Japan's stricken nuclear plant

Watching the smoke

by H.T. and A.T. | OSAKA and HONG KONG

A SURGE in the radiation levels surrounding the reactors at the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Fukushima on Wednesday morning forced authorities to withdraw workers from the site of Japan’s escalating nuclear catastrophe. A skeleton crew of 50, these are the staff who had been left behind to shut down the plants’ still-operating reactors, before their cores submit to a chaotic deterioration. Till Tuesday there had been another 750 working with them. After being called away, the remaining 50 returned to their desperate tasks only one hour later, as the intensity of radiation at their workstations subsided somewhat. Their brief absence gave the appearance that the unfolding disaster, which they have been struggling to manage, may have slipped completely beyond their control.

At the time of the workers’ withdrawal, some part or parts of the plant were emitting 10 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation per hour. In an American nuclear plant, workers are allowed to be exposed to no more than 50mSv in a year. At 10mSv per hour, any given worker would have exceeded that yearly maximum within a single shift. By 11.30am however the level dropped dramatically, and mysteriously, to about 6mSv per hour and the workers were back to the job. The exact cause of the increased rate of emission—even its specific location—is unknown; it may have been due to a leak from radioactive substances stored at the No. 2 reactor, but there were any number of other possible sources among the plant’s six reactors.

An unrelenting series of fires and explosions of pent-up hydrogen gas have complicated the situation at the Dai-ichi reactor immensely. Babbage summarises the series of internal disasters and MIT is producing a running and highly readable commentary.

Hours earlier this morning a plume of white smoke (or possibly steam) was seen rising off one of the plant’s reactors. The government’s chief spokesman, the cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, told a televised press conference that the smoke was due to a fire at the site’s No. 3 reactor (pictured above, to the left; there was also a fire at No. 4, on the right) and that there was a real danger that the reactor’s containment vessel had been damaged. Mr Edano said there was however no present need to expand Fukushima’s evacuation area. The smoke itself subsided without explanation. People who remain within a radius of 20 kilometres of the site have been ordered to leave and those living between 20-30km away instructed to stay indoors, so as to avoid radioactive contamination. About 140,000 people are thought to be living in this zone. As an additional measure, everyone who was within 3 kilometres of Fukushima’s other nuclear power plant, Dai-ni—which has been shut down completely and without leaking—were asked today to leave the area.

Sight of those plumes at Dai-ichi was especially frightening. The prospect of airborne particulate matter floating away from Fukushima is of immediate concern to many of the millions of people who are watching Mr Edano’s statements. Meanwhile panic itself has become the thing to watch for in Tokyo. Radiation levels in the capital did multiply tenfold during the past day, though they remain far below any dangerous level and almost immeasurably lower than at the burning plant. Since then, mercifully, the prevailing winds along Japan’s stricken north-eastern coastline have turned towards the Pacific, diminishing the risk that could at some point be posed by radioactive particles escaping from the compromised plant at Fukushima, 260 kilometres away.

In Tokyo different communities are responding in different ways. A fresh earthquake on a different fault line, with its epicentre off Shizuoka, near Tokyo, had a magnitude of 6.0—enough to terrify people living in most of the planet’s seismic zones, if not the Japanese—and did nothing to settle nerves. But it was with nuclear anxieties in mind that France’s prime minister released a statement on Wednesday urging French nationals in Tokyo to consider leaving immediately, for the south of Japan if not from the country itself. Austria moved its embassy to Osaka, to the south-west, as have a number of private international firms. The Western tabloid press has claimed to see a “mass exodus” from Tokyo, but apart from some expats there seem to be very few Tokyoites inclined to flee abroad. Indeed, in an impressive display of discipline, healthy-sized droves turned out for the annual tax-filing day on Tuesday. Panic-buying on the other hand has become a real concern. The government is calling on ordinary citizens not to hoard fuel or food, as shelves and inventories around the country go bare.

The sort of hour-by-hour fear and speculation that have surrounded the dynamic situation in Fukushima have obstructed the world’s view of the vast human toll already exacted by the disaster that began last Friday afternoon, March 11th. First the massive 9.0 earthquake and then the tsunami it launched: the effects of that initial disastrous day claimed at least 3,771 lives, according to today’s official estimate, and left another 7,843 people missing. Many of the missing are presumed to have been washed out to sea from low-lying coastal areas.

The distracting worry of a meltdown at Fukushima is having terrible consequences for hundreds of thousands or even millions of the people who live in Honshu island's northern extent, Tohoku. Massive disruptions to the country's petrol supplies have left communities in the north without access to food. Vehicles have run dry and, six days in, a huge part of population is starting to go hungry. Even where supermarkets and storehouses are well stocked, fuel is required to deliver goods the final mile they must travel to the people who need it most. This is felt most acutely in Fukushima's "exclusion zone", whose residents have been commanded to stay in their shelters—and where lorry-drivers are afraid or unable to reach them.

Japan now has 80,000 rescue workers up and down the affected area, doing their best to rush aid to those who are stranded, hungry, thirsty and in need of emergency medical care. A late-winter snowfall is bringing misery of its own, with temperatures dropping and expected to stay below freezing overnight.