Monday, April 2, 2012

WSPEEDI Simulation Showed 10 Terabecquerels/Hour Iodine-131 in Chiba on March 15 Last Year, Data Still Not Disclosed

10 terabequerels = 10,000,000,000,000 becquerels.

The system also calculated the amount of radioactive cesium to be 1 terabecquerels/hour each for cesium-134 and cesium 137. And the Japanese government is still sitting on the data.

WSPEEDI simulation system can predict the dispersion of radioactive materials in the hemisphere, in 3D.

From what Jiji Tsushin reports, the WSPEEDI simulation was done on March 15 upon request from the Ministry of Education and Science. For whatever reason, the Ministry decided to not announce it (for that matter, not let anyone know about it, till April 3, 2012).

On the very next day, on March 16, the Ministry announced that SPEEDI and WSPEEDI would now be the responsibilities of the Nuclear Safety Commission, and instructed the Japan Atomic Energy Agency to send the data to the Commission, who either sat on it or didn't even know they were now in charge of SPEEDI/WSPEEDI.

There is another interesting bit of information in the Jiji article below. The simulation was ordered by the Ministry of Education, and one of the parameters was that radioactive materials were released at about 9PM on March 14, 2011. That's about the time (9:18PM to be exact) when 2 safety relief valves were opened in Reactor 2, probably releasing a large amount of radioactive materials through a breach in the Suppression Chamber, according to the research paper by Fumiya Tanabe of Sociotechnical Systems Safety Research Institute.

If that's the case, the government must have known that the Reactor 2 Suppression Chamber had already failed, and opening the safety relief valves would release a large amount of radioactive materials from the breach. So they ordered the WSPEEDI simulation specifying the time of the release at 9PM on March 14.

Jiji Tsushin (4/3/2012):

千葉で「ヨウ素10兆ベクレル」未公表=昨年3月、世界版SPEEDI試算

WSPEEDI Simulation last March: 10 terabecquerels[/hour] of radioactive iodine in Chiba, data not disclosed yet

 東京電力福島第1原発事故で、昨年3月15日、放射性物質の拡散予測データ「世界版SPEEDI」の試算結果で、千葉市内でヨウ素の濃度が毎時10兆ベクレルという高い値が出ていたにもかかわらず、文部科学省と原子力安全委員会の間で十分な連携が取られず、現在も公表されていないことが3日、分かった。

On March 15 last year after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident started, the WSPEEDI simulation of the dispersion of radioactive materials predicted the very high density for radioactive iodine in Chiba City in Chiba, at 10 terabequerels per hour. However, there was no effective communication between the Ministry of Education and Science and the Nuclear Safety Commission, and the data has still not been disclosed.

 文科省や安全委によると、世界版SPEEDIは放出される放射性物質の拡散状況を半地球規模で予測するシステム。日本原子力研究開発機構が同システムを運用しており、昨年3月も文科省の依頼を受け、試算を行っていた。

According to the Ministry of Education and the Nuclear Safety Commission, the WSPEEDI system is capable of simulating the dispersion of radioactive materials emitted on a hemispheric scale. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) operates the system, and it was conducting the calculations upon request from the Ministry of Education in March last year.

 それによると、福島第1原発から昨年3月14日午後9時ごろに放出された放射性物質が拡散した結果、千葉市内で同15日午前6~7時、ヨウ素の濃度は毎時10兆ベクレル、セシウム134、137もそれぞれ同1兆ベクレルと推計された。

According to the calculations, as the result of radioactive materials released from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant at about 9PM on March 14, 2011 and dispersed, Chiba City would have 10 terabequerels/hour radioactive iodine (I-131) between 6AM and 7AM, and 1 terabequerel/hour of cesium-134 and 1 terabequerel/hour of cesium-137.

 この試算データの評価について、文科省は安全委の担当と判断し、同16日に安全委へデータを送るよう同機構に指示した。同機構はメールに添付して送信したが、安全委は重要情報と認識せず、放置したという。同様にデータを受け取っていた文科省も、安全委に公表するよう連絡しなかった。

The Ministry of Education then decided that the Nuclear Safety Commission should be in charge of evaluating this data, and instructed JAEA to send the data to the Nuclear Safety Commission on the next day, March 16. JAEA sent the data as email attachments to the Nuclear Safety Commission, but the Commission didn't see the data as important, and didn't do anything. The Ministry of Education, who had received the data, did not contact the Commission and tell them the data should be made public.

I think the Ministry of Education got scared, seeing the data.

They didn't want to be the one to handle such "hot" data. So they passed it on to the Nuclear Safety Commission under Dr. Haruki Madarame, who was apparently so overwhelmed by the nuclear disaster and missing sleep that he doesn't even remember what he was doing or saying in the first 1 week of the accident.

