A nuclear safety expert in Japan admitted that no one prepares for more than one reactor failure. Multiple reactor failures have always been considered highly improbable.
NHK obtained video of last year’s emergency training at a nuclear plant in Japan. It is obvious that they did not expect anything but a low level emergency involving only one reactor.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant officials have good news.
Reactor 5 coolant pump is now working.
Reactor 6 now has one the reactor’s back up generator working.
Japan government officials announced that efforts will be made to get stranded patients out of hospitals in the evacuation zone, as well as other people who did not have a way to self evacuate (remember Hurricane Katrina?).
Local city governments are now joining together to help each other, now that it has become clear the national government is not prepared to help them.
Just like people in the United States are justified in questioning their government’s ability to help after a natural disaster (Hurricane Katrina), the Japanese have every justification to lose faith in their government.
I’ve said this before, it is clear that the most prepared nation in the world was NOT prepared.
Officials say the water trucks sprayed about 60 tons of water, so far, on reactor 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
That isn’t going to be enough: Each spent fuel pool can hold up to 2000 tons of water, so you can see it’s going to take a lot of water (there are 6 reactors and several spent fuel pools).
Another problem is that even if they get outside power hooked to the plant, most of the power panels, and cooling pumps, have been destroyed by the tsunami. So they are now working to fix that problem as well.
NHK reporting that a convoy of concrete trucks are being prepared to head to the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Concrete was used by the Soviets during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
A hospital in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, inside the zone where people have been instructed to stay indoors, more than half the hospital’s staff have evacuated. But, about 170 inpatients are still at the hospital.
“We’re reaching the limits of our ability to provide treatment,” hospital director Yukio Kanazawa said. Only a small number of hospital staff stayed behind to care for the patients.
Ohmachi Hospital staff is now less than 40%. The hospital is rationing meals for patients, two meals a day.
Doctors who normally work at Tono Hospital, cannot get there because of a fuel shortage.
Ninohe Hospital has run out of supplies, including heating fuel. “It’s as if some enemy is starving us out,” a hospital official said.
Kunihiro Mashiko, chief of the emergency treatment center of Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital says “Lives that were saved once may be lost because of the shortage of both doctors and medicine.”
At Ishinomaki Hospital, tap water, electricity and gas have been cut off. Requests for help with about 120 inpatients were declined.
252 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater have so far hit Japan, after the devastating 9.0 quake on March 11.
This is a record for Japan.
Russia will begin airlifting up to 6,000 Russians out of Japan, according to Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Offically there are 2,000 Russians in Japan, but it is admitted that there are actually 6,000+.
A Japanese newspaper (Sankei Shimbun) has named the workers fighting the nuclear disaster ‘Kesshitai’. It means ‘unit that expects to die’.
A daughter of one of the workers says her father told the family that he will die. The wife of another worker received a message that said: “Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.”
So far, at least 20 people are confirmed to have radiation contamination.
The International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Yukiya Amano, says Japan’s nuclear crisis requires international cooperation.
Yukiya Amano met with Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Friday, and expressed the need for more information from Japanese officials.
A four man team from the IAEA is now in Japan for monitoring of the situation.