New TEPCO video on APR YouTube - January 13

It certainly is interesting that two days after this blog noted what appeared to be a complete and total shutoff of anything other than the daily press releases and compulsory responses (in Japanese) to NISA in terms of communication from TEPCO, another new TEPCO press release video in the Explanatory Series of Videos has appeared.

I'm not going to take credit for this, although I should.

Anyway, this new video is the third video of the third set of videos. The third set discusses radioactive emission and contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi site and outside of it as a result of the accident and of post-accident complications; this new video covers a wide range of the sampling locations, the measurements taken at those locations, and the general trend of those measurements.

Spoiler: The trend is downward in all cases.

This video is the first in the series to display any sort of serious production issue. In this video, after some of the coverage is complete, the narration's description of graphics and the video depiction of those graphics, paginated in numerical order, becomes disjointed. In other words, the narration is a page off from the video. This is a bit annoying the first time through.. however, I must point out the analytical value of the many graphs presented and their general downward trends. These are good ammunition against those who keep saying that the cores continue to melt, or that recriticality has occurred, or that contamination is still pouring into the ocean. All untrue, and all laid out in this video's graphics.

Go to APR YouTube Channel to see the new video by clicking here.

5:16 PM Eastern Friday January 13, 2012
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Radioactive Emissions Measurement at Fukushima Daiichi - new TEPCO video

TEPCO has released the second video of the third series in its coverage of the recovery effort at Fukushima Daiichi.

This third series covers measurement of radiation, and radioactive material emission at the site; the newest video, rather longer than usual, contains detailed information about how TEPCO is measuring the particulate emission from the three damaged reactor plants (each situation is different). The complicated considerations and calculations are very well covered.

CLICK HERE to access the APR YouTube Channel.

2:55 PM Eastern Tuesday December 13, 2011
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New TEPCO video- November 30, 2011

Now available at the APR YouTube Channel is the opening of the third series of "Explanatory Videos" produced by Tokyo Electric Power Company which cover the recovery from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

This video covers many of the basics of radiation - how it's produced, what some basic terms and measurements are, and some thumb rules. The video is actually very interesting (even if not all the captions and illustrations have been redone in English) and it would be good viewing for anyone who has basic questions on radiation or radioactivity.

Click here to get to the APR YouTube Channel.

2:51 PM Eastern Wednesday November 30, 2011
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Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi - new video

TEPCO has released the fourth, and final, video in its series covering the handling of contaminated water at Fukushima Daiichi. This series has been of particular interest to this writer; after the gravity of the entire accident scenario had become clear (or clear enough) one of the first real races against time was that involved with finding enough storage capacity for the water that was being used to cool the three damaged reactors, since it clearly was leaking out of the reactors and not only entering the reactor buildings but the turbine buildings and even outside pipeways ("trenches" in TEPCO's parlance.) From that point on, a number of simultaneous plans were launched to secure storage and to process this water and for quite some time it seemed as if the company were only a step or less ahead of the water buildup.

Quite the opposite is now the case, and in fact, even with the early growing pains that the water cleanup systems had, TEPCO appears to have mastered the situation. I have hammered this following point to death, but it bears repeating: While many accident scenarios have been played out and simulated in the past, even to the point of core damage and melt, none has done anything to educate the industry on the realities of a major accident like Fukushima Daiichi has. TEPCO and NISA are literally writing accident handling procedure as they're inventing it, and are implementing it immediately with only brief, but clear, analysis .. because time is of the essence. It is certain that much hindsight has been used by outside critics in regards to TEPCO's handling of both the accident and its releases to the press in the writing of critical pieces, but this again is hindsight after all and it's hard to imagine a better onsite and offsite performance by any other company.

General George S. Patton wrote something to the effect that "a workable solution applied vigorously is vastly superior to a perfect solution applied too late," and TEPCO has taken this kind of thinking to heart by taking the best possible solution for each problem that it could have soon, while also looking a bit down the road. This is exactly why, having two different purification systems, TEPCO continues to work on making the earlier, more complicated one work while it operates the second, slightly better (simpler) design which arrived on site much later. (TEPCO, as shown in the video, intends to install pumps between two of the Kurion system skids to avoid having to change the pumps that fail frequently on the second skid; these pumps are adjacent to the cesium adsorption tanks which have a high rad level at their surfaces, making pump changeout workers become rad sponges. The new pumps will get around this problem, and probably be better pumps.)

