Because I Can

The Truthiness Will Set You Moderately Free, Sort Of

There are a variety of theories regarding who runs the planet, and what we had better do to survive. I have my own theory of Who Runs Things.

It came about when a friend, years ago, used the phrase "Tickle Me Hellmo!" to describe the ExMass popular kid's gift of that era (Yes, it was during the reign of "Lil' Boots" Bush). Not long after, she disappeared -- and on Sesame Street, the character Elmo made a reference to my friend's name and added, "She's done! Caught up in something bad! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

(Well; okay: Elmo might have said a name similar to my friend's, and then added, "She's fun! Taught us not to be sad! Ha ha ha ha ha ha, etc.!" But that wouldn't be half as interesting a blog post, n'cest pas?)

Anyway, we're living in a world where the horror is just below the surface. It has it's own website. This is what it looks like -- Click To Read a larger version of The Hidden Truth; It's Easy And Fun!

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Very Very Very Exceptionally Bad Things

Reported this morning by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), via Japan's Kyodo News Service. Ahh; it's probably nothing.

URGENT: Radiation 1,600 times normal level 20 km from Fukushima plant: IAEA
VIENNA, March 22, Kyodo

Radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels has been detected in an area about 20 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency officials said Monday.

Data collected by an IAEA team show that radiation levels of 161 microsievert per hour have been detected in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, the officials said.

The government has set an exclusion zone covering areas within a 20-km radius of the plant and has urged people within 20 to 30 km to stay indoors.

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Other Counties Heard From

Josh Marshall At TPM has grave misgivings about our adventure near the Shores Of Tripoli™.

At the end of last week I couldn't help tweeting that everything I was seeing in Libya was bringing out my inner foreign policy Realist. And everything I've seen this weekend has confirmed me in that view. Indeed, there are so many reasons this strikes me as a bad idea I really hardly know where to start...

A week ago a relatively limited intervention probably could have sealed the rebels' victory... But where do we expect to get from this now? It's not clear to me how the best case scenario can be anything more than our maintaining a safe haven in Benghazi for the people who were about to be crushed because they'd participated in a failed rebellion. So Qaddafi reclaims his rule over all of Libya except this one city which has no government or apparent hope of anything better than permanent limbo. Where do we go with that?

We're calling a time out on a really ugly situation the fundamental dynamics of which we aren't in any position to change. That sounds like a mess.

Maybe we do this and then that rejuvenates the opposition and Qaddafi is gone in a week. If that happens, great. Egg on my face. But I doubt it.

At the same time, TPM published a response from an unnamed "U.S. Government employee in a Middle Eastern Country", who has a different take altogether:

The Arab world is in a state of remarkable transformation. But you would be wrong to look at these as individual transformations, individual revolutions, within individual nation-states. The Arabs certainly don't see it that way. Rather, Libya today occupies a position at the heart of what has been a regional phenomenon, an Arab Spring if you like, that has been defined by a remarkable feeling of solidarity across the Arab world...

But what frustrates me most about yours and others' "realpolitik"-driven critiques of this intervention is that critics seldom stop to consider the alternative. What if we had ignored the rebels' pleas for our assistance? What if we had stood by and done nothing? As you say Qadhafi probably would have prevailed, and the payback likely would have been terrible, for the people in Benghazi and elsewhere. Democracy would have failed in Libya, and stalled elsewhere.

All of which would have been covered exhaustively on Al Jazeera, of course. Under the overall narrative that the United States, after launching a $1.5 trillion invasion of Iraq, ignored the suffering of the people of Libya despite the region's urgent requests for assistance. That we let the democracy movement die in Libya, that we betrayed the Arab people and showed that we do not really care about democracy after all, only about our narrow economic interests. Seriously, people on the street were already using these lines with me last week, even before the going got really bad for the rebels...

Today in Libya and elsewhere in the region we are watching history unfold. It is easy in such moments to lose track of the big picture, to lose perspective. But at the end of the day we must realize that we are faced with a decision that will define our relations with these countries and their people for a long time to come: whether to take the risk and support in a tangible way their democratic aspirations, or stand aside and do nothing in fear of all the things that could go wrong. I for one am glad we chose the former.

