Interesting bit on Japan's economy:
One of the great curiosities in the global economy is Japan's public debt; while we regard a debt-to-national income ratio of 60 per cent as a crisis, and the Greeks and Irish are running into the risk of default with a ratio of around 100 per cent, Japan has merrily chugged along with a ratio of close to 200 per cent for some years, a product of her slow growth and those official attempts to stimulate the economy through public spending.
Japan's gigantic mortgage has, so far, been easy for her to fund because she has almost exclusively funded it internally; Japanese salarymen still earn good money and they choose to save rather than spend it.
That could collapse in a hurry. Particularly if this event curtails nuclear power in Japan (which has few natural resources) and stifles production.
Nonian, almost all day-to-day activity in a nuclear power plant is designed to support the plumbing.
The earthquake caused the reactors to shut down automatically. The control rods, which stop the reaction, dropped into the core. The fuel, however, is still very hot. The fuel is in the form of pellets about the size of a pencil eraser and covered with zirconium cladding. They're stacked in long thin fuel rods in a framework and the whole apparatus sits in a large pool of water.
Normally, the circulating water that cools the core after a shutdown is circulated with pumps run by offsite power, but the earthquake took out the transmission lines. When offsite power is cut of off, the emergency generators start automatically, and the six-unit plant had something like 13 generators. However, then the tsunami hit and took those out.
After that, there are two systems that circulate water using convection, and there are batteries. They ran out of battery power and it took a while to get new portable generators to the site. In the meantime, the fuel continued to heat up. If the water boils to the point that the core is uncovered, the cladding on the fuel pellets starts to melt, which releases radioactive particles. Essentially, they had about six backup systems for cooling fail one after the other. At that point, they went to the last ditch step, which is flood the whole containment vessel with seawater and boron.
These are water-moderated reactors, and the water slows down the fission products so that they have a chance to hit each other and cause more fission. Without water, the reaction can't become critical, so you're not talking about an atomic explosion here. However, hydrogen from the melting cladding can (and has) exploded and the steam pressure built up. One or the other has apparent made an opening in the containment vessel at one reactor.
Also, hookers and blow.
When offsite power is cut of off, the emergency generators start automatically, and the six-unit plant had something like 13 generators. However, then the tsunami hit and took those out.
Tsunami proof generators seems to be the next order of business.
Thanks, Ginger. That was really helpf and made total sense to me who knows nothing about this sort of stuff.
Tsunami proof generators seems to be the next order of business.
The new designs feed cooling water by gravity. I wonder if any of them will be built after this.
The poor Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Relations has been tweeting for days. I think he just nods off for an hour or so and goes back to it.
Ginger, I should probably know this, but...do you/did you used to work in nuclear science?
I'm going to believe she did. Otherwise, she's THE PRETENDER.
BTW, Ginger your calm assessments are keeping me from freaking the fuck out. Thank you.
A tiny bit of good news: it does look like they've gotten the Unit 4 fire out.
I wouldn't want to second guess anyone in such a situation, but I wish they had accepted help from other countries when it was first offered.
I worked eight years for a nuclear utility and eight years for the industry-funded watchdog group. I've been part of dozens of emergency drills. In order to get to this level of emergency in a drill, we used to have to make up all kinds of unlikely things: a plane hit the plant, and 10 valves failed, and a worker was trapped and, and.... It's just surreal to see all these things actually happening.
