Institute for Science and International Security › ISIS Reports › Japan › ISIS Statement on Events at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site in Japan

Damage to plan 3/16/2011 click to enlarge

ISIS Statement on Events at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site in Japan

March 15, 2011

ISIS assesses that the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has worsened considerably. The explosion in the Unit 2 reactor, the third so far, and the fire in the spent fuel pond in the reactor building for Unit 4¹ means that this accident can no longer be viewed as a level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Events (INES) scale that ranks events from 1 to 7. A level 4 incident involves only local radiological consequences. This event is now closer to a level 6, and it may unfortunately reach a level 7.

A level 6 event means that consequences are broader and countermeasures are needed to deal with the radioactive contamination. A level 7 event would constitute a larger release of radioactive material, and would require further extended countermeasures. The international community should increase assistance to Japan to both contain the emergency at the reactors and to address the wider contamination. We need to find a solution together.

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1 “Japanese authorities also today informed the IAEA at 04:50 CET that the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is on fire and radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere.” 5:15 update: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Institute for Science and International Security › ISIS Reports › Japan › ISIS Statement on Events at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site in Japan

Torts Today: Reactor design has long been questioned

As I suggested last night.  When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.  And that looks like a defectively designed reactor under the Reasonable Alternative design test of the Products Liability Restatement, Section 2.  Turns out others made that observation 40 years ago.  Like I said the mistakes creating the accident are always simple.  It's the complications that ensue that are complex. - gwc

The warnings were stark and issued repeatedly as far back as 1972: If the cooling systems ever failed at a Mark 1 nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment.

Now, with one Mark 1 containment vessel damaged at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and other vessels there under severe strain, the weaknesses of the design — developed in the 1960s by General Electric — could be contributing to the unfolding catastrophe.

HERE is the Times report

Disasters Fail to Follow Scripts - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Accidents have simple origins. The shuttle's rubber O rings became brittle in the cold.  BP's cut-off valve had no back-up - unlike newer ones.  The Japanese reactors' cooling pumps were diesel engines - which the tsunami flooded when it overflowed the seawall.   What happens next is unpredictable. - gwc



by David Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists
The Japanese reactors were designed to cope with power failure for eight hours. Most U.S. reactors can cope with outages for only four hours.

Disasters Fail to Follow Scripts - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Justice Stevens : on Ground Zero Mosque "fear of the unknown - is the source of most invidious prejudice"

The Double Crane Memorial

Like many Japanese and Japanese Americans,
 Justice Stevens loves the game of baseball

The National Japanese American Memorial  commemorates those Japanese Americans who died wearing the uniform of the United States and the Japanese Americans put in internment camps during World War II.  Speaking to supporters of the sponsoring foundation retired Justice John Paul Stevens  reflected on the `Ground Zero Mosque'.  A Navy WWII veteran, Stevens's own impulse was to resent the Japanese tourists he saw at in Hawai'i at the Pearl Harbor Memorial - the sunken battleship Arizona,   But reflection led him to the dangers of guilt by association,  And to the basic fact that "fear of the unknown - is the source of most invidious prejudice".  thanks to Adam Liptak of the NY Times for reporting this story.


The entire speech is HERE.   An excerpt follows:

I suspect that many New Yorkers who lost friends or relatives as a result of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 may have reacted to the news that Muslims are planning to erect a mosque or a religious center in the neighborhood much as I reacted to the sight of the Japanese tourists on the Arizona. Perhaps some of them may have thought: "This is no place for a mosque; Muslims killed innocent Americans herei they should build their places of worship in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else, but not here."

But then, after a period of reflection, some of those New Yorkers may have had second thoughts, just as I did at the Arizona. The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago; the Mus-lims planning to build the mosque are not responsible for what an entirely different group of Muslims did on 9/11. Indeed, terrorists like those who killed over 3 / 000 Americans -including Catholics 1 Jews 1 Protestants atheists and some of the 600 1 000 Muslims who live in New York -have also killed many more Muslims who disagree with their radical views in other parts of the world. Many of the Muslims who pray in New York mosques may well have come to America to escape the intolerance of radicals like those who dominate the Taliban. Descendants of pilgrims who came to America in the 17th century to escape religious persecutions -as well as those who thereafter joined the American political experiment that those people of faith helped launch -should understand why American Muslims should enjoy the freedom to build their places of worship wherever permitted by local zoning laws.

Names of Japanese American veterans killed in WWII