Worth reading.

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Appointment In Samarra, Too

Courage And Quo Vadis

In first-person shooter games on the Intertubes, when your character is hiding behind a box / barrel / wall / alien thing and being shot at, you don't just stand up and start running -- because you have no clear idea where to go, or what will happen after you come out of your position of safety.

From this morning's NYT:

Western leaders acknowledged, though, that there was no endgame beyond the immediate United Nations authorization to protect Libyan civilians, and it was uncertain that even military strikes would force Colonel Qaddafi from power.

Many of the leaders who were in Paris had called for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and it may be that military intervention will lead to negotiations with the opposition for the colonel and his family to leave — or, at the least, buys time for the rebels to regroup.

There are risks, though. One widely held concern is the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority, opening the door for Islamic extremists to begin operating in a country that had been closed to them. The operation may also present a double standard: While the West has taken punitive action against Libya, a relatively isolated Arab state, the governments in Bahrain and Yemen have faced few penalties after cracking down on their own protest movements.

Oh, and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Elsewherestan denounced the Allied strikes. Funny, given they're allied with Al-Qaeda, and Mommar The Duck says the rebels in Libya are all Al-Qaeda fighters on "psychedelics", and all.

So this should all be fun -- you know; more stuff to watch on your teevee. And educational for the kids. I'm not sure whether to laugh until I throw up, or just throw up.

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Appointment In Samarra

Shaking The Tree

Libyan Air Force Jet, Attacking The Rebels, Is Shot Down --
Possibly By French Fighters (Patrick Baz, Agence France-Press)

On Thursday evening, the UN Security Council voted to impose an immediate cease-fire in Libya between the well-supplied and overwhelming forces commanded by Mommar Quaddafi, and the nascent pro-democracy rebellion that had sprung into being less than three weeks ago -- this, as that rebellion looks as if it's about to be crushed, harshly, by elite Libyian army troops and paid mercenaries from central Africa.

Quadaffi went on Libyan state teevee to announce his government and forces would immediately comply with the UN cease-fire -- but apparently, they didn't (no surprise there), and the New York Times reported heavy bombardment and fighting in Benghazi.

President Obama publicly declared yesterday that Quadaffi was being given a "final warning" to adhere to the UN resolution's terms, which were "non-negotiable". Quadaffi sent Obama a rambling, disconnected letter which was read by one of The Duck's spokespersons:

You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs... I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son, and I have all the love for you as a son... We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more.

Our response, and that of other 'partners' in this enterprise earlier today, was to launch approximately 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a variety of Libyian air defense and other military targets. French aircraft apparently attacked at least one Libyan army tank near Benghazi.

(Map: New York Times Online, March 19th)

And, as they say, that was just the overture. I'm only a Dog, Jim; not an intelligence analyst, and have no idea what the actual symphony will sound like. Or how long it will last. Or what the price of the ticket will be.

Initially, I was all in favor of our unilaterally bombing the hell out of The Duck; fortunately, that only lasted for a few hours. I've seen a B-52 strike, and what's left after; and (as The Great Curmudgeon says) don't believe Our Freedom Bombs Only Fall On The Bad Guys. They don't.

We can assume that Quaddafi will be forced from power, and that it will either end quickly, or not. Quadaffi isn't emotionally stable -- based on his 'costumes of state' (Mommar is the Lady Gaga of north African leaders), and reports -- recently backed up by Wikileaks -- that his minor-emperor lifestyle centers around narcissistic comforts and physical pleasure, rather than governing or trying to build a more modern country for his people subjects.

The assessment of most other governments of The Duck are the same: Crazier than a balloon full of rats; hard to say what he'll do. Libya was (until a month ago) a "stable and reliable partner" of the West -- that is, he sold us oil, which gave American and EU diplomats an excuse to look away when The Duck appeared in public wearing clown suits, while his nation suffered food shortages and high unemployment.

