Talk:Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant/Archive 1

Archive 1

Refuel Frequency

Some of the other wikipedia entries about reactors (like the one at MIT) have a refuel frequency in the top info box. Anyone know the refuel frequency of Fukushima I 1-4? Please share, with references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Farazars (talk • contribs) 05:40, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Built vs. designed. vs. constructed

The article states:

"Unit 1 (FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI-1), which had been built by General Electric in the late 1960s, was in commercial operation since March 1971, and was targeted for shutdown in March 2011.[1]"

This might be somewhat misleading due to the imprecision of the word built. Some readers could conclude that GE actually constructed the facility. While the plant was designed by GE (and some parts were built by GE) the facility was most likely constructed-built by either TEPCO or a specialty construction company (like a Bechtel or a Halliburton).

It might be more accurate to say:

"Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 1 was a General Electric designed, 439 MWh, BWR-3, Boiling water reactor. ref:http://www.icjt.org/npp/podrobnosti.php?drzava=14&lokacija=818 Construction commenced in July 1967, commercial electrical production began March 26, 1971, and the plant was scheduled for shutdown on March 26, 2011. ref: existing reference 1 and the icjt.org reference above.66.65.191.165 (talk) 13:43, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Great! Do you also have a ref for the BWR3 info? Furhtermore, could you create similar statement for the other 5 reactors, then I'll be glad to add them as a full paragraph... L.tak (talk) 13:50, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it would be more correct. Unit 1 reactor was supplied by General Electric while construction was conducted by Kajima. Unit 3 reactor was supplied by Toshiba. [1] It is interesting fact that unit 3 was to be load with MOX fuel. [2] Beagel (talk) 13:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

The following source:

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CNPP2010_CD/pages/AnnexII/tables/table2.htm

states that Unit 1 is a BWR-3. It also details the other 5 units at total facility. If you were going to summarize all 6, I might suggest a table (like the original source does):

 Unit                 Type    MW         Designer of the Construction  Grid        Commercial         Scheduled Shutdown Date
                                         Nuclear Steam   Start         Connection  Operational Date
                                         Supply System
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-1 	BWR-3   439      GE/GETSC        1967-7 	 1970-11   1971-3              26 Mar 11
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-2 	BWR-4   760      GE/T 	         1969-6 	 1973-12   1974-7              18 Jul 14
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-3 	BWR-4   760      TOSHIBA         1970-12         1974-10   1976-3              26 Mar 16
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-4 	BWR-4   760  	 HITACHI 	 1973-2 	 1978-2    1978-10             12 Oct 18
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-5 	BWR-4   760  	 TOSHIBA 	 1972-5          1977-9    1978-4 	       18 Apr 18
 FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-6 	BWR-5  1067  	 GE/T 	         1973-10         1979-5    1979-10             24 Oct 19

Some of this information is available on Wikipedia already here: List of boiling water reactors. However, it may make sense to replicate this information here because not many readers would search through the long list in List of boiling water reactors to learn this information. 66.65.191.165 (talk) 14:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone know if the the scheduled shutdown date shown at icjt.org (26 Mar 11, only a couple weeks before the accident) is really an accurate "decommissioning" date? Each of the shutdown dates are exactly 40 years after the commercial operation date. Do operational licenses run 40 years in Japan, with no extensions? If so, it is quite a coincidence.66.65.191.165 (talk) 14:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Split of earthquake section

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

{{splitapart}}

The earthquake section takes up about 60% of the article. I propose we split it out into Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant incident or some other naming. --Kslotte (talk) 15:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

How about naming Sendai earthquake impact on Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants? Note, this would cover both I and II. --Kslotte (talk) 15:14, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

well, acutally Fukushima I disaster already existsed. But the general feel here (see discussion way up!) was to wait until things had quieted down. Now such a move is virtually impossible, but I am sure it will happen in the next days! L.tak (talk) 15:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

My point here is that we have passed 50%. And, in that case we should either name the article according what it is about or be splitt. Maybe naming Fukushima incident. --Kslotte (talk) 15:27, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

What about Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant 2011 incident? Madscotinengland (talk) 15:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

No year is needed according to WP:PRECISION. --Kslotte (talk) 15:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

OK - using WP:PRECISION then we should call it Fukushima I incident to keep it simple - similar to Chernobyl disaster - the other plant doesn't seem to be as significant at this point but could be merged in future? Madscotinengland (talk) 15:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I support naming Fukushima I incident. --Kslotte (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I made this split section proposal, saying "It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article titled Fukushima I incident.". Do we get support for this? --Kslotte (talk) 15:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

While I accept the above comments about the fact it is an ongoing incident and splitting the article will take some time, I think a planned name will help in the long run - even if we put a redirect in the short term. Cheers Kslotte for suggesting this Madscotinengland (talk) 15:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Well done to the person who already set up the redirect! Madscotinengland (talk) 16:00, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

After some more thinking, I suggest naming Fukushima I nuclear incident, to distinguish from other Fukushima names. --Kslotte (talk) 17:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Split, but as Japanese officials have now rated this as a scale 4 accident, I would suggest naming it Fukushima I accident, which is in line with eg. Three Mile Island accident. --hydrox (talk) 19:37, 12 March 2011 (UTC) On the second thought, this is not a direct result of a man-made mistake, so one up for Fukushima I nuclear incident. --hydrox (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Do not split It will just mean people editing both articles with the same information not knowing where to put it. This article is hardly too long yet, and we have no idea how this will end up. Sandpiper (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

See, for example, how it is done on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating_Station#Accident. People searching for information on the nuclear power plant per se can find it easily on the main article. When the incident is severe enough, a short summary is written in the main article with a link to the event-specific article. Currently 14 of 18 paragraphs in this article deal with the incident, so the incident is becoming notable on its own. --hydrox (talk) 19:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Split, certainly a separate article on the incident is required. One of the reasons is that it will then be the respective category (nuclear incidents) where later it would be easy to find for a person who, for example, does not remember the name of the station. We should always take into account such considerations!

Olegwiki (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Do not split, this is a current event and it's too soon to name it either an incident or a disaster just yet. Wait the situation out, get valid confirmation on what have actually happened, and then take the actions needed with a split then. There's no point in having another article up today which may be outdated tomorrow, that'll just cause confusion for the reader. Xertoz (talk) 21:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• split the ongoing incident is distinct from the plant itself, regardless of what happens. Beyond that, the points made above regarding article length are certainly valid. Another issue to consider here is the weight of information being given to the incident verse that given to the plant itself.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
• do not split now, but later Now things are fast and it is not practical. But Monday or so the suggestion makes perfect sense... L.tak (talk) 22:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
• Wait. There will still have to be a large section on this incident in the present article, which is not overlong. Only once lengthy reports are released by whatever commissions are someday convened to investigate this event, will a stand-alone article be needed. Wikipedia articles have to follow the secondary sources, which don't go into enough detail yet. Abductive (reasoning) 00:25, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split. This is gonna get waaay more complex and extensive. Might as well get the split done and over with and out of the way because Monday morning EST there is going to be a lot of signal/noise...Geofferybard (talk) 01:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split later. As many have said, changes are happening quite fast, and it is easier to keep it as one article for now, and split it when things become easier to manage --Alphamone (talk) 01:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split later. Agreed; don't want to have people trying to edit this information in two places. There will be plenty of time for the split later. Hiroe (talk) 03:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split rather sooner than later. No matter what happens next, the incident will most certainly get its own article soon anyway. I believe it is better to get over it and spin it off now. This would also allow sending readers from the 2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami article directly to the newly created incident page.--spitzl (talk) 02:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split I think it is pointless to take a poll. I agree with the previous post above about created a new incident page sooner rather than later. Stevo1000 (talk) 03:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split. Preferably soon. Most of this page seems to be about the nuclear accident that's currently ongoing in Japan and not about the Plant itself. It should be split off into a page about this nuclear incident akin to the Chernobyl disaster or Three Mile Island accident. So maybe "Fukushima accident"? It just seems out of place having all this information about the accident just splattered on the page about the plant itself. - Matt (talk)03:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split sooner rather than later. From watching a somewhat similar situation over the shootings in Arizona, I think it will be easier to organize the information. People interested in just the current event won't have to skip over the history of the plant. --Banana (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Do not split I don't see a good justification in terms of intended scope. The earthquake obviously has its own article, and pretty much the entire scope of the nuclear accident has been confined to Fukushima I, which wasn't clear at the start but is now. To the question "what would we be consolidating?" the answer is clearly nothing, as all the material is on the plant article which is of a reasonable size and nothing would be removed from the earthquake article should it be moved. I understand the argument for the TMI disaster and such, but the specifics don't make a lot of sense to me. We don't know if unit 3 will be a major issue, and as such it's too early to make a nuclear disaster article. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Split, but merge both Fukushima I and II problems - no real reason to have them split from each other - they are from the same accident (tsunami), same time, both developing stories. Enerjazzer (talk) 04:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

A split has been done., But, there is still much tweakings to be done.--Kslotte (talk) 09:02, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

er, yes. much of what has been left behind here needs to be on the new page as general introduction. There is very little here which is not directly relevant to a good article about the incident. Sandpiper (talk) 09:19, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Consensus is to split let's talk name

- IMO a split article is already going to be way too long anyway. Perhaps it will even split twice. But for now, we can consider the name issue:

- Incident, Disaster or Accident?

- Geofferybard (talk) 05:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Disaster Since this was caused by a natural disaster and was not an accident caused by human error, I'd say disaster would be the more fitting term.Matt (talk) 06:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Agree with disaster. Nergaal (talk) 06:35, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Disaster. Beagel (talk) 07:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Not "incident" that's too wishy washy...128.111.95.33 (talk) 07:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Accident It's an accident caused by a natural disaster.--Lynntoniolondon (talk) 08:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Incident. While the incident was brought about by a natural disaster, it is not yet clear that the nuclear incident deserves to be called a disaster in and of itself. This may change depending on the eventual environmental outcome. -- ToE^T 08:44, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Consider, for instance, this Xinhuanet headline: Japan spares no effort to prevent nuclear disaster. -- ToE^T 11:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Organization of new page after split

Proposal based on TMI please integrate with the existing Fukushima entries (just ideas)

   * 1 Accident
         o 1.1 Earthquake summary as pertinent to the Fukushima disaster
         o 1.2 Immediate effect on NPP
         o 1.3 Human factorss:Company and civic response; first govt announcement 
         o 1.4 International response
         o 1.5 First detection of radioactive material release
           and so forth
   * 2 Comparison to Chernobly, TMI, etc. (Link section to a main article on same)
   * 3 Aftermath do later
         o 2.1 Evacuations analyzed in separate section
         o 2.2 Investigations to be fleshed out later; include press and agency access
         o 2.3 
         o 2.4 Cleanup
         o 2.5 Health effects and epidemiology
         o 2.6 Activism and legal action (public response)
         o 2.7 Lessons learned - analysis of error (not OR of course)
   * 4 Timeline
   * 4 Stabilization: (Corresponds to TMI Current status section(leave blank until stabilized)
   * 5 
   * 6 See also
   * 7 References
   * 8 Bibliography
   * 9 External links

Geofferybard (talk) 07:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

er, you have forgotten an introduction. The article needs to explain what it is talking about and some general information about the reactor concerned. Something short, just like what is here on this page already, in fact. Sandpiper (talk) 09:17, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Dai-ichi

In the lead we have "often referred to as Fukushima Dai-ichi ...". Does dai-ichi have a meaning in Japanese beyond being simply a proper noun? Greenshed (talk) 13:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

dai ichi = the number one = 1 , simply. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frank A (talk • contribs) 14:26, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

More precisely, it would translate as "first" or "number one." "Ichi" by itself is the number one; "dai" is a generic "counter" particle that turns it into an ordinal number. rdfox 76 (talk) 15:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

This distinguishes it from Fukushima Dai-Ni: Fukushima #2 NPP. —WWoods (talk) 16:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Cropped images at Commons

There are now a few cropped and annotated images that might be useful at Commons:Category:Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. -84user (talk) 17:06, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Radioactive iodine and cesium isotopes

Radioactive iodine and cesium isotopes were released and yet this information is not mentioned. These are the tell-tale signs of radioactive core exposure to the outside world and are highly significant. Can the article reflect this key piece of information? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.52.242.209 (talk) 22:05, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Need a reliable source first. Rod57 (talk) 15:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

It is extremely reliable information. Are you actually reading what is happening?

NISA have confirmed the presence of caesium-137 and iodine-131 in the vicinity of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. NISA reported an initial increase in levels of radioactivity around the plant earlier today, but these levels have been observed to lessen in recent hours. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.52.242.209 (talk) 04:31, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

These articles provide interesting background on why hydrogen is produced and additionally what else has likely happened to the rods when cesium is detected:

 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/12-3
 http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-japan-quake-qa-20110313,0,2957196.story

Also, this page from the commander of the US 7th fleet explains the repositioning of US ships in the area of fukushima No 1 (but doesn't specifically detail the contaminants)

 http://www.c7f.navy.mil/news/2011/03-march/026.htm  

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippokai (talk • contribs) 08:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

C Class

I think this article has received plenty of improvements and is now C-class. No?--v/r - TP 23:44, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Explosion at Reactor No.3

Just saw two explosions at reactor No. 3 on TV, the first explosion was associated with large plume of gray debris and black smoke that rose vertically, it was then followed a few minutes later by a second explosion with yellow flash. Two hydrogen explosions. Looks allot worse the reactor No. 3, reactor building is in worse shape. Also saw plume of white steam jetting out of reactor vessel, it's now gone. Explosion felt 30km away. --Diamonddavej (talk) 03:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

We might want to have a wider angle view image of both blown buildings, before and after, such as that NHK World has been airing lately... 184.144.160.156 (talk) 05:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Wrong talk page. Please discuss article edits on the talk page at Talk:Fukushima I nuclear accidents. Carcharoth (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

accident merged back here

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

user:Rememberway merged the accident article back to this article at 8:30 14 March 2011. The discussion occurred at Talk:Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#Article_should_merge_back_to_Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant; over the course of an hour, with the participation of three editors. 184.144.160.156 (talk) 09:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone should probably merge the talk pages.--Pontificalibus (talk) 09:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Everyone: Please don't change the article split again before discussions have taken place - for a while we ended up with two copies of the information, which would have gotten ugly quickly as they diverged. I've for now reverted the accident to a redirect, but that is not an endorsement that that is the proper way - I have no opinion on what the proper split should be, but form a stable consensus before changing it back again. henrik•talk 09:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Merging As I wrote on the Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents talk page, the nuclear plant has a history going back over 40 years, and I think the main article should concentrate on this, with all the various reactors. The Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents article should concentrate on the current crisis. I don't see how it would be better to force all of this into a single article. - Robin Robin Whittle (talk) 12:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

but the fact of the matter is that there is not very much about the plant as such right now.Sandpiper (talk) 13:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Merging If we take the example of Three Mile Iland we have : Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station and Three Mile Island accident --Kimdime (talk) 13:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose merging, with 45KB, this article will survive on it own. We should develop this article further. Not going backwards. Having to have an introduction section on many place isn't an issue. You can copy and paste and cordinate such things here in talk. --Kslotte (talk) 10:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose merging. Was proper consideration given to the fact that both articles were top news item on the WP Main Page? I think the merge was terrible while featured on the main page. None of the mergers even sorted out the duplicate images on the remerged page. Rwendland (talk) 10:29, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

obviously both articles wer top item because everyone interested in reading one of them also read the other. This is a reason for having both together. I agree there might be an enire articles worth of info in the accident article, but the reactor article was a stub before all this happened and no one has added to it as regards general info. Which, anyway, is mostly stuff people reading the accident article want to know anyway. Sandpiper (talk) 10:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Merging as of right now there are enough WP:RS to keep both articles separate. When events die down I believe we should write a small section in the main article that gives a brief explanation of the events and links to this article, but otherwise we will have the problem of overwhelming the other article.Coffeepusher (talk) 10:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Merging The nuclear plant has a history going back over 40 years, and the main article should concentrate on this, with all the various reactors. The Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents article should concentrate on the current crisis. I don't see how it would be better to force all of this into a single article. - Robin Robin Whittle (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose however, I believe the plant article should have a very limited scope on the incident, instead referring to this article for full details. Otherwise, as mentioned in other areas, we would be doubling all the required work.MartinezMD (talk) 12:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Merging The information about the accident resulting from the earthquake and tsunami is lengthy and a separate topic of discussion, and the article organization should be consistent with Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station and Three Mile Island accident. The discussion should center around whether the information about the accident and Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents should be merged. Also need to discuss the best way to include the information about the accident at Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant resulting from the earthquake and tsunami. Obankston (talk) 13:29, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