All that considered, please watch this video more than once. It goes by quickly enough that the real complexity of the onsite water transfer and storage job might come off too lightly; consider the size of this site, and look at the overhead plan showing just how much area the tank system is taking up and how widespread it is. This would be a very important thing to consider, at least briefly, for any nuclear plant site --- in other words, if this kind of thing ever did happen on site, would there be enough space for tankage of a magnitude in correct proportion to the number of plants at that given site? If there are enough acres, are they level? Much in this video makes one stop and think on the second viewing.


CLICK HERE FOR APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

7:25 PM Eastern Thursday November 17, 2011
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New and interesting TEPCO video from November 2 through 11, 2011

TEPCO has released another in its "Reports from Fukushima Daiichi" series and this one gives perhaps the best real perspective of the condition of the reactor buildings from ground level yet. Although the views aren't lingering ones, they're long enough to give a good impression of the physical scale of the buildings for those not familiar. See the link below to find the new video at the APR YouTube channel.

CLICK HERE FOR APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

Some people, particularly newer readers, may not be totally familiar with the layout on the Fukushima Daiichi site. Here is one of the first illustrations I ever did for the Fukushima reporting, which is a very large TEPCO press release photo that I have marked to show the major structures. Click to enlarge. Note how the reactor buildings are numbered in two groups, with numbers in each group moving higher as you get away from the center of the plant site.


For a scaled view of the internals of one of the reactor buildings, I show again a view I've used many times before from one of the APRA collections' reports, which is WASH-1250. Note the human figures on the refueling floor (up high) and near the downcomer pipes in the torus (low in the building.)


10:35 AM Eastern Tuesday November 15, 2011
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Desalination of water at Fukushima Daiichi

Seventh in the series of TEPCO explanatory videos, the newest installment covers desalination of plant water at the Fukushima Daiichi site. Available now at the APR YouTube Channel; the new video is presently the featured video.

APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL LINK

3:47 PM Eastern Wednesday November 9, 2011
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Report from Fukushima Daiichi - #2

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has released a second installment of its video series "Report from Fukushima Daiichi." This is one of three general types of video that TEPCO has been producing since the accident (the other two being the continuing coherent series on accident recovery actions, and a gaggle of unrelated videos which happen to be specific to whatever problem is being dealt with at the moment, which we might call situational videos.) This type of video is meant to give an overall view of conditions and operations at the site.

TEPCO has promised (as this video notes) to give as complete and open a picture as possible concerning recovery operations on site, and considering the massive efforts underway there, these videos are a bonus addition to the voluminous web and paper reporting TEPCO is performing.

The newest video is presently the featured video on the APR YouTube Channel.

Click here to get to the APR YouTube Channel.

5:04 PM Eastern Thursday October 27, 2011
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New video at APR YouTube

TEPCO has released the first in its continuing series of videos on Fukushima Daiichi which covers the contaminated water situation at the site.

Click here to see the new video at APR/YouTube.

2:45 PM Eastern Wednesday October 26, 2011
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New video: Fukushima Daiichi cooling water injection

TEPCO has released its third video in the series which is intended to inform the public about operations and conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi site. This video is now up at the APR YouTube Channel... link below.

TEPCO is to be commended for its transparency vis a vis the content of these videos; the new video is perhaps the most graphic yet in terms of what MIGHT happen if cooling water injection is interrupted for various periods of time. Even the worst case scenarios (which frankly are only remotely likely, on the order of probability of the tsunami that caused the accident in the first place) are examined and described. A few notes may be helpful to non-nuclear readers and viewers, however.

-The equipment being employed on site and which is described in this video is wholly non standard. The arrangements of equipment external to the plants in terms of tankage, hoses, mounted pumps and also fire engines and diesel generators and pumps have been set up in stages over time since the accident in ever-improving layout, operation, redundancy and effectiveness. This should be kept in mind when viewing this video - in other words, that the possible scenarios are limited to Fukushima Daiichi Nos. 1 through 3 plants ONLY.

-In many places, TEPCO makes calculations or estimations which are clearly in error on the conservative side. As one example, TEPCO states that effects of metal-water reactions upon exceeding 1200C (in the unlikely event of prolonged feed interruption) are made using original core inventories even though it's proven that a large amount of the zirconium metal in the core has already reacted and thus is not actually available for further reaction. In this way, at every step of any process considering decay heat removal, estimates of the time required to react will be much shorter than actually required.

