– Typhoon Roke Nears Japan on Track for Leaking Nuclear Plant (Bloomberg, Sept. 20, 2011):
Typhoon Roke brought evacuation orders and fears of floods to Nagoya city in central Japan today as it approached the main island of Honshu on a course toward the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.
More than 1 million people in Nagoya have been advised to evacuate because of Roke and almost 80,000 have been ordered to leave due to flood risk, said Katsuya Kobayashi in the city’s disaster prevention center.
That’s more than double the numbers for typhoon Talas earlier this month, which dumped record rainfall on southern Japan, causing mudslides and floods that killed 67 people and left 26 missing. Talas was the deadliest storm to hit Japan in seven years.
“The major difference between the two typhoons was Talas was slow-moving over the Kii peninsula, dumping rain in the same area, while Roke is fast moving,” Kenji Okada, a forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, said. “Roke is bringing strong gusts and dumping rain in a wide region.”
The eye of Roke, categorized as “strong” by the agency, was about 928 kilometers (575 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 3 p.m. local time today. It was packing wind speeds of 144 kilometers per hour (89 miles), with gusts of 216 kilometers per hour.
The typhoon, moving northeast at 15 kilometers per hour, is forecast to take three days to pass over Japan and its storm warning area is due to cover most of the country in that time, according to the meteorological agency’s website.
Japan Airlines Co. canceled 49 domestic flights today as of 6 p.m. because of the typhoon, according to the company’s website.
Toyota Watching Storm
Toyota Motor Corp., Asia’s largest automaker, has yet to decide on whether to operate its plants in Aichi prefecture tomorrow afternoon, spokesman Dion Corbett said today by telephone. Tomorrow’s morning shift will go ahead as normal, he said. Nagoya city is in Aichi prefecture.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Suzuki Motor Corp. will keep plants in the region operating as normal, Mitsubishi spokesman Yuki Murata and Suzuki spokesman Shigeyuki Yamamura said today.
Roke, due in Fukushima prefecture in 48 hours, may hinder work to control leakage of water into the basements of the Dai- Ichi reactor buildings, which contained 102 million liters of radioactive water as of Sept. 13, according to Tokyo Electric estimates.
The storm may drop 150 millimeters of rain on Fukushima within 24 hours, likely in short, heavy downpours, Okada of the Japan Meteorological Agency said by phone today.
Basement Problem
Since July, much of Tokyo Electric’s work in Fukushima has focused on decontaminating highly radiated cooling water that ran off into basements and trenches at the damaged reactors.
In addition, as much as 500 tons, or 500,000 liters, of underground water is leaking into Dai-Ichi buildings every day through cracks in walls and trenches, Tokyo Electric spokesman Hajime Motojuku said today.
The utility has been injecting water into Dai-Ichi’s reactors since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, causing the worst nuclear accident in 25 years. Reactors need to be cooled below 100 degrees Celsius to shut down the plant.
Levels of contaminated water in Dai-Ichi basements have fallen more than 14 percent in the last month as Tepco speeded up water decontamination by adding a system supplied by Toshiba Corp. and Shaw Group Inc.
The company is in the process of installing a cover for the No. 1 reactor building and aims to put similar covers over units 3 and 4 next year after debris is cleared, Tokyo Electric spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said today. The tops of those three units were blown off by hydrogen explosions in March.
Still, the covers are unlikely to prevent rainwater from flowing into the basements, Iwamoto said.
Have the Japanese people done something really bad to get all this?
British Second World War Soldier Prisoners who were shot, then strung up from lamp-posts and used as bayonet practice in Singapore and what is now Malaysia just might say yes, if they could…..