Strange Glow

by Timothy J Jorgensen

  All this news is good for everyone, except for Madigan … and the bluefin tuna. For Madigan, the large reduction in radioactivity in the ocean from Fukushima also means the window of opportunity has closed for tracking the migration of fish using Fukushima radioisotopes as a tracer. He’ll need to return to his stable isotope methods, with their many limitations, if he wants to keep following ocean fish migration patterns. As for the bluefin, their clean bill of health means that sushi gourmets can resume their bluefin indulgence without any worries about the risk of eating Fukushima radioactivity. As such, the Tokyo fish market can continue selling its bluefin tuna at astronomical prices and the carnage of these magnificent fish can proceed as usual … until they’re all gone.25

  CHAPTER 16

  BLUE MOON: NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ACCIDENTS

  When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.

  —William Gibson

  There is no such thing as an accident; it is fate misnamed.

  —Napoleon Bonaparte

  ON SHAKY GROUND

  At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, American engineer Carl Pillitteri was working with his Japanese crew inside Reactor Unit One at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, situated 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo on the east coast of Japan. Suddenly it seemed like an enormous sledgehammer was pounding the foundation of the building. The concrete walls and floor began to crack, and everyone in the crew immediately knew this was an earthquake. After a few seconds the lights went out, leaving the crew in pitch darkness and unable to see anything. Panic ensued. Pillitteri suddenly felt his body being clutched tightly by the two young men standing on either side of him and the entwined trio impulsively began chanting prayers in a mixed cacophony of English and Japanese, like a bilingual foghorn blaring forlornly into a moonless night.

  As if to shout down their prayers, earsplitting demonic sounds started to emanate from the direction of the steam-driven turbine. Pillitteri didn’t know whether the sounds were coming from the turbine itself or from the building being flexed and twisted all around it. But he knew the sounds meant bad things were happening. Suddenly, he started to feel himself surrender to the idea that he and his crew were going to die. And a scream in the dark from a hysterical coworker, proclaiming that the turbine was about to blow, didn’t help matters. At that point all Pillitteri asked of God was to “make it quick.”1

  Steam turbines are devices that look like jet engines. They take energy in the form of steam derived from boiling water and convert that energy into rotary motion. The rotary motion can be used to propel a vehicle, as in the case of old steam-powered railroad locomotives, or to drive a generator to produce electrical power. Coal power plants and nuclear power plants are based on the same thermodynamic strategy; heat boils water to make steam, which then turns turbines to generate electrical power. Simple as that. The heat can come from either burning coal or it can come from nuclear fission. Regardless of the source of the heat, once the water boils, the turbines start spitting out electricity just the same. Steam turbines harness a considerable amount of energy, so it’s not good to be around when one “blows.”

  The turbine did not blow and, after about five minutes, the shaking subsided and a few lights came back on thanks to a diesel emergency power generator that had survived the quake. There weren’t many working lights, but there were just enough for Pillitteri and his crew to find their way to the door leading outside. Miraculously, all of the crew made it out alive.

  What Pillitteri had experienced was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. A 9.0 earthquake is an enormous earthquake, rarely ever experienced. There have only been three larger than 9.0 since people began measuring earthquakes: Chile (9.5 in 1960), Alaska (9.2 in 1964), and Sumatra (9.1 in 2004).

  Earthquakes are currently measured using the moment magnitude scale, which is more accurate that the older Richter scale that it replaced. An increase of just one unit on the moment magnitude scale represents a 32-fold increase in energy, not just 10-fold as many people mistakenly believe.2 This means that even tenths of a point differences in the magnitudes of earthquakes can represent huge differences in damage.

  Once outside, the crew members soon regained their composure, but they were uncertain what to do next. Pillitteri decided it probably best not to linger near the damaged reactor building. The building happened to be on sloping ground. To remove himself from the scene, Pillitteri turned uphill, facing away from the harbor below, and began to climb, soon arriving up at the employee parking lot on the crest of the hill. From his elevated perch he surveyed the situation below. There were damaged buildings and rubble everywhere. The damage extended well beyond the power plant grounds. Most of the buildings surrounding the plant had collapsed.3 This was way too much damage for any local rescue crews to handle. Surely many would die before outside assistance could arrive. The nuclear power plant where he had worked since 2008 was in shambles, and many of his friends and colleagues among the 6,415 workers were likely dead. Slowly he began to absorb the enormity of the situation and he was beset with grief. How could this happen, and why couldn’t it have been foreseen?

  Earthquakes are notoriously hard to predict, although it’s not from lack of trying. In fact, the Japanese were among the first to attempt it when, in the ninth century, they claimed that earthquakes could be predicted from the behavior of catfish. That didn’t work out so well. Nevertheless, nearly twelve centuries later, we aren’t doing much better than the catfish. The best that can be done is to make forecasts in the form of broad probabilistic statements concerning the chances of an earthquake happening in a certain region of the world over a certain number of decades.4 If that’s all you need, then geologists can help you. But if you want to know whether a major earthquake is going to occur at a given location in the coming year, you’ll receive more guidance from the Farmers’ Almanac than the US Geological Survey.