Intervention in Libya isn't a wildly popular idea in Europe, or among the advisers surrounding our President. The U.S. is tired of Endless War™; Europe is sick of being asked to support unilateral American anything. The French and British may be the only parties in the "broad coalition" to provide the military assets that make this Resolution more than a mouthful of words.

Europe and the U.S. also can't afford to put their snouts into the rat-hole of a civil war if it means a trap snaps closed on the other side -- making it messy, politically and monetarily expensive, to back out. The economies of the U.S. and Europe have been crippled by the greed of their own financial structures, with effects greater than anything Al-Qaeda has dreamt of inflicting.

At the same time, the UN and Western departments of state remember that they stood by and did nothing about genocide in Rawanda, and in Darfur, until it was too late for millions of victims. Then, Lil' Boots and President Cheney unleashed the Project For a New American Century plan, projecting U.S. power anywhere, which left a mess for the rest of the world to clean up, and generations of scarred children who will flinch at the mention of the word, "America".

After popular rebellion in Egypt, the Middle East is even more fractured along sectarian and tribal faultlines: The Saudis and the Emirates are frightened, so are the Israelis; the Palestinians are hopeful, the Iranians and their proxy forces are eager to advance their chances.

Perhaps Obama and others thought we have to be seen to popular rebellions in the region as a protector, the repository of democracy and the rule of law (unless you're Bradley Manning, or a Wall Street Master Of The Universe); maybe it is ultimately all about the oil.

And, it's the Great Game Of Power. The larger players at the table are always maneuvering for advantage; smaller players are, too -- or, just to keep their seats. For the U.S., it's about maintaining America's preeminence to influence others and affect events in the world -- the Empire we've had since the end of WW2, but which appears to be slowly winding down.

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I keep thinking about a story, used in a play in the 1930's by W. Somerset Maugham, turned into a novel by American author John O'Hara, Appointment In Samarra.

A man bumps into Death, in the form of a woman, at a market in Baghdad. Death gestures at him; he runs home, tells his manservant what happened, packs a bag and leaves to hide in the town of Samarra -- the last place Death would think to look for him.

The manservant goes back to the market, and finds Death. He asks why he had threatened his master. "I did not threaten him," Death replied. "I was only surprised to see him -- because he has an appointment with me, tonight, in Samarra."

If we're trying to reestablish America's image as using our might for good works, rather than (for example) the craven desire of a Lil' Boots Bush to have a larger penis, and avoid the mistakes of not intervening in Rawanda or Darfur... well, I hope we understand the law of unintended consequences, and that No Good deed Goes Unpunished.

Haven't the events of the past week been enough evidence that The Great Game is nothing more than that? What more will it take to change our perspective; a sizable asteroid? A pandemic?

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Very Very Exceptionally Bad Things

(Graphic: New York Times Online, March 17, 2011)

The New York Times' continuing coverage of the nuclear crisis in Japan, following the earthquake and tsunami a week ago, mentioned a few facts this morning which may indicate the situation is getting worse, not better -- and, that the Japanese government and Tokyo Power Company (TEPCO) have been understating the level of danger to the surrounding population for some time.

My One Dog's Opinion, based on nothing but general experience, is that TEPCO didn't reveal the full extent of problems at the Fukushima plant to the Japanese government until things began to spiral out of control -- and even then, they weren't completely forthcoming.

At this point, the situation is so critical that no one has time to place blame -- they're too busy trying to prevent it from getting even worse.

In a further sign of spreading alarm that uranium in the plant could begin to melt, Japan planned to import about 150 tons of boron from South Korea and France to mix with water to be sprayed onto damaged reactors, French and South Korean officials said Friday. Boron absorbs neutrons during a nuclear reaction and can be used in an effort to stop a meltdown if the zirconium cladding on uranium fuel rods is compromised.

Tokyo Electric Power Company... said earlier this week that there was a possibility of “recriticality,” in which fission would resume if fuel rods melted and the uranium pellets slumped into a jumble together on the floor of a storage pool or reactor core. Spraying pure water on the uranium under these conditions can actually accelerate fission, said Robert Albrecht, a longtime nuclear engineer...

