Landracing Forum
Misc Forums => NON LSR Posting => Topic started by: DocBeech on March 12, 2011, 06:47:31 AM
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Im sure you all have been following this disaster but at this point its turned extremely bad. Here is some information if you havn't followed it all that closely. The dangerous point I want to make is the trade winds that travel from Japan to the US West Coast and through Hawaii. This is going from extremely bad to world disaster.
The nuclear power plant finally exploded. Down hill from here :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake)
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/japans-fukushima-no1-nuclear-power-plant-explodes/story-e6frfku0-1226020387955 (http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/japans-fukushima-no1-nuclear-power-plant-explodes/story-e6frfku0-1226020387955)
Pressure at one of the plants is at 2.1 times the max, so they have radiation leaking out of one of the power plants. The leak has been confirmed and is blowing towards the sea.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Officials+warn+possible+radiation+leak/4429753/story.html
Also they have confirmed that 3 of the 4 reactors on the second plant have cooling systems that have now failed.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4581359/japanese-nuclear-plants-cooling-systems-fail/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/11/japan-tsunami-earthquake-live-coverage
5 total reactors have lost cooling systems. Radiation is at 1000 times the normal level, and pressure is at 2.1 times the max acceptable load. Pressure levels are unable to be controlled now.
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We have a fellow land speed racer in Japan. Nagoya, I think. He is Kasutoshi "Kaz" Mizutani. Nice guy and he races an HD in the FIM class at BUB. I sure hope he is OK, and everyone else, too. In fact, I hope we get this mess figured out soon.
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Wasn't one of the selling points of nuclear reactors that they could withstand earthquakes? Were we sold a pack of lies? I want non-fossil power too, but not if it means a melt down whenever there is a strong earthquake.
Don
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I'll jump in to defend nukes -- even though I'm not a nuclear-trained person. And -- I'm not an earthquake specialist, either. . .
But the 8.9 magnitude 'quake in Japan the other day - is a really bad-axx quake, especially when compared to others by someone that remembers high school physics and math. In physics we learned about earthquake magnitudes being measured by the Richter scale, which name has now been dropped -- it's plain old "magnitude" now. And in math we learned that the scale for earthquakes is logarithmic -- that is, each whole number is ten times the previous number - so a magnitude 8.8 quake, like the Japanese one the other day, was more than 200++ times as severe as the one that shook the San Fernando area in 1971 (6.5), half again as big as the one that messed up so much and caused fires in San Francisco in 1906 (8.3), and even a little bit more than the big 'quake in Anchorage, Alaska in 1964 (8.6). There -- that's a reminder of the way the ground-shakers are measured and described.
Then there's the way stuff is built to withstand a quake. I don't know the numbers for American nukes, much less Japanese ones, but I do know that not only do all of them get built to withstand a X.X magnitude quake, but also that the size of that required number is also influenced by the frequency of that size quake in that specific area. Here's a table I copied from a USGS website:
MS Earthquakes
per year
---------- -----------
8.5 - 8.9 0.3
8.0 - 8.4 1.1
7.5 - 7.9 3.1
7.0 - 7.4 15
6.5 - 6.9 56
6.0 - 6.4 210
So, anyway, nothing can be built to withstand every quake that'll ever happen. Rather - they're built to withstand one that's relatively likely to occur in the next YYYY years, which probably means that since less-severe quakes happen more frequently than the big ones -- the nuke (or highway overpass or the skyscraper) is built to withstand the rigors of a quake likely to happen during a time span shorter than the bunch of years for "the Big One".
As for the Japan reactors that are in trouble -- I haven't yet heard the latest on whether the reactor's metal shell has been cracked open, or whether the damage was only (?) to the concrete building that housed the reactor vessel. I did hear yesterday that there was some radiation leaking out, so that implies something went wrong inside the reactor vessel - since nothing radioactive is allowed out by the very process used. The stuff the literally goes inside and gets intimate with the radioactive material is cooled in a heat transfer device and sent back to the reactor core for more heat. Unh, think of an intercooler on your blown engine - to keep the cooler cooling you not only pass ice water through it but even maybe some nitrous. The water and the goofy gas doesn't ever get into the engine, just like the radioactivity doesn't get out to the cooling medium. I know that the coolant was not getting moved properly, and that that happened because the electricity that powered those pumps had been cut off. Without being cooled continuously - the reactor's nuclear fuel continues to give off heat, getting hotter and hotter (thermally, not radioactively) until maybe it's so hot that the fuel (usually in rods) starts to melt. And when that happens the nuclear material ends up in a puddle/mass -- where it's much closer to other nuclear fuel and therefore starts generating even more heat - and eventually can, if not controlled somehow, can literally melt through everything trying to hold it contained - everything being the concrete shell around the vessel, the foundation of the building, and sooner or later it would start down through the earth underneath the reactor, ergo the nickname "the China Syndrome" -- which teased that the melted mass would keep going down 'til it went right through the earth and ended up in China (geography be damned).
So -- reactors are built pretty well, built well enough to withstand a shock that's likely to happen in the neighborhood, and built to keep radioactivity in.
Back to listening to the news about Japan.
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It wasn't the earthquake. The facility was well built to survive that. The tsunami took out the backup generators to run the cooling pumps. There was some battery backup for a few hours.
At the Fukushima Daiichi facility the #1 unit lost coolant for long enough for massive overheating. The temperatures, not doubt caused by core melting, broke down the water into hydrogen gas. The explosion was from hydrogen gas buildup. The shock wave on the video was massive and no doubt destroyed or damaged all remaining hope of saving the reactor. Four employees were injured and are being treated for radioactive poisoning.
They are now pumping in sea water and boric acid in an untested (they threw the book out long ago) method to prevent total meltdown.
The massively radioactive water will no doubt be dumped in the ocean.
This is without doubt the third worst nuclear incident (out of 18!) after Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island. This is only the fourth (after those two and Idaho Falls in 1961) to release radioactivity into the atmosphere.
The "good" news is the wind is blowing out to sea. Towards us.
Units 2 and 3 are still a big unknown. They don't have cooling either. They are using convection only.
Units 4-6 were already shut down for maintenance. Unit 2 is low on water.
The Fukushima Daini plant a few miles down the road is in similar shape. Units 1-4 don't have any cooling. Atmospheric releases of radioactive steam are occurring on all four. Unit 3 they claim to have a cold shutdown. Unit 4 has exceeded 212F. They have declared an emergency zone around this facility.
A crane operator was killed in the earthquake.
Defend nukes? Even if nothing happened we have to protect the radioactive material for 40,000 years. Oh wait, something did happen.
It may be weeks or months before we find out the true horror of this event.
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I used to work as an emergency planner for my state office of emergency management. Part of my responsibility involved developing response plans for and test exercises for both a nuclear power plant and a defense installation that processed radioactive material.
My first comment would be lets not get carried away, with speculation. Second DO NOT TRUST THE MEDIA to give you accurate and useful information on this event. They have a 50 year history of being technologically incompetent with things like radiological emergencies, and the vast majority of what you see in the news will be half truths, misinterpreted facts, and just plain stupid. Almost everything the media said about 3 mile island was wrong or exaggerated (of course the fact that the local government officials were idiots did not help).
The Chernobyl accident did turn out to be a major problem to the emergency responders, but that was due to an un-contained design (no pressure vessel), an inherently unstable design that was prone to run away at low power levels (a design that would never have been approved in any other industrial country), and intentional efforts by the operational staff to by-pass and turn off safety devices. There is still conflicting information regarding Chernobyl and if there are any statistically significant long term impacts to the exposed populations.
The Japanese designs should be a far cry from both those earlier reactor designs.
Second, just because the media says "radiation is leaking" does not mean it is bad. Radiation can be detected at extraordinarily low levels. For example following the Three Mile Island incident they collected tongues from white tail deer from an area within 50 mi of the plant. They did test to have higher levels of CS137 than deer in nearby counties but those levels were still less than seen in deer in other parts of the country when we were actively testing nuclear weapons.
"The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the TMI plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year. These are radiation exposures we all receive on a routine basis. My average daily radiation exposure just due to living in Colorado is about 2 mr/day, so the total average exposure received within 50 miles of the TMI plant was roughly equivalent to visiting Denver Colorado for 4 days.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/env_rpt/aser95/tb-a-2.pdf
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/R/Radiation.html
Assessing radiation exposure after a release is very complex and the media are no where near qualified to condense that information into a sound bite for the 5:00 news.
