Japan: no-fly zone established near nuclear plants

If you're wanting to stay on top of the fast-moving story of the nuclear crisis in Japan, one good source: the IAEA's updates, on Facebook (the iaea.org website is intermittently overloaded). Today, updates on recent explosions and fires, damaged reactors and pools storing spent fuel, and word that a "30-kilometer no-fly zone has been established around the Daiichi plant."

• [anansi133]

  I just discovered a web site with background from the nuclear engineer’s side of things: Nuclear Engineering International

  http://www.neimagazine.com/

  There’s some fascinating reading about a different type of plant on the other side of the country, one that hasn’t been affected by the earthquakes- yet the political scandal at Monju has really set the tone for this latest crisis.

  http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=76&storyCode=2059044

  They also publish a fascinating series of diagrams they put out, some of which have ended up on /hr/ 4chan:

  http://www.neimagazine.com/hybrid.asp?typeCode=680&pubCode=1

  The usual caveats apply regarding industry insiders- I don’t expect these guys to tell me much about the relative value of this kind of electric power fer instance – but it is an interesting perspective.

• [jphilby]

  NEI is, of course, an industry lobbyist.

  As for Monju, considering the record for fast-breeders, and the amount of remediation on existing plants to be called for, and the quadrupling of the costs of new reactors in the past few years, I don’t think FBRs will be going anywhere in the lifetime of anyone writing now.

• [Anonymous]

  We were kin’da lucky with three mile island,then came
  chernobyl still vivid in most brains, now this !
  I pray it stops there. The world is blessed with
  a lot of ‘brain boxes’ its time they went to work
  to give the world something which is non lethal !
  Candid Comment

• [cratermoon]

  I wouldn’t trust what the IAEA says about the events on the ground at Fukushima. At best, their updates are incomplete and woefully behind the fast-changing situation. How bad? I’ve started to come here first to find whatever Xeni and Maggie are saying.

  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-chernobyl-clean-up-expert-slams-japan-idUSTRE72E7AL20110315