-When describing the dual fire engine flood feeding (core reflood) with two lines, TEPCO omits to indicate that one of the fire lines would feed through the feedwater injection line (feed sparger ring) while the other would feed through the core spray ring. At present, both are in use at all three reactors.

This video is very descriptive and outlines a number of possible but unlikely scenarios. TEPCO is clearly prepared for any further complications on site which would affect cooling of the damaged cores, and this video should calm a few of the most worried observers quite a bit.

APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL LINK - See "Fukushima Daiichi - Cooling Water Injection."

7:30 PM Eastern Sunday October 9, 2011
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New "Favorite" videos at APR Youtube.

Readers here might wish to flip over to the APR YouTube Channel and view two videos that I have placed in the "Favorites" section.

One of them, very short, is from Dominion and discusses the NRC actions at North Anna following the earthquake.

The other is a video update from Southern Co. on the progress of construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 plants at Plant Vogtle. This video is very interesting and for those not familiar with nuclear plant construction I dare say might be fascinating.

Click here to get to the APR YouTube Channel.

5:00 PM Eastern Thursday October 6, 2011
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Two brief TEPCO movies inside reactor buildings

TEPCO has released to the press for distribution two movies taken while crane-lifted equipment - and a camera - were being used to collect particulate matter being emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi plants. These videos are not very instructive, but I offer them on the APR YouTube Channel for completeness and because they do actually show locations not yet filmed at the site.

The actual views are not obvious, so TEPCO has provided diagrams.

Here is the diagram for camera location for the film at No. 2 plant, followed by a direct link to the video at the APR YouTube Channel.


LINK TO VIDEO AT NO. 2 PLANT AS INDICATED ABOVE.

Here is the diagram for camera location (looking down this time) for the film at No. 3 plant, followed by a direct link to the video at the APR YouTube Channel.


LINK TO VIDEO AT NO. 3 PLANT AS INDICATED ABOVE.

2:15 PM Eastern Saturday September 24, 2011
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New TEPCO video on RPV, PCV measurements

CLICK HERE TO GET TO APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

TEPCO has released a new video detailing the status of instruments used to measure water level, pressure and temperature in the reactor pressure vessels and primary containment vessels at Fukushima Daiichi's three reactor plants. (The fourth did not have a core installed and is not included.)

While the video is interesting, unfortunately TEPCO did not convert the graphics to English as it did in some other videos. The narrative is very informative though and the video is fully worth watching.

In this video TEPCO reveals its assumption that some of the fuel is in the primary containment vessels. This is not the first time TEPCO has stated this, but the company's mention of this condition is very sparse. This has naturally been assumed by many for a long time, although the majority opinion is that most of the core material remains inside the pressure vessels; the spike in pressure at No. 2 plant upon initiation of core spray ring flow supports this theory very well.

The newest TEPCO video is presently (9/22) the featured video on the APR YouTube channel.

8:50 PM Eastern Thursday September 22, 2011
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New TEPCO video: Fukushima Daiichi, Sept. 20

TEPCO has released a new video with scenes on-site at Fukushima Daiichi showing various parts of the operations there and which also shows some of the operations TEPCO is conducting off site, in terms of surveys of the evacuation zone and accomodations it makes for those who return temporarily to their home or business sites.

This video is online now at the APR YouTube channel. Link below:

APR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

9:00 AM Eastern Wednesday September 21, 2011
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Fukushima Daiichi: Reactor water injection

TEPCO will be very shortly beginning water injection to the No. 2 plant's reactor through the core spray line, exactly as has already been done with No. 3 plant. The amount will be adjusted upward incrementally through the core spray line and reduced through the feed line to attempt to maintain constant temperature with reduced water flow - the idea being to reduce the feed line more than the core spray line adds. This moves toward the goal of keeping temperature low and minimizing the buildup of contaminated water.

Multiple sources of water, and multiple pumps are available. In the best TEPCO press video yet, the entire setup as it is right now is explained in good detail and shown in detail. Maps are used to show site locations. See the newest video on the APR YouTube channel now; it is already on line and is at this moment the featured video.

Click here to get to the APR YouTube channel.

3:50 PM Eastern Wednesday September 14, 2011
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