[bratticus]

Tepco Chief Pressured to Quit After Costing Holders $26 Billion
By Shigeru Sato, James Paton and Yuriy Humber / Bloomberg / Mar 27, 2011

Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Masataka Shimizu is facing calls to quit after the crisis at the utility’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant capped a tenure that has seen $26 billion wiped off the company’s market value.

... Shimizu pledged three years ago to “regain trust” in nuclear power after a 2007 earthquake shut his company’s biggest atomic plant at Kashiwazaki Kariwa. The disaster that’s unfolded at Fukushima Dai-Ichi since the 9.0-magnitude temblor has destroyed any chance he had of success.

... Tepco’s market value has dropped from about 3.5 trillion yen in June 2008 to 1.4 trillion yen as of March 24, during which time the number of shares in issue has increased about 19 percent, based on Tepco earnings filings.

Bloomberg says "may be wrong" is the same as "was wrong", just look at this article:

Tepco Says Radioactive Reading in Water at No. 2 Was Wrong
By Tsuyoshi Inajima / Bloomberg / Mar 27, 2011

The reading of 2.9 billion becquerels per cubic centimeter of iodine-134, one of the substances found in the water, may have been wrong, said Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman at the Tokyo- based utility. The radiation level of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour at the building probably won’t change, he said.

The article title says "was wrong" but the quoted statement says "may have been wrong". They haven't taken down the statement:

http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/file ... 0325-6.pdf

Regarding the result of concentration measurement in the stagnant water on the basement floor of the turbine building of Unit 1 of Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station

Radioactive Nuclide - Concentration (Bq/cm3)

Code: Select all

Cl-38  1.6×10^6
As-74  3.9×10^2
Y-91   5.2×10^4
I-131  2.1×10^5
Cs-134 1.6×10^5
Cs-136 1.7×10^4
Cs-137 1.8×10^6
La-140 3.4×10^2

[bratticus]

[bratticus]

I was going to analyze this but I said to myself "dear lazyweb..."

Japan declares 'nuclear emergency' after quake, page 337
TheRedneck / Mar 25, 2011

• CL-38 - probably a result of injecting seawater directly into the core. Not a common isotope, however; I would have expected more Cl-36.
• As-74 - Arsenic normally carries an atomic weight of 75, so obviously this is likely not due to neutron capture of an existing element. I tend to think it is a transmutation from germanium, which has extensive use in electronic sensors and in a lot of electronic circuitry from the 1960s/1970s (before the major changeover to silicon). I don't think they will be getting very good sensor readings in the control room if this is the case.
• Y-91 - While yttrium is used to alloy some metals, it is used in minuscule amounts. Zirconium isotopes formed by neutron absorption, however, could decay into yttrium through transmutation theoretically, and I think this is probably what happened. So much for the fuel rod cladding.
• I-131 - We all know about radioactive iodine by now... a product of uranium decay.
• Cs-134, -135, -137 - radioactive isotopes of cesium... 134 and 137 are more dangerous than the relatively low energy 135. Common fission products.
• La-140 - Lanthanum is a normal fission product of uranium fission. The La-140 isotope is considered interesting to some in the nuclear physics field, but I honestly don't know why. It does indicate uranium fission, though.

In summary, it means uranium is reacting where that water sample was recently.