Major Earthquake In Japan Major Tsunamis

[elmanito]

After shock of 6.2 in Tokyo at 2.30 pm.Radioactive cloud is heading to Tokyo.
Fukushima is a MOX (Plutonium) nuclear plant.

Namaste

 

[LovableHuggable]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78267.html

A nuclear crisis at the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant deepened Tuesday as fresh explosions occurred at the site and its operator said water in a pool storing spent nuclear fuel rods may be boiling, an ominous sign for the release of high-level radioactive materials from the fuel.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said water levels in the pool storing the spent fuel rods at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 4 reactor may have dropped, exposing the rods. The firm said it has not yet confirmed the current water levels or started operations to pour water into the facility.

Unless the spent fuel rods are cooled down, they could be damaged and emit radioactive substances. The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency urged TEPCO to inject water into the pool soon to prevent heating of the fuel rods.

more at link

 

[SirTOKESalot]

This is some good news, written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-reactors-pose-no-risk-2011-3-1#ixzz1GgTgBDMF


You Can STOP WORRYING ABOUT A RADIATION DISASTER IN JAPAN -- Here's Why

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-reactors-pose-no-risk-2011-3-1#ixzz1GgTQxtvX



This was originally posted as a comment on Japan Death Toll Climbs Astronomically As Nuclear Crisis Spreads.

UPDATE: We have learned that this was written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT. It was originally posted here.

I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.

By "significant" I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on - say - a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.

I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.

We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.

The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world. The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before.

The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.

The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), which is filled with graphite, all inside the third containment. This is the so-called "core catcher". If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.

This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions: The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.

Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran).

In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “moderator rods”. The moderator rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the moderator rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C. The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the moderator rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up. This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.

So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods.

The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Xenon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.

This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.

What happened at Fukushima I will try to summarize the main facts.

The earthquake that hit Japan was 7 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 7 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the moderator rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions. The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.

When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario.

The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, moderator rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor. When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did. Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake.

The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in. This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown. It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.

But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems. Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C. This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in.

I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health. At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained.

It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima.

The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment. So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented.

Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail. And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting.

What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay - radioactive Cesium and Iodine - started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere. It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give.

The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems. The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core - it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.

But Plan A had failed - cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable - so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened: In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us. The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now.

The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is "liquid control rod". Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-reactors-pose-no-risk-2011-3-1#ixzz1GgTQxtvX

 

[igrowone]

thank you sirtokes for a bit of reason in the face of hysteria
as mentioned by the Dr., part of the problem is the lack of good communications, which is really not surprising considering the situation

 

[SpasticGramps]

Good article SirTokes. One thing the article didn't address above though is the situation on the #4 reactor where all the spent fuel rods are kept. From my understanding it is the top part of the spent fuel rods that are exposed because the water level has dropped and this is what is emitting some of the radiation.

Hopefully, just a small area gets contaminated which is what looks like may happen.

 

[Madrus Rose]

here's a follow on chart of the Japanese $Nikkei stock market , a disaster for anyone over there who had their savings invested in it ...but big Fund buyers as usual will get
a golden opportunity to step in a pick up shares cheap as they usually do .

This crash has taken the Nikkei down to almost the bottom of the trough at the height of the recession 2 1/2 yrs ago. The giant electric utility TEPCO will be seeing red on out for 10yrs from now because of this & huge pain for average person , for all the gains in this market for the last 2yrs have been wiped out in 2days . A meltdown of great proportions , there was a significant bounce from the bottom later on .

 

[dagnabit]

japan will bounce back..
if you have capital id invest NOW!!!!

 

[Madrus Rose]

japan will bounce back..
if you have capital id invest NOW!!!!

They are stepping in & buying this crash as you can see by the bounce from the lowest point today ...trouble is for the small guy who's already lost his investments in this fall has no more money to re-invest , so basically wiped out on margin calls .

