Saturday morning update

A few different details from Fukushima Daiichi..

TEPCO is reporting that the level of water in No. 2 plant pipe tunnel is now up a total of 10 cm, leaving about 90 cm roughly to the top of the trench. No overflow has occurred.

TEPCO is beginning to install the barriers that had been mentioned by NISA at one or two briefings. This entails sealing the southern end of the intake water breakwater enclosure with steel sheets, and placing fiter type silt screens across the seawater inlet of No. 2 plant and at the north end of the inlet area for all four plants. This should contain all particulate matter in this local area.

TEPCO will attempt to increase the purity of the nitrogen being injected to No. 1 plant. The motivations for this are not known; perhaps there is some oxygen content in the nitrogen gas.

Finally, from another totally unrelated site...

There is now information that during the most recent earthquake, Higashidori nuclear station experienced inoperability of all three of its diesel generators. NISA has commented that one diesel on standby isn't enough. Whether or not Higashidori actually entered a full SBO is not clear yet, but this will surely come out somewhere at some point and we'll keep an eye out for it. I myself am beginning to suspect that the Japanese industry's standby power requirements and SBO awareness are a leading contributor to the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

6:18 AM Eastern 4/9
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW