Fukushima Update ...

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The lack of urgency in Japan regarding the 'Fuku-sham-a Meltdown Madness' is astounding. The Japanese are facing unspeakable consequences. A not- quite worst case scenario will have Tokyo or much of the main Japanese island of Honshu queasily 'habitable' for years to centuries with a large 'dead zone' surrounding the N- plants.

A worst- case will poison the entire country along with the atmosphere and the Pacific ocean food chain and the ocean itself.

Where is the world on this? Where is the International Atomic Energy Agency?

In Japan, patting TEPCO and the Japanese government on the back!

The Chinese aren't saying a word because they are in the process of building a hundred of their own cardboard-box reactors. South Korea and post- Soviet Russia are nuclear consumers. Nobody cares about what North Korea thinks about anything.

Nuclear disasters lead inevitably to the reactor disaster cover-ups. Fuku-shame-a is an existential threat to the industry. For this reason, the industry's government promoters dare not speak to the facts too loudly or appear to respond to them.

 

• The Japanese government is AWOL. Prime Minister Kan has announced his resignation but has given no firm date for it.
 
• TEPCO falls farther behind in the water-pumping race against itself, The establishment clearly has no clue.
 
• Every passing day brings closer the inevitable calamity: a prompt criticality within a reactor, a steam explosion, a more powerful hydrogen explosion, the collapse of a reactor building, a spent fuel fire leading to a 'large release' at one time of intense radiation (+100 Sieverts) that causes a hard-to-deny number of instant fatalities among the plant workers ... or something else much worse, all of the above.
 
• TEPCO's puny efforts have failed to 'stabilize' anything. They have produced some colorful graphics but these are meaningless.
 
• TEPCO never says how much radioactivity is in the waste-water.

 
Inquiring minds would like to know ...

 

Fukushima Water Has More Radiation Than Released Into Air 

(Bloomberg) -- The water level in basements and trenches at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant rose and may contain more radiation than is known to have been released into the atmosphere in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

The amount of contaminated water rose to about 105 million liters (28 million gallons) from 100 million liters on May 18, and may start overflowing after June 20, the company known as Tepco said in a statement today. Radiation in the water is estimated at 720,000 terabecquerels, general manager Junichi Matsumoto said at a media briefing in Tokyo.

Tepco has pumped millions of liters of water to cool three reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators, crippling its cooling systems. With Japan's rainy season in full swing, heavy downpours threaten to flood the plant and leak more radiation into the sea, soil and air.

"The risk of overflow is as serious as the meltdown of reactor fuel rods that's already happened," Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in western Japan, said in a phone interview. "Tepco should've acknowledged this risk weeks ago and could've taken any urgent measures."

 

It has never been enough for a country to simply have ... electricity. There has to be electricity that conforms to a cultural ideal; American-style 'Tail- Fin Capitalism'. Within modernity, it is not enough to have enough, there must be excess ... so there is a plenitude to waste.

Modernity appears to defy diminishing returns. This is a large part of modernity's appeal: it pretends to void Steve's First Law of Economics which has surplus- management costs rising faster than the value of the surplus itself. The waste- based economy turns the surplus- cost defect on its head. As a cultural -- rather than an economic -- asset, greed (surplus) becomes a cost- free good that rationalizes other goods' cost- free waste.

It is modernity's persistent and hopeful illusion of goods and waste that has undermined the processes that would allow modernity's excesses to self-correct. 'Endless growth' becomes modernity's marching song as it limps to the abyss, with growth itself masquerading as its own cost- free good.

Meanwhile, back at the reality ranch the costs of surplus electricity multiply like cockroaches. What about all the other reactors @ Fukushima? What about the other 50 reactors in Japan? What happens to these fifty reactors after Japan becomes too radioactive to comfortably endure, or too poor to afford reactor maintenance? All of this eludes public discussion, which presumes the immediate past extending endlessly/effortlessly into the waste- endowed future.

Once the current 'rough spot' gets past itself, that is ...

Modernity promises a future of yellow- brick super-highways lined on both sides with electricity- driven 'progress'. The Japanese have determinedly unlearned their own history as part of the 'progress process'. Beginning when US Admiral Perry and his 'Black Ships' appeared in Tokyo Bay in 1853, the country has made one Faustian agreement after the other with industrial modernity, all of which have brutally failed.

Japan's nuclear bargain is set to turn out no better than all the others. Yet modernity succeeds by its 'act of positive forgetting' which insists the past in all of its iterations is a thing devoid of value. Modernity's past failures never matter because only a truncated, undeveloped form of modernity has ever been allowed to exist ... that form being 'The Past' itself! Like Catholic transcendentalism, the tautology/circular logic of modernity exists always out of reach within the future, one that conveniently never arrives to challenge modernity's own claims upon it.

'Action words' that emerge like demons from the modernity's nuclear cauldron speak to incomprehensible truths: 'meltdown', 'radiation', 'fissile', 'Cherenkov', 'criticality'; this is the new-technocratic banality of evil-speak. People cannot endure the power of ideas that grasp the hand and snatch into the void: horrors of their childrens' monstrous deformities, of inedible food as ashes- in the mouths of the starving, of skin sloughing off and teeth falling out, of dead organs rotting within living bodies and of freakish cancers. This is cyborg/post- humanoid terror that orbits in dimensions outside the reptilian brain- fear of tooth and claw we are all born with.

This is also the 'innovation' of the post- food stamp, poverty- based 'Niewe Economy' that we have built for ourselves. Caught between pet devils, humans curl into the fetal position rejecting all responsibilities. We have 'evolved' into larvae in the laboratory of easy credit and 24 hour convenience, constantly orienting ourselves toward the shiny: neon/LED blinking advertising signs, parking garages with 24 hour illumination, the flat-screen televisions with 'vacant' on and uber- chic maglev bullet trains that go from nowhere to nowhere faster than do the current bullet trains.

The Japanese crisis response is easy to understand from the cultural standpoint, incomprehensible from the standpoint of physics. Occasionally, children are required to stop playing and conquer fears so as to escape large consequences. The Soviets may have over-reacted at Chernobyl but they understood physics. By relocating hundreds of thousands of people and by putting hundreds of thousands more to work clearing the site they were responding to the dynamic imposed by splitting atoms -- leaving the various cultural/political constituencies to take care of themselves.

By acting as they did, the Soviets insured a margin of safety for the other three RBMK reactors at the Chernobyl site and other reactors elsewhere. The three could have all melted down and exploded but didn't. Meanwhile, the politics did indeed take care ... the Soviet Union itself melted down on realized surplus- electricity costs that the reactors had incurred behind the Soviet's military- industrial facade.

TEPCO is running out of time. They need to start pumping that sand, boron and lead grit into the reactors in place of some of the water. The solid material will displace water at the bottoms of the reactor containments, stopping the leaks and perhaps quelling ongoing reactions at the same time. As the cores heat increases beneath sand- boron layers the solid material will act the same way as the water flows do now, insulating the what remains of the core from water or steam that remains in the reactor buildings. Insulating the core would make a steam explosion less likely. As more sand, boron and lead are added to the containments, water would be pumped out of the buildings and treated. Adding new water would not be required.

Sand and boron can be added with just enough water to cause it to flow easily through the piping currently being used to pump water into the containments.

If the cores cannot be accessed by existing plumbing, then holes must be drilled through the concrete containment walls to allow concrete pumps to force the sand mix into the containments.

The Japanese also need to start building a sheet- pile cofferdam around the entire facility to prevent the radioactive water from leaking though the ground into the water table or the ocean.

None of this is rocket science. Meanwhile, the country is whistling past the graveyard: reactor unit 3 is bubbling away (please click on image for a clearer image):

 

 

The temperature trend in this reactor unit is rising. Keep in mind that much of Fukushima's instrumentation was damaged of destroyed by the earthquake and subsequent meltdowns/explosions. Individual instrument readings are not reliable.

Nobody has any idea where the core of this unit is located. Nobody has entered the building since a crew spent ten minutes inside on May 18.

Here is the breakout on reactor unit 1.

Its temperature trend is rising too, (click on the image for a sharper version):

 

 

There are fewer instrument readings, due to long period of zero- cooling, extreme temperatures and pressures during the night of the 12th when the reactor unit melted down then exploded. The pink area indicates a rising trend although this could be a fluctuation due to the flow of water through the reactor.

Because nobody knows where the cores are located or in what condition they are in, it is hard to determine whether there is effective cooling or not. If the cores have completely melted down, the pressure vessels would be empty tubes, completely open at the bottom, subject to rising temperatures from steam or from the molten cores, themselves.

Here is reactor unit 2: (click on the image for a larger version):

 

 

The temperature reading from one of the sensors at the bottom of (what is left of) the pressure vessel fluctuates wildly. The temperature is also on the borderline. Judging from temperatures, unit 3 is reactive. Units 1 and 2 may be critical as temperatures are above boiling point of water with a lot of water being pumped into the PVs.

Physics indicates the remnants of Japan's nuclear/cultural 'self' will vanish when the next important item breaks. There are no nuclear industry prerogatives left to preserve, only shadows. There are fatal problems everywhere within the Fukushima site. The Japanese can accept the institutional cost and buy some time for the rest of their nuclear plants or follow the current strategy and lose everything.

Japan will have no choice but to bring to bear every resource it commands to assault these reactors. This is not simply the subjective speculation by a layman thousands of comfortable miles away, rather it is common sense. The force at work is entropy. The reactor cores and spent fuel represent concentrated energy far in excess of means to on hand to contain it. TEPCO and the Japanese government refuse to assemble adequate tools with which to manage the entropy process. Energy dissipation takes place whether the establishment acknowledges the facts of it or not.

The only thing to be done is to create a form of informal containment that can slowly dissipate enough of the intense energy being emitted so as to keep the bulk of the energy separated from the outside world.

The water could do this if the containments were leak free. The containments would become over-sized spent fuel pools, in addition to the pre- existing pools. Over a decade or so the fuel would cool after which time the fuel mass could then be removed.

The containments' fractured states makes water containment impossible. There have been non- stop earthquakes and aftershocks of the Great March 11 earthquake. The water flow since March 12 is eroding the containments and the ground beneath them, compromising the reactor buildings' foundations. The explosions within the reactors damaged the containments and piping. Instead of being pools, the reactor buildings are sieves.

TEPCO had extreme difficulties repairing water leaks that were out in the open/accessible. It is hard to see how TEPCO intends to fix the large leaks under the containments or within the drywells and suppression pools. The buildings -- not the containments -- are too radioactive to spend more than ten minutes or less inside. Conditions within the containments themselves by TEPCO's own reports are lethal, within minutes or seconds. Workers are rapidly accumulating doses under current conditions. How will massive repair projects take place with TEPCO's minuscule staffs?

TEPCO's approach to keeping radiation contained is sheer idiocy: to build plastic tents around the reactor buildings. These tents will undoubtedly keep moths out of the reactors. What about typhoons?

The TEPCO crew has convinced themselves they are dealing with decay heat from shut-down reactors. The isotope ratios and the heat in both unit 3 and the spent fuel pool in unit 4 indicate something more energetic than decay is taking place.

The Japanese are content to wait until its too late to attack these reactors. This is a form of contentment that the Japanese are sure to regret.


...

Bits ... Pieces ...

 

More good stuff is taking place at the Wonderful Nuclear Resort Fukushima:

• TEPCO says plants won't be in 'cold shutdown' by the end of the year after all. Have a nice day!
  


• TEPCO readings point to a massive increase in Iodine 131 in seawater outside the plant, from 5,200 Bequerels/Liter to 24,000 Bq/L. High levels of radioisotopes are found in areas outside the 20 km exclusion zone.


• TEPCO instruments indicate reactor unit 3 is starting to heat up again even with an flood of 13.5 cubic meters of water injected into it every hour.


• TEPCO jury- rig at unit 5 tempts fate as pump fails then repair is put off for 15 hours. Of course, nobody at the Fukushima Spa bothers to inform anyone until after the fact that the reactor in 'cold shutdown' was close to boiling.

Decay Heat, Bitchez!

• Tropical storm Songda passed over Fukushima Bar and Grill apparently without causing another meltdown. How many bullets have the Japanese dodged at Fukushima since March 11th?

How many more can they dodge?

Here is what the clock on the wall is saying, first about the delay in 'shutting the plant down':

 

TEPCO official admits there will be “major delay” to contain crisis because of triple meltdown (Energy News/Japan Times)

Stabilizing the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant by the end of the year may be impossible, senior officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, throwing a monkey wrench into plans to let evacuees return to their homes near the plant.

The confirmation of core meltdowns hitting reactors 1 through 3, accompanied by breaches to the critical pressure vessels that hold the nuclear fuel, has led officials to believe that "there will be a major delay to work" to contain the situation, one official said.

Tepco, the plant's operator, announced on April 17 its road map for bringing the troubled reactors into a cold shutdown within six to nine months.

... on May 12, it was confirmed that a meltdown had occurred at the No. 1 reactor, forcing the utility to abandon the water entombment idea and try to install a new cooling system that decontaminates and recycles the radioactive water flooding the reactor's turbine building instead.

Given that the contaminated water has leaked from the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel, a Tepco official said, "We must first determine where it is leaking and seal it."

 

This is complete ass- hattery on TEPCO's part as there is no way anyone or thing can 'seal' any but the easiest leaks and TEPCO management knows it. The leaks are underneath the massive reactors, beneath the water- flow, in radiation environments that are hostile for humans and human- designed machinery other than a few, specially constructed robots.

The rad- proof robots available cannot work underwater and underground at the same time. TEPCO cannot even find the leaks: it does not know which reactor is leaking or if all of them are! It cannot locate the cores within the reactor buildings or determine what these cores are doing.

TEPCOs insistence on the 'fixing leaks' fairy tale indicates the company has no idea: the crisis is managing the company. The question is how long before the government fires TEPCO and installs competent management?

Under what horrific circumstance will this 'regime change' take place?

The delay allows radiation to accumulate outside the plant:
 

Fukushima Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’

Yuriy Humber and Stuart Biggs (Bloomberg)

Radioactive soil in pockets of areas near Japan’s crippled nuclear plant have reached the same level as Chernobyl, where a “dead zone” remains 25 years after the reactor in the former Soviet Union exploded.

Soil samples in areas outside the 20-kilometer (12 miles) exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant measured more than 1.48 million becquerels a square meter, the standard used for evacuating residents after the Chernobyl accident, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published May 24 and given to the government.

Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report. The extent of contamination shows the government must move fast to avoid the same future for the area around Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant as Chernobyl, scientists said. Technology has improved since the 1980s, meaning soil can be decontaminated with chemicals or by planting crops to absorb radioactive materials, allowing residents to return.

Soil samples showed one site with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, according to Kawata’s study. Five more sites about 30 kilometers from Dai- Ichi showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter.

When asked to comment on the report today, Tokyo Electric spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.

 


Here are the sea- water contamination charts. Readings don't necessarily relate to particular reactors as all are conjoined within the complex. Most of the water is being pumped into unit 3 so it makes sense that reactor is the source of the high radiation. (TEPCO, click on chart for larger image):



Figure 1: this was from the 27th of May, the following was from the 29th: (Click on image for sharper image):





Figure 2: Sharp rise to 24,000 Bq/L is meaningful. Half- life of ¹³¹I is a bit over 8 days. Generally, activity declines to small levels over a period of 10 to 13 half- lives. Iodine isotopes are volatile, released after reactivity. A method to determine reactivity is to measure the ratio of ¹³¹I to longer- lived ¹³⁷Cs. An increase in Iodine relative to Cesium indicates that a nuclear reaction -- criticality -- is taking place somewhere within the ruins.

This TEPCO chart is of reactor temperatures in troublesome unit 3 (click on image for larger version):

 

 

Figure 3: The pink area indicates the most recent rise in temps with some sensors at the top of the 'pressure vessel' increasing dramatically. Pay attention to the line indicated by the black arrow. This is a sensor in the suppression pool and is an indicator of the overall temperature of the reactor building. Whatever is going on in unit 3 is slowly heating up the immense reactor building itself ... which has 13.5 metric tons of cold water being poured into it every hour (click on image for a larger version):

 

 

Figure 4: TEPCO is manfully pumping that water! It seems all they know how to do. Despite this water flood, the temperature is over twice boiling: 243C. This heat is in a reactor with minuscule pressure which indicates a reactor 'containment' in name only.

Also note the high temperature in the reactor unit 4 spent fuel pool.

While all this excitement has been taking place the service water pump circulating seawater into the heat exchanger used to cool the core of reactor unit 5 failed Saturday due to "Fouling".

 

Pump failure nearly brings No. 5 to a boil
Tepco installs backup unit 15 hours later for halted reactor

Reiji Yoshida (Japan Times)

The seawater pump in the cooling system for the Fukushima power plant's No. 5 reactor broke down Saturday evening, prompting repair crews to install a backup pump 15 hours later on Sunday afternoon, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Tepco discovered the pump had stopped at 9 p.m. Saturday but didn't announce it to the public until Sunday morning.

The beleaguered utility said it notified the local and central governments of the situation on Saturday evening.

The seawater pump was set up after the reactor's original pumps were knocked out by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. It was part of the critical Residual Heat Removal System that was later used to safely ease the reactor into a cold shutdown on March 20.

 

It's hard to know where to begin with this. First is the delay in starting repairs, assuming there would be no problems with the replacement pump and that emergency water injection would work as advertised. As per usual, TEPCO only notified the greater world when it suited arrogant TEPCO.

Right now it doesn't appear that any great change is going to take place in Japan until something catastrophic takes place. The candidate as usual is reactor unit 3 with its boiling core in an undisclosed location. Of course, there is nothing to be done, we are all sinners now in the hands of an angry nuclear god ...

>>>>

Bits and Pieces at the Pump and Elsewhere ...

 
In Japan, the Fukushima reactor complex is being rained- upon by tropical storm Songda. Right now, the storm center is about 300km WSW of Tokyo, heading in an easterly direction. Cooler ocean water temperatures are sapping the storm of energy.

Keep in mind this storm was two days ago a supertyphoon. The storm has momentum -- any storm is a 'curve' in the atmosphere -- and a lot of energy remains with the storm, just not in the form of high wind. There will be heavy rain, perhaps enough to add significantly to the reactors' museum collection of intensely radioactive water.

Caught with its 'cheap' pants pulled up tight around its neck, TEPCO begs forgiveness for not being prepared for a typhoon @ the beginning of typhoon season ... TEPCO must have hoped the entire season would be canceled this year like "Secret Diary Of A Call Girl" .

 
From the 'Not As Completely Useless As We First Thought' department: Bill Clinton and New York mayor Mike Bloomberg are gearing up the fight against climate disruption (New York Times):


 

“This is enough to choke a horse, one of the two or three biggest challenges in the world,” Mr. Clinton said in an unusual joint telephone interview last week with Mr. Bloomberg. “But if we can prove that this is good economics, good public health and fights the most calamitous consequences of climate change, then we will have done a world of good.”

They are expected to announce a new formal partnership with the World Bank, which will eventually provide financial and technical assistance for cities seeking to reduce emissions by improving energy efficiency in transit, power generation, lighting and public buildings.

Cities now house more than half of the world’s population, and while they occupy 2 percent of the globe’s land mass, cities consume 70 percent of global energy and produce 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If anything meaningful is going to happen on climate in the short term, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bloomberg and their advisers say, it has to start in the cities.

“We are putting a stake in the ground around the idea that national and international governments have failed, possibly quite permanently, or at least in a way that they will not make any serious progress before it’s too late,” said Kevin Sheekey, a former deputy mayor of New York and principal political adviser to Mr. Bloomberg. “If you address the problems of the cities, there will be no need for China and India to sign onto some international accord. And thank God, because that’s not going to get done. It’s time to say it.”

 


The real challenge is to combat energy company sourced climate change deniers who have co-opted the discussion with well- funded, cleverly targeted misinformation campaigns.

What Clinton/Bloomberg can work on is a 'one- size- fits- all' energy policy that centers on conservation. Solving both energy shortage and climate problems starts with re-examining car- centric transportation.

This re-examination will not solve the culture, modernity, the progress narrative or role-playing by participants, including post- Warhol 'superstars' such as Clinton and Bloomberg. Maybe the duo can somehow step 'outside' the Disco 54 art- world context they have both created for themselves and which was waiting for them when they arrived. This might allow some breathing space for the rest of us before climate/energy reality pops over the horizon and annihilates modernity.

Meanwhile; the country at large appears perhaps to maybe/possibly be getting somehow/somewhat ready to come to some kind of terms with the peak oil climate/energy reality concept. When the words "Peak Oil" bleat from a headline of the Wall Street Journal rather than Economic Undertow it means that somewhere, somebody important is taking the oil- shortage reality seriously. How about on the American highway?

Um ... uh, no?

 

Gas tanks are draining family budgets

Damian Dovarganes, AP

NEW YORK (AP) — There's less money this summer for hotel rooms, surfboards and bathing suits. It's all going into the gas tank.

High prices at the pump are putting a squeeze on the family budget as the traditional summer driving season begins. For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.

Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201. Families now spend more filling up than they spend on cars, clothes or recreation. Last year, they spent less on gasoline than each of those things.

Jeffrey Wayman of Cape Charles, Va., spent Friday riding his motorcycle to North Carolina's Outer Banks, a day trip with his wife. They decided to eat snacks in a gas station parking lot rather than buy lunch because rising fuel prices have eaten so much into their budget over the past year that they can't ride as frequently as they would like.

"We used to do it a lot more, but not as much now," he said. "You have to cut back when you have a $480 gas bill a month."

 

The dynamic illustrated by this article cannot be a surprise to readers here: high energy prices allocate funds and returns away from non- energy opportunities. Returns to energy companies reduce returns elsewhere. Jeffery Wayman's lunches are stranded by high oil prices, soon his motorcycles will be stranded, then his family's house if it hasn't been stranded already. Everything that is stranded is someone else's business and source of income. Businesses stranded by high energy prices find themselves in a desperate twilight struggle to survive, firing staff and emptying out credit lines in the hope against hope that customers will somehow reappear before the lights go out.

... Customers don't show up because they are broke, stranded themselves by high energy costs.

Both the stranding process and business struggles run counter to any inflationary impulse associated with the high prices. Eventually the demand is destroyed when the businesses fail. Allocation works up to the point where it stops. Jeffrey Wayman will allocate away from lunches toward gasoline but cannot allocate away from food. Comes the time comes when Wayman is hungry enough, he will 'allocate' his motorcycle to the pawn shop in order to eat.

None of this reality is allowed to puncture the narrative. Excess consumption is a condition. All else in the economy must give way to the consumption imperative:
 

Demand for gasoline has fallen for eight straight weeks as drivers try to cut back, but higher prices can't keep drivers parked for long. Even with high prices this year, the government expects gasoline demand to grow slightly for the year.

"Drivers try to do what they can, but they have to go almost all the places they go," says David Greene, a researcher at the Center of Transportation Analysis at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and manager of the Department of Energy website fueleconomy.gov. "There's no magic gizmo that will drastically change someone's gasoline use."

Mike Siroub clutched his heart as he described the experience of filling up lately. He owns a Union Oil gas station in Arcadia, Calif., but one of his cars is also a 1975 Oldsmobile.

"Think about it," he said. "If you've got a car with a 30-gallon tank and gas is $4 a gallon and you fill it up, you're out $120."

 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's- and US Department of Energy's man David Greene personifies the narrow- mindedness that informs America's Waste- Based Economy. He chooses to overlook what is right under his nose! Our gizmos do indeed drastically change gasoline use by pricing the economy that has been built up around cheap fuels into bankruptcy. The stranding process is conservation by another name.

When Mike Siroub buys $120 worth of gasoline, other businesses lose the chance to earn a part of that money. Returns concentrate rather than cycling throughout the broader economy. The $120 payment to Exxon-Mobil and Saudi Aramco is "less money this summer for hotel rooms, surfboards and bathing suits. It's all going into the gas tank."

It's not just this summer, but summers going back to 2004. The consequence can be seen in the declining level of business transactions:

 

 

Figure 1: this is M2 velocity or non- velocity (St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank). People and things are hanging onto their money. The bumpy line within the pink bubble represents transactions during our puny 'Potemkin Recovery'.

 

 

Figure 2: this base money - zero maturity instrument - velocity. Zero- maturity money is a good substitute for late- lamented M3 which included term deposits such as CDs. It is interesting to note the long- term trends. There is less 'currency- money' in circulation right now, much less over a very long period of time.

There was a trend increase in velocity or transactions from the Vietnam War period to the Iranian Revolution. During much of this period the US suffered from inflation. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker raised Fed short- term lending rates beginning in 1979 and into the early 1980s to quash it.

Velocity was both the cause and consequence of peoples' desire to gain goods at almost any price rather than hold onto money.

Velocity has been on a long- term decline since, coinciding with the 'great moderation' and an exponential increase in credit. Credit transactions would not appear as base- money velocity, the credit mechanism is different from the cash- transaction mechanism.

The trend has been the cause and consequence of people desiring to take on debt and then use additional debt to service it.

Dollars also began to flow overseas beginning with US peak oil, into reserves, with less velocity an outcome.

A thousand entities can borrow simultaneously from a lender and gain tremendous aggregate purchasing power instantly. The same thousand can only gain incremental purchasing power over a long period from returns on cash transactions with each other. This is 'quantity of money' versus 'ability/willingness to borrow'. Borrowing wins ... for awhile.

At some point borrowing represents more debt service than it does purchasing power. When that point is reached, borrowing becomes counterproductive. This is where the indebted world is now ... drowning in the stuff and unable to roll it over because of debt's negative purchasing power.

All the drivers can purchase without limit as much gas as they like with their credit cards starting tomorrow.

Like Greece, they can then 'find it difficult' to repay for whatever reasons, casting the lenders into insolvency. What happens next? Credit represents cash returns brought from the future which is why businesses with intermittent cash flows rely on credit. However, credit is only viable when cash flow/current output is able to service the loans.

Borrowers can ignore the debts (default) and start transacting with cash again. Velocity will increase. The starting point or 'growth basis' of velocity is low. The serial transaction mechanism requires time and liquidity for an increase in transactions -- velocity -- to become noticeable.

This is why the current flood of bank credit does not appear in the money supply as indicated by MZM any more than it did at other times. People borrow to buy specific goods when they need or want to buy them, not to hold onto the borrowed funds 'for a rainy day'. Nobody borrows for the future, they save for it if they can ...

The lack of velocity is some people holding onto cash with the rest having cash unavailable. Credit becomes a substitute. For those with cash, credit is cost- free: that is, the 'real' cost of credit is zero when the rate of inflation is the same or greater than debt service costs.

For those without cash, debt grants some temporary purchasing power. The effect of this 'undeserved' purchasing power is the increasing bid on goods to be had with credit.

The insinuation of credit- money into every sphere of the economy made transacting with currency- money less necessary. Credit has made money scarce, the bad having driven out the good, in this case ...

Junk Strategy ...

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The waste- water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has become a gigantic problem:

 

Fukushima Faces ‘Massive’ Radioactive Water Problem

Stuart Biggs and Yuriy Humber (Bloomberg)

As a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled nuclear plant today, academics warn the company has failed to disclose the scale of radiation leaks and faces a “massive problem” with contaminated water.

The utility known as Tepco has been pumping cooling water into the three reactors that melted down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. By May 18, almost 100,000 tons of radioactive water had leaked into basements and other areas of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, according to Tepco’s estimates. The radiated water may double by the end of December.

“Contaminated water is increasing and this is a massive problem,” Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya University, said by phone. “They need to find a place to store the contaminated water and they need to guarantee it won’t go into the soil.”

 

An unknown number of tons of radioactive water have already leaked into the soil and from there into the ocean. How much exactly is a guess but the number is likely to be big. Leaks are discovered in buildings that can be monitored. There are certainly more leaks in reactor buildings and under basements that cannot be approached due to radioactivity dangers.

Large and unknown is how much radioactivity each measure of water carries. Like so much else having to do with the reactor, this figure is shrouded in TEPCO mystery. The fact of the secrecy itself indicates radiation levels that are too high to endure for anything but shortest periods -- and are too high for the public to know about. Indicative was the water in a basement area that burned the feet of workers in water in March. The water measured 2 Sv/hr, nearly a lethal dose. This is unsurprising as waste-water in basements carry radioactive materials directly from the molten cores.

What is reported in the water is iodine 131 and cesium 134 and 137. Uranium, chlorine, plutonium, technetium, cobalt and other elements have been indicated on and off by TEPCO. Dozens or hundreds of other elemental isotopes and toxic compounds are in the plant water, but like guests arriving at the ball, they have not been publicly announced yet. Perhaps the IAEA can persuade the Japanese government to list exactly what is to be found in the waste-water.

Japan has deployed its version of Wall Street's extend and pretend junk strategy at the reactor complex. TEPCO emits soothing bromides about nothing in particular, insisting that everything is going to 'be alright' some months- or three into the future. The establishment sends managers to public meetings who say nothing but bow a lot. Occasionally, someone resigns. Day follows day with little happening other than the flow of 'liquidity', numbers and charts.

So far, the establishment's strategy seems to have worked extremely well. The three reactor cores melted away months ago -- within days or hours of the March 11 earthquake. Keeping quiet about the meltdowns and pretending that little radiation has leaked for months meant that when the news finally emerged it had little consequence. There is no outrage, only passive acceptance.

The strategy indicates the greatest danger is not the physical consequence of the reactor failures but the political danger to the reactor industry. While these hazards are significant, the real danger is the economic consequence of reactor failure(s) within a peak energy context. Somebody has to pay the industry to manage the safety of these reactors over a very long time period. Meanwhile, the industry as a whole is captive to the same 'insufficiency of returns' dynamic as the rest of modernity. The nuke industry's product -- cheap baseload electricity -- is only useful and profitable in the context of industrial economies of scale. Industries in this context can only derive profits -- and therefor exist -- when capital (natural) inputs are mis- priced.

When inputs are repriced to reflect scarcity value the returns to industries shrink. This decreases the relative value of the industries themselves. It is this shift of values consequent to input repricing that forms entirely the current 'economic crisis'. It is the reason why our 'recovery' slips further out of reach with the passage of time.

Modernity, with ever greater efficiently, has been digging its own grave.

Safety management is the reactor industry's most important form of natural capital. Reactors are a child of the parent nuclear weapon establishment. After World War Two, building weapons gained a social ascendancy that exceeded any utility the weapons themselves could possibly provide. Nuclear weapons are too indiscriminate to be militarily useful. This internal logic doomed N-bomb making in most countries: increasing the kind and number of nuclear weapons cannot increase 'security', rather security decreases because of associated safety management costs.

The child of the parent: the Soviet RBMK reactor that melted down so spectacularly in the Ukraine was of a design intended to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. So also was the Windscale pile in Great Britain whose graphite/uranium fire was the world's worst radiation disaster prior to Chernobyl.

The nuclear power establishment demands for itself the same social ascendancy as weapons- making but cannot earn it. Land- sited reactors only produce electricity: the steam or hot water outflow is too potentially dangerous to use for domestic heating. Reactors cannot be located far from users due to costs. Reactors also cannot be designed or constructed as safety requires due to costs. Safety management strategy is to mis-price tail risks, often by way of subsidies or by cost- shifting of risks to other, non- nuclear entities. There is a competition between uses for land and water resources that reactors require, this puts reactors side by side within interconnected reactor campuses, where the failure of one hazards the others.

Both the inevitability and consequences of reactor failure accompany the enterprise. Reactors become unaffordable as safety management reprices itself and tail risks emerge. When the consequences of reactor failure are greater than the value of the reactor's product the economic rationale for reactors to exist vanishes.