Iodine 131 is the isotope that will probably be of the most concern, and it has a half life (time it takes for 1/2 of it to decay and cease to be radioactive) of just a tad over 8 days. It emits a soft gamma ray and a beta particle. Beta particles are stopped by a thin layer of any material. It will not penetrate a thin sheet of aluminum and only penetrates the skin about 1-2 mm. It is not a significant external radiation hazard, but is an inhalation risk. Its absorption can be blocked by natural iodine or potassium iodide pills to flood the body with non-radioactive iodine so it is not absorbed. Any radiological release in Japan from this will not make it across the Pacific ocean in any significant dose even if an absolutely catastrophic release were to happen.
Bottom line the media's representation of the risk is probably 100 - 1,000,000 times higher than reality. Radiological consequences of medical significance are only likely in the very nearby area.
We simply do not have enough information to determine what the facts are yet. They are trying to shut the reactor down, now and even the on scene experts will have no clue what the damages are for days or weeks.
Given Japan's experience with large scale radiation effects you can be certain that they are being extremely cautious in their evacuation actions.
I personally would not worry at all about the radiological consequences from these incidence for any one outside of the immediate area of the plant. You would likely get more radiation exposure on the airplane flight over to Japan than the local residents will receive outside the local plant area.
By the way just to show how we routinely accept radiation exposure on a daily basis -- did you guys know that bananas are radioactive? Bananas are high in potassium which has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope. You are surrounded by and eat radioactive material all the time. It is a natural part of our world and there is some evidence that low levels of radiation actually stimulate the immune system for damaged tissue repair in the body.
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2010/03/08/bananas-are-radioactive-2.htm
Larry
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Larry I agree with you. The media will do anything to get a story, ask 10 people and they get 10 different views and use what they think will make the best story. Panic sells news and papers. I also was in the safety end of things at Douglas and Boeing and we were not allowed to discuss anything with the media. All meetings were behind closed doors and a person was assigned to give out press releases etc.
At any event like this earth quake everyone is concerned and and want answers, for sure worry about their families and homes. Even in todays world of instant news connections it goes nuts by the time other party's pass it on as the story changes with each conversation. I feel sorry for those people and wish I could help. The panic after the hurricane Katrina and the aftermath that's still going on after all these years is proof.
God bless those people and their losses.
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Thanks for the very lucid information Larry. I only wish the media would do some research and follow up their alarmist stories with some more factual material in the following days.
Pete
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Thanks for the very lucid information Larry. I only wish the media would do some research and follow up their alarmist stories with some more factual material in the following days.
Yeah. Right. Like that's gonna happen.
Three Mile Island was a complete fabricated crisis. No one got so much as a hangnail from it, no radiation was released, and it was never close to a meltdown.
I get so tired of the chicken-headed stupidity of all those morons making knee-jerk responses every time you hear so much as a fart near a nuclear facility. I am tired of the "not in my backyard" legions who have kept American from being a leader in safe, productive, nonpolluting nuclear fueled electric powerplants. The French have done it, and never had a lick of trouble.
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Thanks for the very lucid information Larry. I only wish the media would do some research and follow up their alarmist stories with some more factual material in the following days.
Yeah. Right. Like that's gonna happen.
Three Mile Island was a complete fabricated crisis. No one got so much as a hangnail from it, no radiation was released, and it was never close to a meltdown.
I get so tired of the chicken-headed stupidity of all those morons making knee-jerk responses every time you hear so much as a fart near a nuclear facility. I am tired of the "not in my backyard" legions who have kept American from being a leader in safe, productive, nonpolluting nuclear fueled electric powerplants. The French have done it, and never had a lick of trouble.
One of your more eloquent politicians of yesteryear (Adlai Stevenson) was quoted as sayint that a newsroom editor is a person who separates the "wheat from the chaff" and then goes ahead and prints the "chaff"....
Well, Three Mile Island may well have been a fabricated crisis.... all the indicators are that it was.... but remember Chernobyl in the Ukraine (the USSR at the time).... it WAS a catastrophe!.... whether the Japanese situation is of the magnitude of that or not, only time will tell. I would think that the Japanese will be more amenable to receiving help from the rest of the world than the Soviets were in the mid 80s....
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Have a look at this link to yahoo news regarding the severity of the nuclear events in Japan....
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/japan-rates-quake-less-serious-3-mile-island-20110312-075629-316.html
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I worked at Diablo Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County two different times in the mid 1990's during their shut downs for refueling. I wanted to see first hand what Nuclear Power was all about.
The Diablo Plant was very well maintained, and very well built. The domes over the reactors were made to withstand the impact of a 747 Jet. The dome was three foot thick concrete, loaded with rebar. On one shutdown I was assigned to work in the dome, that in itself was very interesting. I went to school for a week, learning how to work and also how to dress and undress in special clothes, that included boots and headgear.
When going into an area that may have radiation, you had a complete body scan when you came out of the area. At the end of the 6 to 8 weeks when refueling was complete and you were terminated you went in and had another body scan to see how much accumulated radiation you had.
Overall I felt very safe while working there, under normal circumstances. I would not want to be there in an earthquake like the one that just happened in Japan. Why you ask? IMO They don't have any good provisions for storing the spent fuel rod. I was told it is stored in a building behind the plant in a big pool which is filled with Boric Acid. I asked how they empty the pool and transport the spent fuel rod, and the answer I got is they don't. Seems like no one wants spent fuel rod in their back yard, or transported through their towns.
It is my opinion, that until they come up with a way to get rid of the spent fuel rod, no nuclear plant is safe from Mother Nature. Whether it be a 100 year flood or Tsunami, or a 100 year Earthquake.
Tom G.
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Keep up those "Wheat vs Chaff" thoughts as they admit that a partial meltdown has occurred in a second reactor.
Just coming on to the radar: "excessive radiation levels were recorded at Onagawa nuclear plant."
They have treated 160 residents for high levels of radioactivity.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) runs these facilities. They have shut them down twice in the past for falsifying records. The industry and the government have a history of under reporting incidents.
Stay tuned, this ain't done yet.
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For anyone looking for "official" sources for information a good place to start is here:
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/index.html
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110313-3.pdf
Given all that is going on, the Nuclear reactor issues do not appear to be all that significant (compared to what they could be). Off site radiation levels are no where near "catastrophic", and in line with what would be expected given the situation.
Immediate waste heat production after the Fukushima 1 plant was scrammed (emergency shut down) should be considerably reduced by now. From what I have been reading, immediately after shut down, it probably was producing heat at the rate of 95 mega watts. After 48 hours that should have dropped as fission products from power production decayed away to something like 7-8 MW and by now it should be in the range of 5-6 MW after 72 hours. As a result the longer they keep the reactor stable the safer the situation is. They likely have some minor fuel element damage due to over heating, but not a "melt down" as the general, public interprets that rather inexact term.
Larry
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That is the most "sanitized" report I have seen.
A better source is the plant operator TEPCO
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html (http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html)
Given all that is going on, the Nuclear reactor issues do not appear to be all that significant (compared to what they could be)
Run away heating in SEVEN nuclear reactors isn't significant?
At the time of the earthquake all of the control rods were reinserted. We don't know what the power output was prior to the earthquake. Since the #1 unit had the most problems it may have been at a higher rate of output. Heat generation stops at this point. Residual heat is still at a high level.
The cooling system is operating normally at this point. Shortly after the external power went out.
The backup diesel generators kicked in. Every unit has two generators so that one is always available if maintenance is performed on the other one.
An hour later the tsunami destroyed all of the generators. I have yet to hear that power has been restored. At this point in time there is no cooling and the operator panel is dark. Any valve turned has to be done manually.
The only cooling available is to allow convection cooling and it is very limited. This would describe all 7 reactors in operation.
As the temperature rises at some point the water rises above the boiling point. TEPCO is required by law to report when this level is passed. The reports from their web site show the time this happened.
As the pressure rises at some point the pressure vessel limit is reached and radioactive steam must be released to prevent breaching the pressure vessel. TEPCO is required by law to report when this happens. All of the reactors have been vented. An uncontrolled release of radioactivity isn't a trivial event. Imagine this happening in your backyard. At this point all of the structure is radioactive. Any work done exposes workers. Including manually turning valves.
Low water levels were reported in several units. Uncovered rods at some point begin to melt. When the temperature passes 2200 degrees the water disassociates into hydrogen gas. This is well known and documented in reactors. The gas should have been released to the atmosphere through a flare stack outside. Through some failure mechanism (like no power) it was released into the building.
The explosion shown on tv was certainly a hydrogen gas explosion. Despite the government saying the containment vessel was intact, the explosion probably severed pipes into the reactor. Hydrogen gas buildup in the other reactors may be happening. It has been reported in the #3 unit. A nuclear power plant exploded. Wrap your head around that.
When they got to the point where they started injecting sea water and boric acid into the #1 unit they have given up any hope of saving the reactor and are doing a Hail Mary to try and prevent melting through the bottom. This very old reactor has a weak design underneath and that is very possible. Some experts don't predict that this will work.
They are now injecting sea water and boric acid into the #3 reactor due to the same circumstances.
The final analysis is months away and the result may be "minor fuel element damage" to quote someone. Hard to believe that an uncontrolled melting of any size can be "minor".
The latest report from TEPCO
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station:
Units 1 to 3: shutdown due to earthquake
Units 4 to 6: outage due to regular inspection
* The national government has instructed evacuation for those local
residents within 20km radius of the site periphery.
* The value of radioactive material (iodine, etc) is increasing according
to the monitoring car at the site (outside).
* Since the amount of radiation at the boundary of the site exceeds the
limits, we decide at 4:17PM, Mar 12 and we have reported and/or noticed
the government agencies concerned to apply the clause 1 of the Article 15
of the Radiation Disaster Measure at 5PM, Mar 12. The radiation dose at
the monitoring post decreased once. Today, the measured value revamped and
the radiation dose measured at site boundary exceeded the limiting value
again. As such, at 8:56AM, today, it was determined that a specific incident
stipulated in article 15, clause 1 occurred and at 09:01AM, today, notified
accordingly.
After that, the measured value by the monitoring car decreased once, however
the value revamped and the radiation dose measured at site boundary exceeded
the limitation again. As such, at 2:15PM, today, it was determined that a
specific incident stipulated in article 15, clause 1 occurred and at 02:23PM,
today, notified accordingly.
* In addition, a vertical earthquake hit the site and big explosion has
happened near the Unit 1 and smoke breaks out around 3:36PM, Mar 12th.
* Unit 1: We started injection of sea water into the reactor core at 8:20PM,
Mar 12 and then boric acid subsequently. We are coordinating with the
relevant authorities and departments as to how to cool down water in the
spent nuclear fuel pool.
* Unit 2: Reactor has been shut down and Reactor Core Isolation Cooling
System has been injecting water to the reactor. Current reactor water level
is lower than normal level, but the water level is steady. After fully
securing safety, we are preparing to implement a measure to reduce the
pressure of the reactor containment vessels under the instruction of the
national government. To do so, we operated the vent valve and completed the
operation at 11:00AM, Mar 13.
* Unit 3: High Pressure Coolant Injection System automatically stopped. We
endeavored to restart the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System but failed.
Also, we could not confirm the water inflow of Emergency Core Cooling System.
As such, we decided at 5.10AM, Mar 12, and we reported and/or noticed the
government agencies concerned to apply the clause 1 of the Article 15 of
the Radiation Disaster Measure at 5:58AM, Mar 13.
In order to fully secure safety, we operated the vent valve to reduce the
pressure of the reactor containment vessels (partial release of air
containing radioactive materials) and completed the procedure at 8:41AM,
Mar 13 (successfully completed at 09:20AM, Mar 13. After that, we began
injecting water containing boric acid that absorbs neutron into the reactor
by the fire pump from 09:25AM, Mar 13.
Taking account of the situation that the water level within the pressure
vessel did not rise for a long time and the radiation dose is increasing,
we cannot exclude the possibility that the same situation occurred at Unit
1 on Mar 12 will occur. We are considering the countermeasure to prevent
that.
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It may be weeks or months before we find out the true horror of this event.
Still waiting for a straight count of how much is missing from Hanford - but not holding my breath. Wasn't Kerr-McGee supposed to let us know what really happened - it's been 35 years.
Did you hear some of the comments about how "it will dissipate"? You know, as if it were smoke? Are they that stupid, or did they just "get the word"?
Wait for them to STOP reporting it - that's how you know it's really bad.
If they give iodine to anyone, it will be Federal employees only, with a gag order "to prevent a panic" - like everyone on the west coast jumping in their cars.
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Run away heating in SEVEN nuclear reactors isn't significant?
I did not say that!
You have restated the comment in a manner that misrepresents both what I said and the actual situation.
I said the reactor situation was not very significant when compared to all the other things going on.
There is also not a run away heating situation!
You have to keep all this in context.
First there is no indication I have seen of run away heating they are simply trying to cool the decay heat from fission products that were present at the time the reactor was scrammed. This decay heat rapidly goes away as the fission products cease to exist. Decay heat starts out at about 7% of the reactors power level at the time of shut down dropping to around 2% an hour or two after shut down, and then tapers off to about 1% of initial power after a day. It will drop very slowly after that as only the long half life fission products are left. This is not "run away heating" it is a predictable heat output that tapers of exponentially after shutdown. Highest heat loads for cooling are during the first few hours after shut down, then rapidly diminishing after that.
For those unfamiliar with the nuclear fission process, when a nuclear reactor is operational it is actively splitting atoms of uranium or plutonium or sometimes thorium to release energy. As those atoms break apart they form decay products of other atoms that are also radioactive but that decay away very rapidly (in most cases) releasing both radiation and heat energy. Each decay product either releases energy and becomes another radioactive decay product or it completes its final decay process and ceases to be radioactive. This is a step wise chain that once started must go to completion. Unlike a fire you cannot put it out or stop it by any process known to man.
As a result you cannot just turn off a nuclear reactor like you turn off an engine. If you shut down the primary chain reaction it uses to produce power, the nuclear reactor must still let this secondary decay process run its course. This continues to release energy but is not a "run away" process.
A physical analogy would be a fire place. The primary nuclear chain reaction would be you constantly putting wood on the fire. Once you stop throwing wood on the fire, the then burning wood still has to burn out which continues to produce heat, but at an ever slowing rate until all the wood is consumed and turned to ashes.
The same thing happens in a nuclear reactor, the decay products of the initial fission of an atom are like a burning log, that must still finish burning out before it stops producing energy.
They are at this point trying to control this release of energy from decay heat and provide enough cooling so the fuel rods do not over heat and damage their protective coating that contains the radioactive material.
Based on the announcements that some small amounts of Cesium 137 and Iodine 131 had been detected, than a "few" fuel elements have likely gotten hot enough to damage their cladding, but the low radiation levels detected indicate that at this point there is no large scale breakdown in the fuel or large scale "uncontrolled" reaction. By flooding with sea water, and boric acid they are taking preventive measures to make sure it stays that way.
The information I have seen is that the plant that is most impacted was near the end of its design life anyway. It was going to be decommissioned anyhow and due to the present situation it would never operate again as a power reactor as they would never be able to recover the costs of repair, so the logical solution is to take the most cost effective means to ensure it goes cold as soon as possible.
Boron the element in boric acid, acts as a poison to nuclear fission. The boron atoms absorb neutrons that have the potential of triggering the fission another atom. By adding the boric acid they are ensuring that no large scale fission reaction can take place even if for some reason a large number of fuel elements were severely overheated and began to melt.
When compared to the direct impacts to life and property of the earthquake and the tidal wave, the nuclear reactors are orders of magnitude smaller in direct impact. --- ie not significant when compared to the other problems going on.
Mean while the explosion on the video simply blew the exterior sheet metal cladding off the building. These buildings are intentionally designed to blow out panels in case of a rapid internal pressure rise without damaging piping etc. All though it looked impressive on the video every indication I have seen is that the structural contents of the building were largely untouched, and only the cosmetic external panels were blown off.
Last of all --
1. There is absolutely nothing we can do about the situation in any case, it is all in the hands of the Japanese half a world away.
2. The radiation releases they are mentioning are gnat farts compared to the expanse of the pacific ocean basin and will have absolutely no impact on the U.S.
3. We are guessing based on 3rd hand info from 3rd hand sources processed for public release. The fact is we have no clue what is really going on, and based on historical nuclear accidents, the specialists on the scene don't fully understand what they are dealing with either and will not know for weeks-years what actually happened inside the reactor. They are making their best guess given loss of all instrumentation and power, and are winging it based on the evidence they have at hand.
There is no real time action you can take that will have any impact at all on you your friends or the resolution of the emergency so lets wait until we have some actual post accident analysis to deal with before we start discussing what shoulda coulda woulda happened.
Larry
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After Chernobyl, the daily left wing paper in West Berlin printed Caesium-137 counts in foods on the local market, everything from Danish qvaark to Turkish figs. I stopped eating the figs. Now I need to find a Geiger counter before harvesting the garden.
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Here is a very good description of what has happened at the plants, how they manage this sort of situation and an description of the outcome. It also has a very good discussion of the multiple layers of protection the plant is designed around.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
Larry
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Those layers are all fine and great, but gone. The building exploded. The Japanese Gov also reported the cooling systems are failing.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576199022182617758.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
(Reuters) - The Japanese Nuclear Safety Agency on Saturday rated the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan at a four on a scale of one to seven, which is not quite as bad as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979, which was rated a five.
The agency hasn't provided an update of its assessment since Saturday despite further problems at the Daiichi plant.
So how were the events different?
THREE MILE ISLAND:
* Three Mile Island is the worst nuclear power accident in U.S. history even though it resulted in no injuries.
* About half the reactor core in one unit at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania melted due to the loss of coolant. The other unit suffered no damage and still operates today.
* The plant did vent a small amount of radiation to release pressure but nuclear experts said that release did not result in radiation levels beyond what environmental regulations allow.
* State authorities recommended a voluntary evacuation of pregnant women and pre-school age children from within five miles of the plant. Within days, about 140,000 people had left the area.
* Operators at Three Mile Island stopped the meltdown by restoring cooling water to the reactor core.
* The Three Mile Island accident was caused by a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies and component failures, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
* After Three Mile Island, the NRC strengthened safety standards for all U.S. reactors, delaying the construction of many reactors already under construction. The industry did not start building a new reactor in the United States for about 30 years, and only in the past few years have power companies sought permission to construct new reactors
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI:
* Three units at the Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a loss of coolant to their reactors following a massive earthquake and a devastating tsunami. The fuel rods in at least one unit were damaged due to the loss of coolant and suffered a partial meltdown.
* The plant vented a small amount of radiation to release pressure in the units' containment, raising the levels in the immediate vicinity of the plant above the legal limit. The plant also suffered an explosion caused by a buildup of hydrogen that collapsed the roof on at least one of the units.
* The government ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from around the plant and by Saturday a total of 140,000 had been evacuated from around Daiichi and another nearby plant Daini.
* Operators at Daiichi are pouring seawater into at least two reactors at the plant to prevent a further meltdown.
* As for the future, nuclear experts said it was too soon to say what affect the Daiichi accident would have on the so-called nuclear renaissance, but noted it would certainly be a lot harder to build a new reactor for a while.
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7:00 Sunday night
A second explosion has happened. The #3 unit has suffered an explosion.
A ten foot tsunami has been reported on the way.
The damage from the earthquake and tsunami are done. The damage from this event could go on for many years.
Your Geiger counter will detect ionizing radiation beta particles and to some extent gamma rays, but won't show alpha radiation.
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Okay, now it's all up to the jet stream.
As Japan is a very modern country, the utter devastation and what it takes to respond to it, gives one pause as to what a similar disaster in the US would entail, with or without the nuke plants.
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We have a similar fault off of the Oregon coast with the potential for a quake of this size that occurred in Japan. Historic records show that quakes occur at periodic intervals and we are due to have another one at any time. We know about this and have been preparing.
Several years ago I did a "tsunami-proof" protection design for a coastal bridge. My part was to figure out how to protect the bridge piers and abutments from the tidal waves. It was our first design of this type and it was amazing how little information was available on this facet of engineering. A lot was basic intuition and there was no established design method. Not a lot of calculations. A lot of it was simply imagining what a tidal wave will act like and acting on that mental image. The bridge protection was designed a few primitive calculations and this method.
This design taught us how little we know. We commissioned a study with the University of Hawaii, Oregon State University, and others. The big task was to model the tidal waves. The wave data would give us information for engineering and we used the recently designed bridge as the subject. Multi dimensional finite element analyses were made using the local sea floor shape and tidal waves coming in from different directions and distances. It took a lot of run time on the most powerful computers in the country to execute the model. The results were worth the trouble. We actually watched the simulated waves rush up and hit the bridge. We saw in the virtual way the things you see in the videos of the Japan tidal waves. It is amazing and terrifying.
Some of our models show coastal Oregon cities being inundated and swept away. We cannot engineer defenses against these waves. They are too big. The best we can do is to avoid them by moving the critical infrastructure up and out of harms way. This will be a big job for the next generation.
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I spent a number of years in the Aleutian Islands way back when. All the Aleut native villages were on the north sides of the islands. On the south sides were evidence of debris, logs and such over a mile inland. We had about 900 small earthquakes per month, and once in awhile some that would rock the boat. Just the tidal change in Unimak Pass would create a 12-16 ft. wall of water. Sorry, no photos. Nature doesn't care.
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Monday morning update.
Unit 1 - Explosion. Seawater and boron. Complete irreversible failure.
Unit 2 - Seawater and boron. Complete irreversible failure.
Unit 3 - Explosion. Seawater and boron. Complete irreversible failure.
Unit 3, which exploded early Monday morning in Japan, reportedly has a leak in its bottom.
"The situation is getting worse by the hour. We haven't hit bottom yet... We now have reports that unit 3 suffered perhaps a 90 percent uncovering of the core -- this is unprecedented since Chernobyl," Kaku said.
The leak is making it difficult to keep the core of the reactor covered with sea water, Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist, said.
The Onagawa plant reported very high levels of radiation. No reports have come from this plant. There is some speculation that the radiation came from the other plants. That's 55 miles from the other plants. The evacuation zone is only 12 miles.
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Ah, Michio Kaku, a "popularizer" of science, author of many books including "Parallel Worlds", currently working on the "Theory of Everything", AND adamant anti-nuclear anything*
Please quote a non-partisan "scientist". :cheers:
Mike
* Kaku has publicly stated his concerns over matters including the human cause of global warming, nuclear armament, nuclear power and the general misuse of science.[6] He was critical of the Cassini-Huygens space probe because of the 72 pounds of plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Conscious of the possibility of casualties if the probe's fuel were dispersed into the environment during a malfunction and crash as the probe was making a 'sling-shot' maneuver around earth, Kaku publicly criticized NASA's risk assessment.[7] He has also spoken on the dangers of space junk and called for more and better monitoring. Kaku is generally a vigorous supporter of the exploration of outer space, believing that the ultimate destiny of the human race may lie in extrasolar planets; but he is critical of some of the cost-ineffective missions and methods of NASA.
Kaku credits his anti-nuclear war position to programs he heard on the Pacifica Radio network, during his student years in California. It was during this period that he made the decision to turn away from a career developing the next generation of nuclear weapons in association with Teller and focused on research, teaching, writing and media. Kaku joined with others such as Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, Peace Action and was instrumental in building a global anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in the 1980s, during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Kaku was a board member of Peace Action and on the board of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City where he originated his long running program, Explorations, that focused on the issues of science, war, peace and the environment.
His remark from an interview in support of SETI, "We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even know.", is used in the third Symphony of Science installment, Our Place in the Cosmos.
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku (http://dia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku)
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The Japanese public has still not gotten the entire story on WW2. Based on that time line (some of the people involved are still alive) we'll have disclosure in 70 years.
Remember that the most delicate patient here isn't the Japanese public (and certainly not the American public), or even Japanese industry, but the Nikkei index. Anything like the truth (cost in trillions broken down per household, years to rebuild infrastructure, how many cancer deaths in 50 years) will make it look like 1929.
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Despite venting from all four reactors, it looks like some power has been restored at the Fukashima Daini plant. They are reporting some cooling pumps running in three of the reactors. The other one is listed as a cold shut down on the 12th.
No such luck 11 miles down the coast. The Fukashima Daiichi plant has had total failure on all three reactors. (three were shut down for maintenance). You no doubt saw the explosions at the #1 and #3 unit. They are afraid #2 will follow.
Sea water and boric acid are being pumped using fire pumps into all three of the reactors. It isn't working. There is a leak out the bottom of #3 and it won't hold water. They think 90% of the core is exposed. #1 and #2 have been fully exposed more than once.
The spent fuel pool is above the reactor. There is a huge amount of radioactive material there.
Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.
“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,” said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.
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This is the first of two photos. I am standing in the opening of the bridge I helped to design and looking west across the Pacific. This ocean was much lower in the ice ages. A lot of water was frozen and on land. This little creek cut a V-shaped channel in the sandstone bedrock. The old channel bottom is 90 feet below my shoes. The ocean rose up after the ice ages and the channel filled with sand and gravel to its present elevation. We drilled a lot of holes to determine the geology of the land under the bridge. Down below my feet under 55 feet of sands and gravels we found fresh wood in many holes. Logs, etc. The wood was not very old. It looked just like the wood on the beach.
There was an earthquake and tidal wave around 1700 AD on the nearby fault about 70 miles or so out in the ocean. Records from Japan helped us to determine the date. The waves hit their islands. We think the tidal wave scoured a 55 foot deep layer of sands and gravels out of this canyon and dumped it back on the beach. The logs were on the bottom of all this. Look close at the ocean edge in the right of the photo. There is a person there with blue pants and a grey top. He or she is standing near something that will tell us about the true power of what we are seeing.
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This is the second photo. We are far out on the beach during a very low tide. Things are visible now that are hidden by a sand layer during the summer months. This is near where the person was standing in the first photo. In front of us is a root ring of a Sitka Spruce. This is not petrified wood. It is the real thing. Cypresses grow in salt water. Sitka spruces cannot. They are usually up on the bank at least twenty feet above the water like the trees on the bluff in the background.
We have map showing all of the land contours around the bridge. We used it when we designed the structure. The root ring is 25 to 35 feet lower than the elevation where Sitka spruces grow now. Geologic studies of the Oregon coast show evidence of the shore dropping suddenly and violently during the big 1700 quake. The evidence can be seen here.
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And it gets worse . . .
#2 exploded. They think this one damaged the pressure vessel. The spent fuel pool was damaged.
Shigekazu Omukai, spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency, said the bottom of the container that surrounds the reactor might have been damaged. Another agency spokesman, Shinji Kinjo, says that "a leak of nuclear material is feared."
Unit #1 spent fuel pool is losing water.
A fire at the #4 unit (one that was not in service) was from the spent fuel pool. Radioactive material was burning OUTSIDE. They are now reporting that they are trying to get the cooling unit working. ON A UNIT THAT WAS NOT IN SERVICE.
Fire was extinguished on Tuesday at the 4th reactor of Japan's quake-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant, Kyodo news agency reported.
The agency also reported that the 4th reactor was also hit by a blast, caused by the build-up of hydrogen.
Most of the personnel at the plant have been evacuated. There is only a skeleton crew remaining.
The radiation level has spiked.
Radiation is now three times higher than normal in Tokyo. The wind is now blowing inland.
Four reactors, four explosions.
At the nearby Fukushima Daini facility, engineers have reported signs of three more reactors overheating, leading them to vent gas. A third facility, the Onagawa nuclear power plant, also is under a state of emergency.
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Radiation is now three times higher than normal in Tokyo. The wind is now blowing inland.
Translation radiation levels in Tokyo have risen to barely detectable levels.
Radiation levels of .809 micro severts were recorded in central Tokyo at 10.00 a.m. local time (9.00 p.m. U.S. Eastern time)
.809 microsieverts = 0.08 mrem. Normal background radiation at sea level is about 1 mrem per day, so 0.08 x 24 hrs = 1.92 mrem which is approximately the normal background radiation here in Denver. In other words it is a meaningless increase in exposure biologically. As I mentioned in a previous post, radiation can be detected at absurdly low levels. Be VERY suspicious when radiation exposures are expressed as X times normal because that usually means that they now have X times almost nothing. It is a classic method used by the media to misrepresent trivial exposures to get viewer hits and ratings.
That said some of the radiation levels near the reactors during the recent radiation spikes were high enough to raise an eye brow, and indicate that there has been some fuel cladding failure, but the readings also rapidly dropped afterwords, indicating the puff of contamination was very small.
The important thing to remember is that radiation absorbed dose is a product of both the rate of exposure and the duration. In areas like Tokyo the duration is long but the exposure rate is so low that it falls well below the threshold for concern biologically.
Many areas of the world have natural radiation levels several times higher than have been reported, were people live out their lives with no adverse effect of any kind.
Larry
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Larry, I continue to be amazed at your calm attitude.
The hydrogen explosion yesterday at the #4 unit came from the spent fuel pool that is open to the atmosphere. The spent fuel ignited and caused radiation levels high enough that the plant was evacuated. 800 people were evacuated. I was surprised only because I can't believe that 800 people hadn't left earlier. In a hurry.
The control room at unit #4 is too hot to occupy.
Units 4, 5, and 6 were shut down for maintenance and supposed to be not a problem. They haven't had electricity to run the pumps either. Now they are reporting high temperatures at all three.
The radiation reported from long distances away seem to hint that maybe they are under reporting the levels at the plant. Foreign journalists have been requested to leave the Sendai area 60 miles away. 16 rescue helicopters are showing radiation levels. The Ronald Reagan 100 miles away instituted decontamination procedures as they fled the area.
"Raise an eyebrow". More like levels that would cause your eyes to bulge out.
Fail safe indeed.
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If memory serves, a single x-ray is about 100,000 microsv/hr or 100 milsv/hr.
The issue though is exposure time.
The issue of contamination on the Ronald Reagan was from a helicopter and crew that landed back on the ship. After decontamination the levels were low enough not to cause alarm.
While a very dangerous and potentally catastrafic, the news is not reported correctly. I also heard the Ronald reagan was moved because of contamination, which it was, just forgot to mention the helo.
John
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Larry, I continue to be amazed at your calm attitude.
I spent 14 years working in emergency management. During that time I tested repaired and calibrated radiological monitoring equipment and was one of the primary trainers for radiological emergency response operations. I also participated in writing emergency response plans for radiological facilities and conducting and evaluating emergency response exercises. I also served as the assistant communications officer so was immersed in the communication streams of several emergencies.
I also helped create one of the Urban Heavy Rescue teams that FEMA sponsors, and spent 5 years on a mountain rescue team.
Lessons learned:
1. The media seldom has a clue what is going on -- we spent more time fixing bad information from the media than we did dealing with actual situations. Therefor take media accounts with a very large bag of salt.
2. You seldom know all the facts even if you are on scene, -- getting excited does not help anyone.
3. The reporting process regarding radiological monitoring is historically a huge problem, it is VERY difficult to get good monitoring data even from trained emergency response personal, and radiological data from untrained sources is 99.99% crap.
It took us years of training to get Phd and masters degree health department responders to report useful radiological data, and even then it was about 30% useless. Under the stress of the moment (just the stress from a simple evaluation exercise) they never could get their head around gathering all the data needed. They also frequently mis-reported actual readings, due to having the equipment set on the wrong range multiplier setting, they reported 100's of mr/h when actual readings were 10's or 1's mr/hr. They could not remember to tell us the actual location or time the readings were taken. They could not remember to write down their measurements and mis-spoke when reporting by radio. They reported readings taken at location A as readings taken at location B. They forgot to include units in their measurements they would report rates of exposure as absorbed dose exposures. (rates would be units/hr, absorbed dose would be units --- they would forget or jumble those units)
As a result it took some detective work to throw out the bad reports and infer the real situation from a body of reports that gave a consistent picture.
4. The public perception of radiation risk is many times higher than the actual risk.
5. Protective actions can cause more harm than good. We considered and rejected the idea of issuing Potassium Iodide tablets to the public for radiological protection because there was a very real risk of killing people due to serious allergic reactions to Potassium Iodide that a small percentage of the population will experience to protect against low levels of radiation exposure that have absolutely zero biological risk.
We are talking about extremely low radiation exposures off site in the context of biological injury. Radiation exposure from a brief whole body dose of gamma radiation is asymptomatic (not reliably detectable even by evaluation of blood tests) at levels of 12-15 RAD, with in modern measuring units would be total exposure of:
120,000 - 500,000 microsieverts -- the media are reporting exposure rates of anything from fractional microsievert rates per hour to 10's of microsieverts per hour in areas off site. In short the actual radiological risk in those areas is essentially zero.
Normal background radiation in most of the world is around 10 microsieverts per day with some areas like here in Denver Colorado having normal background radiation of 20-30 microsieverts. The levels of radiation they are reporting off site are in the first place trivial biologically, second the levels will rapidly drop as decay of the radioactive isotopes occurs.
In the U.S. Annual allowed Occupational exposure rates for non-radiation workers are set at 0.1 rem/year (1000 microsieverts) on top of the normal annual exposure of 0.3 rem/year (3000 microsieverts) from normal background radiation, and incidental exposure of 0.05 rem/year (500 microsieverts) we receive from medical x-rays, high altitude air plane flights etc.
Annual allowed Occupational exposure to radiation workers (which the plant staff is) is much higher at 5 rem/year or (50000 microsieverts) These are considered safe and allowed exposure rates on a continuing basis.
Emergency responders one time acute exposures would be much higher. An employer can allow an individual who works in a restricted area to receive up to 3 Rem / quarter (30,000 microsieverts) ie any 3 month period or total accumulated whole body dose cannot exceed 5(N-18) rems where N is the persons age in years at their last birthday. That means a 40 year old emergency responder could be allowed to receive 5(50-18) REM or an accute dose of 160 Rem (160000 microsieverts).
That said the ALARA guideline is to keep radiation exposure As Low As Reasonably Achievable -- that is why they are doing all the evacuations. It is simply good practice, and probably required by their protective action guidelines, but those levels of radiation exposure are in real terms trivial. They are about as serious as going out in mid day sun without sun screen.
Larry
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Amen
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Larry, you are correct about the dose-time relationship.
U.S. nuclear workers are limited to 50 millisieverts.
I wondered how the workers at Fukushima were getting work done with only 50 left at the plant without going over the limit.
Well, first off the limit in Japan is 100 millisieverts.
The Japanese government was obviously worried about the workers too.
Japan’s Health Ministry raised the legal limit today to 250 millisieverts.
Even with the new limit the last 50 workers were evacuated.
They have abandoned the plant.
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Thanks for some clarity here guys. :cheers:
This is after your last reply Dean. Was it 50 workers or the 800 reported?
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Yes the situation has deteriorated quite a bit if they have pulled back the workers.
That means that "on the plant site and nearby" concern about radiation levels is "now" appropriate.
Nuclear reactors are relentless, they do not pause to take a break for anyone. If you don't keep ahead of developments you can get yourself into a check mate situation where no matter what you do, it is wrong.
If reports I have seen that the Japanese refused to accept emergency air lift of portable generators from America shortly after the situation developed, they may now be paying the price for excess pride getting in the way of smart emergency response.
Still no point in second guessing what is happening, as we don't have any useful level of technical information.
There is still no legitimate radiological threat to the U.S. so panic buying of Potassium iodide is a sad commentary on the media's inability to communicate useful information to the public.
At this point only time will tell. The uncovered spent fuel is actually a bigger external radiological threat than the reactors ever were, as they will produce lots of small particulate smoke if they continue to burn uncontrolled.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Second_fire_reported_at_unit_4_1603111.html
Problems for units 3 and 4
16 March 2011
FIRST PUBLISHED 0.25am GMT
UPDATE 1:14am GMT Information from TEPCO spokesman and video feed
UPDATE 2: 4:10am GMT Update title from 'Second fire reported at unit 4' and information on Unit 3 and 4 from Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has described problems that occurred on the morning of 16 March with Fukushima Daiichi 3 and 4. He also outlined plans to pump water into unit 4.
At 8:34am local time white smoke was seen billowing out of Fukushima Daiichi 3. Efforts to determine the cause of this development were interrupted as all workers had evacuated to a safe area due to rising radiation readings. Readings from a sensor near the front gate had fluctuated for some time, although Edano said that on the whole there was no health hazard. Earlier in the morning readings had ranged between 600-800 microsieverts per hour, but at 10am readings rose to 1000 microsieverts per hour. Readings began to fall again from around 10:54.
Edano said that one possibility being considered was that the unit 3 reactor had suffered a similar failure to that suffered by unit 2 yesterday, although there had been no reported blast or loud sound, which had been the case for unit 2. The immediate focus, said Edano was on monitoring of levels and checking pumping operations.
It was not clear whether the increase in radiation readings were due to the problems today with unit 3 or the ongoing problems resulting from the damage suffered by unit 2, yesterday.
Edano also outlined plans for units 4. Preparations were being made to inject water into unit 4, however the high levels of radiation from unit 3 were impairing those preparations. When possible, the water injection would be done gradually as there were safety concerns over pouring a large amount of water at once. The water will be pumped into the reactor building from the ground, plans to drop water from a helicopter having been abandoned. Although he said that "all things were possible" Edano did not believe that recriticality at unit 4 was a realistic risk
Second fire at unit 4
Earlier, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that a blaze was spotted in the reactor building of Fukushima Daiichi 4 at 5.45am local time this morning.
Attempts to extinguish it were reportedly delayed due to high levels of radiation in the area. A spokesperson for TEPCO said that by around 6:15am there were no flames to be seen.
The incident at unit 4 is believed to be in the region of a used fuel pond in the upper portion of the reactor building.
Origins
Tokyo Electric Power Company issued a notice of an explosion at unit 4 at 6am on 15 March. This was followed by the company's confirmation of damage around the fifth floor rooftop area of the reactor building.
On that day, a fire was discovered but investigations concluded it had died down by around 11am.
At present it is not clear whether today's fire was a completely new blaze, or if the fire reported yesterday had flared up again.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
1000 microsieverts per hour, still is not high enough to prohibit emergency action if proper planning is done to minimize shift time. But it takes extensive prior planning and the workers need to know exactly what they must do during their 10 -15 minutes in the building. Since that reading is at the front gate, no doubt exposure rates are significantly higher in the building.
At the time of the SL-1 accident in Idaho, permissible absorbed dose to save a life was 100 rad (1000 millisievert), to meet that criteria, initial entry teams were limited to shifts of 65 seconds each to perform tasks, with maximum dose received of 27 R with 22 people receiving exposures ranging from 3 to 27 R. These total exposures received in one minute mission time, implied that peak exposure rates in the SL-1 recovery were over 1000 rad/hr (10000 millisievert), possibly 1500 rad/hr (15000 millisievert)
With the LD50 dose* at 450 rad (4500 millisievert) exposure a person would receive a fatal dose in less than 20 minutes at those exposure rates.
*(LD50 dose = the dose that will kill 50% of those exposed within 30 days)
I have no idea what Japanese exposure standards are for critical life saving actions, but even very high exposure rates can be managed by strictly limiting exposure time, and rotating large numbers of people through the rescue tasks. Given the sophistication of modern robotic systems many basic tasks should be able to be accomplished by robotic systems but that also takes pre-planning and availability of the hardware.
The Japanese plant workers may have gotten too far behind the power curve to prevent a major release but only time will tell.
Larry
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I don't think there was any time at Chernobyl that the plant was evacuated.
The doomsday clock keeps ticking whether there are people there or not.
You would think that instead of abandoning work that this possibility would have been discussed in planning sessions the last couple of days.
They will have to mobilize an army of people to do just as Larry says and work for the amount of time the situation will allow.
Some of the Chernobyl workers had a 20 second window to do some work before the had to leave. Permanently.
I saw a picture in National Geographic years after of a field packed with 40 helicopters and hundreds of trucks that were too hot to ever use again.
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I read yesterday that they actually kept one of the undamaged Chernoble reactors operational for YEARS after the one melt down. First I had heard of that?
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The withdrawal of workers was apparently temporary, to allow a radiation spike to dissipate. After a short period of evacuation, they have a small cadre of 50 workers who have returned to the site to continue essential recovery operations.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/16/fukushima-16-march-summary/
Larry
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It's hard to believe that the primary coolant system is still out of operation. I would think you could have any number of generators on site by now. The sea water is being injected through the fire suppression port.
Part of the problem with the spent fuel pool on unit #4 is that all of the primary rods were removed for maintenance and stored in the spent fuel pool along with what was already there.
I would agree with the Brave New Climate that the amount of heat remaining after 5 days would be low. That assumes no damage, clearly that is not the case here.
All in all, it seems like there is a whole lot more going on than the released information would seem to dictate. Putting more water in the spent fuel pool shouldn't be too hard, should it.
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One of the stories I read said that the spent rod pools were ABOVE the containment vessell in those buildings, the ones blowing up?
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Dean, Larry, and all!
When this was first posted I thought, Oh no...
However, this thread has been very enlightening. Thanks SSS for letting it run.
One diagram I saw has the spent fuel pool above the inner containment vessel on the "second floor" inside the secondary containment walls/roof. The second containment is concrete all around the primary, spent fuel pool and anything else. Then there is the rain shield thin covering and skeleton that the hydrogen blast blew off.
The spent fuel pool is contained in a concrete building. My question is how hot do the spent fuel rods uncovered become? I assume not as hot as a useable fuel rod. Then it would not need as much coolant, unless you put good fuel rods in there. Perhaps that's the issue.
It seems the early report of not being able to connect a backup generator because the plug was an incorrect match is poor planning and no ingenuity. I can understand not having the same phase between US generator and Japan pumps, but an electrical plant not being able to connect wires? I would even twist them together.
Now to go look up the decay rate on nuclear stuff. My evening is full. My heart is empty.
Geo
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A US agency helping Japan tackle its nuclear crisis at a stricken nuclear power plant says there is no water in one of the reactor's pools, leading to "extremely high" radiation levels.
The announcement by the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, came as the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant said it had almost completed a new power line that could restore electricity to the facility and avoid a meltdown.
Mr Jaczko, who was briefing US politicians in Washington, said the NRC believed "there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the spent fuel pool".
"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool. And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."
The spent fuel storage is in the upper right labeled "fuel storage pool".
(http://clubtroppo.com.au/files/2011/03/GE_BWR_Containment_Diagram.jpg)
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Thank you, that explains a lot!
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Now to go look up the decay rate on nuclear stuff. My evening is full. My heart is empty.
Geo
It varies a bit depending on what the fuel mix is, but a close approximation often used in nuclear weapon planning for fall out, is that the exposure rate decreases exponentially at an exponent of -1.8 (or very close to that value). The short hand rule of thumb is that for every 7 fold increase in time, the exposure rate decreases by approximately a factor or 10.
Once the reactor shuts down (the emergency scram) the decay products begin this exponential decay. 7 hours after the shut down the radiation intensity of the decay products would be about 10% of its initial value, 7x7 hrs (2 days) after shut down the radiation intensity would be 1% or the original value. After 2 weeks 0.1% of the original value. As you can see the initial decay rate is very rapid, but begins to slow down as only the long half life isotopes are left.
The fission products in an operational reactor are a bit different than a nuclear weapon because the fission process is spread out over time, rather than all happening at a single moment in time. As a result the decay products from fission that occurred weeks or months ago, are in a much later stage of decay that the decay products of fission that occurred just moments before the shut down. As a result the decay is not as abrupt as it would be for a weapons fall out.
This however only applies to the full load of decay products from nuclear fission. In this sort of situation you get fractionation where only certain radio nuclides are mobile enough to get out of the reactor.The nobel gasses decay very rapidly (which accounts for the sharp but brief spikes in radiation as a puff of material escapes the containment. The two most prominent radio nuclides are Iodine 131 which has a 1/2 life of 8.02 days (ie every 8.02 days half of the remaining I 131 ceases to be radioactive). This is easily absorbed by the body and concentrated in the thyroid gland, and is the reason behind issuing potassium iodide tablets to flood the body with non-radioactive iodine to minimize uptake of radioactive iodine.
The second important isotope is Cesium Cs 137 which is a beta and moderate energy gamma emitter but has a half life of 30.17 years, so it takes a significant time to decay away to nothing. Medically it acts much like potassium and the good news is that it washes out of the body fairly quickly, taking only about 70 days for 1/2 of it to be excreted if any is ingested.
The third important radio isotope is probably strontium 90 which has a 1/2 life of 28.8 years. Only about 20% - 30% of the strontium 90 ingested is actually absorbed by the body. The bad news is that it is treated by the body as an analog of calcium and gets deposited in the bones. Its biological half life is about 18 years. Since it mimics calcium, the source of a persons calcium intake impacts how much Sr 90 they will absorb. Persons who get most of the calcium from milk products will take up less Sr 90 than people that get most of their calcium from vegetables, because the cow that makes the milk, preferentially filters out some of the Sr 90.
One of the problems with cooling the reactor core and rods with sea water, is that common salt when irradiated with neutrons captures neutrons and converts to a radioactive isotope Na 24. Sodium 24 has a short half life of 15 hours but it is a gamma emitter so the salt in the sea water could create a new short lived radiation hazard if it is exposed to high neutron irradiation in the core. I am not sure if the neutron flux in the shut down reactor is high enough for this to be an issue there or in the spent fuel rod pool, as I do not know how much fission occurs in the fuel rods in the cooling pool. It is obviously below the threshold to support a chain reaction but it may be high enough to activate some of the salt in the sea water.
Larry
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All I know is there were some big 'splosions by looking at those reactor buildings!
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Slim, I don't know if this guy knows what he's talking about, but he's sure got me convinced he does. Thank you for not closing this off as we know it's a little off our usual subjects.
Stan
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It is a good thread for learning about an important subject we do not usually deal with. Explosions, meltdowns, etc are not totally unfamiliar for most of us.
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As a former vet of Iraq and someone that has worked in the medical field yes he is mostly correct. The only part that he left out is that radiation does not hurt the body hollywood style. You don't enter the reactor and come out looking like you just had the workout of your life unless you had incredible doses of it. More over it can take up to weeks to show signs and symptoms of radiation poisoning and months to die from it. Some of the firefighters might not even begin to show symptoms of poisoning until April. Those who did recieve lethal doses might live another 6 months. Usually it takes 30-90 days to die from radiation poisoning. Radiation Poisoning is a very slow and painful death. Organ failure, tissure burns, loss of apetite followed by intense stomach cramps. Diahrea, Headcahe, and Fever are pretty good signs that sometimes show themselves within 10 min, or some symptoms can wait 4 weeks before presenting themselves like slow healing injuries, bloody vomit or stool, fatigue, disorientation, and other signs as well. Basically some of these exposed peopel could be the walking dead and not know it.
The other problem I havn't seen a lot of talk about is food contamination. Cesium 137 with its half life of 30 years means it has 600 years before it reaches safe levels. So that means it could possibly be spread through the food supplies of the pacific ocean for a long time. The same goes for the more dangerous Strontium 90. Remember once absorbed it doesn't always leave. So lets say it deposits itself in your body, either one of these. Now you live in seattle and love to eat crab. Just an example. You continue to eat crab from the pacific for 30 years or more. That Cesium 137 will still be in the food chain. So you are continuing to add to the levels in your body. Unlike a toxin once deposited in your bones, it will continue to radiate until you die.
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This may be the dumbest thing I`ve ever written, but if there is a complete melt down, would detonating a low power nuclear weapon burn up the remaining radioactive material or just spread it around?
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As a former vet of Iraq and someone that has worked in the medical field yes he is mostly correct. The only part that he left out is that radiation does not hurt the body hollywood style. You don't enter the reactor and come out looking like you just had the workout of your life unless you had incredible doses of it. More over it can take up to weeks to show signs and symptoms of radiation poisoning and months to die from it. Some of the firefighters might not even begin to show symptoms of poisoning until April. Those who did recieve lethal doses might live another 6 months. Usually it takes 30-90 days to die from radiation poisoning. Radiation Poisoning is a very slow and painful death. Organ failure, tissure burns, loss of apetite followed by intense stomach cramps. Diahrea, Headcahe, and Fever are pretty good signs that sometimes show themselves within 10 min, or some symptoms can wait 4 weeks before presenting themselves like slow healing injuries, bloody vomit or stool, fatigue, disorientation, and other signs as well. Basically some of these exposed peopel could be the walking dead and not know it.
The other problem I havn't seen a lot of talk about is food contamination. Cesium 137 with its half life of 30 years means it has 600 years before it reaches safe levels. So that means it could possibly be spread through the food supplies of the pacific ocean for a long time. The same goes for the more dangerous Strontium 90. Remember once absorbed it doesn't always leave. So lets say it deposits itself in your body, either one of these. Now you live in seattle and love to eat crab. Just an example. You continue to eat crab from the pacific for 30 years or more. That Cesium 137 will still be in the food chain. So you are continuing to add to the levels in your body. Unlike a toxin once deposited in your bones, it will continue to radiate until you die.
OMG, you read this and it makes you wonder why we ever thought this was a good idea, sounds like a truly horrific way to die.
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Well, once upon a time there was this insane house painter named Adolf :x
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This may be the dumbest thing I`ve ever written, but if there is a complete melt down, would detonating a low power nuclear weapon burn up the remaining radioactive material or just spread it around?
Short answer is no that won't work, there is no way known to interrupt the radioactive decay process. Once started the radioactive elements begin their step wise decay toward lead or some other heavy non-radioactive elements.
As far as the radiation poisoning -- yes acute over dose is an ugly way to die, but the exposure levels they are talking about are no where near lethal. Radiation exposure is not "exact" the LD50/30 dose of acute gamma exposure is considered to be 450 RAD absorbed dose, but some folks have received in the neighborhood of 1000 and are still walking around.
Regarding the Cs137 and Strontium 90 in the food chain -- been there done that already conducted that experiment with open air testing of nuclear weapons that put several orders of magnitude more radioactive Cs137 and Sr90 in the atmosphere/pacific than these reactor incidents will ever accomplish, and you guys have been eating that trace radioactive material in your sea food for 60 years now. They did the same thing with large parts of Utah that was down wind from the Nevada test site and there are no mutant rabbits to show for it (except for that invisible one named Harvey).
Larry
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I remember the worry about contaminated milk from cows that grazed on grass that had collected Strontium 90 in fallout. That's as close as I can recall about tainted food. Fish? Well, lucky for us - we don't eat much or often, so our chances of catching a doze of radiation are pretty limited there. And most of what we eat is lake trout caught in the great lakes. Keep on chomping.
On the subject of whether this very non-LSR topic should be discussed on the LSR website and Forum -- I personally am enjoying and learning plenty from it and don't want to have it come to an end. If a bunch of members asked me to cease and desist the ongoing topic I would -- but 'til then I'll let it run.
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For a different perspective on radiation poisoning, try arch-conservative Ann Coulter's newest (March 16) column "A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION":
http://www.anncoulter.com/ (http://www.anncoulter.com/)
Mike
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OMG, you read this and it makes you wonder why we ever thought this was a good idea, sounds like a truly horrific way to die.