Additionally... there also appeared to be damage to the floor or sides of the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4, and that this was making it extremely hard to refill the pool with water... a leak had not been located but engineers had concluded that it must exist because water sprayed on the storage pool has been disappearing much more quickly than would be consistent with evaporation.

One concern at [Reactor] No. 4 has been a fire that was burning at its storage pool earlier in the week; American officials are not convinced the fire has gone out. American officials have also worried that the spent-fuel pool at that reactor has run dry, exposing the rods.

The NYT continued that the United States government has not reversed a previously-declared instruction for all U.S. nationals to relocate at least 50 miles from the nuclear plant, which is a greater perimeter than the Japanese government has established (see NYT graphic at the top of the page).

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Very Bad Thing

American officials in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the State Department have said their greatest concern was that efforts by the Japanese to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors showed few signs of working. On Wednesday, American and Japanese officials gave "radically different assessments" of the danger, but appeared to try and present a more united front yesterday.

"Experts met in Tokyo to compare notes," per the NYT. With Japanese permission the U.S. began to fly intelligence-collection aircraft over the site, "in hopes of gaining a view for Washington as well as its allies in Tokyo that did not rely on the announcements of officials from Tokyo Electric, which operates Fukushima Daiichi."

"American officials say they suspect that the company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage."

American officials, meanwhile, remained fixated on the temperature readings inside Reactor No. 2 and two others that had been operating until the earthquake shut them down, as well as at the plant’s spent fuel pools, looking for any signs that their high levels of heat were going down. If the fuel rods are uncovered and exposed to air, they heat up and can burst into flame, spewing radioactive elements.

So far the officials saw no signs of dropping temperatures. And the [UN's IAEA website] made it clear that there were no readings at all from some critical areas. Part of the American effort, by satellites and aircraft, is to identify the hot spots, something the Japanese have not been able to do in some cases...

Getting the Japanese to accept [use of] American detection equipment was a delicate diplomatic maneuver, which some Japanese officials originally resisted. But as it became clear that conditions at the plant were spinning out of control, and with Japanese officials admitting they had little hard evidence about whether there was water in the cooling pools or breaches in the reactor containment structures, they began to accept more help.

...As time went by, and the situation became worse. On occasion, admitting you're screwed and asking for help to solve a problem is better than trying to avoid "embarrassment" over having made a mistake.

In this case, damage to the Daiichi plant was an act of nature (The decision to build nuclear power plants in a country as seismically-active as Japan we'll table for the moment). However, the crisis that has developed since is the result of human beings, making decisions -- or, not.

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UPDATE: From the NYT this morning:

Japan Raises Nuclear Crisis Warning Level Retroactively
By Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher / 10:58 PDST

The decision to raise the level came two days after an American warned publicly that the situation at the plant was much bleaker than Japanese officials had indicated...

A senior official at [Japan's] nuclear safety agency, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said Friday that [Japanese] regulators had not raised the threat level earlier because they were still assessing the situation. But on Friday, they decided events starting at the plant on Tuesday had been worrisome enough to justify the higher rating...

Despite changing the threat level, the Japanese government did not extend the evacuation area from 12 miles. The United States on Wednesday warned its nationals in the area to move at least 50 miles away from the plant.

Mr. Nishiyama said there was “no need” to expand the evacuation area, asserting that officials had erred on the side of caution from the very beginning in setting the boundary...

Uh-Huh.

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Still Very Exceptionally Bad Things

Got Transparency?

A spokesperson for the Japanese Prime Minister told the BBC he "couldn't understand [the] behavior" of foreign governments which have directed their citizens in Japan to leave the country, or of individual foreigners leaving on their own. The inference was that there was no reason to do so.

At the same time, attempts by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government to affect the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have (again, by the BBC) appeared "increasingly erratic and desperate".

For a second day, U.S.-built Chinook helicopters dropped seven-ton containers of water on Reactor building Number 3 -- however, they had to fly at around 1000 feet in the air to avoid high levels of radiation; videos of the drops showed most of the water missing the building and drifting away.

Video also showed police and fire department trucks with water cannons, brought in to fire water into building number 3... but again, couldn't get close enough to deliver much water due to high radioactivity.

Video To Explain The Nuclear Crisis To Japan's Children: The Sick

Nuclear Plant Needs Help From Doctors To Stop Pooping -- But He's

Better Than Mr. Chernobyl, Or Mr. Three-Mile Island (UTub)

The focus of activity is on Reactor 3, in particular the spent fuel rods stored in a pool just below its badly damaged roof. It was revealed today for the first time that these spent fuel rods are filled, not with pellets of Uranium-238, but of a higher-grade nuclear fuel called "Mox" -- a mixture containing Plutonium Oxide.

If these fuel rods aren't kept submerged in water, they will overheat and begin to burn. The smoke from that fire will be amazingly radioactive, and will release particles of Plutonium, which has a half-life of 25,000 years.

In Tokyo, They're Detecting, Uh, Something

From Western news reports I've read or have listened to today, my impression is a consensus is developing that, since the crisis began last Saturday, TEPCO has not been fully honest with the Japanese government or the media about how bad the situation actually was as the danger developed -- an example being the "Mox" spent fuel mix in Reactor Building 3; why did TEPCO or the Japanese government delay in revealing a fact that critical?

Infographic Of Plant Damage (As Of March 16, 2011), Via Reuters

By not being forthcoming, TEPCO's position has delayed and deflected resources and advice which, applied earlier, might have made a difference. As a result, the crisis is moving from something like Three-Mile Island swiftly into Chernobyl territory.

Not that it matters now, but shares in TEPCO on Tokyo's Nikkei Stock Exchange have lost 62% of their value since March 11th.

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Sing 'Waltzing Matilda'

(Click For Bigger Graphic Of Impending Doom. It's Easy And Fun!)

According to the UN office of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty (an organization with a worldwide network of sensors capable of detecting even small amounts of nuclear radiation), a plume of radioactive material will reach the West Coast of the United States by Thursday or Friday, the New York Times reports.

"Health and nuclear experts emphasize that any plume would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States."

Okay then! "Extremely minor". Move along, nothing to see here.

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Neville Shute; First Edition Cover, On The Beach

Neville Shute Norway (1899 - 1960) was a British aviation engineer ("Someone who can do for a shilling what any fool can do for a Pound," he once said) from the late 1920's through the end of the Second World War. He had a number of patents in Great Britain and America for a variety improvements to aircraft construction made over those twenty-plus years.

At the same time, he published over thirty novels between 1926 and 1958 under the name Neville Shute, including the 1956 classic, On The Beach.

(As a young Dog, I read the book in the early 1960's, along with another nuclear war anxiety classic, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon (1959); books that featured, even described, The Unthinkable were being read by large numbers of people. When Alas was turned into a "Playhouse 90" television drama in the spring of 1960, it scared the shit out of me. And with good reason.

(Where I grew up, Minuteman missile fields were only a few miles away. If (in the immortal words of Slim Pickens in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove) it came to nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkis, our war would be very short; we were a prime target. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was revealed that the early 60's Russian strategy to destroy American Minuteman fields was to fire a cloud of missiles with ground-bursting warheads: One to five megatons, exploding every thirty seconds, as they literally dug the silos out of the ground.

The town's large air-raid siren outside the fire station had allegedly been liberated from Dresden, Germany, by one of the firemen after WW2; hearing it go off every Friday at noon for almost two decades in a warbling, rise-and-fall tone of a 3-minute attack warning test, was something I never truly became used to.)

As a novelist, Shute was a realist about human nature. As an engineer, he understood the danger presented by rapid technological change; the development of nuclear weapons and the Cold War were never far from the minds of people in America, England, Russia -- or in Australia, where Shute retired in his 50's after WWII.