The capital (mis) investment represented by the reactors themselves is stranded. There are insufficient returns to afford safety management expenses that 'outlive' the industrial economies that created the reactors in the first place.

These safety management costs extend endlessly into the future. Keeping radioactive material out of the environment from the destroyed Chernobyl reactor is more costly than the Ukrainian government can afford on its own. Kiev must turn to international begging to find funds to keep the Chernobyl reactor covered. The begging takes place even as Chernobyl radiation in groundwater steadily creeps toward the water supply of Kiev.

Finance and politics have no particular time- frame and diffuse consequences for failure. Physics is relentless. Mother Nature runs a hard school: our energy constrained economic future is now. Reactors require profitable industrial societies to support them. Industrial profits requires cheap energy which excludes nuclear because of the safety management costs. TEPCO fails not only because of poor safety management but also because of knock- on effects of that failure upon the Japanese economy.

Japan is on the road to becoming the 'New Ukraine' only with many more reactors.

The consequences of current failures is multiplied by 500 times -- the number of operating power reactors worldwide. Assumptions about the profitability of industry of longer time- frames are just that. Japan could be wise to consider making the decommissioning of its 55 reactors and the removal of the resulting waste its primary industry.

Failure to do so leaves a future of 'boarded up' reactors melting down all over the a country too impoverished to do anything else ... with a hapless population lacking tools to do anything other than to flee. Where in the United States can we house 100 million Japanese nuclear refugees?

On whom do we offload our own unaffordable reactors?

Reactor cores follow no set rules but their own. Here is a chart of reactor unit 3 temperatures beginning with the earthquake to the present: (this graphic is from TEPCO, click on image for a larger version):
 


 

Figure 1: Each plot represents a sensor located within what remains of the pressure vessel and containment at Fukushima reactor unit 3. The pink high- lighted area indicates some kind of large energy release beginning May 1, perhaps re-criticality.

TEPCO prays the issue is decay heat and that the cores will cool steadily with time. This is what the 'Cold Shutdown in 90 days' remarks suggest. This is establishment 'hopium': what the cores contain and what the fuel mass will do is unpredictable. Because of instrument failures, no one is certain what is taking place inside reactor unit 3 and the others.

After the increase in temperatiure, TEPCO increased the water flood from 10 cubic meter to 15 per hour. A potential chain of events has water leaks getting worse exposing the core material or re-criticality taking place. Adding water will work for awhile but outflow will increase due to erosion. There is a limit to how much water can be pumped into this reactor. It must either be stored or it must flow into the ground.

Meanwhile, the amount of radiation outside the plant relentlessly increases. Cesium 137 is found in tea leaves in areas far from Fukushima Daiichi. Increased radiation is also being detected in the ocean.

Because TEPCO hasn't gotten around to changing water gauges in units 2 and 3 nobody 'knows' for absolute certain whether there is anything at all in the reactor pressure vessels. Since reactor units 1 and 3 both experienced powerful steam explosions (with hydrogen components), the meltdowns would put most of the cores and related 'melt' goods @ the bottoms of the respective reactors. The earthquake and the explosions would have left the reactors as sieves with core material under the sieves. Water runs out of the holes with a bit on top of the cores. Cut off the supply of water and the hot cores boil off the small amount of water remaining.

Keeping the water flowing allows some shielding of the cores. In this sense Fukushima is not Chernobyl. Without the water flow, it would be almost impossible for anyone to work @ the facility, being too radioactive for anyone to remain nearby for more than a few minutes.

The water flow also carries heat away from the cores: the ground around and under the plant has become the primary heat sink for the cores. This is in place of the ocean by way of condensers in the working configuration.

Water carries a huge burden of radioactive materials and gases which are released from and by the cores. This radiation is a form of energy that is removed from the cores along with the heat. The longer the water flows the more radiation enters the greater world. The reactor ruins are excellent examples of entropy. The total energy content of the reactor fuel tends to be dissipated evenly into the reactor surroundings. Water buys only a little time: water flow carries core energy wherever it can reach. Because of water- borne contamination, it will eventually be impossible for anyone to work @ the facility, being too radioactive for anyone to remain nearby for more than a few minutes.

Water flooding is the 'easy solution' because water is able to flow through any pipe. 'Easy' is proposed as a substitute for more costly 'permanent'. Pumping highly radioactive water into a building or a storage tank will soon have the storage almost as radioactive as the core.

Because of entropy, TEPCO is going to have to cut the amount of water flowing through the plants. The tendency for leaks is to increase over time. Continuing the water flood will require TEPCO to pump increasing quantities of water into the plants just to 'run in place'. TEPCO pretends it can 'fix' the leaks and recycle existing waste water but this is impossible.

Pipes have to be installed and repaired, connections made. Filters and pumps must be installed and connections made to heat exchangers. All of this must take place in hazardous environments. So far, changing a water gauge and installing some flex-duct in one reactor building appears to be the limit of what conditions allow work crews to accomplish.

Radiation within containments is fierce. There is controversy about how radioactive the containments are. Because of defective instruments it is impossible to tell, but the fact of non- entry by reactor crews speaks for itelf. The entire reactor complex underground is flooded. Just finding leaks under highly radioactive water in damaged buildings is hard to imagine.

TEPCO needs to rethink the entire water- entombment approach and develop a new plan.

There is no reason why TEPCO cannot insert monitoring equipment into the drywells, either by fishing through reactor plumbing or drilling through the concrete. Faulty instruments leaves TEPCO in the dark.

Instead of water, operators should pump sand, boron and lead as a slurry into the containments with concrete pumps. Any pipe that can carry water can also carry a slurry. Inserting a few tons of the sand mix per hour alongside the water would cut down the amount of water leakage. The sand mix is persistent: it stays put and does not flow away through cracks or holes. Enough sand and boron could be pumped into the containment to fill the drywell. Lead in the slurry would provide shielding for those conscripted to clear radioactive debris from the rest of the site.

The French nuclear company Areva has sent equipment to Japan to remove some kinds of radioisotopes from the waste- water to be recycled. Areva's 'secrecy' approach raises questions about the process (From the skeptical Ex- SKF):


 

TEPCO-AREVA Contract to Treat Contaminated Water at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Is Shrouded in Secrecy

With TEPCO again running out of space to hide (aka move) the highly contaminated water from the Reactors 2 and 3 at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, the hope is that the water treatment facility being built by AREVA will be in operation in June.

I mentioned the "rumor" in my post yesterday that the cost to treat 1 tonne of contaminated water will cost TEPCO/Japanese taxpayers 200 million yen (US$2.44 million). In addition to the exorbitant cost, some people are asking, "What exactly will the facility do? What types of radioactive materials is it capable of removing from the water?"

After all, it will be the first even for AREVA to treat radioactive water of this level of contamination.

To my (feigned) surprise, no one in the Japanese government seems to know exactly what the facility is designed to do, and TEPCO is not saying anything, because it is under the "confidentiality [non-disclosure] clause" of the agreement with the French company.

Why any work related to Fukushima I Nuke Plant is still considered "private" is a mystery to me, when the entire world is being affected and the Japanese taxpayers will likely be required to pick up the tab.

 

What entities do rather than what they pitch is suggestive: the process is not going to work so Areva wants to gain its return up front, leaving the unhappy Japanese to their radioactive fate.

Extend and pretend junk strategy is illuminated as bankrupt by the actions of participants. The idea 'in the air' suggests that events on the ground are set to overrun TEPCO with another series of calamities. In this sense, there is no difference between the reactor establishment 'cashing out' and financiers around the world doing the same thing.

Let The Finger Pointing Begin ...

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"We are in the position of a man who has seized a wolf by the ears and dare not let him go."