What a luck that Japan had, having these people in the government.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can someone explain what this means from a health standpoint? This sounds incredibly high. Should people who were in Chiba City on 15-March stop saving for retirement?

Anonymous said...

Boy, did they fuck the fuckin' fuck up/ all of japan is dee ee A DEE "basically well WELL over 10 chernobles thus far". I am serious. Take it seriously.Realize the ridiculousness and delusion en masse everywhere, the true amounts of fallout \/exposure, crap, tonnage, realize it.

elbows said...

I don't think it is safe to presume that the 9PM estimates were done because of knowledge of suppression chamber damage. Its not impossible, but there are other scenarios which seem more likely.

For example at 9PM they managed to temporarily open the small vent valve of the suppression chamber. They don't think this vent succeeded as the measured pressure was below that of the rupture disc, and containment pressure did not drop significantly, but they don't actually know whether the rupture disc ruptured at some point or not. So we don't know whether this attempted vet vent or the 00:02 dry vent managed to release anything.

Certainly they were worried about the suppression chamber by the evening of the 14th, but the concern would likely be about whether the S/C would fail after the SRV valves were opened, rather than knowledge about existing S/C damage. Worries about S/C ability to handle more steam were a main reason for trying to vent in the first place.

But the point is they would run simulations in advance of venting attempts, in order to see what would happen as a result of wind direction etc. Their estimates for the amount released at source would likely not match reality, so the later studies of actual contamination at various locations are more useful than model estimates. But the covering up of the simulation results is indeed one of the big scandals of this disaster. In situations like this is it seems that citizens will have to rely on common sense & weather forecasts rather than specific nuclear data. Weather forecasts were not covered up, although some agencies did give misleading info about this. For example I believe that the World Meteorological Organisation put out a press release on March 15th that made it sound like the wind was predominately blowing stuff out to sea, but by the time this press release was issued Japan had already had the wind taking stuff south and then north-west. http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_909_en.html

Chibaguy said...

@anon 12:06, the residents of Chiba should leave the country and take their taxes with them. Chiba is as bad as parts of Fukushima. It should be equated with Nakadori in Fukushima.

Anonymous said...

Say it with me steve elbows, 3 open air meltdowns+ A FUEL POOL OR 3, NO CONTAINMENT, with no societal mitigation, say it.
/Also, show me a picture of fukushima Daini with todays paper anytime, I'll be waiting just like I have for a over year.

Anonymous said...

Remember in a "normal world" the mandatory " dead man's land" is now at least 1100 square kilometers and that is being very reserved = a 1 month 1 chernoble event, personally I think 5000sq km's is reserved. Remember, chernoble blew contamination swept over 25,000 sq km's and to a lesser degree the entire world. Japan is very tiny compared to those reactors and their power/effect.

Anonymous said...

One chernoble, two chernobles, three chernobles burning for over a year with mox and throw spent fuel in there which is just as bad as mox.... and people expect to live?'
baseless rumor?

Anonymous said...

I happen to think that simulations like these scared the decidents into postponing the vents until it was too late.

It is imperative to retro-fit NPPs with filtered venting systems, I believe.

Anonymous said...

Japan isn't scared enough, I have seen nothing but confidence since the beginning, even now.

elbows said...

@ anonymous that wanted me to say something dramatic and scary.

No, sorry, a really bad nuclear disaster happened and I am very interested in the detail. I have no need whatsoever to hype up what happened because the known reality is already bad enough. So there is no need to exaggerate what actually happened, and I do not believe that hysteria is any more helpful than the other extreme, the coverups and false reassurances that governments etc give.

I am interested in the little details for geeky reasons and to improve knowledge. I like quality information that is accurate. And since Im not trying to suggest that nuclear power is safe, or pretend that Fukushima was not a dreadful multi-reactor meltdown, I don't see why anybody should ask me to think about the disaster in the same easy they do.

For example I am fascinated by reactor 2 and the exact detail of why the radioactive contamination from this reactor is estimated to be much worse than from the others. It frustrated me that the explosions got all the attention, that there was so much focus on the visual stuff that looked so dramatic, but was not necessarily the main cause of contamination. I got quite frustrated and bored with people doing really bad analysis of photos of reactor 3 because they had convinced themselves that the reactor vessel must have exploded into the air, or that the entire reactor 4 building was leaning to one side, or that the weather they were seeing on the webcam was actually a massive release of radiation, or that a light was a fire, or any of the other stuff that people jabber on about on the net.

