Friday morning update: Fukushima Daiichi

The news coming out of Fukushima Daiichi, and Tokyo, vis a vis TEPCO's response to the accident isn't making TEPCO look very good at all. TEPCO is getting hammered, publicly, by NISA and a professor of nuclear engineering has appeared on Japanese TV giving a not necessarily positive view of the delays in establishing decay heat removal at the plants following the loss of battery power.

As to NISA's problems with TEPCO... NISA has told TEPCO to go back and review all its radiological data again since it keeps releasing data on contamination or activity in water, and then revising it. Then there's the dosimetry issue, discussed here previously. The total effect is that both TEPCO's operations people and their radcon (radiological controls) people are getting beaten up.

I'm not going to judge them, myself. They're struggling with fantastic adversity even now; perhaps their training was good before this, or perhaps it wasn't. Those weaknesses, if and when found, will be an integral part of the overall review of this accident after it's all over and will help determine prevention of future occurrences. In many nuclear accidents, people have been the problem... or else a very large part of it. But we must wait to see.

Meanwhile on the operational standpoint, the latest JAIF status document reflects no significant changes. We note that trench water level now appears as a data point under "major data" on the fifth page.

JAIF STATUS 1 APRIL 1600

Efforts to move water out of the condensers and into other tanks continues. The US Navy barge with fresh water is docked nearby, but no word of any water transfer from it yet. With any luck we'll have further NISA and TEPCO data later on today to help determine the effect of core cooling and spent fuel pool cooling efforts.

6:00 AM Eastern Friday 4/1
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