Friedrich Mellenthin (1943)

 

Figure 1: radiation map of the region surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi power station. Cumulative exposure is presumed to be for the year ending 2012. 20km exclusion zone is noted. (Click on chart for a sharper image: Radiation Safety Philippines)

 

Two months ongoing at the Fukushima Daiichi running sore and the ossified and corrupt Japanese establishment no closer to any kind of remediation now than they were on the night of March 12. Meanwhile, the blame- game starts with the Japanese Prime Minister denying he ordered the halt to sea- water injections into reactor unit 1 on the 12th of March: 

Kan denies ordering TEPCO to stop seawater injection at reactor

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Monday denied having instructed Tokyo Electric Power Co to stop injecting seawater into the troubled No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, brushing aside criticism that an alleged suspension order from him may have worsened the situation.

At a Diet session, Kan said while he ordered the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan and TEPCO on March 12, a day after the mega earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, to examine if the injection could rekindle a nuclear chain reaction in a state known as ‘‘recriticality,’’ he did not receive a report at that time that the injection had actually started.

‘‘I cannot have said ‘stop’ with regard to something that had not been reported to me,’’ the premier told the House of Representatives’ special committee on post-disaster reconstruction in response to Sadakazu Tanigaki, chief of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party.

According to a document released by TEPCO, the injection started at 7:04 p.m. on March 12, stopped at 7:25 p.m. and resumed at 8:20 p.m., meaning that the operation had been suspended for 55 minutes.

 

On March 11, events instantly outran the Prime Minister- or anyone else's ability to effect outcomes. Like so much else in our modern life, that opportunity had come and gone years previously, when the Japanese establishment ignored safety reports illuminating the vulnerability of conventional reactors to earthquakes and tsunamis.

Meanwhile, the hunt for a friction- free scapegoat intensifies. Kan needs to stay away from hotel rooms:
 

Worker error may have led to meltdown

Minoru Matsutani and Masami Ito (Japan Times)

The emergency cooling system for reactor 1 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have been shut down manually before the tsunami hit on March 11, according to a Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman and documents recently released by the utility.

A part of the cooling system known as the isolation condenser was down for about three hours, which could have contributed to the reactor core's meltdown.

The finding upends the government's previous conclusion that the condenser was functioning normally on March 11.

"I learned (of the shutdown) through media reports today," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference Tuesday. "We have asked the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency and other bodies to give detailed analyses and reports (on that matter)."

NISA, the government agency that oversees nuclear plant operators, urged Tepco on Tuesday to provide a detailed explanation by May 23.

Tepco, Japan's largest electricity supplier, disclosed internal documents and data Monday indicating the isolation condenser may have been manually shut down around 3 p.m. March 11 shortly after kicking in following the massive quake at 2:46 p.m. The plant was hit by tsunami around 3:30 p.m.

 

Pity the poor isolation condenser operator. He's on the hook for hundreds of trillions in yen in damages -- this on top of the lethal doses of radiation he very likely absorbed working in the reactor complex without proper safety equipment!

Neither TEPCO nor the Japanese government has a clue as to how to deal with these reactors. They wring their hands helplessly and spew bureaucratic 'papers' like the Federal Reserve.

Reprise: both entities have a clue but the price demanded is a 'full- court press' on the part of the entire nation along with a supporting international effort. This risks Japan's solvency along with what remains of the nuclear industry's credibility.

Japan's sense of itself as a participant in the modernity enterprise of is also challenged. The business of the post-modern world is leisure and finance swindles, not humping lead bricks in a radiation suit, engaged in an Manichean struggle with an invisible something that causes your skin to slough off. Better to pretend the irradiated school-kids are alright.

Some sense: the Chinese under similar circumstances would lose no time throwing millions of hapless farm workers into the fire 'for the good of the country Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. The progress narrative renders the Japanese establishment helpless. The strategy becomes for them to stick heads into the sand, punish a reactor underling and hope against all hope that pouring tens of thousands of tons of water into holes will 'fix' what is wrong.

Reports indicate a large release of radiation detected at the plant gate shortly before the tsunami struck. This means the reactor containment(s) were immediately compromised.

Radiation detected at the plant gate may have come from any reactor at the complex ... or all of them.

The immediate aftermath of the earthquake was chaos. Critical items were non- functional including important instruments and valves.

Managers at the plant did not have authority to vent the reactor, When the decision was made to vent, operators were challenged by extremely high levels of radiation inside the containment building.

Arriving at the decision to pump of seawater into the reactors was also halting: reactor operators did not begin until after the reactor unit 1 had already melted down.

TEPCO was concerned first and foremost about its 'investment' and managers on site did not have authority to address the core emergencies.

Reactor unit 1 probably melted down a few hours after cooling systems stopped working.

Presumably, the local fire department was able to bring pumper trucks to the plant shortly after the earthquake although mention of this arrival has not been noted.

TEPCO negligence: ten thousand tons of slightly radioactive demineralized water (primary turbine drive fluid) in the Central Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility was available to be pumped by firetruck into the feedwater lines to cool the cores/spent fuel pools after the battery power/RCIC failed. This is excess condenser water, removed from reactors during maintenance. Three of the six reactors were shut down for that reason.

During reactor operation this water is boiled in the core; steam drives turbines. It carries some radioactivity but all operating reactors contain water with the same levels of radioactivity. The water in the CRWDF would have been no more radioactive than the water already within the 3 reactors and spent fuel pools.

This water was later dumped into the sea.

Cooling water cycled through by the cores would have been drained by way of relief valves back into Central Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility. 10k tons/cubic meters of water which would have provided sufficient mass to cool the three cores plus spent fuel pools until power was restored. Worst case scenario would have been a dozen fire trucks and hose lines to be disposed of as low- level radioactive waste. Managers simply 'forgot' about the tons of fresh water in CRWDF available as emergency coolant that was sitting right under their noses.

The foregoing presumes that cores, containments, pressure vessels and related plumbing were in a condition to contain and circulate coolant. The earthquake may have fatally damaged the reactors so that they would have melted down anyway.

More TEPCO negligence: operators 'forgot' about spent fuel in unit 4 until water had boiled away. They relied on rate tables and did not account for leaks in spent the fuel pool or its plumbing.

TEPCO pours water not knowing the condition of the cores or where they might be within the buildings. Water shields what remains of the cores. If the flow is interrupted, there is nothing between the cores' radiation and the outside world. Overheating material can become critical and 'reposition' itself explosively. Core melt meeting water is the stuff of steam explosions. Water also morphs to hydrogen and oxygen, it boils away or leaks carrying radiation and a toxic stew of isotopes away from the corium into the water table and the ocean. Some of the water floods the basements of the reactor buildings.

Given enough time and water, all of the cores' energy will be carried to the outside world. No water and the outcome is the same. This is TEPCO's dilemma.

The water flow is not a panacea. Radiation levels within the lower level of reactor unit 1 have skyrocketed to a mind- boggling 200 Sv/hr. (Figure 2):

 

 

TEPCO plans to recirculate water from this area to a heat exchanger in order to 'cool' ... something or other. Good Grief!

Having escaped their pressure vessels, the cores are burning their way through the concrete foundations of the three reactor buildings.

Temperature sensors built into the pressure vessels indicate high- but not extreme temperatures. The utility hopes that fuel remains within the pressure vessels and that water is providing some cooling. It is more likely that the hot material is below the sensors which are measuring steam temperatures.

It's also likely that many sensors don't work.

All three plants were old, built in the 1970's. The large nuclear stations are worn by hard use: their large thermal and radiation loads. Stresses accumulate over time.

 

 

Figure 3: Arnie Gundersen explains how containment vents were added to the GE Mark 1 BWR as a "band aid" 20 years after the plants built in order to prevent an explosion of the notoriously weak Mark 1 containment system.

The entire nuclear industry in Japan has a history of safety issues, cutting maintenance corners and covering up hardware defects.

The General Electric design has characteristics that leaves it vulnerable to a loss of coolant or power: a 'station shutdown'.

The Fukushima/GE plants were at the end of a decades-long operating cycle meant that critical water and steam circulating systems were vulnerable to radiation stresses, corrosion, embrittlement and metal fatigue.

Critical safety systems were vulnerable, including the emergency generators and cables connecting these to pumps and valves. The systems represented complex chains of components: the failure of one component would compromise the entire chain.