Real danger is the Japanese were buyers of 20% of our treasury notes & now they will not have the moneys to do this which puts our own recovery in jeopardy , that is based on the Fed injecting digitally printed money into the system or "Quantitative Easing" which we are on the 2nd leg of .

(Massive printing of money btw )

For those that want to help out heres a good link

"Japan earthquake and tsunami: How to help"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsr...room/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-how-to-help

 

[igrowone]

Real danger is the Japanese were buyers of 20% of our treasury notes & now they will not have the moneys to do this which puts our own recovery in jeopardy , that is based on the Fed injecting digitally printed money into the system or "Quantitative Easing" which we are on the 2nd leg of .

(Massive printing of money btw )

one could see danger, i see a good kick in the cojones of Ben's strategy
they may talk like they can print all they want, but they are limited by fundamental economics
try to make up for a japanese decrease with more fed play money - get a proportionate hit to the dollar
there are limits, a free falling dollar will not be an economic boon

 

[SpasticGramps]

What? You mean you can't print your way to prosperity? Someone better tell Benny Boy because that's exactly what he thinks he can do.

 

[BabyHuey]

This is some good news, written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT.

I did a little research on the Dr.

He is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry.
I asked him to write this information to my family in Australia, who were being made sick with worry by the media reports coming from Japan.

As of today, his information page clarifies that he is not involved with nukes at all.

And yes, he’s a “Research Scientist” – that’s his part of his actual job title, not what he does.

The main research interest of Dr. Josef Oehmen is risk management in the value chain, with a special focus on lean product development.

I actually found the Dr.'s article(blog/e-mail?) very informative.
His qualifications as an expert are less impressive.

 

[Madrus Rose]

The beaten down Solar stocks all got boosts thru all this last two days, with one of the most noteable movers and %gainers today SPWRA up 10% ( Sunpower Corp)

Another & most popular of the clean energy Solar group is FSLR (First Solar Inc)
that has risen 20pts in the last two days trading . Before this disaster this group had
really fallen out of favor ...kind of a glimpse into market mentality in the face of serious nuclear reactor situation in Japan .

First Solar FSLR http://www.firstsolar.com/en/index.php

Solar Stocks list
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?d=v1&...ner+eslr+fslr+jaso+ldk+spir+stp+spwra+tsl+yge

 

[elmanito]

Quake-triggered tsunami destroys major Japanese coastal whaling base

AYUKAWA, Japan, March 15, Kyodo

A major Japanese coastal whaling base in Miyagi Prefecture has been virtually destroyed after powerful tsunami triggered by last Friday's massive earthquake in northeastern Japan washed away a whale-processing facility.

In the Ayukawa district on the southern tip of the Oshika Peninsula in the northeastern prefecture's city of Ishinomaki, tsunami more than 10 meters high traveled around 600 meters inland and swallowed about 80 percent of the approximately 700 houses in the area.

Some 400 of about 1,400 residents in the area remain unaccounted for as of Tuesday, local authorities said.

Ayukawa had prospered as a whaling base, attracting many fishing firms after a whaling company from Yamaguchi Prefecture opened an office there in 1906.

But the number of whaling vessels has declined to only two small ships from 13 in the first half of the 1930s as whaling quotas have declined substantially under International Whaling Commission regulations.

The two existing vessels, which have been used to catch beaked whales in coastal waters, are scheduled to participate in Japan's research whaling from April.

''We cannot say (whether the plan can be implemented) as we have not been able to confirm the safety of some people involved (with the vessels),'' said Chikao Kimura, secretary general of the Japan Small-Type Whaling Association.

Yoshiya Endo, a 72-year-old former whaling vessel stoker, said, ''Whaling is impossible. Reviving it may take 20 to 30 years.''

But a person involved in whaling said the whaling culture should be preserved. ''As long as there are people who will carry on whaling even in the absence of vessels or facilities, whaling could be revived eventually.''

