Alan Gillis in The Science of Conundrums reports: The shock of Japan's mega earthquake and tsunami has paralyzed not only Japan but the rest of the world. It has been so fantastic and overwhelming, our response has been the Japanese response, a mesmerising flood of emotions staring from the blank faces of the survivors. A wonder far beyond the moment, as though time itself had stopped and entombed them and us.

Unstoppable forces suddenly come, suddenly go while unleashing a cascade of events as bewildering as all the destruction. Inevitable consequences wash over those of us still left standing like a tangible fate that won't stop until there's nothing left. What can we do anyway, especially behind a TV or laptop? Yet there are some who can act and have the power to save Japan from a second wave of disaster. But as part of the usual status quo that rarely acts in time, are politicians and scientists going to ignore the obvious or help us this time?

The big event still to come is not obscure, not buried in disaster upon disaster. It explodes literally at Fukushima near Tokyo, from a 6 reactor complex, that while we watch, explodes and explodes three times in a row sending out great clouds of dust and smoke and nuclear particle radiation. A 30 km radius evacuation of 180,000 people but radiation now detectable beyond Japan in the adjoining Russian Islands. Many Japanese stay put without other clear and better options. Go where, do what?

What do we do? We watch. We talk. Foreigners scramble to fly home. Many remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Low levels of radiation still, but for how long? The best guess of an ultimate disaster brewing is that one of the three most damaged nuclear reactors, Number 2 is breached and Number 2 is likely at risk for an actual full meltdown of its core.

American Physicist Michio Kaku Warns Japan




"Sandbag the reactors" or do what the Soviets did to stop Chernobyl. (Alternate video link)

The worst case now is not like Chernobyl, not a sudden and catastrophic steam explosion of the containment building and its reactor, releasing a enormous cloud of deadly radiation that drifted across Europe into the British Isles. Something more like Three Mile Island so far except there's no safe way to cool down Number 2. Injecting seawater to cool the overheating reactors caused the hydrogen explosions at Fukushima. Physicists knew it could happen and warnings were given, but there was also no choice they said. Something had to be done to prevent the meltdowns.

At Fukushima the worst case could be an even greater disaster.

With failures evident and failures spreading, it seems we are waiting for a worst case scenario before we act. Then it could be too big and too late. Not one nuclear meltdown but six. Telling the Japanese who haven't left the Fukushima disaster zone to stay inside their homes and wash and dry their laundry indoors won't work for long. Watching some experts say it's too early to tell and it can't happen here is no help either.

Perhaps the other 10,000 nuclear physicists watching the resumption of experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider today, were too busy to notice what's been happening in Japan.

Seriously, why the wall of silence around CERN? The foremost nuclear lab in the world always chatting up its nuclear safety at the LHC every chance it gets, and the great discoveries always over the horizon? CERN has nothing to say to Japan? No CERN plan to save Japan? Not CERN's job? Fiddle while Rome burns?

There are pictures and video and commentators telling us what they see, but no real discussion of the events at Fukushima. Details are sketchy they say. Why? Is it the Charlie Sheen effect? No time for the real world? So we should wait? It's an International Emergency that can wait? One more day, one more explosion can change everything. If the Japanese aren't prepared to act now and entomb Fukushima Number 2, they may never be able to contain the meltdown that would also threaten the other 5 already damaged reactors nearby.

Besides 3 explosions another had a fire around its heavy water swimming pool spent fuel storage pond. A lot of extremely hot rods close to the reactors, way more fuel waiting for a fire. The 2 of the 6 reactors not in the news, not hit with explosions or fire, also suffered some coolant loss. All this damage in one space that could fit on a big shopping mall parking lot.

According to Dr Kaku there is only one solution and that is to bury the reactors now including the most dangerous Number 2 in sand and concrete like Chernobyl. If not Number 2 at least we could see a more dangerous Nuclear Fire and Meltdown. At Chernobyl it seems the reactor was destroyed and its fuel rods were smashed and scattered into something of a deadly hot heap of nuclear material and rubble.

At Fukushima Number 2 it would be hotter still. You have concentrated fuel rods still aligned and close to each other, though separated by graphite rods inserted during automatic shutdown to slow down the fission reaction. The extremely hot and probably partially melted rods are all in a tight fitting mass within the jacket of a 6" thick stainless steel vessel that has partially
ruptured. When the steel melts away opening a nuclear fire pit how would you get close enough then to use the Chernobyl sarcophagus option? How close can you get to an open nuclear fire? Then if you're still alive try dumping sand on a fire that melts stainless steel.

Chernobyl RIP 1986

Many first responders died horribly after extreme radiation exposure at Chernobyl and many others in the disaster zone later of slower cancers. That could be avoided now in Japan. Wait and see from physicists and government could mean six nuclear fires on Tokyo's doorstep. The scientific community which is often in its own catatonic state of theoretical R&D and pension plans needs to wake up to this emergency. After all didn't the physics and engineering branch give us Chernobyl in the first place?

Remember the 1950's PR that started the nuclear industry? "Harnessing the Atom" as they called it. And this soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What next? "It can't happen in America" commercials and "tell your Congressman about today's safe nuclear option"?

Are you watching too Mr President? How about last year's Obama on video? No nukes but go nuclear? Loan guarantees to the nuclear industry for new nuclear plants. What about all the unsecured nuclear waste and the old nuclear plants in the US like the General Electric design used at Fukushima? What guarantees do we have? What guarantees in Japan? And who will pay? Us too?

This Story Starts To Break

Reuters Video: IAEA: Japan nuclear plant damage "worrying"

Reuters: Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA

Reuters: Timeline: Japan's unfolding nuclear crisis

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive After a brief and successful restart this November, the Large Hadron Collider is on standby until March for more fixes and re-commissioning to higher energies. It's an uncharacteristic and surprising move by CERN, four years behind schedule and billions over budget on the $10 Billion collider, but a welcome go-slow approach to machine safety.

In September 2008 days after start-up a $40 Million accident crippled the LHC for over a year. Until the surprise winter break, CERN's objectives were for 3.5 TeV beams by the end of 2009 instead of the 1.18 TeV beams achieved, though with a bonus of some test collisions at a record 2.36 TeV.

Data highlights of CMS collisions have just been released in an article on MIT News. The big surprises were high numbers of mesons produced, and those numbers increased faster with collision energies, not predicted by models based on lower energy collisions at other colliders. CMS will publish its formal paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

Why Stop There? 2.36 TeV instead of 7 TeV

The abrupt end to commissioning in December at higher energies also surprised CERNies on site besides fans of the LHC. It wasn't because of the usual winter shutdown over the holidays. Safety concerns won over speed. Going to higher TeV meant jumping over another threshold in magnet powering, above 2,000 Amps. With so many magnets damaged last time during the 2008 busbar accident, Steve Meyers, CERN's #1 collider guy, decided to go slow again. Anyway the leaky CMS experiment and the faulty nQPS, the new Quench Protection System for the thousands of magnets, were also having trouble big time.

2010-2011 LHC Run 18-24 Months at 3.5 TeV per Beam

After a rethink last week at Chamonix, the collider's favorite ski resort, CERN has decided on going slower still. After current repairs and retrofits that should be completed by mid-February, now pushed ahead to March (don't ask) the LHC will aim for 3.5 TeV beams and 7 TeV collisions or 7 Tera or 7 Trillion Electron Volts, over the next 18 to 24 months, shutting down for lengthy major safety retrofits for possibly a year. Then in 2013 commissioning to 7 TeV per beam and 14 TeV collisions. Alarmingly sensible. Collider safety taking precedence? Congratulations, CERN.

Though potentially more dangerous heavy lead ion collisions, are now off the back burner and might start this Fall.

Unforeseen Radiation and $235 Million to $Billions More In Upgrades

More surprises at Chamonix. The end of January 5 day event, largely a study of safety at 5 TeV per beam, current LHC status of safety upgrades, and future safety upgrades, was more of the usual data avalanche. Here comes the check for the big holiday blowout.

Including new amazing unforeseen radiation hazards that will develop as the collider runs (Session 6--Radiation to Electronics) to deficiencies in the pre-accelerators (Session 8) including Electron Cloud trouble, and aging equipment and a need for higher energy injection beams with more bunches per beam or Billions More Dollars in upgrades. Maybe 100 Million Swiss Francs in civil engineering to move huge power supplies away from radiation zones, unknown but substantial costs to shield and/or redesign and replace equipment prone to radiation damage. Maybe at a minimum 1.3 or 1.4 Billion SF to upgrade pre-accelerators, probably much more if aging systems need full replacement. And more major upgrades to ventilation equipment including more ventilation shafts that were alarmingly inadequate for the 6 ton spill of Helium in 2008.

Here's the schedule and presentation abstracts including links to CERN docs and slides, "LHC Performance Workshop - Chamonix 2010". A "Summary of the ....", the webcast of February 5 and now a 2 part video from CERN, covers the main points made at Chamonix. Here's the abstract of the video, including links to docs cited and slides shown.

An important but informal end comment from the DG, Dr Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the new Director General of CERN since January 2009, didn't make it to video.

After Steve Meyers overview of radiation hazards developing and damaging equipment, to answer the big unspoken question hanging in the air, Meyers said:

"I think a declaration 10 or 15 years ago that the underground service areas in the LHC were non-radiation areas."

After Meyer's conclusions, Dr Heuer, sitting in his seat up front summed up his thoughts this way to the CERN audience:

"Instead of making decisions every 3 months, I prefer to have enough time to think it over."

A radical change from last year's we're good to go to 5 TeV per beam and gradual installation of more safety systems over the next 5 years. The estimate back in July for safety after $40 M in repairs was a whopping $235 Million extra in "LHC Status by Steve Meyers..." CERN video, still ignored by the media for safety the collider should have had before the accident of 2008. No CERN press release, that must be it. The new faster CERN schedule on safety upgrades will still mean spending the $235 M, while $1 to $2 Billion more on other upgrades thanks to the Chamonix review is now being considered. Hard to recall the LHC is a new collider.

One thing CERN forgot was the $1 Gazillion for Computer Systems Security including SCADA and Ethernet-Connected Instrumentation Systems. Why wait for the Trojans to attack?

All Ahead Slow: New Physics In Sight

If the LHC Machine is being re-engineered for more safety, it's the same old anything goes as to what the LHC might produce in terms of New Physics. Exciting not to know where physics is going, but hardly something to brag about. An army of the best minds in HEP don't have a clue? We're going to the Moon, but we might wind up on Mars or Venus or maybe we don't have enough thrust to go anywhere?

We've all read about it over and over again. Wow, the LHC is on the brink of answering the biggest questions in the Universe. Great. Where can I buy one? Or more realistically the LHC is an experiment with the unknown, with unknown consequences, with little in the way of safety studies and risk assessments.

As with design and engineering before the accident, CERN is still relying on its own considerable expertise in what will happen at the LHC with its experiments. It's what CERN doesn't do with all that expertise that raises some red flags on safety like not studying all the risk scenarios and not performing slow and difficult computer modeling of collider objects the LHC might produce and what they would do at the LHC.

CERN isn't worried, so why should we be? Well, CERN wasn't worried before the big accident CERN still calls "the incident". Accidents preventable, incidents happen. Now poised to go to extremely high energy collisions of 7 TeV as early as this March and ultimately to 14 TeV, the LHC may create objects like micro black holes that might threaten the planet.

--Alan Gillis

This is Part 1 of a report on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies this March. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected