Scavenger hunt!!!

 

Rules??? We have rules about that?

 

Really? That's a rule? A rule.

I don't view that as a real rule.

 

Nah, she's not an FO, she's the MD90 personified.

The dead give away... among other things... Is the cowboys tattoo. It screams I belong in Dallas!

 

From DeltaNet

Flight data successfully extracted from Air France black boxes
May 16, 2011


Investigators analyzing the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 successfully extracted data from the black boxes on Monday, including all information from the flight data recorder and a loop containing the last two hours of cockpit voice recordings, Reuters reported.

The digital chips and memory cards inside the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders discovered recently under roughly 12,000 feet of water were found to be in good condition with scant evidence of salt water corrosion, said earlier reports.

The data will now be analyzed in detail, and it will take several weeks before an interim report is written and published this summer, France's BEA air investigation agency said in a statement.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared June 2009 while flying through heavy storms from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

More detailed story here http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/wo...ef=global-home

 

I think everyone is referring to this as an -88. But, it looks like a DC-9 to me.

Is this a case of me thinking my airplane is bigger than it really is?

 

Pick your terminology. All publications that have talked about the ship sets, request/strongly urge everyone to place all charts back in the correct place and put the binder back in the flight kit.

On some level I get it. You get a mechanic up there, and they start tearing though things, a few pages could get lost.

 

For you nuclear types

Fukushima Reactor 1 melted down, 2 and 3 may have too

By John Timmer

Yesterday, TEPCO, the company responsible for running the Fukushima nuclear reactors, released a provisional analysis of the events that occurred in Unit 1, one of the reactors that was active when the tsunami struck. In five stark pages, the report lays out the impact of the tsunami on the facility: water levels that plunged below the bottom of the fuel, a complete meltdown of the nuclear fuel, and extensive damage to the reactor vessel.

The new analysis was enabled by the recent installation of air purifiers that let personnel reenter the reactor control room for the first time. Once inside, they were able to recalibrate some of the instruments that have been monitoring the reactor core; the revised numbers have enabled TEPCO to better understand what happened in the wake of the tsunami.

Things moved fairly quickly: by four hours after the tsunami hit, the levels of cooling water had dropped enough that the top of the fuel stack was exposed to the air. Shortly after that happened, the temperature in the core reached nearly 3,000°C, and the cooling water boiled off the bottom of the fuel stack. Melting of fuel rods started at 4.8 hours after the earthquake hit, and a partial meltdown had already occurred by 5.1 hours. According to TEPCO, any residual integrity in the fuel rods was gone by 15 hours after the quake, and the reactor core was emptied of fuel by 16 hours.

If there's a bright side here, it's that, by melting to the floor of the reactor, most of the fuel was resubmerged in cooling water. Temperatures there are now in the area of 100-120°C. The temperatures still fluctuate based on the rate of cooling water injection, suggesting the majority of the fuel is still inside the reactor vessel. The temperature and pressure readings indicate that the vessel is generally intact, as well. But the continued loss of cooling water indicates that it almost certainly has been leaking water that is heavily contaminated with radioactive isotopes (though not necessarily reactor fuel).

As Nature's Geoff Brumfiel puts it, "Nobody really knows where all the water is going—but it can't be anywhere good." The best hope is that it largely leaked into the basement areas of the reactor building but we currently don't know for certain where the water escaped to or how far it has spread. Complicating matters further are reports that TEPCO thinks that the two other reactors that were active at the time of the quake suffered similar damage. Confirmation will have to wait for access to their control rooms.

All of this will make the cleanup efforts extraordinarily complex, as the fuel can no longer be lifted out using the structure it was incorporated into, since all that supporting material has melted away. Workers will also have to contend with leaks of highly radioactive water during the process; that water will have to be removed or contained before it leaches into the surrounding soil. There are positives here—temperatures are relatively low now, and the fuel appears to have remained in the reactor vessel—but Fukushima is likely to be a long-term worry.

TEPCO Report here http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp.../110515e10.pdf

 

Nosmo;
I read that article too. From the live readings in and around Tokyo, they are looking at 8 micro s/a an versus the normal of four. Still well in to the safe level. I hope it stays that way as I am in and out of Tokyo a lot.

 

Sort of disproves the China Syndrome theory.