Obama's Enemies List: A Growing List of Obama's Enemies

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here .] Yes, we have had one , two , three posts already on this, and this is the fourth.  Sorry if that seems too focused but the story keeps going, so I keep posting. Update: This New York Times article and this Reuters article both suggest that the Daini plant, not the Daiichi plant, is the one where they have “lost control over pressure in the reactors.”  They are both in Fukushima, separated by about ten miles. Update (II): The New York Times is reporting that they are evacuating the area around both reactors now.  And Msnbc reports that five reactors at these two different locations are in serious trouble. Update (III): This blog, All Things Nuclear, has some very cogent analysis of the problem, here and here . Update (IV): “ Mobile electricity supplies have arrived at the site .” That is a big deal, because if was the power dying to the pumps that has been creating this problem. Hat tip: Allahpundit . Update (V): Finally someone is asking the important question: what do celebrities think about the disaster ? It reminds me a big of this classic piece in the Onion just after 9-11. Hell, the ABC story manages to work in a reference to Charlie Sheen. Winning! Then again, the tsunami did interrupt production on the latest Twilight movie, so at least some good came out of this. Update (VI): Got this flash from Reuters’ twitter (via @andylevy): FLASH: #Japan nuclear authorities say high possibility of meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor – Jiji Update (VII): Twitter feeds are suggesting that we have begun meltdown in at least one reactor. Waiting for verification. I will remind you that breaking news events often contain erroneous information. For instance, during the Giffords shooting people were being reported alive, and then dead. Follow my twitter @AaronWorthing, and we can keep track of these things together. Update (IX): Hot Air is covering the story. They have mild verification. Now it is important to note that this is not the same as breaching containment, etc. Three Mile Island, for instance, had a partial meltdown, and no one died, the core didn’t leak. Update (X): The story seems to be that they have very strong indicators that we are in meltdown, but by the nature of the beast they can’t really be sure. Its not like they can step inside of it, right? From Reuters : Japanese nuclear authorities said that there was a high possibility that nuclear fuel rods at a reactor at Tokyo Electric Power’s Daiichi plant may be melting or have melted, Jiji news agency reported. Experts have said that if the fuel rods have been damaged, it means that it could develop into a breach of the nuclear reactor vessel and the question then becomes one of how strong the containment structure around the vessel is and whether it has been undermined by the earthquake. And NFK is reporting that the radiation has gotten so severe they have stopped venting. Update (XI): And the rods were briefly exposed to the air as they pumped in water from a fire engine . Update (XII): AFP/Breitbart news verifies . Update (XIII): According to this report , there has been an explosion at the nuclear plant. Four people were injured. Hopefully not seriously. This will probably be the last update this evening. ——————– A second reactor a the same facility that has been failing all day is in trouble.  The Washington Post has details: Japanese officials called Saturday for further evacuations from the area surrounding a nuclear power plant where radiation levels inside have surged to 1,000 times their normal levels after the cooling system failed. The nuclear safety agency expanded the evacuation area after some radiation had also seeped outside the plant, the Associated Press also reported. The cooling system for a reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was crippled after power was lost in the wake of a deadly earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on Friday afternoon. The loss of electricity has also delayed the planned release of vapor from inside the reactor to ease pressure, AP said. Pressure inside one of the reactors had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal. Japanese authorities on Saturday were racing to find ways to deliver new backup generators or batteries to the plant. The reactor, owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co., is drawing on battery power that may last only a few hours. Without electricity, the reactor will not be able to pump water to cool its hot reactor core, possibly leading to a meltdown or some other release of radioactive material. Japanese authorities ordered the evacuation of about 3,000 residents within a 1.9-mile radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and told people within a 16.2-mile radius to remain indoors, according to the Web site of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Incident and Emergency Centre. Read the whole thing. Via Hot Air , we learn of this Time Magazine piece , which taps the expertise of nuclear scientist Ron Chesser: “I think this sounds like a low-level alert,” said nuclear scientist Ron Chesser, director of Texas Tech University’s Center of Environmental Radiation Studies. Chesser knows a thing or two about crises like