New Scientist and the Wall of Zeros
I usually really enjoy the New Scientist, and I’ve had a warm spot for them since they interviewed me back in 2005. Fun magazine, but they sometimes let their enthusiasms get in the way. (If you followed Climategate, you may recall that a poorly-sourced story became the basis for the since-debunked IPCC conclusion that glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035.)
Well, they’ve managed to step in it again; I could wish they were a little better with editing and fact-checking. Today, in a story headlined “Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels” they then reported that the Cesium-137 and Iodine-131 relase from Fukushima had reached as much as 73 percent of what was released into the atmosphere by Chernobyl.
Considering what Chernobyl did, this seemed unlikely. So, let’s check their arithmetic.
First of all, just looking at their numbers, they say there’ve been about 1.2-1.3×1017 Becquerel (Bq) of I-131 released per day in the first two days after the accident. That’s from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, and the number has been reported a couple of times; it should be reasonably accurate.
A “Becquerel”, by the way, is a measure of radioactivity corresponding to one radioactive disintegration per second. By comparison, a banana has about 20 Bq in the form of Potassium-40. So the I-131 release here is about a quadrillion bananas, which is pretty significant.
By comparison, they say, Chernobyl released about 1.7×1018 Bq of I-131 in the ten days following the accident. If you just do the division, that’s (1.2/1.7) and the order of magnitude divides out — sure enough, that’s about 0.68.
On the other hand, Fukushima is largely releasing the volatile stuff only, And certainly the New Scientist article does say, in the second paragraph:
The difference between this accident and Chernobyl, they say, is that at Chernobyl a huge fire released large amounts of many radioactive materials, including fuel particles, in smoke. At Fukushima Daiichi, only the volatile elements, such as iodine and caesium, [sic -- the international spelling] are bubbling off the damaged fuel.
That difference is pretty significant, though — because some estimates have the total radioactivity release from Charnobyl as high as 3.3×1020 Bq. That’s roughly 2000 times as much total.
I presume, however, that “Fukushima release approaching 0.0005 times as much radioactivity as Chernobyl” wouldn’t make near as good a headline.
(Homework problem: assume there is one atom of I-131 left from the Chernobyl accident. The half life of I-131 is 8.2 days, or about 193 hours. How many atoms of I-131 did there have to be at the time of Chernobyl to leave that one atom now.)
I’ll pass on your homework problem, but I did notice this in tonight’s (7 P.M. EDT, MARCH 24) NEI update:
Air samples collected at on-site monitors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant March 19-23 show that only iodine-131 was found to be in excess of Japanese government limits. Radiation dose rates measured on site March 21-23 have decreased from 193 millirem to 21 millirem per hour.
Yeah, you’d expect that. The I-131 dominated the total release, and it’s got a half-life of 8 days, a “lifetime” of around 12. The reactor stopped making it when it was shutdown; there isn’t much left now,
On the other hand, in its noon Friday broadcast, NHK reported that Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency held a 1030 a.m. news conference in which it announced the #3 reactor is likely damaged and leaking.
More from the website (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/25_10.html):
High radiation detected in water at plant
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has detected high levels of radioactive substances in water that 3 workers were exposed to at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The company says 3.9 million becquerels of radioactive substances per cubic centimeter were detected in the water that the workers were standing in. That is 10,000 times higher than levels of the water inside a nuclear reactor in operation.
The level of radioactive cerium-144 was 2.2 million becquerels. Also, 1.2 million becquerels of iodine-131 was measured. These substances are generated during nuclear fission inside a reactor.
Tokyo Electric says damage to the No.3 reactor and spent nuclear fuel rods in a storage pool may have produced the highly radioactive water.
Friday, March 25, 2011 08:22 +0900 (JST)
More than 2^1000. That’s a lot of atoms.
the thing is neither you nor wormme take into account elementary quantum mechanics (he actively distrusts it, not ignorant of it like you).
the moment you get to very small number of iodine atoms, the rules of statistics no longer apply, they are valid only for large numbers.
according to quantum mechanics, the same lonely atom could hang around in the vicinity for 20+ years, and there is no telling when will it finally decay. it can stay in this state until the end of universe.
so in double irony, people who you are laughing at, can look for consolation in me laughing at you.
Dude, try momentarily to grope toward having a hint of sense. Work it the other way — decay events are exponentially distributed. 8 day half life means expectation that half of the large mass will have undergone decay after 8 days. That will let you estimate λ. (It’s not hard.) Now, compute the probability of an I-131 NOT having had a decay event after 1000 half-lives. Which is to say 1 – the probability that a decay event will happen in1000 half-lives.
Now, how many atoms do you have to have to have an expectation of having at least one survivor.
And then recall what happened the last time you claimed I was ignorantly being intellectually dishonest by using CT scan doses for comparison. You’re setting yourself up again; I didn’t make up the homework assignment myself, I cribbed it from someone else.
The only decays that count are only the ones that occur and cause energy to be imparted to a monitoring device. An isotope that does not decay is not there!
If it does not show up on a meter, it does not count, so it is not there.
Theoretically I am wrong, but guess what…
“Now, compute the probability of an I-131 NOT having had a decay event after 1000 half-lives. Which is to say 1 – the probability that a decay event will happen in1000 half-lives.”
it is greater then zero. let’s call it P1. unless you distrust quantum mechanics, we agree that:
P1 > 0
“Now, how many atoms do you have to have to have an expectation of having at least one survivor.”
you mean, “what is the smallest number of atoms to have at the beginning to have an expectation of having at least one survivor.”?
if we have even one atom at the beginning, the probability to have this same atom at the end (P2) is equal P1.
therefore,
P2 > 0.
since there is non zero probability that this one atom will survive, the number of atoms necessary to have to have an expectation of having at least one survivor is 1.
get it yet or should I try to go even slower?
you dolt.
Poul,the probability is, indeed, non-zero. It’s just very very very small.
Here, I’ll give you a hand up: the mean lifetime is 11.578 days, so λ is 1/lifetime, and CDF of an exponential is 1-e^(-λt).
and how does it in any shape or form contradict what i said?
Keep working the example. If the probability is about 1 in 10^301 (that exponent look familiar?) how many atoms do you have to have to have an expectation that even 1 survived that long?
Answer: about 107150860718626732094842504906000181056140481170553360744
375038837035105112493612249319837881569585812759467291755314682518714
528569231404359845775746985748039345677748242309854210746050623711418
779541821530464749835819412673987675591655439460770629145711964776865
42167660429831652624386837205668069376
or around 2^1000.
“If the probability is about 1 in 10^301 (that exponent look familiar?) how many atoms do you have to have to have an expectation that even 1 survived that long?”
one.
unless you’re defining “expectation” differently than the rest of scientific community.
First moment, Poul. just like in every stats 101 class.
Poul, this is pretty elementary stuff; I think you’re just thrashing.
N(t) = N_0 e^{-\lambda t}
if you think that posting irrelevant formulae will somehow get you off the hook for making stupid assumptions, you are mistaken.
Poul, that’s the formula for exponential decay.
the formula for exponential decay is not applicable for a single atom, it obeys laws of quantum mechanics.
you dolt.
Or the government could provide guarantees for financing for temporary diesel generators to be installed at the site while construction of new nuclear plants is underway.
TEPCO is not a threat to Japan, or is at least less of one than the global warming true believers, who would have the Japanese starve as tribute to their Earth Gods.
to clarify – this does not make NS article less ridiculous. it is riduculous, and incompetent. but so is charlie’s “homework”.
“Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the governmental nuclear regulatory body, told a press conference, ”At present, our monitoring data suggest the (No. 3) reactor retains certain containment functions, but there is a good chance that the reactor has been damaged.”” – http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80947.html
certain containment functions. facepalm.jpg
“Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa told a news conference Friday that U.S. forces in Japan will offer some freshwater to be sprayed at the reactor cores and the fuel pools to ensure ample water supply. TEPCO currently uses freshwater from a dam near the plant.”
i don’t get it. us forces are bringing a desalination plant? fresh water cisterns? what is all this?
The vital importance of cooling the Fukushima reactors with clean fresh water (not salt water) has been pointed out by the good folks at The Oil Drum in their summary article “Fukushima Dai-ichi status and potential outcomes” (url below).
The short story is that from a corrosion point-of-view, the *worst* fluid one that one could choose for reactor core cooling would be hot pressurized salty seawater … which is exactly what TEPCO has been using. That is why switching to freshwater is vital ASAP.
It is clear that Japan is suffering from not three, but *four* major disasters:
(1) the earthquake
(2) the tsunami
(3) the reactor meltdowns
(4) TEPCO’s corporate fascism and incompetence
Cleanup of the first three disasters will be tough … cleanup of the fourth disaster will be toughest of all. Because TEPCO is fighting back, with the tools of obfuscation, secrecy, willful ignorance, and every form of direct and indirect lying.
How hard will it be to bring a culture of honesty, candor, transparency, and accountability to TEPCO?
This challenge is not obviously easier, than cleaning up the radioactive contamination at Fukushima. And yet, it is just as necessary.
URL: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7675
As a followup, TEPCO’s obfuscation, secrecy, willful ignorance, and lying are exceedingly familiar to Americans, aren’t they?
Because during the early days of the Gulf Oil disaster, BP behaved exactly the same way.
To fix it fast, the White House installed three checks-and-balances:
(1) Admiral Thad Allen was given overall command.
(2) Nobelist Steven Chu coordinated the science-and-engineering.
(3) Multiple cameras were pointed at the well-head, and the information was streamed live to every American home, 24×7 … and those cameras *DIDN’T* lie.
BP’s immensely competent engineers *loved* the resulting environment of honesty, candor, transparency, and accountability … and they performed fabulously in it. Good for them.
Who was it who hated this new environment? That’s easy. BP’s immensely corrupt and incompetent top-level management hated it. But no-one cared … because both both BP and the American public were better off without them.
There is a major lesson here for TEPCO’s role in the Fukushima diaster. That lesson is simple: TEPCO executives should *not* be left in charge of it.
Leaving TEPCO’s incompetent, lying, corrupt, willfully ignorant corporate executives in charge of the Fukushima meltdowns is the single biggest mistake that Japan has made in dealing with this disaster.
If BP’s engineers were that competent, they would have refused orders and left, like Halliburton did. The one party who came out of that affair smelling like a rose was the devil incarnate to the left, Halliburton.
Haven’t had much experience with Japan, have you, John?
Look, this is a culture where no one wants to deliver bad news. A Japanese doctor won’t tell a patient that they have probably-terminal cancer. They will carefully phrase a yes or no question so the expected answer is always yes, to save the embarrassment of you saying no, and it they get surprised, they’ll immediately apologize.
They’re not speaking some weird bureaucrat-speak, they’re speaking Japanese. If it seems odd to you, well, they’re not from Seattle.
Charlie, it’s plain that BP and TEPCO exhibited the same “culture” … a culture of incompetence, lying, corruption, and willful ignorance.
To call that culture “Japanese” is just plain wrong.
Now, if you said “TEPCO exhibits its incompetence, lying, corruption, and willful ignorance in a characteristically Japanese way” … well that might possibly be correct.
… but it would *NOT* be an excuse for accepting it.
Because *NO* democratic culture’s citizens are obligated to passively accept incompetence, lying, corruption, and willful ignorance … isn’t that right?
No, but then you’re still diagnosing a sarcoma from a bump on the knee. Remember a few days ago you were predicting that the military solution would be to blow up the plant with nukes, not bring in fresh water.
FYI, The Oil Drum is hardly an objective, politically neutral source. They have some people who know something about oil production, but they’re a bunch of peak oil conspiracy theorists, and the owner writes for Mother Jones all the time.
Blind squirrel…
Didn’t you just say up there that BP’s engineers were extremely competent? ^^^
I worked for Chiyoda (engineering contractor) for a couple of years, and one thing I learned was that:
1) The Japanese don’t like to lose face, and
2) The Japanese don’t like to lose face.
This cuts both ways. It makes them more inclined to take quality seriously (it was very fertile ground for Demming’s ideas), but when things do go bad, the pass-the-buck game gets a lot more serious than here. They have a complete paradigm that works for them, but leaves westerners nonplussed. I think this, along with some other pathologies, is leading to a lot of this conspiracy theorizing.
You know, John, the Oil Drum did predict the Deepwater Horizon was going to be worse that first reports — but when it did so, it also predicted that the Gulf of Mexico would be biologically dead for decades.
If I bump my knee and the orthopod comes in with his hair on fire, tells me it’s osteosarcoma, it’s already metastasized, amputation probably won’t make any difference, and it turns out that I’ve got a hairline fracture of the patella, we don’t count that as a success for the doc because he said it was worse than a bump to the knee.
It’s hard to some folks to understand that at the The Oil Drum, there is no “party-line” … a diversity of opinion is deliberately cultivated on that site.
Now if *TATLER* has a party-line relating to the Fukushima disaster … well … why not just tell us all what that party-line is?
Don’t make us guess.
And add this phrase to the mast-head: “Tatler: your best source for party-line
informationpropaganda“Then every time you’ve told us the Oil Dum had an opinion on this you were sort of fibbing, weren’t you John?