Namaste

 

[Mountain]

Quake-triggered tsunami destroys major Japanese coastal whaling base

One of the silver linings in the disaster.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the owner of the facility, put out a fire at its No. 4 reactor unit on Wednesday, which erupted because a prior one was not extinguished. The company added that damage to the fuel rods at the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors were 70 and 33 percent, respectively.

Don't know what they consider 'damage' but seems those guys had/have a tiger in the tank they're dealing with. Hopefully the situation is settling down. Only possible cause of the peeps that stuck with it even if it meant/means their lives.

 

[Mountain]

(Reuters) After days of Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) struggle to regain control of overheating reactors, an explosion blasted holes at the outer building of the No. 4 reactor.

TEPCO may pour water into the overheating fuel pool in the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant within two or three days, possibly through holes in the building or dropping it via helicopter.

The pools of spent fuel are dangerous for two reasons: they are more easily exposed to the atmosphere because they don't have the feet-thick containment wall that protects the nuclear core; the building housing the pool has already suffered hydrogen gas explosions and is open to the sky in places.

They also hold far more radioactive elements that could quickly heat up again if water burns off. Experts worry that this could expose the used nuclear fuel and start a fire that would release more radioactivity.

"There is more radiation in the spent fuel pool than in the reactor," said Arnie Gundersen, a 39-year veteran of the nuclear industry, now chief engineer at Fairwinds Associates Inc, who worked on reactor designs similar to Daiichi plant.

"They need to keep water in those pools because the roof over the building housing the pools is already damaged and radiation will escape."

The rods contain radioactive cesium, strontium and plutonium. When a rod is exposed to the air the zirconium metal on the rods will set on fire, which could release the radiation, said Gundersen.

If the spent fuel rods burn, which is what is believed to have occurred at Unit 4 at Daiichi, those radioactive elements can get in into the air. Keeping them cool is crucial.

"All they need to do with the spent fuel pools is make up for the amount of water evaporating or boiling away," said David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at a press conference Tuesday. "They should be able to do that, which should give them time to get cooling restored."

Gundersen said the 50 or so people left at the plant cannot babysit six nuclear plants, and that the greatest danger remained a meltdown at the Unit 2 reactor, which could release deadly radioactive elements if it breaches both the steel sheathe and the already damaged containment dome.

"That evacuation is a sign they may be throwing in the towel."

I've edited some of that story out and you can Google to find the half I deleted.

Wild stuff!!! We'll see how this shakes out and we'll only know months down the road. I was tempted to bold some info in that quote, but just couldn't resist at least once, I thought more important but you can draw your own conclusions. Hmmmm...strong burst of radiation from what? Didn't just happen out of thin air.

 

[Mountain]

Was just gonna turn off my puter and did a last scan of news and......I know this is just info on the net and as some say bullshit and lies but I think...YIKES!

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Japan suspended operations to prevent a stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous for workers to remain at the facility.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

 

[Greyskull]

^^^^ saw that on cnn...
fucked....

 

[Strainhunter]

If or should I say when? radiation contaminated air drifts over to the west coast of the USA...it might cause certain outdoor grown crops not to be consumed anymore (for a while?).

I remember Chernobyl in '86 and plenty outdoor grown products were contaminated within the path the radiated air and rain had taken...

PS: HERE a little article to read.

 

[rick shaw]

After Chernobyl was entombed fields of hemp were planted to absorb radioactive wastes.

 

[TNTBudSticker]

I was hearing on the news that the radiation is not THAT harmful then it went on saying that ...if one spends one hour around those nuclear plants,it would take 3 years of your life for every hour one is there.

I wouldn't touch anything coming out of japan for the next 50 years.
Close the trade gap for real.
Even Tokyo is being hit with "low" levels of radiation.

The shipping ports all over the world going to have to scan for radiation in the containers if anything comes out of Japan.

I think Japan is really careless that they went ahead and built those 22-25 nuclear reactors....What the Hell were they thinking ???!!
Frankly I'm sort of pissed off.
I'm going to stop short of saying that they deserved it.Indirectly or directly.