this: he was the first American scientist allowed inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 1992. But Chesser spoke before Fukushima officials made their next announcement at about 1 PM ET,  acknowledging that they had had to release a small amount of what’s being referred to as “slightly” radioactive vapor to keep pressure at safe levels. The country’s nuclear safety agency insists that the vapor will have no ill effect on the health of either people or the environment, which may indeed be true. Chernobyl taught officials the importance of candor in such matters and in any event, simply taking radiation readings of the Fukushima surroundings will confirm if the authorities are telling the truth. The greater problem—an unknown unknown—will occur if the pressure cannot be brought under control and more steam needs to be bled off. The U.S. is pitching in, shipping more coolant to the stricken plant. But if the pumps can’t get up and running it will do little good. Chesser, who  toured one other, smaller, Japanese plant before the quake, is still sanguine. “I was very much impressed with the amount of attention to safety, especially regarding potential earthquakes,” he said. But he does concede to being “a little it surprised” that the Fukushima plant is nonetheless in such trouble. One thing that weighs in the plant’s favor: unlike the Chernobyl reactors, those in Fukushima are covered iwith containment vessels, which should help minimize any potential damage. And of course you know by now that we have not been supplying coolant—Hillary misspoke. The same Hot Air post states that “ Dow Jones is now reporting that the local electric company says it’s ‘lost control over pressure in the reactors[.]”  They link to a WSJ pieces that I can’t read because I don’t subscribe.  But there is assurance that even if things go really bad, the materials will not leak out: Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters that there is serious concern in Japan whether the cooling of the core and removal of residual heat could be assured. “If that does not happen, if heat is not removed, there is a definite danger of a core melt … fuel will overheat, become damaged and melt down.” “Even if fuel rods melt and the pressure inside the reactor builds up, radiation would not leak as long as the reactor container functions well,” Tomoko Murakami, leader of the nuclear energy group at Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, told Reuters. But the pressure can only build up so much before steam must be released, and along with it, some radiation. Also at the Blaze we are hearing of a problem at another nuclear plant, and we get this video discussing the issue: And meanwhile for a change of pace at one of IGN’s user blogs, Keira shares her experiences in the quake: Well, I’ve had an eventful afternoon. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that a massive earthquake struck just off the coast of Japan a little before 3pm this afternoon. I was in my fourth floor lab at the time; I’d just started to vacuum-transfer some solvent into a flask to begin a reaction, and was sitting at my desk when the tremors started. There were two other students (Horiguchi and Ochiai) in the room with me and at first we just grinned nervously at each other, as you do when minor earthquakes strike, waiting for it to stop. It didn’t stop. The shaking got stronger and stronger. Soon I was wondering if this would be the biggest earthquake I’d experienced in Japan – then I was sure it was. By the time I started wondering if I should be getting the hell out of the building, it was more or less impossible to move. Everything in the room was shaking like crazy. I was hanging onto my desk as glassware and equipment crashed down all around us. Ochiai was clinging to the edge of the fume cupboard, trying to keep away from the stuff falling off benches in the middle of the room. Books were flying off the shelves, and Horiguchi ducked under a desk just in time to escape being knocked out by a falling scanner. The power went out, and dewars of liquid nitrogen crashed over adding clouds of vapour to the chaos. When there was a slight lull, Tanaka stuck his head into our room to yell,  “Soto deyou, deyou!” (Let’s get outside!) The only thing I thought to grab was my jumper before Ochiai, Horiguchi and I picked our way across the floor and followed him out into the corridor. The rows of compressed gas cylinders by the entrance had fallen down, a bookshelf had slid half across the corridor, and the shelves right by the emergency exit had completely toppled over, spilling machinery and oil baths everywhere. Clambering over stirrers and heating mantles strewn across the oil-slicked floor to get to the fire exit was no mean feat with the building still moving, but we made it out and down the stairs to the car park. There’s a lot more , so if you are interested in a first person account, there’s one and in English, too. Meanwhile IGN itself asks the real important question: did video game developers survive? They even have a handy graphic: Thanks for that. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

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Even More on the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami and the Increasingly Scary Nuclear Issue (Update: Explosion!)