On The Beach is a novel about people living in 1964 Australia (ten years in the future for Shute, when he wrote the book), approximately a year after the Third World War. The northern hemisphere is poisoned by radioactive fallout, and everywhere above the Equator whoever wasn't killed in the blast of warheads has died from radiation poisoning.

(I always thought the date Shute chose for the war was a curious coincidence: The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962 and nearly ended in what would have been a series of escalations, and then a full nuclear exchange.)

In the novel, radioactive particles are slowly making their way below the equator to the southern hemisphere. The theory of Australian scientists (which proves true) is, background radiation levels will slowly rise and everyone in the south will die as well. Against that background of impending doom, Shute sketched his characters and set them in motion.

In 1958, Stanley Kramer directed a film of Shute's novel, starring Gregory Peck (who after did To Kill A Mockingbird), Anthony Perkins (his first good film role before being locked into a signature character by Psycho), Fred Astaire (yes, Fred Astaire) and Ava Gardner (who had divorced Frank Sinatra, and spent time in Spain with Ernest Hemingway).

Peck is an American nuclear submarine commander, given orders to go back to the northern hemisphere and see if radiation levels have decreased -- and to go to the United States to investigate mysterious radio signals broadcasting from San Diego (Seattle, in the novel). He falls in love with Ava Gardner, then sets off with scientist Fred Astaire to the north.

When investigated, the signals have a fairly prosaic explanation; the sub cruises up to San Francisco (destroyed in the novel but only abandoned, a ghost town, in the film) then returns to Australia.

Scenes Of A Dying World; Click To Enlarge; Easy And Fun!

Ernest Gold, composer of the film's soundtrack, wove the classic Australian tune, "Waltzing Matilda", as a motif in most of the music. At one point, Gardner accompanies Peck on a river-fishing trip -- crowded with others who want one last experience with rod and reel, and where they are serenaded by drunken campers singing the song, over and over.

In Melbourne, reports arrive of high radiation levels working down from the north. In advance, people are lining up for government-issue suicide pills -- painless and effective. Peck tells Gardner that his crew has agreed that they will take their submarine back to the U.S. -- in reality, to head for the Marianas Trench and dive for the bottom until pressure crushes the hull.

One by one, the film's characters make their Abscheid: Fred Astaire seals the doors in his garage, climbs into the driver's seat of a Mercedes 300SL racer, starts the engine in neutral and floors the accelerator pedal; Anthony Perkins and his wife have a last cup of tea. After watching Peck's submarine submerge from a cliff over the ocean, Gardner's character takes her pills with a slug from a pint of Scotch (" 'Fooled you,' she said ") -- and that is how Shute's novel ends.

Kramer's film concludes with scenes of Melbourne, now as empty and abandoned as San Francisco or San Diego, while the "Waltzing Matilda' motif plays behind.

The final image is of a large banner (There Is Still Time -- Brother), strung across a central park by the Salvation Army in promise of the solace of religion; but here, it was a warning to viewers in the theatre that there was still time for people, nations and their governments, to walk back from the nuclear brink.

Still Time.

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Very Exceptionally Bad Things

Chairman Of NRC Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’; Urges Deeper Caution In Japan
(New York Times, 1:45PM, March 16, 2011)

(Photo: Fukushima, 6:35AM PDST, 3/16 [Digital Globe])

One issue for the Japanese government, public, and nuclear experts and engineers around the world, is that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has apparently been less than forthcoming with accurate information about the emergency at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. What we do know isn't good; reporting from Japan sketches an image of controlled panic, real bravery, but ultimately a deteriorating situation. The only real question seems to be how bad it will actually become.

The photo above (via Digital Globe), shows all four reactors at the Fukushima plant site as of 6:35AM PDST today; I've added labels and enhancements to see the reactor structures more clearly.

I'm not an expert on systems engineering. I have read some things; I've written some things, years ago, about nuclear power that required me to understand the basics of generating that kind of power and the differences in reactors to do so. Some things I've read or seen stand out as singular, and at the risk of posting something which reads like a high school science fair exhibit, this is what we know:

What We Know: The Reactors

The TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi power plant consists of four nuclear reactors, designed and built by General Electric. Each is a "hot water" reactor, producing power by pumping fresh water around bundles of fuel rods (filled with pellets of Uranium-238) suspended inside a steel containment vessel. The water is heated, produces steam, and drives a turbine to generate electricity.