What about merging all the accidents into 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents ?--Kimdime (talk) 13:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The tables titled "Status of reactors" are bulky and should be moved to Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents. Obankston (talk) 13:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

There is also information about the accidents at List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents#2010s. Obankston (talk) 14:40, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose merging This article has absolutely detoriated in quality after the merge. It now contains lots of duplicate information. The events are significant enough to merit their own article, as discussed earlier. However, I would support the creation of a new article, March 2011 Japanese nuclear incidents, that summarizes the whole series of nuclear power problems in Japan in the wake of the natural disaster (NB not "nuclear accidents", as only one of them has thus far been rated an "accident" on the INES scale.) --hydrox (talk) 15:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose merging. The accident deserves its own article and the plant's article should be about the plant itself. The accident article should be shortly summarized in the plant's article. Beagel (talk) 16:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Strongest possible oppose to splitting. Articles are best split when the material is offtopic, or when the size of the article becomes unwieldy. In the current article, on the contrary, it's of an appropriate length, it's all about things happening at the plant, and the presence of construction and historical details of the plant help explain to the reader what's happening. Also and most significantly there's the fact that if we split the article then three different articles end up having to summarise the same material, and this wasn't being done. The articles were getting further and further out of step. Basically if we split the article, then every change has to be made in SIX places. In the body of the accident, summarised in the lead of that article, in the plant article, in the lead of the plant article, in the earthquake article in the lead of the article. This wasn't happening. At all. It's an unworkable structure.Rememberway (talk) 17:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion ?

I don't get it, there seems to be quite a strong majority for the merging, how could we have that done ? --Kimdime (talk) 15:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

You must mean majority against the merge. The accidents page is currently protected. The chain of events was triggered by what I would call a trigger happy decision to back-merge accidents page here. --hydrox (talk) 16:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

yes, I meant against the merging--Kimdime (talk) 16:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see that the issue has been discused on the [admin board] I assume that the split will reappear any time soon--Kimdime (talk) 16:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The lead now

Why do we have some detailed timeline in the lead, which shouldn't be more than 4 paragraphs, this detail needs to be moved somewhere else.--Pontificalibus (talk) 10:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

because it is the two merged leads from both articles and someone needs to make sense of it. This having to check and acept other peoples edits is murder. Sandpiper (talk) 10:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

"Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents"

A new article has appeared, Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents.

184.144.160.156 (talk) 12:25, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I think a timeline is an important part of what should be a separate article on the crisis. I agree it is not really an "accident", and I am not sure we should be constrained by some officials using this term. I think many official descriptions do not use the term "accident". It is, by any definition, a crisis. Robin Whittle (talk) 13:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

yes, I agree, I think a timeline is desireable. Where it ought to end up depends on how big things get, but I suspect the tmeline could get very big before this is over. Sandpiper (talk) 13:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

For anyone with a little time on their hands, we could use some help referencing many of the items in the timeline article—most of the references can be found in the Fukushima I and II articles, and they can probably just be copied over. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

"Time of Last Change" needs a timezone.

The article about the Japanese reactor is an ongoing current event. The bottom of the page has a "last changed" note, with date & time. The time doesn't include information about the timezone -- is it local Japanese time, GMT, US East Coast time, the contributor's time? For a normal article, this isn't important, but for an ongoing event, knowing the degree of "current" matters more.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.57.249 (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Visualization or low quality copyrighted image?

thumb|left|copyrighted image

provided cg visualization

My visualization is not perfect I suppose, but I made it because I personally think usable images that are not under copyright are better for Wikipedia. I tried to add it, but it was reverted so I want some thoughts from all of you about what you think regarding this too.

Thanks for your thoughts! Cheers, Nesnad (talk) 16:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I think if we are going to have a CGI image then a better job can be done about it. Good intention, but readers would see this as a joke if the quality is not higher. Nergaal (talk) 18:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

TXS anyway for the others wikipedias which don't display fair use images. I used your work on fr:wiki...--Kimdime (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Premature

It may be premature to update this article with news of the last few days as if this news is hard and fast fact. This is an encyclopedia not CNN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.83.101.22 (talk) 16:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

you think we should not mention the incident at fukushima power plant yet? Japanes government might have made a mistake in announcing a state of emergency? Sandpiper (talk) 17:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

What the Japanese government does or does not do has nothing to do with the content of an encyclopedia.167.83.101.22 (talk) 21:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

accident info here

After the split, normal procedure is to keep accident info here. Only marginally, so it is easy to update. I feel this morning things got out of hand becasue it got to big (also with lead descriptions), but if we keep it small it is manageable. Only 30 minutes ago, the split was performed (again), so that's why it is now in quite bad shape, but we're working on it with several people! L.tak (talk) 18:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

It just hasn't been accurate all weekend.Rememberway (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

We just haven't got a way to summarise it right now; to do we have to work out what the NPOV is, but we haven't had time, and the actual opinions of people around the world about what is important about this accident is probably changing over time anyway.Rememberway (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

So even if you make it accurate it will immediately be out of date. We need to just point to the main article. The only way to win this game is not to play it, and contribute to the main article instead.Rememberway (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

It won't be immediately out-of-date if it doesn't include specific detail of the latest events but is a summary of what has happened so far. And people are aware that sources including Wikipedia do not always have the latest info in a fast-changing situation.--Pontificalibus (talk) 21:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Japanese second explosion.png

There's a big problem with one of the Fukushima I images. File:Japanese second explosion.png is on commons, claims to have been screencap'd off CTV Winnipeg, a commercial TV station, but also claims to be GFDL. This is clearly impossible. The screenshot itself has a credit for NTV Japan, annother commercial TV station.

I suggest this be uploaded to Wikipedia with the copyright status corrected, and fair-use rationales created for the pages on which it would appear. 184.144.160.156 (talk) 01:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Reactors No. 5 & No. 6 Cooling Problems

My internet is not running very fast so I can't edit in the source, but it would be CNN / Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.76.128.217 (talk) 17:32, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

rod and moderator configuration

In the Mark 1 core are the rods static and does the moderator move up and down or do the rods move up from a static moderator? Wouldn't a gravity fail safe send moveable rods down into the moderator block? I ask because a report said the rods were exposed out of the moderator and I wonder how that would happen. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.15.41.250 (talk) 01:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

In this reactor, the fuel rods are static. The moderator is water. Normally the water covers the fuel rods. However, since the water pumps failed, cold water can't be added so the water is being boiled off. The water level is therefore lowered and the rods exposed. The control rods are inserted from the bottom and they are correctly inserted now. And no, having control rods drop down from above does not make them fail safe because earthqukes could cause the mechanisms to jam. F (talk) 05:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Fukushima I 14 March 2011 satellite image by DigitalGlobe.jpg

Hello, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. You have new messages at File talk:Fukushima I 14 March 2011 satellite image by DigitalGlobe.jpg.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

184.144.160.156 (talk) 02:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Coordinate error

{{geodata-check}}

The following coordinate fixes are needed for

"Fukushima 1 Nuclear Reactor Facility" lat=37.4197607426, lon=141.032585237

I submit that this (above) is a more precise location marker for the Fukushima I Reactor facility. This location is the southernmost of the 3-4 reactor containment structures in the actual Fukushima facility, where the initial reactor explosion and fire that everyone is interested in occurred as a result of the 9.0 Quake & Tsunami on 2011-03-11.

The other (inaccurate) coordinates appear to be placed well outside the facility's main area, on an access road (about 1300m away at a bearing of ~305°), at what may be an entrance kiosk but is most certainly NOT part of the primary reactor facility of interest.

At a time like this, we all need the most accurate data we can get, so please, someone out there who knows even more than I do: please check my information here and confirm this correction!

—sunamoR euQsulupoP sutaneS (talk) 04:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, you are right. I have changed the coordinates to the location of reactor 1 where the first explosion occurred. F (talk) 05:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Kyodo: Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plants

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78524.html Ottawahitech (talk) 06:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

zircaloy

We should improve the zircaloy article, with all that is being mentioned about the failure modes of the nuclear uranium fuel rod cladding. 184.144.160.156 (talk) 09:39, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Nuclear Accident?

I disagree with referring to the current situation at Fukushima as a "nuclear accident." The word "accident" implies someone made a mistake or misstep, the only accident that Fukushima suffered was being built in an earthquake zone. I would move that we change it to "Fukushima Nuclear Crisis."

"Accident" is the official terminology used by international authorities. --rtc (talk) 12:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

But articles are supposed to be named with something ordinary people will understand, not the turn of phrase chosen by a spin doctor. It isnt an accident. Happily it isnt an accident, it was not caused by some human mistake. But note, I dont like 'disaster' either. Sandpiper (talk) 13:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The article should be named using official terminology, as was Three Mile Island accident. If there are additional turns of phrase that non-experts would understand, they should be redirects. Obankston (talk) 13:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Words like "Event" and "Incident" generally refer to situations which have the potential to produce damage or long-term consequences. Aside for it being rightly noted that official terminology for this is "accident" it is also grammatically correct as severe consequences are already being noted in this case i.e. fuel rod damage, scrapping of reactors 1-3, radiation release... yeah, accident Cwill151 (talk) 14:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand the difficulty with "accident", but it may be because I'm not a not a native English speaker. However, the Wiktionary defines wiktionary:accident as "1.An unexpected event with negative consequences occurring without the intention of the one suffering the consequences." I don't see the implication of someone at the origin of the "accident" in this definition. And a Google search is similar. --Frédéric Grosshans (talk) 15:54, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The idiomatic usage of 'accident' to mean someone taking action resulting in unintended negative consequences is not the only way that the word is used in English. It can be applied generally to describe any unexpected, unplanned, or surprising result or action. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.115.31 (talk) 16:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

This is the OP. I suppose at best it's a surreptitiously misleading common English word. I suppose it's just the negative connotations of terms like "Three Mile Island accident." Considering one remembers that as a result of human error, when this is the result of a natural disaster causing mechanical failures. I retract my original motion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.211.129 (talk) 20:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

To be strictly accurate, an 'accident' occurs when some event happens that is nobody's actual fault. The motor insurance industry (for example) refers to such an event as a 'genuine accident' to distinguish it from a non genuine accident where one, some or all of the drivers involved has been negligent. In a genuine accident situation the insurance companies don't pay out unless it is specifically covered by the policy (act of god and all that). Since no person seems to be negligent for this catastrophe (though arguably the designers might have been), then this event is a genuine 'accident'.

Modern language usage now uses the word to describe any event where damage has occured whether anyone is to blame or not. As in, "Oops, I accidentally spilt my coffee over my keyboard". 86.173.174.62 (talk) 18:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Fukushima accident updated to a 6 on the INES scale

I think it would be important to mention that the accident has been updated to a 6 (up from a 4 yesterday)on the INES scale today by the ASN (Autorité française de sûreté nucléaire.

Tschernobyl was a 7 which is the maximum for reference, so a six is actually a huge deal.

On CNN today it was mentiones that it was actually only upgraded to a 5, and is "at par with the 3-mile incident"

Source (in French): http://www.lemonde.fr/japon/article/2011/03/15/l-asn-classe-l-accident-nucleaire-de-fukushima-au-niveau-6_1493498_1492975.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.230.155.9 (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

It is a huge deal! But this article only summarizes things, and it seems a good basis take only the Japanese statement here. There seems no good reason to take the evaluation of other "outsiders" without getting to lenghty (resulting in worries on up to dateness and dubplication). It is a pity however, that there is no independent organization stating the level... L.tak (talk) 13:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Caution, this is the "private" opinion of ASN, the French nuclear agency. It's not official. The Japanese nuclear agency and ultimately, the IAEA have the last words. --91.32.81.188 (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Correctness of Seismi Design for Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant

Peak ground acceleration of 0.18 g is too low for the seismicity of Japan. Please confirm the seismic design value of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stkim511 (talk • contribs) 19:37, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

This is what the source says: Unit 1 was designed for a peak ground acceleration of 0.18g and a response spectrum based on the Taft record from the Southern California (Kern County) earthquake of 1952. However, I have no idea if this is sensible or not (don't even known what it means exactly and how to test it). You seem knowledgeable, do you have any suggestions/comments for improvements? Rgds! L.tak (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

How much did it cost to build?

I understand it may be incremental as each new reactor is built, etc., but approximately how much total? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.67.103 (talk) 21:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Chronic vs Acute exposure

In the article it says that acute exposure is more dangerous than chronic exposure. Is this true? Isn't it the other way around? Blakut (talk) 00:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Nah. A high dose over a short term will severely damage your immune system and digestive tract, by killing lots of the rapidly reproducing cells there. And then you die. If you have the same total dose over a longer period, it gives the immune system and digestive tract a chance to grow new cells and repopulate so you can survive. Of course, the cancer risk is thought to be a function of total dose, but cancer is an extremely common disease anyway and so it needs an awful lot of total radiation to make any very measurable difference. (It's different if you inhale radioactive chemicals, because then you carry on getting cooked).

Anyway, this isn't a discussion forum.Rememberway (talk) 04:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Lock the article for a month?

I suggest the article is locked from any additional updates on the situation in Japan until it has been investigated by a qualified body, as opposed to news updates and guesswork; e.g. "Steam...", "No, hydrogen". Everyone on youtube has turned into a particle physicist in the last 24h. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.100.14 (talk) 19:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Disagree. The article should summarize what is being reported by official sources and qualified news agencies, with appropriate qualifiers to indicate that events are still unfolding and experts have to speculate to some degree at this early stage. --Dan East (talk) 01:40, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• • Trouble is, the "Official Sources" are currently dustmen, lawyers and eco-hippies. The news agencies are not qualified in that they mostly cite "an expert" or other useless bile. 62.200.22.2 (talk) 07:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What type or design of BWR is Unit 1?

eg. is it BWR/1 ... BWR/6 (see BWR) and can we have a schematic for that ? And the other units too. Rod57 (talk) 13:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Rod, I just commented on that in the section below (Built vs. designed. vs. constructed). This reactor is a BWR-3. If you want a basic schematic, there is one here: http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-links-on-fukushima-daiichi-1.html but since this link is just a blog, it probably isn't good for a Wikipedia source. See this list also: List_of_boiling_water_reactors66.65.191.165 (talk) 13:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Also I just found

Reactor       Design                       Size   Commercial operation
Fukushima I-1 General Electric Mark I BWR  439 MW March 1971
Fukushima I–2 General Electric Mark I BWR  760 MW July 1974
Fukushima I-3 General Electric Mark I BWR  760 MW March 1976
Fukushima I-4 General Electric Mark I BWR  760 MW October 1978
Fukushima I-5 General Electric Mark I BWR  760 MW April 1978
Fukushima I-6 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW October 1979

at [3]. Rod57 (talk) 13:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

This table is incorrect as only units 1,2, and 6 supplied by General Electric. Beagel (talk) 14:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

BWR Systems Says "During the evolution of the boiling water reactors, three major types of containments were built. The major containment designs are the Mark I (page 3-16), Mark II (page 3-17), and the Mark III (page 3-18). Unlike the Mark III, that consists of a primary containment and a drywell, the Mark I and Mark II designs consist of a drywell and a wetwell (suppression pool)." and has diagrams of each. Rod57 (talk) 14:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Reactor JP-5 (FUKUSHIMA-DAIICHI-1) type is BWR-3, see IAEA list. Reactor schematic is similar to Monticello Nuclear Power Plant, USA. Anonymous 14:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.134.32.5 (talk)

Do these reactors have a proper containment structure outside of the actual reactor pressure vessel (as most reactors do), or not ? The roof, which blew off, didn't look like a proper containment structure. Eregli bob (talk) 09:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

62.200.22.2 (talk) 07:54, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Inside Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z1DWKC2HJ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1QQR-xH0w same type like fukushima 1 japan (exept the chimney sadly now for fukushima) , 1 April there is open house day want to take some pictures --FischX (talk) 16:08, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Incident clarification

Some one added a tag to "while an operator was conducting an adjustment to the control blade" that clarification was needed.

