Oceanographers know that the Kuroshio current sweeps west from Japan to the Central Pacific and then toward the U.S. West Coast, but they’re less certain how it behaves after it branches toward Alaska and California.

Radiation still leaking into the sea from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant will help them document the ocean’s circulatory system.

“By the time that current reaches the Central Pacific, there are branches heading more towards Alaska and the South—that gets harder to predict,” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

“But that’s one of the things that several people hope to do by measuring these isotopes even at levels when they’re not harmful. We could actually track those ocean currents and better understand the circulation pattern in the Pacific.”  [Link].

The main idea here is that these radioactive particles act like markers so that those studying these currents can follow where they go. This will allow the researchers to test a lot of theories they currently have about currents. So at least some good may come from having leaked and dumped long lived radioactive isotopes into the ocean.

Are there other benefits that might result as well?

Under TEPCOs blueprint for bringing the crisis under control, the principal means to cool the reactors to a cold shutdown state is flooding the fuel with water. Engineers involved in responding to the disaster considered other approaches but did not develop specific plans quickly enough. TEPCO has therefore gone ahead with the flooding plan. New discoveries demanding a rethink of the plan have caused deep disappointment and distrust of the operator in foreign countries, in Japan and in the local communities most directly affected by the crisis. The company should be offering more than one scenario in its new game plan. It should have a “plan B” to resort to immediately if “plan A” falls apart, and the firm should talk candidly about what it would do in a worst-case scenario. Whatever approach is adopted, it is clear that efforts to cool the fuel at the bottom of the pressure vessel will continue for years.  [link]

Do you think TEPCO is doing enough to plan for contingencies? Is the Japanese government treating the situation seriously enough?

Prime Minister Kan, who announced the decision at a hastily called news conference Friday, acknowledged that the government’s request for the utility to suspend the plant’s reactors lacks any legal basis.

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According to a government source, the prime minister decided to suspend Hamaoka and then had other Cabinet members, such as Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda, accept the decision. The industry ministry oversees the nuclear power industry.

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The news caused a sensation at Chubu Electric’s head office in Nagoya city. “It was totally unexpected. It came out of the blue,” a public relations official said of the government’s request to suspend Nos. 4 and 5 reactors that are currently operating. [Link]

It’s very hard to know what’s happening here. There look to be two significant elements here:

• There was no consensus here. Getting a consensus sounds really good, and it sounds very democratic. However, if you consider group dynamics and the number of interest involved here, the type of solutions you end up with are usually quite vague and murky — and worse — as there is a consensus, it’s not clear who is responsible for the solution. You don’t get clear cut, efficient solutions, and it’s not clear where responsibility for the solution lies. Okay but …
• Kan has no legal authority here. So how can he really expect a lot of success here without a consensus.

Prime minister Kan is really going out on a limb on this one. I certainly expect that after dragging its heels Chubu Electric Power will comply. They are currently reviewing the process necessary to shut down the plant ahead of the summer heat. For example, chairman Toshio Mita has already flown to Qatar to see if he can procure liquefied natural gas, and another meeting might be held on Monday to discuss the subject among board members.

But there are many questions that remain. Just some examples:

• Why is prime minister Kan going out on a limb here? Does he really believe the plant represents a danger?
• Is this going to weaken Kan politically or somehow help him?
• If the plant lies on a fault line, will merely improving its defenses against a tsunami really make the plant safe? Read what ex-skf says about this.
• Can earthquakes really be predicted? Some say no. Certainly the Hamaoka plant is a concern given its location at the heart of Honshu, and as it lies on a major fault, but how safe is any nuclear plant in Japan?
• So how will this affect METI’s strategic plans for nuclear energy in the future? Will nuclear power be called into question?

A new open and crowdsourced initiative to deploy more geiger counters all over Japan looks to be a go. Safecast, formerly RDTN.org, recently met and exceeded its $33,000 fund-raising goal on Kickstarter, which should help Safecast send between 100 and 600 geiger counters to the catastrophe-struck country.

The data captured from the geiger counters will be fed into Safecast.org, which aggregates radiation readings from government, nonprofit, and other sources, as well as into Pachube, a global open-source network of sensors.

Safecast is one of the larger crowdsourced monitoring efforts, not unlike a similar effort in the United States that predated the Japanese disaster. Safecast plans to deploy hundreds of geiger counters in Japan.

For the last month, the Safecast crew and volunteers have been collaborating with universities in Japan and driving their geiger counters around the country and taking measurements. Safecasts early monitoring trips north of Tokyo returned some disturbing findings, including elevated radiation levels in a kindergarten classroom. [Link]

Hm. What’s this about elevated radiation levels in a Tokyo kindergarten?

Anyway, if this works that would be good because I know of no current government source or any other private source of information that offers simultaneous measurements of radiation.

The 30 year old, 12.8 billion yen SPEEDI when it’s occasionally working does give fairly up to date information. But only in a very limited area.

The government’s latest readings seem to be organized here … or if you’d like a more graphical interface, then here. But this information seems to be consistently about a day or so late. It’s never simultaneous.

So, for example, say something happened at Fukushima Daiichi, and they decided to vent one of the reactors … then someone like NILU projected that radiation in your area would be increasing. You’d have no way to know whether this was happening or not unless you yourself possessed some fairly expensive and sophisticated equipment.

However, if Safecast accomplishes its goal, people in affected areas should be able to get some fairly good up to date information … at a cost much less than probably what the government pays for their information.

As critical repairs continue at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, its operator is finding it difficult to find people willing to work at the plant.

The tally of workers at the plant as of May 3 was 1,312 people. Many of them are employed by subcontractors hired by operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. [Link]

This is a big concern. Note also that as more and more people who get passed a certain exposure level to radiation, the less people who will be able to work at other nuclear power plants. The entire industry could eventually face a shortage of workers. So there needs to be some plan in place to increase the number of workers in some way … currently, I’m pretty sure there is not.