The condition of the soil under the plant has not been revealed. It is likely that much if not all of the plant was built on fill or on unstable marine soils. It is possible that the containment structures are not fixed to the bedrock but on soil subject to liquefaction.

The earthquake shifted the land under the plant to the east and lowered it. It is reasonable that the concrete containment structures were cracked by the earthquake and that equipment was damaged.

Roads leading to the plant from the rest of the country were furrowed by the quake: nevertheless road transport of portable generators was possible within nine hours.

It's likely the earthquake damaged vital systems, caused critical pipe breakage and cracked the containments. Explosions taking place during meltdown events certainly did done more damage.

Fssion products are distributed by way of ground water to sewers, waste treatment facilities, incinerators and finally bricks and concrete in Tokyo and elsewhere which become the heat sinks -- along with the ocean -- for Fukushima Daiichi.

Short- lived isotopes continue to be detected in increasing amounts far downrange of the plant. This indicates continuing criticality taking place.

And so the TEPCO soap opera spirals endlessly out of control, a malevolent reality program that is the stuff of nightmares ...


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I don't know if Meredith Whitney 'gets it' or not when she claims the muni lending structure is kaput but she is on the right side of history:
 

Meredith Whitney: Next Financial Crisis To Come From Local Government Defaults

William Alden- The Huffington Post (2010)

The next major financial crisis could come from a crisis in local government budgets, according to a new report from analyst Meredith Whitney.

State budgets were over-extended in the years leading up to the recent financial crisis, Whitney says, as relayed by this Fortune piece. The situation is so bad that states are spending 27 percent more than they're earning in taxes.

The state fiscal situation may be dismal, but Whitney's thesis says that a future crisis won't be cause by states directly, since they have a safety net from the federal government. Instead, the local municipalities -- cities and towns -- which, as Felix Salmon points out, are financially dependent on the states, would default on their debt.

"The state situation reminded me so much of the banks pre-crisis," Whitney told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo Tuesday. In 2007, Whitney predicted doom for Citigroup and was immediately vindicated when the bank's stock price fell and the then-CEO Chuck Prince resigned.

"The similarities between the states and the banks are extreme, to the extent that states have been spending dramatically, growing leverage dramatically. Muni debt has doubled since 2000, but spending has also grown way faster than revenue," Whitney told CNBC.

States, most of which are constitutionally required to have balanced budgets, have paid for this spending by using money that would otherwise have gone to pension funds, Whitney, who is CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, said. "You borrow from future dollars to benefit the present, basically generational robbery," she told CNBC.

The worst states, according to the 600-page report, are California, New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio. The best, with the most conservative fiscal policies, are Texas, Virginia and Washington.

 
Here's a current version of Whitney- Vision:
 

Whitney warns on US state pension schemes

Nicole Bullock (Financial Times)

Meredith Whitney, the outspoken Wall Street analyst, who predicted a wave of defaults by troubled US municipalities, has warned that the rising cost of states’ retirement schemes could redirect funds away from public services and ultimately hurt the US economy.

Ms Whitney, who shot to fame for spotting trouble at large Wall Street banks ahead of the financial crisis, forecast “state arbitrage” whereby the weakest states, namely California, Illinois, Ohio and New Jersey, face the risk of large emigration of their highest tax base – companies and high net worth individuals – to stronger states that have better managed their finances over the years.

“When states start to cut essential state services [corporations and individuals in high tax brackets] say, ‘I can take or leave it,’ and you are potentially left with a constituency that contributes less to the tax base and takes more from social services,” Ms Whitney told the Financial Times.

 
It isn't clear in her writing whether Meredith understands the nature of all debt as a call option on suburbia, on the growth of energy consumption (waste). I have never seen nor heard the words 'energy consumption' pass the bee- stung lips of Lovely (but Serious as a Heart Attack) Meredith. Nevertheless, the end game of municipal credit is grounded in the futility of further waste as a means to service rapidly increasing debts.

The stock 'n' bond hamsters are outraged by Whitney's truth to power. She's costing finance racketeers some serious money! They line up to pound nails into Whitney's skull: (Wall Street Journal)
 

Meredith Whitney Speaks, Muni Market Yawns

Professional scary person Meredith Whitney took to the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal this morning to sprinkle some more of her fear dust on the muni-bond market:



Municipal bond holders will experience their own form of contract renegotiation in the form of debt restructurings at the local level. These are just the facts.

She makes some good points, frankly, and offers some alarming numbers. State and local finances are plainly a mess, and off-balance sheet liabilities in the form of unfunded pension and other benefit obligations are a potential headache. That point is controversial, but it’s always important to listen to Cassandras like Ms. Whitney, who made her bones as a prognosticator before the financial crisis.

But, interestingly, muni-bond investors are not exactly heading for higher ground today on her words. Muni-bond ETFs such as the iShares S&P National AMT-Free Muni Bond fund, are basically unchanged on the day — at six-month highs.

 

You would think the Journal could come up with a more unflattering image? Below is more Meredith bashing from Bloomberg. If you take the time to look online you can find soothing bromides along side Whitney- bashing all over the place:

 

Meredith Whitney Trips Over Her Muni Default Tale: Joe Mysak

(Bloomberg)

It’s no wonder Meredith Whitney wants to distance herself from her prediction of the municipal market’s meltdown.

“I never said that there would be hundreds of billions of defaults. It was never a precise estimate over a specific period of time.” So said Whitney on Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday morning.

This is what she said on an episode of CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Dec. 19, 2010:

“You could see 50 sizeable defaults. Fifty to 100 sizeable defaults. More. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of defaults.”

As for timing, “It’ll be something to worry about within the next 12 months.”

What this sounds like is Meredith Whitney saying there will be hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of municipal bond defaults within the next 12 months. That sounds like a precise estimate over a specific period of time. And that’s how it has been reported and dissected in the press since then, with not a word of protest from Whitney.

Until this week. Whitney told Bloomberg Radio host Tom Keene that she thought “60 Minutes” did a “really good job” on the story. “But the risk is that they take bits and pieces of an hour-and-a-half interview and certain portions are more magnified than others.”

Whitney also later told Keene: “In the cycle of this municipal downturn, I stand by it. But we never had a specific estimate for that. That’s not the nature of our research.”

 


Our waste- based economy is a scaled-up version of a family that lives in a large house. They have been heating the house by burning the furniture and have started on burning the house. 'Industry' notices a problem exists and suggests more efficient furnaces so that the house can be burnt more completely. Salesmen insist that burning the rest of the house is the only way to 'prosperity'. Whitney notices the furniture is gone but hasn't made the 'furnace' connection, yet.

Keep in mind that debts are being incurred as a money- flow substitute for 'utility' received from furniture burning. Real returns from this nonsense does not exist so something has to be created to stand in returns' place. What economists consider to be 'margin' is really the difference between rates of burn. The 'economy' only grows when furniture -- or the house -- is burned faster than during previous times.

The world's economies burn furniture faster in 2011 than they did in 1911, this represents GDP growth and 'progress'. Furniture isn't burned faster now than in 2005 or in 2006 which puts the world at the edge of the pit. Meredith Whitney may not be able to articulate the entire process in detail but she is able to grasp the outline of the process's form.

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD." (JOE 2010)

Modernity's madness reaches escape velocity: things ARE different this time. Our house is our resource patrimony, a form of irreplaceable capital. To properly invest our capital the end must be to gain a return on its existence in a useful and enduring form not its destruction. It might have been excusable to immediately burn for heat the fuel we extracted in more benighted times, before the turn of the Twentieth Century. There is no reason why the oil extracted in 1950 is not in our world as capital now, either as a store of value like gold or performing some service, perhaps as a 100% recyclable lubricant or chemical feedstock or part of some process we cannot now imagine.

A businessman whose company made enduring use of the same oil for many decades or centuries -- as a conscientious farmer might husband his soil and water -- and improved its qualities in the process would be a wise businessman indeed!

The same businessman would also be exceedingly prosperous. His capital account would increase while those of his wasteful competitors would vanish taking their businesses with them ... the same way capital accounts and along with capital itself is vanishing around the world right this minute!

Humans constantly seek more to degrade, burn, waste or corrupt. We refuse to think of resources as capital. Beginning with this central and essential lie, all of economics is corrupted! Whether it is coal or water, farmland or natural gas, 'culture' or knowledge our attitude bends toward the 'consume' part without understanding. The refusal to understand is the inevitable outcome of the lies' corruption which spirals out from the center.

We haughtily pretend to dominate nature not accepting as first principle that nature is indomitable. We act as if our frauds or labels mean something to anyone or thing but ourselves.

The act of consumption revalues what is consumed.

Consumption requires the cheapest possible inputs so as to allow profits. Increased scarcity of inputs makes capital too expensive to waste. In this way waste- based economies are self- limiting. Recognizing how fuel resources or money reprice themselves by way of scarcity is more than a matter of making adjustments for scale.

Availability reprices the entire consumption dynamic into something that excludes consumption. Availability of a resource sets both the amount and the kind of the return on the resource's use. 'Kind' identifies the character of an asset to be traded, which changes as the asset becomes scarce. Scarcity morphs a cheap throwaway such as a bubble-gum card into a rare collectible to be put into a museum. Scarce oil ceases to be an loss- leader for the auto- and real estate industries and instead becomes an asset to be hoarded.

Meanwhile, the appearance of asset speculation in a 'use market' is a scarcity indicator. Exhaustion of resource capital amplifies speculation returns. These returns become greater than those from any of the other 'uses' which are driven from the market.

At that point Hotelling's Rule takes hold. Scarcity of return 're-proxies' money used to measure the return. What is taking place right now under the noses of economists is the titanic struggle between concepts: money as proxy for a good versus money as a proxy for the process that destroys the good. The struggle manifests itself as currency volatility and incipient inflation/deflation. When the perception shifts from input destruction to input hoarding the consumption process will be annihilated because inputs will be unaffordable.

The 'proxy dynamic' is the scaffold upon which the idea of hard currency is deployed. Anyone who does not believe that hard- currencies are central to the economic 'discussion' taking place right now is not paying attention. The only issue is whether the currency basis should/will be gold -- which is useless -- or oil, which is not. When the waste- based economy by way of its 'marketplace' elevates oil, that resource will morph from 'something to be wasted' to become a store of value. The industrial economy that prospers by burning its capital in a furnace will have nothing left to burn.

Few will be able to afford to buy oil other than wealthy speculators seeking to sell it to others for a gambler's profit. Like gold, oil would become 'useless' unless some non- destructive uses can be found for it. This in turn would support higher values still. John D. Rockefeller in the 19th century did not buy oil for himself. He marketed oil as a way to leverage investments in oil consuming industries. As a result, we have 'infrastructure' -- Whitney's muni world -- built for the 'masses' to waste fuel on an unimaginably colossal scale.

When only the Rockefellers of the world can afford oil, none will remain to pay for these 'infrastructure investments' ... or to service associated debts.

It is this 'perception of oil as an investment asset' dynamic rather than net- exports or simple oilfield exhaustion and depletion that hangs over the fuel- waste economy. Oil that is too valuable to waste strands the past 80 years of 'investment' by every nation on Earth. The pricing/value shifting process is visibly taking place right now. The stranding part is what Meredith Whitney observes: the fact that she is remarking about it speaks for itself!

The next rung on the ladder of understanding is whether the 'cease to exist' part takes place before the 'hard currency' part? The answer will be at what price level does the demand- side bid shift perception? At what price does oil become 'good as gold' and treated accordingly? Is the price $147? How about $130?

Diminishing return on waste is our economic crisis: we cannot profit by our counter-productive activities any more. At all levels, whether at the grocery store or the central bank, we are pricing ourselves out of business because we have wasted too much of our irreplaceable capital.

In this sense of the 'pricing out of business' part, Whitney is absolutely correct and her detractors are misleading. Our states and cities as they are currently constituted cannot afford themselves. The putative 'customers' of these entities cannot earn enough from wasting activities to pay for the accumulated debts incurred as substitutes for the past's non- earnings.

The idea of states or locale entities 'earning' or having a return over any period other than the short-term when all that is produced is waste- enablers is a fantasy. Hello! Germany!

Easy come- easy go: our remaining oil resources are difficult to exploit which makes them more valuable. Their 'asset' worth is greater than their 'consumption' worth. At some point oil becomes a treasure like this Leroy Nieman print of Roger Clemens:

 

 
Two grand! Are you going to burn this in a furnace?

We destroy our capital in the name of 'progress' and money capital is revalued as an integral part of the process. No wonder people are confused about inflation and deflation because the measurement is the two interconnected relative rates of capital destruction. It becomes impossible to determine what anything is worth.

We assume that the future will provide us with increasing benefits while our consumption devours what tools we need face this future.

Municipal Finance 101

In a fuel constrained environment, as prices rise choices must be made. Something must be cut in place of the fuel; the 'somethings' are revenues which decrease relative to expenditures. These in turn represent additional fuel waste by government which creates a vicious cycle. To make up the ongoing and expanding gap funds must be borrowed. Municipalities wind up chasing their tails, caught within incipient debt compounding spirals driven by embedded fuel costs. The only escape is to eliminate fuel waste which is impossible because the municipality is completely invested in it. American waste- based economy is structurally dependent upon fuel being wasted.

If fuel waste is eliminated, the governments lose revenue as this is a 'fee' enacted upon the rate of wastage. If waste continues the costs increase to stifle returns costing more revenue while stranding fuel- waste investments. There is no escape from the waste- based system without an overhaul or a breakdown.

Whitney suggests that state and local governments will reschedule debt payments. This is more can- kicking but what other choice to these entities have? Here is a sketch of state/local income and expenditures since 1990 to 2009 from the Census Bureau: (Please click on the chart for a large picture)

 



 


Notice the 1990s period had revenue surpluses; a period of cheap oil and economic 'growth'. This table -- which skips years -- indicates a widening gap between revenues (which includes funds transfers from the Federal government) and expenditures. Indeed, state and local tax revenues are increasing but other funds are diminished. Purchase of fuel requires other funding needs be neglected, with differences made up by borrowing.


 

 

Whitney cannot be faulted for not going far enough. The world's militaries can do so in the place of Whitney. Here is the Defense Department's think tank Joint Operating Environment 2010:

 

A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment. To what extent conservation measures, investments in alternative energy production, and efforts to expand petroleum production from tar sands and shale would mitigate such a period of adjustment is difficult to predict.

 


This sort of thing is the 'container' within which municipal and state financing exists. Finance insists that 'growth' is a given, which is not true:

 

Energy Summary (JOE 2010)

To generate the energy required worldwide by the 2030s would require us to find an additional 1.4 MBD every year until then.

During the next twenty-five years, coal, oil, and natural gas will remain indispensable to meet energy requirements. The discovery rate for new petroleum and gas fields over the past two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields.

At present, investment in oil production is only beginning to pick up, with the result that production could reach a prolonged plateau. By 2030, the world will require production of 118 MBD, but energy producers may only be producing 100 MBD unless there are major changes in current investment and drilling capacity.

By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.

 

The Progress Pimps insist with increasing desperation that stocks are going to go up, bonds are going to go up, both residential and commercial real estate are going to go up, that commodities are going to go up -- with perhaps the dollar as the single financial asset that declines in value, also bullish.

How is an energy shortage -- that could begin as soon as next year -- be bullish for anything?

Energy prices are supported by economic activity. If activity declines due to a lack of return, what will drive prices?

If shortages result in fuel being so expensive that economic activity is thwarted, what funds can be had to afford anything else? A structural overhaul toward real sustainability falls out of reach. What we have invested so far in wasting activities leaves less capital remaining to fund replacement infrastructures.

Price constrained economies cannot spark-off enough cash flow to service debts. The issue becomes triage: which debts to service or pay off and which to repudiate.

Whitney accepts the obvious, that the revenue/expenditure gap is unlikely to be filled without the hard school of default imposing a new order. The dead must give way to the demands of the living ... It is different this time.