Ok, so you should know this is a BWR with + shaped control blades that come in from the bottom. Good. Now you should also know that a reactor has to be kept critical when it's operating, you do this by adding and subtracting reactivity. Getting a little more advanced, a BWR boils water, so you can't add anything (Boron) to the water to balance the reactivity - that means you must use control blades. Thus, control blades are constantly partially inserted into the core. BUT, if you inserted one for a long time and took it out, then you would have a local power peak and it could fail the fuel that was next to the blade. That means that it's better to constantly switch up which blades are inserted and which are not. Because of this, routine adjustment of control rods is performed that has no particular effect on the power or operation of the core. It's kind of like massaging the core. That is what the operator was doing in this case, moving control blades up and down, as demanded by the schedule. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

that's helping a bit. But not fully. Are control blades a type of Control rod? Or are they different things + shaped control rods? L.tak (talk) 21:59, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

They are the same materials and only the shape is different. PWRs use something called RCCAs which are clusters of rods that come from the top into the core (as in, an operator can only move a cluster, and not an individual rod). BWRs have different needs and because of that it made more sense to have major differences:

• The control elements are of plate type and
• Insert in-between assemblies instead of empty fuel rod positions

The Core of a PWR has small assemblies (about 1/4th as big as PWRs) and a steel sheet wrapping around it. This helps control the fluctuations of the steam, but it also provides an easy space in-between the steel sheets for the control element to come in. The control element is then fashioned in a + shape to wedge in the middle of 4 adjacent assemblies. I hesitate to call it a control rod because it's very obviously not a rod. Technically they are called cruciform blades, but that is not identified by the public as easily. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, now I do get it; good to hear someone with actual knowledge on the subject contributing ;-). I will make a redirect from control blade to control rod (not fully correct but at least gives some idea to what's happening there...). It would be best to rename the page of the control rod (which mentions BWR anyway) to something which takes all shapes, but we'll need your advise on to what name (no idea what that should be: control xxx? or neutron absorbtion units?)! L.tak (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

The word control blade has currency among the nuclear community, it works just find. "Cruciform blades" is probably one of the most highly technical ways to refer to it. Otherwise, there is actually a lot of vocabulary. "Mechanical shim" refers to shimming (I think) reactivity by mechanical means, but I'm not sure if it applies absorbers AND positive reactivity mechanisms (like a sliding reflector), you'll actually have to ask someone more technical than me for an answer to that. But mechanical shim is most commonly used to distinguish between the use of Boron diluted in the system, which is a chemical shim. Distinctions also become important when you consider, for instance, a control drum, which regulates reactivity by twisting instead of inserting. A disadvantage is that there is no way to put pressure or gravity behind it to assure SCRAMs happen reliably, but an advantage is that impacts to the reactor will not move the drum position. These are more appropriate for space reactors (bumpy ride) and fine reactivity control complementary to rods. All of those I've discussed qualify as control elements, although outside of the field this term is to ambiguous. The terminology of neutron control elements, reactivity control elements, or reactor control elements (Britannica) hits much closer to an appropriate article title. Britannica's article also talks about the meaning of shim but gets it wrong. People do mean power control when they talk about a shim, or else chemical shim would have never made sense. Plenty of other people could add a lot onto what I've said, but I hope this gives some good terminology suggestions for now. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

File:2011-03-12 1800 NHK Sōgō channel news program screen shot.jpg

File:2011-03-12 1800 NHK Sōgō channel news program screen shot.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 04:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

unit 1 design peak ground acceleration

According to ref 8, the design peak ground acceleration is 0.18 g for unit 1. 124.149.127.25 (talk) 06:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

True, and we mention that in the text I believe.... Is there any place in the article wehre it is wrong or inconsistent? L.tak (talk) 09:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong because your information is outdated. All of the units had the standards revised 2006 and after. They all used to be on the order of 0.2g like plants in the United States are, but the rated values were changed after several plants got hit with shaking up to 0.8g in past quakes. All of the units have rated values of around 0.5g. They used to have 2 standards, S1 and S2 where one was lower and permitted quicker return to power, but then they changed it to a single standard, Ss, after the 2006, 2007 time frame. My reference is, and was [4], and I do not see any basis to contradict this, although I don't doubt that a prettier reference could be found. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:07, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Fishing and Marine Forecasts

Haven't seen much talk in the way of fishing and marine forecasting of the radiated spent waste water from the plant(s).

The only thing so far, is the following page, Salmon Migration Routes and Japan's Radiation Plume posted Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

Being up here in Alaska, I know I'm finally meating my USDA recommended values for Radioactive Iodine, but I don't want to over do it by eating too much radioactive cooked salmon. However, I'm sure a few glow-in-the-dark Moose are OK. roger (talk) 01:43, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI: There's an additional Radiation effects from Fukushima I nuclear accidents Wiki page now containing data specifically for contamination.  See Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#Discharge_to_seawater_and_contaminated_sealife and Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#Distribution_by_sea.  roger (talk) 02:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Fukushima Daiichi timeline

FYI, the timeline article, Timeline of the Fukushima I nuclear accidents, was pruned of 100k of content recently with this edit. As this is a related article, it may impact on this one. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 10:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Stop the scaremongering!

There is no risk of a second Chernobyl. Most journalists are quoting "an expert", or "top nuclear scientist", and are not experts either in nuclear physics or how the situation is actually developing in Japan. Yes, it's very serious, but please refer to the article listed as [16] in the references, which is not yet cited, and also this article; http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/, which both explain clearly what is happening, with nice pictures for the non-nuclear physicists amongst us, who fear what they do not understand.

At the moment, this article is riddled with the same sloppy non-journalism I cited above, and is just as bad as the international press (who have no understanding of the situation and are simply stirring the fear) - for example; " ...has sparked international concern that the disaster is heading towards becoming an environmental calamity similar to that suffered at Chernobyl in 1986. International experts estimate..."

...and this cites an article in the Telegraph - a newspaper, not a scientific journal, which uses horrible weaselly sentences like:

- "...it was claimed" (by whom?) - "Nuclear safety officials in France said..." - which Nuclear safety officials? A Security guard at a nuclear power station? - "Last night, a US nuclear safety chief said..." oh, come on!!! If the source can't be named, it probably isn't real or authoritative. - "Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, warned..." This warning is just common sense, and doesn't give any scientific data at all, like what kind of radiation (see the articles I mentioned above) or the specific threats (which are currently a dose of radiation sickness from iodine or similar - not pleasant at all, but not immediately life-threatening). - "there were accusations that the situation was now "out of control". " From who? - Francois Baroin is the French Minister of budget. He is the French official who said that the situation could be worse than Chernobyl. He is not a nuclear physicist. He is a lawyer, sho cited Theirry Charles. - "Asked about the maximum possible amount of radioactive release, he (Thierry Charles) said “it would be in the same range as Chernobyl”.". Let's think about this. It's a nuclear reactor - yes, it could release the same amount of radioactivity as Chernobyl as a maximum - that's common sense. What was the exact question asked that solicited this response - and who is Francois Baron to say that things are worse than Charles (a bona fide nuclear expert, inasmuch as he is director for factory, laboratory, transport and waste safety at the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).) has stated? - "Nathalie Kosciusko–Morizet, France's ecology minister, had said that "the worst scenario is possible and even probable"." - yeah, and I bet she understands everything about the design of the Daiichi reactors and how the earthquake has actually affected them, and how the measures currently deployed are working/being hampered, and what sort of outcome is realistic. No. She understands how to hug trees, tie-dye T Shirts and make disgusting stews out of chick-peas and butternut squash.

See how sloppy journalism works? :o)

EVERY newspaper article follows these trends - they misquote the "real" experts (the only expert who has spoken is actually a garbage disposal man, and he's been badly misquoted), quote the numpty scaremongerers and make up their own experts to pad out a story that echoes their own fears and misunderstanding and perpetuates it in the minds of the ignorant masses.

I'm only cross about this because I don't understand the situation fully either - and this kind of nonsense that's currently passing for news does not help anyone. PLEASE read the two articles I provided links for above. They won't tell you that it's all going swimmingly, but they will tell you what is really going on as far as anyone actually knows, instead of making up a whole load of cobblers.

Yeah, your right, what everyone SHOULD say is this: The only way Japan could end up as Chernobyl 2 is if another tsunami (not out of the question because Japan is on the ring of fire) were to hit the plant agian. If that were to happen, the radioactive water washed in could contaminate bodies of water, and would make it impossible for any other rescue efforts to get in there and wash away the rescuers already there. the chances of this are small. but not impossible. The ring of fire is very unpredictable. who knows....... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.206.75 (talk) 22:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

THIS is THE most reliable source of data: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/tsunamiupdate01.html

/phew! Hope someone more knowledgeable than myself picks this up and digs up something TRUE to put in this article. 62.200.22.2 (talk) 07:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern. Must be me, but I thought this article (in particular the section on the accident) is neutral. And it does not mention Chernobyl at all. Could you quote what exactly your concern is, then I'd be happy to help out? L.tak (talk) 08:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

well, I am glad we are not using bravenewclimate.com as a source since it's a personal blog by a pro-nuclear campaigner. Also, I have twice seen basic errors in the information published about this incident on the IAEA.org website also, so it's is good that we are using the variety of source that we are, and that editors are checking them for veracity.--Pontificalibus (talk) 09:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Hate to break it but the release of radioactivity is 50% of the release from Chernobyl and we are not yet done with Fukushima. She is still spewing stuff everywhere. http://www.zamg.ac.at/docs/aktuell/Japan2011-03-22_1500_E.pdf Read that report. Very high levels and it is not over yet -- 50% of Chernobyl. Very very bad news. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.32.166.163 (talk) 05:12, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Hate to break it YOU, but that research was done by a scientist working on behalf of Greenpeace, an anti-nuclear activist organisation, and is contarary to ALL other reports by other neutral organisations, so while it is a source, it is biased. AlexTheBarbarian (talk) 09:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

This might not be the best place for the comment, but I have to comment on the Level 7 declaration. Contrary to what the article claims, this declaration was not made by IAEA. It was Japan's NISA that did it, the IAEA merely acknowledges that declaration.

