Favorable winds over Japan carrying radioactivity out to sea
If there is going to be a major nuclear disaster with massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, today would be the best day meteorologically for this to occur. The low pressure system that brought rain and several inches of snow to Japan yesterday has moved northeastwards out to sea, and high pressure is building in. The clockwise flow of air around the high pressure system approaching Japan from the southwest is driving strong northwesterly winds of 10 - 20 mph over the region. These winds will continue through Thursday, and will take radiation particles emitted by the stricken reactors immediately out to sea, without lingering over Japan. Since high pressure systems are regions of sinking air, the radiation will stay close to the ocean surface as the air spirals clockwise over the Pacific. The contaminated air will remain over the ocean for at least five days, which is plenty of time for the radiation to settle out to the surface.
Figure 1. Surface weather map for 8am EDT today, taken from the 6-hour forecast from this morning's 6 UTC run of the GFS model. A high pressure system to the southwest of Japan, in combination with a low pressure system to the northeast are driving strong northwesterly surface winds over the country. Image is from our wundermap with the "Model" layer turned on. The lines are sea-level pressure (blue contours, 4 mb interval) and 1000 to 500 mb thickness (yellow contours, 60 m interval). Thickness is a measure of the temperature of the lower atmosphere, and a thickness of 5400 meters is usually close to where the dividing line between rain and snow occurs.
Thursday night and Friday morning (U.S. time), the high pressure system moves over Japan, allowing winds to weaken and potentially grow calm, increasing the danger of radioactivity building up over regions near and to the north of the nuclear plant. On Friday, the high departs and a moist southwesterly flow of air will affect Japan. These southwesterly winds will blow most of the radiation out to sea, away from Tokyo. Southwesterly winds will continue through Sunday, when the next major low pressure system is expected to bring heavy precipitation to the country. Beginning Thursday night, the sinking airmass over Japan will be replaced a large-scale area of rising air, and any radiation emitted late Thursday through Friday will be carried aloft towards Alaska and eastern Russia by this southwesterly flow of rising air.
Ground-level releases of radioactivity are typically not able to be transported long distances in significant quantities, since most of the material settles to the ground a few kilometers from the source. If there is a major explosion with hot gases that shoots radioactivity several hundred meters high, that would increase the chances for long range transport, since now the ground is farther away, and the particles that start settling out will stay in the air longer before encountering the ground. Additionally, winds are stronger away from ground, due to reduced friction and presence of the jet stream aloft. These stronger winds will transport radioactivity greater distances. I've made trajectory plots for the next three days assuming two possible release altitudes--a surface-based release near 10 meters, which should be the predominant altitude in the current situation, and a higher release altitude of 300 meters, which might occur from an explosion and fire from a Chernobyl-style incident. Given that the radioactivity has to travel 3000 miles to reach Anchorage, Alaska, and 5000 miles to reach California, a very large amount of dilution will occur, along with potential loss due to rain-out. Any radiation at current levels of emission that might reach these places may not even be detectable, much less be a threat to human health. A Chernobyl-level disaster in Japan would certainly be able to produce detectable levels of radiation over North America, but I strongly doubt it would be a significant concern for human health. The Chernobyl disaster only caused dangerous human health impacts within a few hundred miles of the disaster site, and the distance from Japan to North America is ten times farther than that.
Figure 2. Five-day forecast movement of plumes of radioactive air emitted at 10 meters altitude (red line) and 300 meters (blue line) at 18 UTC (2pm EDT) Wednesday, March 16, 2011 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The plumes spiral clockwise around the high pressure system to the southwest of Japan and stay near the surface. Images created using NOAA's HYSPLIT trajectory model.
Figure 3. Five-day forecast movement of plumes of radioactive air emitted at 10 meters altitude (red line) and 300 meters (blue line) at 18 UTC (2pm EDT) Thursday, March 17, 2011 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The plumes initially spiral clockwise around the high pressure system to the southwest of Japan and stay near the surface. By Saturday, though, the plumes get caught in a southwesterly flow of air in advance of an approaching low pressure system. Ascending air lifts the plumes to high altitudes, where winds are stronger and rapid long-range transport occurs. Images created using NOAA's HYSPLIT trajectory model.
Figure 4. Five-day forecast movement of plumes of radioactive air emitted at 10 meters altitude (red line) and 300 meters (blue line) at 18 UTC (2pm EDT) Friday, March 18, 2011 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The plumes get caught in a southwesterly flow of air in advance of an approaching low pressure system. The plume emitted near the surface (red line) stays trapped near the surface, but the plume emitted at 300 meters is lifted to 3.5 km altitude by the rising air associated with the approaching low pressure system. Images created using NOAA's HYSPLIT trajectory model.
Resources
Seven-day weather forecast for Sendai near the Fukushima nuclear plant
The Austrian Weather Service is running trajectory models for Japan.
Current radar loops from the Japan Meteorological Agency
Rare subtropical cyclone forms near Brazil
An unusual low pressure system that came close to becoming a tropical storm is in the South Atlantic, a few hundred miles east of the coast of Brazil. The Brazilian Navy Hydrographic Center has officially named the system Subtropical Storm "Arani", but I'm not sure the low would have been named by NHC, since Arani has somewhat of a loose circulation and limited heavy thunderstorm activity. The storm is expected to move slowly eastward out to sea, and does not pose a threat to South America. The latest run of the GFDL model shows little development of Arani, and the storm is now encountering a frontal system, which is bringing 20 - 30 knots of wind shear. It is unlikely that Arani will become a tropical storm. Some runs of the GFDL last weekend were predicting Arani would intensify into a Category 3 hurricane; that's the first time I've even seen such a prediction for a South Atlantic storm. The metsul.com blog has more info on Arani, for those of you who read Portugese.
Figure 5. During the daytime on Tuesday 15 March 2011 at 1820 UTC the TRMM satellite flew over a rare cyclone labeled Arani in the South Atlantic. Arani had the appearance of a tropical cyclone but has been classified as a subtropical cyclone. NOAA's Satellite and Information Service classified Arani as a T1 on the Dvorak intensity scale which would indicate an estimated wind speed of about 29 kt (~33 mph). TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data were used in the image above to show rainfall near Arani. Image credit: NASA.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Alex - 51 killed, 21 missing, $1.885 billion USD
TD 2 - 1 killed, unknown damage
Bonnie - 1 killed, $1.5 million USD
Colin - 1 killed, no damage
TD 5 - 2 killed, $7.1 million USD
Danielle - 1 killed, minimal damage
Earl - 8 killed, $45 million USD
Fiona - No deaths, minimal damage
Gaston - No deaths, minimal damage
Hermine - 102 killed (incl. TD 11-E), ~100 missing, $740 million USD
Igor - 4 killed, $200 million USD; RETIRED
Julia - No deaths, minimal damage
Karl - 22 killed, $5.6 billion USD
Lisa - No deaths, no damage
Matthew - 126 killed, 17 missing, $2.6 billion USD
Nicole - 13 killed, $235.4 million USD
Otto - No deaths, $22 million USD
Paula - 1 killed, unknown damage
Richard - 2 killed, $80 million USD
Shary - No deaths, minimal damage
Tomas - 69 killed, $626 million USD; RETIRED
Not a single storm that caused over $1 billion USD in damage or killed more than 100 people was retired.
Dont get me wrong i do feel for the people in Japan but, some of these post are so freaking funny!
Save the Children opens first child-friendly space in Sendai, Japan
Source: Save the Children
Date: 16 Mar 2011
Media Contacts
Eileen Burke, eburke@savechildren.org, (o) 203-221-4233, (c) 203-216-0718
Lane Hartill, lhartill@savechildren.org, (o) 202-640-6608, (c) 202-294-9700
SENDAI, Japan. (March 16, 2011) — Save the Children has opened the first child-friendly space in Sendai, Japan, less than five days after the city was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami.
The space opened Wednesday in a primary school currently being used as an evacuation center. Supervised by Save the Children staff, it contains toys and games aimed at 5-12 year olds affected by the disaster.
Child-friendly spaces are protective environments where children can gather to play and talk about their experiences with supervisors and each other, allowing them to establish a routine in a chaotic situation.
Play and routine are recognized as important ways for children to overcome traumatic experiences.
The supervised play areas also give parents time to concentrate on finding food, search for missing relatives and meet other pressing needs in the aftermath of a disaster.
Steve McDonald, Save the Children's team leader in Sendai said: "Children we've met are having nightmares and are terrified of another tsunami. It's essential that we do everything to help them come to terms with what's happened to them, and that's where the child-friendly spaces and other activities come in."
"Parents in Sendai can now leave their children in a safe place as they start putting their lives back together. This will be the first in a network of child friendly spaces across the affected area."
Save the Children is planning on setting up more child-friendly spaces over the coming days to complement the Japanese government-led relief effort helping the affected population.
Up to 100,000 children were displaced by last week's earthquake, which triggered devastating tsunamis and damaged nuclear power facilities on Japan's east coast.
The displaced population are living in some 2,500 evacuation centers set up across northeastern Japan in recent days.
Save the Children's relief operation is being run from Tokyo, with an operational base in Sendai, the closest city to the earthquake's epicenter.
Donate now to the Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund to support Save the Children's relief efforts and responses to children's ongoing and urgent needs.
Gross's calculations...indicate the Japan quake should have shifted the position of the Earth's figure axis by about 17 cm (6.69 in), towards 133 degrees east longitude. Not to be confused with the Earth's north-south axis, the figure axis is that about which the Earth's mass is balanced. While the slight shift will cause the Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, it won't cause a shift of Earth's axis in space, which can only be affected by external forces such as the gravitational pull of the sun, moon or planets.
Gross points out that the changes to the Earth's rotation and shift of its axis aren't anything to be worried about. "Earth's rotation changes all the time as a result of not only earthquakes, but also the much larger effects of changes in atmospheric winds and oceanic currents," he said. "Over the course of a year, the length of the day increases and decreases by about a millisecond, or about 550 times larger than the change caused by the Japanese earthquake. The position of Earth's figure axis also changes all the time, by about one meter (3.3 feet) over the course of a year, or about six times more than the change that should have been caused by the Japan quake."
More info
Information courtesy of the ATCF site
Jakobshavn Isbrae, Greenland, has now frozen over in sea ice...somewhat.
I'd certainly like to hear why Karl wasn't retired. Maybe Mexico forgot to request retirement under all the drug wars and stuff.
That sounds great for Japan. Hopefully they will recover quickly.
Think of an ice-skater extending and retracting their arms to control the speed of their spin. The effects from atmospheric and oceanic currents (and from this earthquake) are the same principle but, again, the effects are so subtle as to be undetectable without ultra-precise instruments.
where would they "relocate" to. and if they all melt together in a big lump, what then?
Mar. 16 2011 - 2:12 pm
The number 3 nuclear reactor at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi complex is feared damaged and leaking radioactive steam, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
While all six of the nuclear reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi complex contain dangerous amounts of radioactive materials, the threat of a catastrophic failure at number 3 is particularly worrisome. That’s because No. 3 alone uses a fuel containing plutonium — a toxic metal that, if inhaled, remains in the body and can cause many forms of cancer.
The fuel in No. 3 is a blend of plutonium and reprocessed uranium, referred to as MOX (for mixed oxide) and manufactured by the French nuclear company AREVA. MOX fuel rods are also less stable than plutonium-free rods.
No. 3 contains 32 MOX fuel rods, or about 5 percent of the total, according to Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, an anti-nuclear power organization which is considered a credible source of information.
No U.S. nuclear power plants use MOX, stemming from a 1977 ban by the Carter Administration on reprocessing uranium for domestic nuclear power. That is scheduled to change, however, as the National Nuclear Security Administration gears up for a program to produce MOX fuel at a plant now under construction at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. According to the NNSA’s website:
The MOX facility will blend surplus weapon-grade plutonium with depleted uranium oxide to make mixed oxide fuel for use in existing nuclear power plants. Once the MOX fuel assemblies have been irradiated in commercial power reactors, the plutonium can no longer be readily used for nuclear weapons. It will take approximately 15 years for the MOX facility to process the 34 MT of plutonium.
The MOX plant is due to start producing reprocessed fuel for use in civilian reactors in 2017 or 2018. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is considering using MOX fuel at five reactors:
* Sequoyah 1 & 2 (16 miles northeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee)
* Browns Ferry 1, 2, & 3 (32 miles west of Huntsville, Alabama)
According to an article in yesterday’s Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle, a utility in Richland, Washington, is also “mulling” the use MOX fuel.
Some “next generation” nuclear power plants are designed to use only MOX fuel, but proponents say that their designs are inherently safer, a notion dismissed earlier today by Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concern Scientists.
“It is completely unclear whether new designs would actually have significant benefits” in situations similar to the one in Japan, Lyman said at a press conference. “They’ve never been built and operated anywhere.”
Pat, have you read/heard any explanation for why there are three distinct "bangs" audible in that video?
Most likely a 3 Boom echo with a sensitive mic ..
But thats my op only.
If the cores continue burning what in the world can stop it? Do the burn forever and ever??
11,613.30 -242.12 (-2.04%)
What a mess...
WTI Crude Oil
$98.27 ▲1.09
NRC: No water in spent fuel pool of Japan plant
(AP) WASHINGTON (AP) The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan's most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese officials denied it.
If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there's nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.
Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors. He said the spent fuel pool of the complex's Unit 4 reactor has lost water.
Jaczko said officials believe radiation levels are extremely high, and that could affect workers' ability to stop temperatures from escalating.
Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex, deny water is gone from the pool. Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said the "condition is stable" at Unit 4.
Trying to use the words 'common sense' sparingly but if you look at this photo at 438 and try and imagine that there is a pool of water on the top of these buildings that it is maintaining these spent rods at a safe temp. level then I would ask you to please post how you arrive at that conclusion?
I have seen a few of these photos now from different sides of the buildings and it seems that the upper parts of the buildings are not even there!!
True, sorry bloggers if you were offended by this, I only intended to point out a flaw
thank you. it does have a metal detector app and that works, tho how is a mystery too. but it does beep when i pass it over metal. i wonder about ocean currents and the "waste" from the rods. I have seen weather maps showing where the wind could blow radiation but not where it could float to?
The operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi power station automatically shut down during the earthquake.
But after subsequent cooling failures, two of them went into partial meltdown.
Note the post 433 picture. In this at the left hand side of the photo there is a very large lump of something falling down.
We have discussed this over here quite a bit and it would seem to be a very heavy object and not part of the buildings cladding! I now postulate that it might be part of the spent fuel rod containment vessel and if so those rods will be scattered all over the place and they are 'bad news'
Chernobyl 86 Left,,Japan Reactor 2011 right
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