(Interactive Graphic At New York Times Online)

The temperature of the water is regulated by control rods around each fuel bundle, made of metal which absorb neutrons created by radioactive Uranium-238. The rods are pushed in to reduce the chain reaction and lower water temperature, and pulled out to raise it and generate more heat to produce steam. But the control rods alone won't prevent the fuel assemblies from overheating -- water as a coolant is critical.

Each steel containment vessel in each reactor building is surrounded by a thick, reinforced concrete structure (see the graphic above) and, like 19th century construction of powder magazines and armories, the roofs are comparatively flimsy; the force of an explosion inside the reactor building would be directed up, not contained inside, where it would cause more damage.

Another feature of each reactor building is a large, reinforced concrete tub, built into the main structure just under the roof. This is filled with circulating water, much like the containment vessels, and are used to store "spent fuel" -- fuel rods full of Uranium-238 that have reached the end of their useful life and will eventually be removed (in a complicated series of steps) for storage as nuclear waste.

Without consistent water flow and continual heat exchange, temperatures inside the reactor's containment vessels (or in the spent fuel pools) rise; the water is boiled away, fuel rods overheat and begin to melt. The nuclear fuel will literally begin to burn through concrete and steel. A cascade of system failures and "incidents" begins. If they can't be controlled... well, you should go for pizza and not come back for, oh, 25,000 years or so.

(Graphic: Aohi Shinbun, Illustrating The Problem)

What We Know: Incidents At The Reactors

When the earthquake and tsunami struck (U.S. time) on Thursday, March 10, the four reactors were apparently shut down -- "Scrammed", a procedure where control rods are lowered rapidly into the reactor core and water levels raised; it's an emergency measure. They depended on those cooling systems to maintain temperatures in the reactor cores.

However, the cooling system pumps were fueled by several above-ground diesel gasoline tanks, and while they apparently survived the earthquake intact, one or more of them were damaged by the tsunami when it swept through the plant area. The reactors in one or more building immediately began to overheat.

Reactor No. 1: On Saturday, March 12th, less than 24 hours after the earthquake and tsunami, an explosion blew the wall panels and roof off the number one reactor building. This may have been the result of hydrogen gas, generated when the level of coolant water circulating around bundles of fuel rods dropped far enough that the rods were exposed.

The hydrogen may have built up inside the steel containment vessel until the pressure blew a seal, tripped a valve, or found a way out. Once it did in enough quantity, it spontaneously exploded. A live feed video camera, set up several kilometers away by Japan's national news agency, NHK, captured the blast.

• (Status Of No. 1 Reactor Now: Fuel rods may have partially melted. The containment vessel may have been cracked, and is being flooded with seawater drawn from the ocean directly adjacent to the plant.)

Reactor No. 3: On Sunday evening, March 13, TEPCO announced that the cooling system to the containment vessel had failed. Then, some hours later on Monday, March 14, the building housing reactor number three exploded -- as NHK's video showed, spectacularly (In the photo at the top of the post, this building may also have burned; its appearance is similar to Building 4, which did catch fire).

• (Status Of No. 3 Reactor Now: Its core also being flooded with seawater, the number three containment vessel appears to be cracked as well and leaking radioactive steam; it can be seen clearly in the photo at the top.)

Reactor No. 2: Yesterday, March 15, a third explosion occurred in the plant's number two reactor building. In the photo above, taken this morning, it doesn't appear to have any visible damage.

• (Status Of No. 2 Reactor Now: Its core is also being flooded with seawater. The status of the containment vessel is unknown, but a small plume of radioactive steam can be seen in the photo.)

Reactor No. 4: This reactor was offline when the earthquake and tsunami struck on Thursday. Yesterday, March 15, a fire (TEPCO didn't specify its cause) broke out in or near the Number Four reactor building following the explosion at Reactor 2. In the photo above, the panel walls around the steel-and concrete reactor structure appear to have been burned away.

The same fire, or a new one, started in the building again today; again, public statements from TEPCO did not identify the cause.

• (Status Of No. 4 Reactor Now: Its core is also being flooded with seawater. The status of the containment vessel is unknown. TEPCO has reported 'concerns' about the status of spent fuel rods in the pool on the top of the reactor building, which may be massive understatement.)

To sum up: One, and probably two, reactors appear to have cracked or ruptured containment vessels. Three reactors have suffered explosions, possibly caused by hydrogen gas, their fuel rods exposed without sufficient water. It was reported by TEPCO that fuel assemblies in two reactors "may have" gotten hot enough to partially melt.

At least since Saturday, all four reactors have cooled by seawater pumped into the containment vessels, and the spent fuel pools on the top of the structures (and in case anyone was wondering, corrosive seawater will irreparably damage the physical plant). This is the only thing preventing a more massive release of radiation, and real catastrophe, at the moment.

Now What?

Cooling the reactor cores and spent fuel in this way releases radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Even so, the type of radiation released is relatively harmless (very short half-lives) and the amounts produced have been very low. Compared to how much worse it could get, this is "Relatively Good".

Worse would be the fuel rods -- in the reactors, or spent fuel -- getting hot enough to melt down further; they will burn through the containment structure. This would release different kinds of particles, carried in the smoke from fires -- much more radioactive, and dangerous. This is "Bad".

And as radiation levels rise or fires gets worse, conditions for human beings to survive (long enough to do anything to prevent a full-on meltdown of all four reactor cores and the spent fuel) deteriorates. This would be Bad, on the order of "Central Japan Should Go For Pizza For 25,000 Years" kind of bad.

The New York Times online posted the graphic (below) of the radiation levels, reported since the earthquake and tsunami on Thursday, from just outside the Fukushima plant.

(Graphic: New York Times Online, March 16, 2011 - Click To Enlarge)

I've added a trend line in red; you can see where it's going. In the beginning, even with the explosions on Saturday and Monday, levels of released radiation are very low. A spike appears on Monday night -- and then after the explosion of Reactor 2 and the fire at Reactor 4, an escalating series of spikes of higher radiation that are not linked to any reported fire or other event. And, you can see the intervals between rises in the level of radiation appear as almost regular pulses. If true, I couldn't speculate what the cycles are tied to.

What this does say is that something is happening, with frequency, to release larger amounts of more highly radioactive material. Whatever is happening has not been fully, publicly reported by TEPCO or the Japanese government -- and, it may not be fully known or understood by TEPCO's engineerse, or even by any UN-IAEA or NRC experts brought in from outside. At this point trained personnel (by now exposed to large amounts of radiation) can't get close enough to the areas where the real problems are occuring.

Very bad.

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UPDATE: From the New York Times, as of 1:45PM PDST:

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the [Nuclear Regulatory C]ommission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor ... had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation...

If his analysis is accurate and Japanese workers have been unable to keep the spent fuel ... properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep workers at the Daiichi complex from servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant.

Mr. Jaczko said radiation levels may make it impossible to continue ... using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, implemented by a small squad of workers and firemen, are the main steps Japan is taking at Daiichi to forestall a full blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material.

The Emperor of Japan, Emperor Akihito, went on television for the first time to address his country, and say he was "very concerned" about the situation at Fukushima Daiichi. It's difficult to overstate how significant, in Japan's culture, this event is.

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Exceptionally Bad Things, Three

What The Hell Is Going On??
-- Naoto Kan, Prime Minister Of Japan,
To Tokyo Electric Power Company Executives

This report, quoted by The Great Curmudgeon (from The Lede at the New York Times online), was posted at 7:22PM PDST, which is already early Wednesday morning in Japan.

If "all the workers" here includes the fifty who had remained at the plant in a last-ditch attempt to stave off total catastrophe, then; yes. Oy is right.

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