This is how I read the IAEA's own comment on the declaration, from the website in the Wikipedia footnote: "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can confirm that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has submitted a provisional International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) Level 7 rating for the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This new provisional rating considers the accidents that occurred at Units 1, 2 and 3 as a single event on INES and uses estimated total release to the atmosphere as a justification. Previously, separate provisional INES Level 5 ratings had been applied for Units 1, 2 and 3."

So unless someone can find other material somewhere confirming that IAEA actually agrees with NISA, the article should be edited: as it stands, it says the IAEA did it, that must be corrected. 64.105.137.22 (talk) 18:22, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

true... I rephrased... L.tak (talk) 19:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Change title to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant ... NHK uses this to decrease confusion, as does Wikinews.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

---

Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant → Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant — formal request per below discussion. Beagel (talk) 16:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC) Change title to Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant ... NHK uses this to decrease confusion, as does Wikinews. Ichi = One, and Ni = Two, ... in Nihongo. 108.73.113.161 (talk) 00:01, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

CNN uses it too. President Obama also used it in his statement yesterday. But I do think appropriate weight needs to be given to the official name...is there an official English name, or was the article just based on the "usual" translation? If it's the latter, then it probably should be renamed. –flodded ☃ (gripe) 01:07, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

福島第一原子力発電所 (from the Japanesse wp linked article jp:島第一原子力発電所) per Google, translates to Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Island. On the English broadcast of NHK they changed to Dai-Ichi to decrease confusion with Units 1 and 2 (etc..). 99.19.40.160 (talk) 04:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The correct transliteration should be "Daiichi", without the dash. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 05:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Is it strictly incorrect to use the dash? After all, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website uses it: http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/incidents/f1npp_03151100.html . But I agree that the dashless version is certainly more common, and is therefore preferable. 82.132.248.88 (talk) 06:14, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Daichi Fukushima is a former Japanese football player. 99.181.150.106 (talk) 05:07, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there will be any confusion between the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and this football player. Support renaming using "Daiichi" without the dash per Strange Passerby. Correspondingly, the Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant article should be renamed Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant. Beagel (talk) 16:42, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose for now. There have been many changes in naming relating to the reactor and the accidents which only show we have found no good WP:common name. I suggest to wait until things settle down and then decide in April what the best common name is and thus what the article name should be. (It's not that this name is incorrect or out of standards, as it is the term used in many tables etc before the event). L.tak (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Support per above; also, all major international and Japan-based English news sources now pretty much have standardised their usage to Fukushima Daiichi. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 16:51, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

If you count "Fukushima I" together with "Fukushima 1" then this is not the case.--Pontificalibus (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose per L.tak. Why would we want to increase confusion with Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant by giving the articles similar names (Daichi vs Daiini)? The current title is not inaccurate and so does not need to be changed, we have redirects and bold alternate titles in the first sentence. --Pontificalibus (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I see no confusion in Daichi vs Daiini. They do sound differently. Teyandee (talk) 19:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Daini and Daiichi sound more similar than one and two do. Nergaal (talk) 17:08, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support the major news broadcasters seem to be calling it Daiichi. 184.144.166.85 (talk) 04:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Support: Yes, they are (example HNK World, BBC world, CNN). Plus the TEPCO site and IAEA. I saw none major broadcastors using "Fukushima I" or "Fukushima 1" Teyandee (talk) 19:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment although I'm strongly leaned toward opposed I want to give a mostly factual response since I'm the editor who created this page. The use of Fukushima I, to me, sounds more like a "database" way to refer to the plant. It is interpreting the Japanese name to some degree, whereas saying Fukushima Daiichi is literally sounding off what it is called in Japanese (福島第一). I don't expect you will find a consistent president for this in other nuclear plant articles or in other articles in Wikipedia period. For some substance to what I'm arguing, see [5], or IAEA databases for that matter. There was no reason for me to name it other than Fukushima I, and I was really just copying off of some other database, and for what it's worth, there was never a disagreement about how to write the name in English (before the disaster) between those databases, although Tepco has used dai-ichi,ni in their press releases (maybe the entire reason the news called it that). The entrenchment of any use of "daiichi" is purely a product of the recent coverage, or else, the international media would have never had a reason to say the name once until the end of time. I'm not arguing this is an invalid reason. The plant will be remembered for its disaster, although significant attention still needs to be paid to its service as a power reactor (which may be at a close now). If it is remember as "daiichi" in the history books then so be it, but I'm not sure if that will be the case, and I disagree that anyone knows for sure. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:40, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • ...support Internationally "daiichi" has gained the greatest currency, for better for worse. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• Closing admin: please view Talk:Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant#Requested_move before closing to include views expressed there as well. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support - per English-language worldwide news sources, this plant uses the Daiichi rather than the "I" roman numeral. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Support - would support using "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant" w/o the hyphen though. That's how NHK World English states it. --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I cannot tell from the above discussion which name everyone wants to change it to, because it's not listed in the Requested Move template. Someone needs to update that first, because it is not clear which name change we're supporting or opposing. I'd support renaming as I stated above, using "Daiichi" without the hyphen. --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:45, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
    • The RM template says "Daiichi". I have renamed the section name so now it also contains the "Daiichi" not "Dai-Ichi". It should be clear now that we are discussing the changing name to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Teyandee (talk) 18:24, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

With the removal of the hyphen, I've changed my opinion to support. --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support. Per BBC News etc. Kittybrewster ☎ 10:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose for now; I do understand the issues, but I don't see a clear rationale for the move. The idea that "daiichi/daini" is clearer than I/II is dubious. The above vote says "per BBC News" but I just looked at BBC News teletext, and the story of "new radiation leak" makes no mention of Daiichi - it says, "Japan's quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant", "the No 2 reactor", and so on. Also per Theanphibian - let's wait and see. News media are certainly not unanimous about it; and we don't want to keep shuffling it back and forth. Further discussion might be good, but for now I oppose the move.  Chzz  ►  13:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you referring to this article?. The image in it still says Fukushima Daiichi.

Why didn`t they numbered the NPP in the article? I think of 2 reasons:

1) Fukushima Daiichi NPP had gained more damage and had more problems than Fukushima Daiini. It become more "discussable" recently. So they may omitted the numeral as they thought everyone wiil understand that they are talking about Fukushima Daiichi NPP

2) The exact plan is specified at the image.

Also, it is not about one name being "clearer" tham the other. It is about using the official and reliable sources such as TEPCO and IAEA sites, on which the plant is being referred to as Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Teyandee (talk) 15:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

haha! Found an IAEA doc that uses Fukushima I and II. [6] By a Japanese author too. But this is just me being argumentative. You can find uses of both, but Fukushima I has become mostly a secondary name. IAEA does mostly use daiich, even before the accident, and I suspect it was taken to be more savvy. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

{{admin help}}
Could an admin please close the move discussion as well as the related at Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant. Tnx! L.tak (talk) 11:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The last comment in this discussion is dated today, which seems to suggest it is still going. Any specific reason for closing it now? Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:02, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

No, nothing more than that it has been 9 days. I have also no problem keeping it open longer however.. L.tak (talk) 14:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

7 days is only a guideline, not a strict time limit. If discussion is still going on, as it seems, we should allow it to reach a consensus first before closing it. There seems to be a rough consensus for a move but Chzz's !vote is quite recent, so I think we should keep it open a bit longer to allow discussion to unfold completely. If it doesn't, we can still move it tomorrow. Regards SoWhy 16:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wikipedia English is in English. WP:ENGLISH. So if it's anything like a close call, why not use the numeric terms understood by English speakers? -Colfer2 (talk) 00:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
  • This is probably the strongest oppose argument I've heard. I believe this makes sense. The international discussion about the issue, IMO, is largely using "daiichi" to strongly distinguish the particular plant, as the word Fukushima denotes nothing more than an area, with a prefecture and a city adopting it. Thus, Fukushima I is an extremely generic name to slap on a nuclear plant, but it's folly to think that "daiichi" is not generic. It's only non-generic to English speaking reporters. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
    • The word "Daiichi" is used not only to distinguish the NPP. Theoretically they (major news broadcasters) could say "First/Second" or "Fukusima One (Two)" but they use "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant". Why? I believe they want (need) to use the official name of the plant.

