Still Looking For A Clear Picture of Fukushima Daiichi

Latest status report from JAIF:

Latest photo of workers in the Fukushima control room:

And (via VOA's Steve Herman) a report by Austrian scientists projecting the radiation levels. Herman the guy who posted the story on high levels of radiation in Iitate, Japan that equalled a chest x-ray every hour. I'm still not convinced he's not an outlier or missing a larger picture - but he posting sources that make you wonder.

Like this bit from the report:

"The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl had a source term of iodine-131 at 1.76 x 10^18 becquerels of cesium-137 at 8.5 x 10^16 bequerels," the statement added. "The estimated for Fukushima source terms are thus at 20 percent of Chernobyl for iodine, and 20-60 percent of Chernobyl for cesium."

The lead Austrian researcher speculates that levels may in fact be higher - in part because of a delay in collecting data and gaps in the data collected.

Still room for things to not be bad - but a 77 foot tsunami and people being told to avoid giving tap water to infants is pretty damn bad enough.

VOA: Radiation Levels Equal a Chest X-Ray Every Hour

Posting this because this jumped out of the Voice Of America article I was reading:

The Fukushima Prefectural Government tells VOA News that for the second day in a row the highest radiation level it registered outside the plant was in the village of Iitate, 40 kilometers northwest of the nuclear facility. The reading there, very slightly elevated from Friday, was 21.80 micro-sieverts per hour at 6 p.m. Saturday. Assuming these levels are staying consistent throughout the day, that means residents there are receiving about the equivalent of a plain film chest X-ray every hour.

40 kilometers would be double the official evacuation zone.

That seems like it would get more attention than just the VOA.

I found another account (also based on the VOA correspondent Steve Herman) that points out that this report is causing confusion. But seriously, if they really are picking up radiation levels this high - it would be a fairly big deal.

Frak You, Right Back

If you haven't heard this guy's story - you should.

(From the trailer for Gasland)

But there's a new chapter to this story that's worth telling. One of the offending companies, Cabot Oil & Gas, is being called on the carpet for destroying people's water supply - and they're digging in their heels (emphasis mine).

"We have had people here in Pennsylvania without safe drinking water for nearly two years," said John Hanger, head of Pennsylvania's [Department of Environmental Protection]. "That is totally unacceptable. It is reprehensible. We have given Cabot every opportunity to resolve this matter."

But Cabot has pushed back against the agency, taking out a full-page ad this week in several local newspapers and calling plans to construct the water system "unreasonable, unprecedented ... and unfair."

...

A group of Dimock residents — among them, a former Cabot employee and several residents whose wells had caught fire — filed a lawsuit last year against the company for the contamination and the health risks it could pose to them.

Cabot mentioned the lawsuit in its ad this week, adding that it "does not believe it caused these conditions and intends to fight these allegations through its scientific findings."

(Via ProPublica)

For the Good of the Public

ProPublica knocks two out of the park:

1) Bank's Self Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis -
Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.

Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand.

2) Take It With a Grain of (Sea) Salt: Gulf Microbe Study Was Funded by BP 

Earlier this week, major news outlets ran with headlines about how a new microbe [4] has been found eating up BP’s oil  and how microbes have degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the vast plumes of oil in the Gulf are now undetectable. No joke.

A bit skeptical of all the oil-is-mostly-gone claims, the day that microbe study was released we chose instead to focus on the Gulf’s thousands of dead fish. Lucky for us.

MIT’s Science Tracker, in a post published yesterday, noted that the microbe study was conducted by U.C. Berkeley scientists through a grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, and that the Energy Biosciences Institute is funded by none other than BP, through a $500 million, 10-year grant. (To the researchers' credit, they also mentioned the funding in their press release — you just had to read about three-quarters of the way through.)

Nuclear Detonations 1945-1998

(Via Bad Astronomy)

Here's a video representation of the first five decades of nuclear detonations - by location and country responsible.

It starts slow - but picks up rather dramatically.



As Phil Plait rightly asks, What the hell were we thinking?

The verdict on 'A Whale'

Uber oil skimmer "A Whale" is a flop.

BP's to-do list

Poison water? Check. Poison the air? Check.

TEXAS CITY — At BP’s Texas City refinery, more than 400 pounds a day of benzene — 40 times the state reportable levels — was released during a 40-day period while a subunit of the refinery’s ultracracker unit was offline, according to a company filing with the state’s environmental agency Friday.

In all, BP officials said more than 500,000 pounds of pollutants and nonpollutants were released while the company increased flaring as they tried to repair a compressor on the faulty unit.

When did this happen? The week before the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Next up, the ground beneath your feet. Then maybe they'll waltze over to your house and shoot your puppy.


(H/t CJR)

Walruses and Seals

The Boy's birthday is imminent, so my mom had sent up her usual dose of birthday duds and knicknacks. True to form - she'd send stuff for little E as well - so both kids were tearing up the boxes and having a good time.

Two odd items stuck out - litte E's box included two stuffed animals - a walrus and a seal. These stuck out mostly because there was no equivalent item in the Boy's box.

Mom pressed the point by asking us to guess the significance of the two.

As I'll be headed to Norway soon - my first guess was these were animals you could find in Norway. But no.

Mom winged me the correct answer this morning.

BP's 583-page Gulf [disaster] plan, last updated in June 2009, included references to how to protect walruses and sea lions, which, as Energy and Environment subcommittee chair Ed Markey (D-Mass.) noted, "have not called the Gulf [of Mexico] home for 3 million years." The plan also included the phone number of a sea turtle expert who has been dead for five years.

And it gets even worse: The other four oil giants are using almost the exact same plans.

In yesterday's hearing, representatives brought out the emergency response plans of Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP that had been drafted in case of an oil spill in the region. The cover photos of rigs and tankers are identical, just in different colors, and four of the five plans include the references to walruses, sea lions, seals, and sea turtle expert Dr. Peter Lutz. They list him as a staff member of the University of Miami, though he hadn't worked there since 1991, when he left for Florida Atlantic University. Oh, and he passed away in February 2005, so he probably wouldn't be able to offer much help now anyway.

"ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell are as unprepared as BP," said Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who called the responses "cookie cutter" plans. "When you look at the details, it becomes evident these [response] plans are just paper exercises."

Markey summed up the companies' response strategies pretty well in Tuesday's hearing: "The only technology you seem to be relying on is the Xerox machine."

Lovely.

Useless Carcass of Steel

The NYT has a full on awesome account of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that digs into the industry's belief in the Blow Out Preventer.

Needless to say, the article demonstrates this faith was misplaced.

BP's Do-over

The WSJ has a solid graphic about the latest tactic BP is trying on the Deepwater Horizon blowout:

Oh, and the MMS exempted all drilling in the western and central Gulf of Mexico from having to make environmental assessments.

Yes, you heard that right.

(H/t Propublica)

Rudyard Griffiths on BP: What about all the wells that didn't have a blowout?

You have to love this guy. Rudyard Griffiths interviews Felix Salmon on the BP mess. When faced with a total catastrophe where BP is unquestionably to blame, Griffiths bravely stands up for the oppressed oil industry:

Felix Salmon: ...it doesn't make sense to blame the government for the oil spill unless you're blaming government for not regulating enough.

Rudyard Griffiths: But, Felix c'mon. I mean, let's be a little bit fairer to what has been a fairly good record of corporate stewardship up to this point in the Gulf. I mean we're talking 32,000 wells operating in that area. Yes, a tragic, a horrific accident that we're dealing with now, but y'know is there a sense of overreach here where the media, y'know just feeds on those images of the oil pumping out into the sea and suddenly, y'know the heavy hand of government y'know clasps around the throat of a not unimportant part of an American industry that's crucial to their energy security?

Felix Salmon: I don't know what throat you're talking about here. The fact is...the question is how many layers of safeguards do you have on these wells? How certain can you be that they will not fail?

Rudyard Griffiths: Well, 1 out of 32,000 ain't too bad

Felix Salmon: Well, it looks quite bad to me. The fact is that 1 out of 32,000 is one too many, and if there is a 1 out of 32,000 chance of this happening - then you shouldn't have 32,000 wells.

Rudyard Griffiths: Airlines crash, unfortunately airliners crash every month somewhere in the world - hundreds of people die horribly. But we don't ban the airline industry. Y'know, in other words accidents unfortunately happen.

Felix Salmon: I don't think we're banning undersea drilling either.

1 out of 32,000 is clearly one too many, as Mr. Salmon points out. This is the worst oil spill in US history - don't try to act like it is offset by the fact that another well hasn't had a similar catastrophe.

Not only that - but, it's a weak argument to point out all the wells that haven't blown up and sunk when all of these wells are not equal. Wells that operate a mile below the surface clearly pose a greater risk than those who are merely a few dozen yards underwater. The success of simpler procedures isn't a guarantee that more complicated procedures will be safe. Neither do those successful wells offer much in the way of options when a well in deep water blows up.

Take the airline analogy into this logic: Say an airline decides to save money by packing its aircraft to the gills with people and carrying the bare minimum of fuel to arrive at their destination. This ups the consequences of a disaster (more lives per plane) and increases the likelihood of a disaster (less fuel = less options like diverting in case of trouble).

Eventually this policy will result in a catastrophe. In Griffiths' world, we'd ban the airlines - but in the real world, we'd add regulation that set a maximum number of passengers and required planes to carry additional fuel.

Mr. Griffiths? Nice try - but you sound like a total idiot.

WSJ on Deepwater Horizon

The WSJ has a marvelous two parter that's been making the rounds.

• BP Decisions Set Stage for Disaster
• There Was Nobody in Charge
  
  and from the second article...Talk about hubris (emphasis mine):
  
  "In the minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, almost no one on board realized that serious trouble was brewing, other than a few men on the drilling floor—the uppermost of three levels on the massive structure. The sea was as still as glass. A cool wind blew faintly from the north. Capt. Kuchta was hosting two BP executives on board for a ceremony honoring the rig for seven years without a serious accident."

Ow. That stings a little.

(H/t Felix Salmon and CJR)

If Corporations Were People...

Paraphrasing a perfectly apt observation I heard on the radio at lunch.

If I have a few beers before I go home and get pulled over - I get arrested. My car gets impounded. I'm out impound fees, time, and possibly bail money. Then I go to court, where I face more fines and a mark on my record that will raise my insurance rates and make it harder to get a job.

With BP, 11 people are dead and an entire region's environment and livelihood are endangered. You think anyone's going to jail for this?

Haliburton to BP: We Blame You

Click to enlarge

Nola.com and other sources are claiming that BP had invited a testing firm called Schlumberger (SLB) to perform something called a Cement Bond Log (CBL) test in the days before the rig went nova.
In the words of Tim Probert, a Halliburton's executive, the CBL is "the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness" of the well's seal.

For some reason, the SLB folks left the Deepwater Horizon without performing the CBL test.

The rumor mill is citing a considerably more dramatic version of events.

• SLB shows up to do test
• SLB sees oil rig is "kicking heavily", tells BP to shut down the well.
• BP does not.
• SLB asks to be taken off the rig
• BP tells them to wait for the next flight.
• SLB charters their own helocopter and leaves as soon as possible.
• Hours later the Deepwater Horizon blows up.

However, the rumor mill has a number of things wrong (Nola.com's account says the SLB folks were only on standby to perform the test, were not asked to and then left on a regularly scheduled BP flight). Nor was BP required to perform this test:

According to Probert, government regulators at the Minerals Management Service don't require a well owner like BP to order a cement bond log unless it feels uncertain about any of the earlier tests. It's not clear what the results of the positive and negative pressure tests were.

But the human drama of the rumor mill would seem like a good place to start asking questions, though. Did the SLB folks see a well that was "kicking heavily?" - Did they ask to perform their test? Were they concerned for their safety or that of the rig?

Haliburton is clearly making the case they they were in the right - but their version is more information that can be used to pry more information out into the open.

We'll see what BP's response is - and if the SLB folks are willing to go on the record.

(H/t Felix Salmon)

Spillcam

House and Senate members have posted live camera feeds of the BP oil spill.

Below is footage taken from that feed.

• Sen. Nelson's website
• House committee on global warming

(H/t E and MSNBC)

Deepwater in Big Pictures

Boston.com's The Big Picture does the Gulf oil disaster:

Blobs of oil from the massive spill float on the surface of the water on May 5, 2010
in Breton and Chandeleur sounds off the coast of Louisiana. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Regulatory Capture > Regulatory Exemption > DeepWater Horizon

Here's a fun series of dots, I wonder if they connect in any way:

Greg Palast on Truthout.org

Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP's Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.

But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.

Nola.com -Federal regulators let BP avoid filing blowout plan for Gulf oil rig

Petrochemical giant BP didn't file a plan to specifically handle a major oil spill from an uncontrolled blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project because the federal agency that regulates offshore rigs changed its rules two years ago to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, according to an Associated Press review of official records.

The Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department known for its cozy relationship with major oil companies, says it issued the rule relief because some of the industrywide mandates weren't practical for all of the exploratory and production projects operating in the Gulf region.

The blowout rule, the fact that it was lifted in April 2008 for rigs that didn't fit at least one of five conditions, and confusion about whether the BP Deepwater Horizon project was covered by the regulation, caught the attention of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

That'd be the Minerals Management Service exempting BP from a regulation in April of 2008, right? I think I remember hearing something about the MMI in that year.

Now what was that?

Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

Oh yeah, them.

Of course, not filing a plan is different from not HAVING a plan. But to take Mr. Palast's point, having a plan is also very different from actually implementing the plan.

Here's Palast again:

In the end, this is bigger than BP and its policy of cheaping out and skiving the rules. This is about the anti-regulatory mania, which has infected the American body politic. While the tea baggers are simply its extreme expression, US politicians of all stripes love to attack "the little bureaucrat with the fat rule book." It began with Ronald Reagan and was promoted, most vociferously, by Bill Clinton and the head of Clinton's deregulation committee, one Al Gore.

Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.

Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"

The answer is because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn't needed.

(H/t trainreq)

Gulf Oil Spill: Say it With Pictures

NOLA.com has some great visuals on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Case in point:

(H/t MissPriss)

1,000,000 Gallons a Day

The WSJ is quoting two experts who put the leak rate for the Deepwater Horizon at between four and five times the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day:

John Amos, a geologist who has worked as a consultant with companies such as BP, ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC on tracking and measuring oil spills from satellite data, said NOAA raised its estimates to 5,000 barrels a day after he and his colleagues published calculations that showed the original figures were far too low based on the NOAA data. Amos has also previously participated in a joint industry-NASA study using satellite imagines to detect and track oil slicks.

Mr. Amos said the 5,000 barrels a day is the "extremely low end" of their estimates. He said, based on NOAA maps, a more realistic figure is 20,000 barrels a day.

The same article puts that in perspective thusly:

Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, said there may already be more than 9 million gallons of oil floating in the Gulf [as of April 30], based on his estimate of a 25,000 barrel-a-day leak rate. That's compared to 12 million gallons spilled in the Valdez accident.

Interior Department officials said it may take 90 days to cap the leaking well. If the 25,000 barrels a day is accurate and it leaks for 90 days, that's 2.25 million barrels or 94.5 million gallons.

25,000 Barrels/day
x 42 gallons/barrel
1,050,000 gallons per day

Exxon Valdez was 12,000,000 gallons

Deepwater Horizon beats Exxon Valdez in 12 days - that'd be tomorrow.

I have to believe they'll beat six weeks to cap this thing. The NYT is posting some details on what is going to be attempted.

(H/t trainreq)

More on the Horizon

Check out Grist's slideshow on the gulf oil disaster.

Not only are the pictures impressive, but you learn things like:

1) They've been trying to use robots to switch on safety measures underwater (as in, take robot to control panel, use robot arm to pull lever, hope it works).

So far, it hasn't worked.

2) They're currently building a "recovery system chamber" - a massive metal dome - to drop over the wellhead and stop the leak. They've never used a dome this big, nor have they used one at this depth. Cross your fingers.

3) The oil slick is currently 16 miles away from Lousiana's Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

(H/t Good blog)