I want to give you a quick update on the status of the book “Conversations with My Dad, a Nuclear Engineer, about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster in Japan” which I plan to self-publish on Lulu. I am still working on putting this book together, albeit in my very limited free time. Now that I’m back from my South Africa trip, I’m working 10-12 hour lab days to finish up the labwork for my PhD thesis. The good news is that the interviews are all transcribed now (thanks to my volunteers; if I haven’t sent you a rock yet I’ll do so in the next few weeks), so I just need to finish editing and compiling them.

My plan is to have the book available on Lulu around the first week of June. I want to include a few pictures of my father and I in the “extra” chapter. I was compiling some photographs, and I realized that my dad and I have not taken a picture together since my college graduation back in 2006! I’d like to include a recent picture of my dad and I. Fortunately (maybe unfortunately for him), my dad is visiting me on June 1st to help me move out of my apartment, so we’ll do our best to take some photos then to include in the book. You should expect the book on Lulu shortly thereafter. The interviews will of course be out-of-date, but there is still plenty of good information and explanation in these interviews, much of which will still be relevant even three months after the nuclear disaster began. Also, our interviews tell a story, in a way, of the first month of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

As a reminder to everyone, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is far from over. There has been so much damage to the Fukushima reactors 1-3 and the spent fuel pools at reactors 1-4 that restoration of normal cooling systems will still take months. Meanwhile, the situation at Fukushima remains precarious.

You can listen to all the interviews on the new vimeo channel Brandon and I created. You can also listen to most of the interviews on Brad Go’s YouTube channel.

Here’s the vimeo channel:

This evening my dad and I recorded our 20th interview on the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Please see the rest of the blog (sidebar) for previous interviews. If you would like to send a message to me or my father about this or any of the previous interviews, you can do so in a comment below or by sending an email to georneysblog (at) gmail (dot) com. You can also follow me on twitter @GeoEvelyn.

We thought that we were done with the Fukushima interviews, but because of a number of requests by email and in comments, we decided to conduct an interview tonight to comment on the upgrade of Fukushima from a 5 to a 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).  My dad highly recommends checking out this IAEA slideshow presentation to better understand this scale and the reason for the upgrade:

My dad also recommends checking out this Associated Press article comparing and contrasting the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters:

As a geologist, I also wanted to comment on the recent magnitude 6.6 earthquake that prompted an evacuation and cut off power at Fukushima for the better part of an hour. Any event– such as an earthquake– that could lead to an extended loss of power is potentially quite serious for the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and spent fuel pools at Units 1-4, which remain “static but not stable.”  Fortunately, the recent earthquake only caused a temporary evacuation and loss of power. There is the potential for more aftershocks in coming days, and an unfortunately located aftershock could potentially lead to another power loss.

However, I am a geochemist, not a geophysicist or an earthquake expert, so I am not qualified to speak in too much detail about earthquakes and aftershocks. Fortunately, two of my geophysicist friends came through with some more detailed information and analysis than I can provide. First, I want to direct you to a blog post about the recent Fukushima area earthquakes by geoblogger Chris Rowan.  Second, I want to direct you to a guest post (following this one) on my blog that has some figures and text written by Jean-Arthur Olive, a good friend of mine and a fellow PhD student in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program. Thanks so much, Chris and Arthur! If any other geophysicists would like to add anything else, just let me know. I can post more information on my blog and/or post a link to another website. Here are links to the two posts I mentioned above:

In today’s interview:
1. My dad gives an update about Fukushima

2. My dad discusses the upgrade on the INES scale and comments again on the evacuation zone.

Hope to have an audio link soon. Here is the interview on vimeo:

Please see the announcement page for more information about these interviews:

If you have time and interest, please transcribe this interview or volunteer to transcribe Interviews 17, 18, and 19. At this time, we have no plans for future interviews.

My dad and I wrapped up our regular Fukushima interviews last Saturday, but we did say that if something important happened we would consider commenting on it.

Well, the Fukushima nuclear disaster was just provisionally upgraded from a 5 (Three Mile Island level) to a 7 (Chernobyl level) by Japanese authorities. My dad is not surprised by this upgrade since he has long felt Fukushima to be higher than a level 5. Several people have asked us (begged, even) if we would consider commenting on the upgrade, so we’ve agreed to do another interview tonight. If you have any questions related to recent developments at Fukushima that you would like me to ask my father, we may have time to answer one or two questions. Post them in a comment below or send them to georneysblog (at) gmail (dot) com no later that 5 pm EDT.

You can listen to all the interviews on the new vimeo channel Brandon and I created. You can also listen to most of the interviews on Brad Go’s YouTube channel.

Here’s the vimeo channel:

This evening my dad and I recorded our 19th interview on the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Please see the rest of the blog (sidebar) for previous interviews. This is the final interview in our series. If you would like to send a message to me or my father about this or any of the previous interviews, you can do so in a comment below or by sending an email to georneysblog@gmail.com. You can also follow me on twitter @GeoEvelyn. My dad in particular has put an enormous amount of work into research for these interviews. If you would like to send him a thank-you message, I promise to pass it along to him.

In today’s interview:
1. My dad gives a quick update about Fukushima

2. My dad discusses 5 types of Generation III and Generation III+ nuclear power plants (click on links below for more information on each plant):

(a.) EPR AREVA

(b.) APR1400

(c.) AP1000

(d.) ESBWR

(e.) Thorium Reactors

Several links, thanks to a listener also named Mark:

(3.) My dad talks about the importance of evaluating spent fuel pool safety & long-term storage of spent fuel rods

Hope to have an audio link soon. Here is the interview on vimeo:

Please see the announcement page for more information about these interviews:

If you have time and interest, please transcribe this interview or volunteer to transcribe Interviews 17 & 18 (16 is in progress). This is our last interview.

Some Final Notes:
As I announced before, I will be compiling all of the interview transcripts into a book that I will be self-publishing on Lulu. My goal is to have this book available by the end of April. I will try to keep the cost of the book fairly low, and I will donate 25% of the book profits to charities (such as the Red Cross, see the sidebar for a list of charities) benefiting Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster relief. The remaining profits I will use to recover some the expenses I had to put forth (paying for several different recording softwares before Skype came forward and helped, a new headset, and video hosting costs on vimeo) over the past month. Anything leftover I will share with my dad, who has put forth a tremendous amount of effort for these interviews. If you would like to support us (and Japan disaster relief), you can buy the book from Lulu when it comes out and/or you can use the paypal button (see blog sidebar) to make a small donation.  If you prefer that 100% of your money goes to Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster relief, please consider a donation to one of the charities listed on my blog sidebar or any of a number of other relief organizations.

The interview audios and transcripts will remain freely available here always. I also hope to put together the audios in podcast format in the near future– if you have tips on how to make this happen, please post a comment or send an email.

Finally, I would like to say a big THANK YOU you to all of the people who volunteered their time and expertise to help me with audio quality, hosting, and transcriptions. My helpers are too numerous for me to list here, but I will compile a long thank you list (first names) to put in the Lulu book. I have already mailed many of you pretty rocks as thank-you presents. There are still a few of you I need to mail rocks to– I will try to do so in the next couple of weeks. Note that I am a geologist and so I consider *most* rocks pretty, but hopefully some of you appreciate the rocks I have sent you.

I would also like to say a big THANK YOU to all of the thousands upon thousands of people who listened to these interviews, read these interviews, and sent my father and I comments and emails. We hope that these interviews have been helpful for you, and we are happy that we were able to continue them as long as we did– a full month.

In the near future this blog will return to being a geology blog. I hope that a few of you will stay to learn about geology and read about some of my geological travels and adventures. However, I will not be offended at all if many of you decide to no longer follow this blog, which will no longer focus on nuclear power.

As a transition back to geology, in a few days I will blog a little about the Oklo Natural Nuclear Reactor— a nuclear reactor that occurred naturally due to some unusual conditions a long, long time ago in what is today Gabon, Africa. There is no danger of natural nuclear reactors developing on Earth today, but this is an interesting ancient geological phenomenon that can teach a little about nuclear reactors, including possible lessons for long-term storage and migration of nuclear fission products.

You can listen to all the interviews on the new vimeo channel Brandon and I created. You can also listen to most of the interviews on Brad Go’s YouTube channel.

Here’s the vimeo channel:

This afternoon my dad and I recorded our 18th interview on the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Please see the rest of the blog (sidebar) for previous interviews. We are no longer answering listener questions, but please do continue to send emails to georneysblog@gmail.com. We really do appreciate all the comments and nice emails we receive! You can also follow me on twitter @GeoEvelyn.

Here are some websites we refer to in today’s interview:

In today’s interview:
1. My dad gives his usual update

2.We address a final batch of questions from listeners:

(a.) Is there a possibility that radioactive water is seeping into the ground? What potential harm could this cause?

(b.) How could it happen that, after much less than a century of nuclear power, we’ve got an accident that is completely beyond the design basis of a nuclear plant? Aren’t the designs of these plants supposed to take into account events far rarer than that? Was this so out of the blue that we can be reasonably sure something like this won’t happen again in the next, say, 200 years, or does this mean that in the next couple of decades, we might well have another disaster, perhaps of some completely different nature, that is so beyond the design basis of a plant that its safety mechanisms are as compromised as we’ve seen at Fukushima?

(c.) Why do they build several nuclear reactors close together, such as the 6 reactors and 7 spent fuel pools at Fukushima? What are the advantages of building several reactors close together? What are the disadvantages of building several reactors close together?

(d.) What missing information do you wish you had to help you better understand what is happening at Fukushima?

Hope to have an audio link soon. Here is the interview on vimeo:

Please see the announcement page for more information about these interviews:

If you have time and interest, please transcribe this interview. Our final wrap-up interview will take place on Saturday, April 9th.

As my dad and I just announced in Interview 17, we have decided to do just two more interviews about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan.

We will conduct a last interview update on Thursday, April 7th. This will be the last interview in which we address questions from listeners, so please email any remaining questions you may have to georneysblog@gmail.com as soon as possible.

On Saturday, April 9th we will conduct a final interview in which we summarize the previous interviews. In this final interview my dad will also discuss newer generations of nuclear power plants and talk a little about a proposed idea to use thorium, rather than uranium, as a fuel source in nuclear power plants.

After Saturday, we will not conduct any more interviews unless there is a major development at Fukushima. We may also conduct the occasional interview from time to time to remind people that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima will take months to years to fully resolve and overcome.

We hope that these interviews have been helpful for people. As I mentioned in a previous note, I will be compiling all of the interview transcripts in an easy-to-read book form. My father and I will be self-publishing this book on Lulu (unless a publisher wants to come forth and help us?), and we will donate 25% of the book profits to earthquake and tsunami disaster relief in Japan. The book will include all of the interviews through the interview we will be doing on Saturday, and there will also be some extra information on my father and I (including a collection of family photos) and a chapter compiling some of the many, many emails and comments we have received over the course of doing these interviews. The interviews will remain freely available here always; I just thought that some people might like the interview transcripts available in an easier-to-read book form.

There are still a few interviews that need transcriptions. If anyone would like to transcribe some or all of Interviews 14, 15, 16, and 17, my father and I would be most grateful. I can send payment in the form of pretty rocks or gear from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where I am a graduate student.

Radiation in Daily Life. Figure taken from MEXT website here (click on any of the PDFs and scroll to last page).Click figure to view larger. My dad refers to this figure in the interview today.

You can listen to all the interviews on the new vimeo channel Brandon and I created. You can also listen to most of the interviews on Brad Go’s YouTube channel.

Here’s the vimeo channel:

This afternoon my dad and I recorded our 17th interview on the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Please see the rest of the blog (sidebar) for previous interviews. Please keep sending questions and comments to georneysblog@gmail.com. You can also follow me on twitter @GeoEvelyn but please do not send questions via twitter. Please note that our next interview will be the LAST interview in which we will address listener questions, so send in your questions if you have them.

Here are some websites we refer to in today’s interview:

In today’s interview:
1. My dad gives his usual update

2.We address questions from listeners:

(a.) Can you explain some of the different units that are used to measure radiation and radioactivity?

(b.) Can you comment on the radiation reports on the MEXT website? 

(c.) Is it possible the Fukushima plants did have hardened vents but they were inoperable due to air-operated valves which were dependent on air compressors which were without power?

(d.) In the US plants are required to show they can survive an extended station blackout (this sort of accident) and make design and procedure changes if they couldn’t under their original design. Did the Japanese regulator follow the US lead in this area?

Hope to have an audio link soon. Here is the interview on vimeo:

Please see the announcement page for more information about these interviews:

If you have time and interest, please transcribe this interview. Our next interview will be on Thursday, April 7th. This will be the LAST update interview before our final wrap-up interview.