WP:ENGLISH still gives us an opportunity for Daiichi:

as you would find it in reliable sources. The TEPCO and IAEA sites are very reliable and they use the Daiichi. NHK World (English) as, probably, the most reliable source, also use Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/28_h37.html

Teyandee (talk) 14:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, the policy can absolutely go either way and I believe the decision under discussion is entirely a matter of discretion. For a completely extreme and not-entirely-applicable example, we have an article on Japan and not Nihon, which is nothing more than an English versus Japanese. My favorite example in Language selection is Liancourt Rocks, which is a name that almost certainly has less notability than either the Japanese or Korean, but it's used as a matter of discretion because it's neutral.

Just to make things super complicated, see Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant II. The IAEA is savvy to the Japanese pronunciations, but not Russian. They call it Novovoronezh 2. In the Wikipedia article set, the roman numerals I, II, ... are used in several cases, and sometimes to denote reactor numbers which is fairly blatantly inconsistent. Never the less, titling with site 1 vs. site 2 is a completely valid thing to do. Somewhere along the line, English communicators found it more respectful or savvy to actually use the Japanese words for "daiichi". This is probably a bad idea by some accounts, because really, no one will bother with the Chinese names that are much further from natural English phonetics. I think this shows several things, one being that people may look to Japan specifically to vindicate some cultural openness ideal they have, regardless of how true that ideal is. Even the "operation tomodachi" name shows that English speakers find Japan to be the just right porridge of multiculturalism. It's different enough to feel non-trivial to them (as opposed to Spanish), but still close enough to not significantly challenge them (as opposed to Mandarin). That makes it unique in that it is perfect to proudly declare a Japanese word as an "operation". Similarly, the selection of the word "daiichi" is influenced with many feelings of goodwill related to the current circumstances. There is also some aid from Japanese culture to this effect. The virtual absence of stigmas for things too cheesy means that chopping their words into "cute" combinations is free from any gawking from a domestic audience. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

We are talking about the official name which is, (according to above mentioned sources), contains Daiichi.

The recent and currently ongoing events are surely no reason to "start using Daiichi and stop using One". The "Fukushima" is clearly indicates that the event is related to Japan. The plant was and now is called "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant".

Teyandee (talk) 18:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support. i., It is TEPCO's prerogative to officially name it and their English webpage [7] has chosen the transliteration as the English name (contrasted with translation for the names of units 1-6 within). ii., The transliteration is preferred in mainstream media (e.g., current BBC news front page story [8]). iii., Google shows the transliteration is significantly more common (3 million pages contain the exact phrase "Fukushima Daiichi", 5 million for "Fukushima Dai-Ichi"/"Fukushima Dai Ichi", only 1 million for "Fukushima I", similar for "Fukushima 1". 45 million contain both the pronoun I and the word Fukushima). iv., WP policy (both here and here) prefers the transliteration. v., If we really wanted Englishiness we would call it "Fortune Isle number one" [9] not "Fukushima I". vi., The casual reader is more likely to confuse Fukushima I with reactor Unit 1, etc. Cesiumfrog (talk) 00:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Your point iv. is basically redundant with other points you made. The only reading of WP policies that favors "daiichi" are those that say to write it consistent with "established" English uses, and that's what you've already said, that the news media and others use it. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Fukushima map

File:FukushimaGrid.JPG

A map has appeared: File:FukushimaGrid.JPG. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 09:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Most certainly relevant enough for a section on the power connections of the plant, but more historical context would be helpful. What lines were out, what were connected, and when? For now, I'll try to think of a lower impact location to put in in the article. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:12, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but hard to find out. The only thing I saw reported in English was that the lines to Daini were up on March 12th, and that one of the Okuma lines was down (and one up?) on march 12th. Oda Mari added some Japanese references on the accident talk page that go into some detail. ( Martin | talk • contribs 13:20, 9 May 2011 (UTC))

Why is this still missing?

If I understand correctly, people had a problem with the fact that the image got cluttered. If an earlier version is acceptable then the editor who removed it should have replaced it with that desired version. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Re: Warnings and design critique section

Daniel Stapleton (talk) 00:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Respectfully, the following section raised some concern for me:

"The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned Japan in 1990 about the failure of the emergency electricity generators and subsequent failure of the cooling systems of plants in seismically very active regions. The NRC called this one of the most likely risks. The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) cited this report in 2004. According to Jun Tateno, a former NISA scientist, Tepco did not react to these warnings and did not respond with any measures. Because of this, the extraordinary strength of the earthquake in March 2011 cannot be used as an excuse. [31]"

The paragraph ends with a suggestion that TEPCO is or was making excuses of some sort, presumably for the failure of its reactors to withstand the earthquake/tsunami that struck the region in April 2011, however there doesn't seem to be any basis for the final sentence of the paragraph in which the writer claims, "Because of [warnings from NISA], the extraordinary strength of the earthquake in March 2011 cannot be used as an excuse."

An excuse for what, exactly? Who made these excuses and when? It's very unclear and turns the article more towards an effort at recrimination against TEPCO than towards being informative.

Agreed. No one ever implied that Tepco is not criminally liable, and certainly not in this article. Until you cover that point, this accusation makes no sense. I want to get the wording fixed and the tag removed with quick turn around. Will see what I can do. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Partially agreed. The US advice is somewhat tardy, as certain facts were known at tendering. The article is biased in the introduction, suggesting that DaiIchi was constructed and run "entirely" by TEPCO, while in reality it was designed by GE and construction was done by two or more foreign firms, including Boise, which used to build paper mills and large generators. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.110.212.78 (talk) 06:14, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

File:Fukushima explosion.jpg

File:Fukushima explosion.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:52, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Rtnews template

I've removed the Russia Today news template from the page, as it had raised concern because it pointed to a single trending news page, rather than a selection of trend pages, and after discussion in the appropriate places, it's easier to remove it than it is to add lots of other trend pages, as I don't know of any (don't have time to look). If there are any comments, concerns, or suggestions please reply on my talkpage, as I don't watch this page. Penyulap ☏ 03:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant

Why is the Japanese word Daiichi in the title? It seems that people that use Daiichi (in media) don't know it's simply 'one' or 'I'.--Wester (talk) 11:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The page was moved under its current name per this RM discussion. Beagel (talk) 12:43, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

7 rating?

Cited references seem a little weak. (7,15) They seem to be mostly news reports. There is one pdf cited but I could not get it to load. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.101.103 (talk) 05:43, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

There is one more line to the plant, a line from Yonomori, Tohoku substation

1000 feet east of the Yonomori metro stop, south side of the road See it here coming into Fukushima: http://goo.gl/maps/ZQBYc The lines run down the first base line. They originate at a substation in Yonomori. The substation is on the south side of route 112 about 1000 ft up (east) from where it crosses the rapid line. This may or may not be the same as the Yonomori line which goes into units 5/6. Yonomori is as yet a mystery. ( Martin | talk • contribs 04:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC))

Doubt about the tone of this article

Overall the tone of this article is that some radioactivity escaped and that everything is under control (for example "Due to the political climate, the remaining reactors will not be restarted. The disaster disabled the reactor cooling systems, leading to releases of radioactivity"). It appears that as a result the article is strongly misleading about the level of severeness, both in view of the reports about the accident and in view of new reports about the remaining problems such as http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23918882. Harald88 (talk) 18:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

First off, this article is about the plant in general. The main article on the disaster is Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The section on the disaster in this article is meant to be a brief summary. That said, the article could probably do with an addition sentence to indicate that the mitigation is ongoing, and the full scope of the disaster may not be known for years to come. VQuakr (talk) 19:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

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dead link found & unskilled editor unable to replace it with working one

i thought i would humbly call your collective & hopefully not inconvenienced attention to the fact that reference #25, name "IAEApris," is doing a Monty Python parrot impression. Retrieved by me today May the first (and not a siimple retrieval) is the Wayback Machine's 2002 version of "Operating Experience history" to wit -- thank you all, thank you, i don't understand the (new?) reference4s list, thank you. Johanna faust (talk) 21:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

ground acceleration values

In the section 'Plant Description', the design tolerance of 0.18g is stated for reactor 1. The peak ground accelerations listed in the section 'Earthquake and tsunami' are all over 0.5g. but it is stated that the peak acceleration was within design tolerance for reactor 1. Is it possible to check this? Overlycautious (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Annual Generation Units

The units for Annual Generation should be energy (eg., GWh) not power (MWe). I suspect that the correct number should be 29891 GWh as this would imply a 73% efficiency. Nalberding (talk) 04:16, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Reducing quantity of radioactive material

According to the VICE documentary on Fukushima, there is a huge amount of radioactive water stored in tanks near the power plant, and the tanks themselves are even starting to leak.