  Furthermore, despite what you may have heard, earthquakes cannot be overdue. It makes intuitive sense that if a typically active seismic region hasn’t had an earthquake for a long while, one is overdue to arrive and the probability of having one soon should, therefore, be higher. We can even imagine the pressure building up between the tectonic plates during the quiescent time, destined to be released in one calamitous burst. But this is an oversimplification of the highly complicated dynamics of fault lines and their tributaries. In reality, it’s a safer bet to assume that the annual earthquake risk for the region remains constant no matter how long it’s been since the last earthquake. Even the foreshocks reported to sometimes occur before major quakes are not consistently present, and sometimes they can occur without any large subsequent quake. In fact, they technically aren’t even foreshocks unless they are followed by a major quake.5

  There is some good news, however, at least for the Japanese. Japan has a very dense network of tremor detectors throughout the county that can give a warning seconds to minutes before destruction hits. It turns out that fast moving, but nondamaging, P waves emanate from the epicenter of the quake faster than the slower moving S waves, which produce the damage. (P and S stand for primary and secondary, respectively.) Depending on the distance from the epicenter, the P waves may precede the S waves by up to two minutes.6 Two minutes is not a lot of time, but a nationwide broadcast warning would allow someone to climb down from a ladder, turn off a stove, get into an earthquake shelter … or shut down a nuclear reactor.

  The Fukushima plant was connected to the P wave warning system. And, just as planned, its three currently operating reactor units (One, Two, and Three) were automatically shut down just before the earthquake hit. Its other three reactor units (Four, Five, and Six) were already shut down for refueling and maintenance, so all power generation at the plant immediately halted prior to any plant damage.

  The Fukushima Daiichi plant is owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). In 2011, the plant, with its six functional nuclear reactors, was one of the largest nuclear reactor si
tes in the world. Japan relies heavily on nuclear power because of its relative shortage of fossil fuels. Before the Fukushima accident, there were 54 operating nuclear reactors in Japan, providing 40% of the country’s energy needs. (For comparison, 20% of electric power generation in the United States is nuclear.)

  Fukushima’s first reactor was purchased from General Electric, Thomas Edison’s old company. General Electric had beaten out a competing bid from its longstanding rival, the Westinghouse Electric Company, which had been offering a substantially larger and more complicated reactor. Westinghouse may have won the AC/DC wars, making AC current the standard for transmission of electrical power worldwide, but Edison’s General Electric Company became the standard nuclear power reactor at Fukushima. When TEPCO bought more reactors for Fukushima Daiichi, they bought them all from General Electric.

  The earthquake was detected by its P waves, the reactors were shut down before the damaging S waves arrived, and a catastrophe was averted … right? Not quite. Shutting down a nuclear reactor does not eliminate the need for cooling it. It still has a lot of residual heat that needs to be dissipated. In addition, the radioactive fission products—the byproducts of nuclear fission—further contribute to the heat, even when the reactor is not running. For these reasons, reactor core cooling must be continually maintained, and for that you need an intact cooling system. The cooling water intake pipes for the six reactors were damaged somewhat by the earthquake, and that was a potential problem. But water is not the only thing you need to cool a reactor.

  SEA SICKNESS

  From the parking lot, Pillitteri had a clear view of the harbor below and he noticed the crew of a freighter frantically trying to get their ship out of harbor and onto the open sea. He suddenly realized that they were acting in anticipation of the coming tsunami, a response that had been drilled into Japanese seamen so much that they scarcely needed to think about it. Sure enough, just as he watched the ship leave harbor and head east toward the open ocean, he saw a huge swell of water heading in. And then he saw the ship safely ride over it.

  Tsunamis are tidal waves of enormous size that are produced by earthquakes originating under the sea. A fault line demarcating the intersection of the Eurasia, Pacific, and Philippine tectonic sea plates lies just off the east coast of Japan. The plates slide over and under each other in fits of starts and stops, rather than in a continuous smooth slide. Each time there is an abrupt movement of the plates, an earthquake tremor follows. These tremors vary in size in proportion to the amount of plate slippage. In Japan, small movements and small quakes happen on a daily basis. (Japan has about 1,500 earthquakes per year.) But it’s the big movements, all at one time, that cause the problems. On March 11, 2011, the tectonic plates made a big slip and a big earthquake followed, moving the entire main island of Japan 13 feet (4 m) further east than it had been on March 10.7

  When one plate slides underneath the other during an earthquake, it’s as though the bottom had dropped out of all the ocean water above that lower plate. The sudden drop of the enormous water column—the fault line is 19 miles below the water surface—causes the energy produced to emanate in all directions in the form of waves. In the open ocean, where the water is very deep, the waves take the form of large swells on the surface, but as those undulating swells move toward the coastline, the water quickly grows shallow and waves begin to crest, forming a roiling curl of great height that breaks onto the shore.

  This is why the seamen needed to take their freighter straight out to sea in anticipation of the tsunami that would soon hit the harbor. Meeting the wave head on in the deeper water of the open ocean, while it’s still in the form of a swell instead of a ferocious curl, allowed the boat to ride over the swell rather than slam into the curl. It may seem crazy, but if a tsunami is chasing your ship, it’s better to make a 180-degree turn and head straight at it because you’re never going to outrun the thing, and delaying the inevitable encounter by running toward land will only make things worse.

  Pillitteri and his crew had survived the shockwave of an earthquake, but others in town were not so fortunate. The manner of death from the shockwave of an earthquake is not unlike that from the shockwave of a bomb. Buildings collapse, crushing people and possibly starting secondary fires as cooking stoves, heating devices, broken gas lines, and live electrical wires ignite the building materials that have fallen on them. Trauma and possible burning is therefore the first wave of death from an earthquake. But those who survive the shockwave from an earthquake near the sea cannot afford to sit and lick their wounds. They must drag themselves to higher ground as quickly as possible because very soon their likely mode of death is going to change from crushing to drowning.

  Depending on how far the earthquake’s epicenter is from shore, the time until the tsunami hits will vary. For Fukushima, the epicenter of the quake was 60 miles at sea, which meant that the tsunami wouldn’t arrive for 40 minutes … 40 precious minutes. Those people skeptical that the tsunami would come, and those that thought they were too far from the shoreline for the water to reach them, were sadly mistaken and would pay with their lives.

  Ironically, the indication that a tsunami is imminent is that the water at the shoreline rapidly recedes, leaving harbors dry and boats resting on the sea floor below their high and dry docks. This happens because the tsunami’s cresting wave is created from the water in front of it, producing a deep forward trough. The trough quickly empties that harbor of water, resembling a fast-forwarding video of a receding tide. The occurrence of water rapidly retreating from harbors and beaches can be considered the start of the five-minute warning. It means that the crest of the tsunami will typically arrive within five minutes. In situations where offshore earthquakes are too far away to be felt on the coastline, this rapidly receding water may be the only warning that people get. And five minutes gives little time to get out of the wave’s path.

  Whether or not the harbor below had gone dry, Pillitteri hadn’t noticed. His gaze was further out to sea, watching the wall of water that the freighter had just climbed move toward land. At 3:26 p.m., a wave 13 feet (4 meters) high hit the 18.7-foot (5.7-meter) seawall protecting the harbor and was successfully stopped. But the relatively small first wave was followed by two waves closer to 49 feet (15 meters) high. (The precise height of these two waves will never be known, since the wave height meter at the plant wasn’t able to measure anything over 24.6 feet [7.5 meters].) Both of these waves plowed over the wall as though it were merely a speed bump in the road. They hit the shore, moved inland, and ripped buildings from foundations. Cars that happened to have their windows closed trapped air briefly and bobbed around on the surface for a short while. Presently, the cars took on water, capsized, and sank, drowning anyone inside. People who happened to be outdoors at the time were soon slammed with seawater thick with flotsam that included the cars and even whole buildings. If not killed immediately, they swirled around in the cold March seawater groping for some higher structure to pull themselves onto and out of the fray.

  As Pillitteri watched, he suddenly realized that the water would soon make its way onto the power plant grounds, perhaps even make it as high as the parking lot where he stood. But by this time he had become completely fatalistic, and his fear was replaced by awe of the natural forces he was witnessing. Forces much grander than any nuclear power plant were at play, making human efforts to harvest a little natural energy from nuclear fission appear feeble.8 Pillitteri was mesmerized by the sight.

  Pillitteri dodged another bullet. The water never made it to the parking lot where he stood. But it did reach the reactor building from which he had just escaped.

  The fact that the water had breached the seawall meant big trouble for the nuclear reactors. Having lost power from the outside electrical grid due to the earthquake and unable to generate their own power due to the automatic core shutdowns, the cooling units were reliant on diesel backup generators. They had enough diesel fuel to operate for days and, even if fuel should run
out, there were backup batteries to keep the electric cooling pumps running for at least eight more hours, buying still more time for the reactors to cool down to a safe temperature. The trouble was, the generators and the batteries were in the basements of the reactor buildings and the basements were about to get flooded.

  At 3:37 p.m., seawater entered the basement of Reactor Unit One, the building that Pillitteri and his crew had just vacated, and all power needed to control the electrically operated valves for the cooling systems was lost. But fortunately, there was a backup cooling system in Reactor One that didn’t require power. It was a completely gravity operated condensation cooling system. Basically, water vapor from boiling water in the reactor rises through pipes to the roof were it runs through a condenser coil to return it to liquid water, and the condensed water then returns to the reactor via gravity to commence the cycle again. Furthermore, the system can be replenished manually with water from a fire-truck hose, so that any water vapor leak does not run the reactor vessel dry. This is a brilliantly simple system that requires no electricity once it’s operating, but its activation was electronically controlled. Unfortunately, when the water from the tsunami flooded the basement of Reactor Unit One, the resulting loss of power caused the condenser cooling system to shut down because of a flaw in its fail-safe logic.9