“Corporate fascism”? Do you know what the word “fascism” means?
The corrosion damage is already done. The 1, 2, and 3 vessels are already junk. The reason why they want to stop using sea water as soon as possible is that they don’t want any of the minerals dissolved in the sea water to become radioactive.
Those guys at the Oil Drum aren’t that smart. Corrosion was the reason why the didn’t want to use sea water in the first place, not why they want to switch back now.
the *Stated* reason is that they afraid the salt will crystallize and impede the flow of cooling water. I personally find it comical, but this is where I would defer to actual experts…
I’d never heard that. That’s absurd.
On second thought…
If the rods were exposed, and hot (as in 300-400 C), and sea water was sprayed on them lightly, enough solid salt could precipitate out to create flow problems. It would eventually clear, but some strange things could conceivably happen before that.
A quadrillion is 10^15. The population of Japan, IIRC, is around 127 million. That’s over seven million bananas per people.
I am willing to assert that if a person has seven million bananas dropped on him, he’ll be dead. Not threatened by an elevated risk of cancer, not mostly dead, but dead.
Yeah, that’s a lotta bananas.
To be fair, the utility of the banana equivalent activity is pretty limited as a comparison when we’re talking about 10^20….
The Oil Drum folks are asking the very good question: “Is there plutonium-239 in the water that beta-burned the hospitalized Fukushima workers?”
Here the point is that the hospitalized workers were working on Reactor 3 … which is the plutonium-fueled reactor. So if these workers are plutonium-contaminated, that’s a big deal … for them and for everyone.
In this respect … and in every other respect … TEPCO’s going to tell the workers, their families, and the public … precisely *nothing* … isn’t that right?
Democracy doesn’t work without a free flow of information … in this respect the Japanese people might as well be living in Communist East Germany … isn’t that right?
That is why — as said above — leaving TEPCO’s incompetent, lying, corrupt, willfully ignorant corporate executives in charge of the Fukushima meltdowns is the single biggest mistake that Japan has made in dealing with this disaster.
The longer that Japan waits to fix this mistake … the worse the outcome will be.
The Oil Drum folks are asking the very good question: “Is there plutonium-239 in the water that beta-burned the hospitalized Fukushima workers?”
I’d guess the probability > 0 — but since Pu-239 ia an alpha emitter you certainly can’t infer it. On the other hand, since they have reported Ce-144 in the water and Ce-144 is a beta emitter, maybe it was the cerium.
In this respect … and in every other respect … TEPCO’s going to tell the workers, their families, and the public … precisely *nothing* … isn’t that right?
Clearly not, since we’re having this conversation based on what TEPCO told us. What you mean is they’re not going to tell us what you want.
Charlie, TEPCO’s responsible for that water and those radiation injuries … but they’re telling *NOTHING* … so either they’re incompetent, or else they’re stone-walling … both of which are against the norms of democracy, transparency, engineering, and science.
Now, it’s perfectly legitimate for Tatler’s editors to stand against democracy, transparency, engineering, and science … after all, these practices are historically associated, in every century, to truths that plenty of folks have found to be mighty inconvenient.
If so, perhaps “Standing Against Democracy, Transparency, Engineering, and Science” might be added to Tatler’s masthead … so that readers are not confused!
Charlie, TEPCO’s responsible for that water and those radiation injuries … but they’re telling *NOTHING*
Then clearly you don’t know about it, and can relax.
Brilliant, Charlie… a masterful way of pointing out the glaring logical hole in John’s argument.
I’m curious as to why those workers precise medical conditions are our business.
Directly, it isn’t. However, I’ve been watching this with an open mind looking for clues as to the safety/quality culture there, and the fact that these guys weren’t aware that stepping in the water would be a problem gives me reason to question whether their culture is anything like the famed/fabled Japanese TQC culture.
The incident, as a more general indicator, is concerning.
The news report I saw said their alarms went off but they kept working anyway. Then the NISA guy told TEPCO (publicly) that they needed to manage their employees better and have someone in authority on scene to clear people out if necessary. I took that as pretty sharp criticism for the Japanese.
But overall, starting from the moment the earthquake hit, I don’t see where TEPCO has made huge screw-ups. They had a choice to cool the reactors using seawater or not cool the reactors. They picked seawater, and Dr. John’s rants notwithstanding, I think that was the right choice.
Oh, hell yeah, that’s sharp criticism for the Japanese. They’re not used to telling each other that they’re not meeting expectations. These guys are about six sigma outside their comfort zones. Fifty years ago, they’d be finding people fallen on their swords over this kind of stuff.
Literally.
I also agree that there’s a posse out there who want to hang them, and then hold a fair trial. TEPCO may very well end up being criminally culpable, but first we have to determine that to be true.
People setting up the gallows before the trial need to sit tight and shut up.
Could still happen, although not swords necessarily. Seppuku is complicated.
I won’t be a bit surprised if the CEO of TEPCO commits suicide once this is really handled.
the better question would be why were they working in the water without wearing boots, and why did they ignore multiple alarms going off?
I’m still of the opinion it’s yamato gokoro. How could they face their families if they quit just because their feet got wet and itchy. And they clearly got out long before they passed the 25 rem threshold.
Actually rather heroic. Just sometimes “heroic” and “dumb” aren’t mutually exclusive. If they’re lucky, they’ll get out of this with nothing worse than burnt feet.
i don’t know. i’ve met a few japanese, none of them were that stupid.
from the news, the workers were contractors, they probably didn’t know what they’re getting into. the superviser who sent them in without a radiation monitoring specialist – or the specialist himself if he was present – are most likely at fault.
Yamato gokoro isn’t the same as stupid, but it can seem that way. To gaijin.
But the company failed to properly plan and train and equip them. That’s true under Japanese rules just like it would be true under American law. The difference is these guys may end up dead instead of in prison.
Oh, I can see it’s news. I just wish — as I have for a couple weeks now — that we didn’t have three or four layers of filtering, all of which gets nervous when asked to balance a checkbook.
Multiple new sources are now reporting that Reactor 3′s core containment has been breached.
The stock market is taking this news seriously … TEPCO’s stock price has been hammered down by 6.21% (as of this writing).
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan is taking the news seriously too:
So it appears that the folks at the The Oil Drum may have been right … and if these brave workers are now plutonium-contaminated, that is no joke … isn’t that right?
TEPCO corporate officers having advance knowledge of this situation can turn that information into enormous profits … by short-selling their own company’s stock … isn’t that right?
Fortunately, we can all be absolutely confident in the competence, honesty, integrity, and adaptive capability of TEPCO’s corporate leaders … or can we?
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japans-leader-calls-situation-grave-at-nuclear-plant-where-dangerous-breach-suspected/2011/03/25/AFlzKHVB_story.html
I have more confidence in them than I do in you, Mr. “Nuke the Site from Orbit; It’s the Only Way to be Sure”.
If you read the story…
All they really know is that there is highly radioactive water running on the floor. They don’t know if the breach is in the reactor vessel, or if it’s some pipe, valve, or gasket that’s gone bad.
Their big problem is that they’ve been running for a week without instrumentation, just guessing what’s going on inside the equipment, and now that the power’s back on, they’re not sure what’s accurate and what’s damaged.
They may simply need to back off on the water flow and stop overflowing something, but they’re flying blind. Count me among those who thing that there needs to be an army of robots warehoused somewhere in the world to be deployed in case of a nuclear plant emergency. Just having some video in the hot zone would be very helpful right now.
Rob, it’s mighty hard to understand why you retain confidence in TEPCO’s corporate leaders … can you tell us again why you trust them?
IMHO, Japan would be better off right now if they sent for Adm. Thad Allen and SecEnergy Steven Chu and:
(1) placed Adm. Allen in charge of operations,
(2) assigned science-and-engineering oversight to Dr. Chu, and
(3) put multiple cameras on-site at Fukushima, with 24×7 streaming to the Japanese public.
That’s what it took to transform BP’s incompetence, lying, corruption, and willful ignorance … into a culture of honesty, candor, transparency, and accountability … BP’s own engineers *LOVED* the regime … and they swiftly brought the well under control.
And IMHO, that’s what it will take to transform TEPCO’s incompetence, lying, corruption, and willful ignorance … into a culture of honesty, candor, transparency, and accountability … TEPCO’s own engineers would *LOVE* it this new regime … and (hopefully) they would swiftly bring this disaster under control.
Because the non-ideological judgment of the stock market, is that the “trust TEPCO’s corporate management” strategy is failing utterly … isn’t that right?
Hey, John, answer me this:
Did TEPCO’s CEO spit on your sushi, insult your daughter, or was it something else that instilled this unreasoning mistrust and abhorrence in you for them?