Also, there are large amounts of radioactive topsoil put in bags (originating from topsoil exposed to the radioactive fallout during the actual incident), dug off from farms.

The waste can't be reprocessed in fast-breeder reactors to reduce the radioactiveness, since soil and water isn't the same material as nuclear waste from old nuclear reactors. However, I would assume it would be possible to seperate off say (a part of the) water from the radiactive water, for example by heating it up so it evaporates (partly), leaving a residu of radioactive water/debris. That would make it easier to contain the leftover radioactive water.

For the topsoil, perhaps something similar can be done. I remember Advanced Plasma Power used a special technique for reducing the waste from landfills by gasifying it and converting it using a plasma, turning waste into "plasmarok". Perhaps that this technique (or a similar technique) can be used to reduce the quantity of soil and/or reduce its radioactiveness.

Note that there's also something called "DeconGel"; this may possibly be combined in one of the methods outlined above to help keep the material encapsulated, hereby helping to prevent it being spread into the environment, while the material reduction process is done.

The VICE documentary also mentioned that the cooling system itself is starting to become affected from the radioactiveness, and risks failing over time. Perhaps that a new cooling system (based on looped, passively safe designs, hence no longer requiring connection to seawater could be used. That way, the whole plant can be disconnected from the seawater by just encapsulating the sea side with earth and/or clay, reducing the speed of circulation of nuclear material to other places.

Finally, further measures to take could include:

• restricting human access to the entire Fukushima area (for example by making it into a natural reserve/parc), razing the houses in the area and processing the materials into plasmarok
• mandatory sterilization of all people that were in the Fukushima area at the time of the accident and/or have come in contact with it since. The reason for this is that the radiation will have affected the genetic makeup of those people, so that when they reproduce, those genetic flaws (which give rise to cancers, ...) will be present in their children as well, and these too will be able to pass these flaws on to their children in turn, ... hereby affecting the entire Japanese population in time.

Xovady (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Not damaged by earthquake or tsunami, but by loss of power to coolant pumping

Inaccurate to say "The plant suffered major damage from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011." All Light Water Reactors in Japan survived the earthquake either undamaged or with minor damage (covered in other Wikipedia articles, easily repaired), and all operating reactors had begun or completed shutdown between the time the earthquake was detected and when it hit the reactor. The reactors, and reactor buildings, all had no damage from the tsunami, beyond basement flooding. The important damage at Fukushima Daiichi from the tsunami, was to the backup diesel generators.

Other reactor sites, including the Onagawa reactor site, had adequate sea wall to block the tsunamis. This site had lowered the natural sea wall instead of enhancing it (lower sea wall made construction easier).

Other reactor sites had diesel backup generators inland and high, to protect them from flooding. This site had diesel backup generators in the basement, where they were ruined by the tsunami.

If the diesel backup generators had been protected, or if replacement generators had been flown in (Russia? China? Hawaii? Australia?), there would have been no loss of coolant accident, or any of the damage that followed from LOCA. If one of the reactors had been restarted at minimal power, enough to generate a little electricity, there would have been no loss of coolant accident.

Perhaps say "The plant suffered major damage in the days after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011."

George Lerner (talk) 20:35, 14 March 2015 (UTC) George Lerner, http://liquidfluoridethoriumreactor.glerner.com/2015-what-about-fukushima/

Obviously the onsite generators were a critical component of this plant. (Furthermore, I understand it took hours not days for the damage to spread to the reactor core.) It sounds like you're playing semantic games to push a POV, and I disagree with making such a cumbersome rewording of the lead.

This plant was simply not designed to be able to survive this tsunami. In the body of the article, I do think it is worth focusing on the design issues concerning the plant and its regulatory environment. For example, the susceptibility of the reactor to meltdown was well known, and had already been solved in less-outdated designs (e.g. generation IV reactors), and on a more superficial level the susceptibility to generator inundation had already been recognised (but perhaps not well communicated?); I think the article should explain the reasons why operators had not been required to address these deficiencies earlier. Similarly I think this article should cover what process had been in place for informing the seawall-height-policing with accurate estimates of tsunami-height risk/cost. Cesiumfrog (talk) 03:22, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The earthquake itself knocked out the power lines connecting the plant to the grid, causing a LOOP accident. Whether or not you call the power lines connecting the plant to the grid a "part of the plant" is a matter of semantics, but this was one of the first critical steps that led to the meltdown. The tsunami, itself, more directly caused severe damage to the plant, flooding the BDGs, as well as many other rooms and buildings. There were also various buildings that suffered severe structural damage from debris (=floating heavy machinery) hitting up against various buildings, roads, and structures within the plant. While none of this directly caused the meltdown, it is impossible to say claim anything other than that the plant suffered damage from the M9.0 quake and resulting tsunami. If you wanted to make a statement that the core itself was only secondarily damaged in the aftermath of said plant damage, then that might be appropriate somewhere, but the plant itself suffered extensive damage from the tsunami. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.53.248.35 (talk) 03:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

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Mutations

I've removed a small section stating "mutations in <<variety of forest plants, animals>> increase"

The reference to this was linked to a dailymail article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3536451/Japan-prepares-release-thousands-tonnes-water-containing-radioactive-tritium-Fukushima-nuclear-power-plant-destroyed-huge-tsunami-2011.html), however this article only claims this was in reference to a Greenpeace article, so the reference seems inappropriate. Given Greenpeace's politically motivated nature, any source for this claim should be made and cited from a less bias source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.174.150.236 (talk) 00:12, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:NORUSH apparently applies here. Daily Mail & other tabloids should be removed from any serious article. I recommend WP:Suggested sources#Current news or a Science journal. JRPG (talk) 07:55, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

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• Corrected formatting/usage for http://archives.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/09/02/japan.tepco/index.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110528122321/http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.powrea.htm?country=JP to http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.powrea.htm?country=JP
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110523050242/http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110327-2-2.pdf to http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110327-2-2.pdf

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Boise Cascade?

Concerning this from paragraph 2 of the article: "Fukushima was the first nuclear plant to be designed, constructed and run in conjunction with General Electric, Boise Cascade[citation needed], and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).[3]" ...

Boise Cascade? I agree with the "[citation needed]" thought. Maybe a retraction is in order until we have one …. I just went to the Boise Cascade website and did a search for "nuclear"--in case they've branched out their product line when I wasn't paying attention. Zero hits. Maybe they are shy about their role in the troublesome power plant. Or, maybe this part of the article is just incorrect or bogus. 70.134.65.76 (talk) 04:50, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, seems dubious. I took it out. Anyone is welcome to restore if they can provide a source. VQuakr (talk) 05:11, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Design basis

The article states that GE was involved in much of the reactor design, but leaves the question hanging of how the original (inadequate) design basis came into being, or what politics might have been operating at that time. — MaxEnt 06:20, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Fukushima-1.JPG

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:22, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Decommissioning vs. shutdown

The text states:

In April 2012, Units 1-4 were decommissioned. Units 2-4 were decommissioned on April 19, while Unit 1 was the last of these four units to be decommissioned on April 20 at midnight.

However, according to the IAEA, the 6 units are shut down and in decommissioning process (Table 17, p.55), but not yet decommissioned. Shouldn't we replace "decommissioned" with "permanently shut down" (that's the label of IAEA's Table 16)? --User:Haraldmmueller 19:35, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I have changed it in the running text; howeer, it's no so easy to correct it in the infobox, as the template does not have the necessary field(s) to indicate "permanently shutdown" information. I have opened a discussion at the template page. --User:Haraldmmueller 10:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)