Loads of stuff went horribly wrong, loads of people with responsibility made lots of mistakes before, during and after the disaster, and I've been horrified by how sues such as decontamination and food safety are being handled. That doesn't stop me being interested in the detail and absolutely uninterested in hysteria.

Anonymous said...

and people continue to ignore this as the worst environmental disaster in the history of the earth, short of a meteor or ice age (even then..)

There are still people who believe that we somehow "sweat out" the radiation over time, or that the big mighty 'clean' ocean will disperse this stuff.

The stupidity of humans is pure evil now. Thats the downfall of man.

Anonymous said...

reactor 2 for some reason put out "more radiation"?
gong show, subterfuge/runaround, lookin' under rocks. Rest assured 1 2 and 3 emissed their their cores, and I was to bet I'd say if it were a reactor pissing contest " which it is not!" mox reactor 3 holds the title, with it's complete core and spent fuel ejection, Don't tell me that didn't happen! jesus, and there's plenty more unmitigatable radioactive material where that came from, you will see. AS the area grows too radioactively "hot" to engage in mitagatory actions.

elbows said...

@anonymous Thats exactly the kind of unhelpful rubbish Im talking about. MOX fuel is mostly an issue because people had already latched on to the downsides of MOX long before Fukushima disaster happened. So some people like to throw it out there in relation to Fukushima to hype up the disaster, which as I already mentioned needs no hyping as the reality was quite bad enough. The meltdown of reactors 1 & 2 was no less severe because they didn't use MOX.

As for the idea that everything in reactor 3 was ejected, if that was the case then it is very hard to see how workers could possibly have worked on site for over a year since this happened. Workers would have been facing the sort of thing that happened in Chernobyl, highly radioactive material all over the place that causes immediate devastating health affects. There are some hotspots around the plant but nothing like we'd expect if all the contents of a fuel pool were scattered around.

I have no idea at all why you think that ejection of material from reactor 3 reactor & pool would result in the area growing too radioactively hot more than a year later, rather than at the time. The plant is only going to grow too radioactive for workers to be able to engage in mitigatory action if there is a new failure of some kind. There are some possibilities in this regard, but nobody really knows if they will happen or not.

At the moment the main story is really about how Japan is dealing with the material that came out of the reactors a year ago and contaminated land & ocean. Looking at food safety issues and government behaviour is helpful. Trying to understand more about the detail of what happened in the disaster is useful. But I don't quite know what the point of going on about MOX and making wild claims on the internet is, other than treating Fukushima as some form of entertainment where scaring yourself about the worst-case implications and making silly noises about the end of the world is considered fun. This is real life, not a bad B-movie.

Anonymous said...

I don't hype up mox, it does that itself, that's how bad that stuff is, and if you're in japan and you can find rads here or there, that's mox, ok, a little here, a lot over there, but it's everywhere and it is mox, and the rest of it might as well be too, because of it's use that produces 250kg's of plutonium roughly in each reactor load, <not good,that's a problem for all japan, and the world, not fixable, everyone should leave. Think about it ok, if it's a problem for the whole world "chernoble truly was"... how well can japan faire, this is way over 3 chernobles in truth and counting. It is too late for japan. Mox and plutonium everywhere!!! In everything! everything.

Majia's Blog said...

Summary of reported releases
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/dispossessed-in-japan-no-timely.html

Anonymous said...

Check out the INPO report. It's considered the bible of Fukushima reports because INPO was the outside world's contact with Tepco in the early days. Govt agencies like NISA and NRC begged INPO to be a part of their teleconferences with Tepco as NRC FOIAs show.

Per INPO, reactor two was never vented. They never blew the rupture disk. Nor did they suffer an explosion according to seismic data INPO reviewed.

All the radiation at that time came from reactor 3 and elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

At Anon 2:39: Are you talking about the INPO report that can be downloaded here?

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/safetyandsecurity/reports/special-report-on-the-nuclear-accident-at-the-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-station

It appears to me you are correct: venting failed and explosion apparently did not happen. HOWEVER, the following is stated on page numbered 28: "With no reports of steam being discharged from the Unit 2 vent stack and no changes to the venting lineup, TEPCO suspects the loud noise, instrument failure, and subsequent containment depressurization to be indicative of a potential breach of the containment."

So whichever way, something "popped open" and something got out.
*mscharisma*

Durf said...

The Jiji report was a massively mistaken piece and was amended hours later. The Chiba authorities took readings that pointed to a 10 TBq/hr release of iodine from Fukushima Daiichi. That wasn't the local reading in Chiba.

elbows said...

Just because a report says that venting and explosions didn't happen, doesn't mean no radiation came from reactor 2. The very idea that nothing was released from this reactor is a joke and is quite the opposite of what people think happened. You don't need explosions or deliberate venting in order to release radiation.

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