Or are you just one of the usual Seattle anti-corporatists, even as you get your morning latte from Starbucks (one of the biggest corporations out there)?
Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
It’s true that some folks disregard this.
Meanwhile … Tatler itself is reporting more ominous news …
Tatler Report: Japan quietly quietly widening nuke evacuation (not good)
It’s good to see Tatler prioritizing inconvenient facts above soothing ideology.
URL: http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/25/report-japan-quietly-quietly-widening-nuke-evacuation/
John, go look up “ad hominem argument” there’s a good lad.
Wikipedia’s page on ad hominem attack methods provides plenty of examples …
… and it’s regrettable that Tatler provides plenty more.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
But you’re missing an essential point. We’re not claiming your arguments are false because you’re a hysterical clown. We’re observing that you’re a hysterical clown from your arguments.
And he never did answer my question, either.
Each reader can therefore draw his/her own opinions. John has been asked, and has refused to answer, so speculate to your heart’s content.
By the way… isn’t accusing me of an ad hominem attack an ad hominem attack in and of itself, at least by your definition, which seems to be “any bad thing said about me.”
TEPCO’s behavior and institutional culture are extreme even by Japanese standards. I posted a story in an earlier thread about the US parking some reconnaissance drones over the reactor sites and speculated that this was, among other things, a way of getting around TEPCO’s “cone of silence” on the operation. That surmise was fully substantiated a few days later.
Also consider that the Japanese miitary basically had to “shame” TEPCO into letting SDEF personnel actually get onto the site and assist in pumping operations.
I have do doubt whatever that TEPCO is an imminent threat to the health and safety of the Japanese people. The country would be much better off if its government seizes TEPCO, “nationalizes” its assets, fires the senior management and tells the shareholders & unsecured creditors that their compensation claims have lesser priority than compensation for the property damage and cleanup costs caused by TEPCO’s negligence at Fukushima Daiichi.
The more people TEPCO lets on it’s site, the more exposure they will get. All they need is some bigwig in for a photo-op to get dosed.
Attention TEPCO: Do NOT accept any offers of help from the University of Washington, or locally from the Seattle area!
Hang on, there: 1.2*10^17 divided by 1.7*10^18 yields 0.0705. That’s about 7%, not close to 70%.
Am I the first to notice this amid all the other Sturm und Drang? Shame on y’all, if so.
No, and it almost got me too. The Chernobyl number is the release over ten days.
Charlie, that’s typical doomie math. Nothing they say can be trusted.
TEPCO seems to be even more of a threat to Japan than I thought.
Japan has two different electric grids, each of which seems to service about half the country geographically, and their power is NOT inter-changeable because the big electric utility companies, notably including TEPCO, like it that way. Only this is wrecking the Japanese economy given the loss of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi reactors.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134828205/a-country-divided-japans-electric-bottleneck
“… It might seem much easier to send the surplus power from one side of Japan to the other to ease the blackouts. But that’s harder than you might think, Hatta says.
“One major problem is that the east and west of Japan have different electric cycles and the capacity of the connectors are very much limited,” he says.
That’s partly an accident of history. Eastern Japan followed the German model and has a 50-cycle electrical power grid. The western part of Japan used the American model and has a 60-cycle grid. Transferring power from one grid to another requires a very expensive facility. And there are only three connections between eastern and western Japan. That bottleneck means the power transfer is just a trickle, even during this national emergency. Creating more capacity would take years.
Fear Of A Monopoly
Hatta says, up until now, Japan’s big utility companies, including TEPCO, liked the arrangement, because it protected their monopoly pricing and made them very powerful politically.
“The users of electricity like Japan Steel wouldn’t say anything against electric utility companies — they are so afraid,” he says. “And also many politicians wouldn’t touch those electric utility companies.”
Hatta says the situation must change to reduce the stranglehold the utilities have on the country’s energy users.
“One possibility is that on this occasion [the] Japanese government nationalize TEPCO,” he says.
The government could keep TEPCO’s transmission lines and sell off its power plants to smaller producers who would compete to sell power to customers.
For the time being, TEPCO says it’s doing everything it can to secure more power.
The stakes are incredibly high. Power consumption normally doubles during the heat of the summer. Right now it seems unlikely TEPCO will be able to meet the demand, threatening more disruption for Japanese companies and workers, and greater damage to Japan’s fragile economy.”
Yes, Tom, I’m sure Japan would be ever so much better if they’d have just kept MacArthur, given up on that Japanese stuff and all become Americans.