No worse than being swept to sea after the tsunami, buried alive in an earthquake, having cancer, a virus like HIV, an illness like Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," being hit by a bus and in a coma for months before passing, etc. Time where one can live the slow death in any form is awful. The movies have made us perceive terrible things that do not occur because we like the scary side of things. Much like the news.
I hope we will learn from this event and build smarter in the future.
I had heard bits about the the things Ann Coulter writes about but never gathered together. My fear of nuclear power generation is going away through the knowledge gained in this thread.
Thanks for everyone's contribution.
Geo
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The radiation is the key to all of this.
If this had been a coal fired plant, natural gas fired, hydroelectric plant etc., the cleanup would have been under way and out of the news.
The legacy of this will go on for the next decade or more.
Until someone says this is under control the last page has yet to be written.
You guys build some incredible stuff, so tell me how you would fix this. I was driving to work this morning and heard they should have power by tomorrow. The pump motors were damaged by sea water and they are planning on powering pumps outside the plant. That means they have to somehow run pipes into the reactor. That seems like it would take weeks under decent conditions.
The radiation levels are going to make that super difficult. You need knowledgeable trade people. Anyone working will have a brief time to get the job done and never come back.
The interior of the plant suffered an explosion. It was heard 25 miles away. So just imagine the damage to the wiring, motors, pipes by a thousand pound bomb or something like that. The building structure and debris has collapsed over everything on the interior.
The integrity of the spent fuel pool is in doubt. If it won't hold water it doesn't matter how much you pour in. The aerial effort so far had put 65 tons of water into unit #3 to put water in. I doubt if a fraction of that actually hit the building or came close to the spent fuel pool based on the video. I heard the pool holds 7,500 tons of water.
I also heard an interview with a Russian and American nuclear expert. They looked at the records for unit #4 over the last several years and they say the pool was pretty full before the de-fueling in December. Although illegal, they think the very fresh rods removed in December may have been double stacked. Instead of 16 feet of water they would have had a few feet at best. Speculation, but not out of the question.
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Dean, having worked for long shifts in full chemical gear I can tell you hooking up those outside pumps is a monumental task even in the best of conditions.
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try arch-conservative Ann Coulter's newest (March 16) column "A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION":
http://www.anncoulter.com/ (http://www.anncoulter.com/)
It's been quite a while since I've seen such a magnificent collection of
non sequiturs and straw-men.
What a wonderful splendid textbook of logical fallacies.
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I hope the Japanese are listening.
A special working group set up in Ukraine has passed Japan its proposals on stabilizing the situation at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in Japan.
The group comprises specialists who were involved in clearing the aftermath of the nuclear breakdown at the Chornobyl NPP in Ukraine.
"The proposals were passed by first deputy head of the State Agency for the Zone of Alienation Dmytro Bobro and deputy head of the National Security and Defense Service Serhiy Parashin through the Japanese embassy in Ukraine," the Ukrainian Emergencies Service said in a statement circulated on Thursday.
According to Ukrainian specialists, to bring the heat processes in Fukushima-1 reactors under control, it is necessary "first, to ensure a normal cooling mode in the spent fuel pools by pumping water, sea water as a last resort, into them; second, the type of reactor fuel coolant needs to be changed - water, which might trigger a steam-zirconium reaction fraught with the release of hydrogen and potential blasts, should be replaced with low-melting and chemically neutral metal, for instance tin which will pull heat away from the fuel rods (molten or damaged) towards the inner walls of the reactor, while continuing to use sea water to cool down its outer walls".
The tin 'lake' inside the reactor will "reduce the discharge of heavy fission products and bring ionizing radiation levels down. Chipped tin could be pumped in through steam communications under pressure using cylinders with helium or argon".
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http://www.japanquakemap.com/
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Some of the world nuclear agencies are rating this as a 6 out of 7 on the INES or International Nuclear Incident Scale. Which makes sense since 3 mile Island was a 5 with no casualties, and this one already has 15 dead, and 27 being treated for radiation. They believe core 4 has been dry for days now which means the fuel rods would have cracked leaking very dangerous radioactive material in to the atmosphere. Even though they are working on the situation no one has been close to the cores in days. They are using Global Hawk Drones to try to take photos and assess the problem remotely. The firefighters though are the ones in real trouble. They were exposed to levels of radiation that would cause sickenss or serious health issues, and are being treated at an "unkown" location right now. Meaning they want them out of the public eye for some reason? I think they recieved lethal or harmful doses of radiation and they don't want the knowledge public yet.
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http://www.japanquakemap.com/
Repost. Takes a moment to run, but maps the more than 550 aftershock after the big one.
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My work occasionally involves saving bridges or roads during floods. Often we do work in or near the rivers during the high water. Occasionally it becomes too dangerous, futile, or both and we get the people and equipment out of harms way. The bridge or road is on its own. We come back when everything calms down and we fix or replace as needed.
I know there will not be a nuclear explosion, but what will happen if the workers withdraw from the reactors and let them burn?
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It depends on what is burning and what the local winds are doing.
The good thing is, in the northern hemisphere the prevailing winds "most of the time" are out of the west, north west. Although on the coast you can get on shore winds, odds are more often than not the winds would carry most of the smoke and particulate matter out to sea.
As you say, sometimes the better part of valor is to abandon the problem and let it go. In this case though if the problem is super heated control rods in a dry storage pool, it is one of those things that will only get worse for along time, so it probably justifies some extraordinary efforts to control it like the folks at Chernobyl who did the initial helicopter drops to smother the reactor.
One of the issues is, that the Criticality of the fuel is determined not only by its amount, but in part by its geometry, and in part by how it is moderated.
I use the word Criticality to refer to how close it is to producing a self sustaining chain reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
One of the ways they keep special nuclear material from going critical (starting a chain reaction) is to control its geometry. A given mass of material might be super critical (act like a bomb although very ineffeciently with only a few pounds explosive yield) if in the shape of a sphere. It might be critical ( acting like nuclear reactor with a self sustaining chain reaction) if it is shaped like a fat cylinder, and just below critical if shaped like a long thin rod. Same amount of material but the geometry changes how many neutrons actually hit another fissionable atom. In a sphere you have the maximum mass to surface area ratio, so relatively few neutrons escape the mass without running into another fissionable atom. In the fat cylinder you have more surface area for the same mass so more neutrons escape without causing another fission. As a thin rod, you have maximum surface area and most of the neutrons escape without hitting another fissionable atom.
If the fuel rods get hot enough to melt and run like candle wax they could puddle into a mass that is more sphere like than rod like and begin to produce lots of energy due to a chain reaction. That will create lots of heat usually followed by a small explosion that blows the molten mass apart, but in the process it would produce lots of new radioactive decay products and lots of small particles of highly radioactive material in the form of smoke. This is something that they very much want to avoid. I do not know for sure if the fuel elements chemical make up precludes that sort of melting scenario or not. It might be physically impossible for a serious criticality to occur and only a lesser situation where the metal gets very very hot and gives off very fine particulates (like smoke) that would spread large amounts of radioactive material about. I simply am not up on the specific fuel pellet design of these plants and what can or cannot happen at very high temperatures. In most cases I am familiar with the uranium is in the form of oxides so it cannot "burn" in the classic sense but it can get to very high temperatures.
Moderation can also cause a problem, as a mass that is in the wrong shape and just below a critical state (not quite capable of a chain reaction) can become critical (or super critical) if suddenly immersed in water. So they also have to worry about what happens if they let the fuel run dry and then try to flood it with water later.
Bottom line, this is the sort of situation that in most cases is better attacked vigorously and early. If you get behind the power curve it is like a spin on the salt at some point you cannot catch it any more, and your going for a ride no matter what you do. I don't think they are at that point of no return, but giving up too early could guarantee a bad situation would get worse. Unlike a house burning that you can back off and wait for it to burn out, this in my opinion would not be the sort of situation you would want to with draw from until you are absolutely sure you have no other option.
Someone with actual nuclear fuel design experience would have to address the details of what is possible and impossible due to the actual physical form and makeup of the fuel rods in this plant design. I don't have the background to address that specific question in detail only in theory of certain what if situations.
Some of you might find this article on the "Watt's Up with That" blog interesting:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/17/live-real-time-monitoring-map-of-radiation-counts-in-the-usa/#more-36112
Here are a couple other blog posts on this general topic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/17/in-light-of-radiation-fears-i-offer-this-repost/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/14/some-quotes-news-bytes-on-the-nuclear-energy-tsunami/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/11/nuclear-meltdown-race-to-save-reactors-in-japan/
Larry
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They can't walk away from it because it will keep releasing unacceptable levels of radioactivity.
Units 5-6 have a generator controlling things and they would probably be able to put those units back on line sometime in the future.
Units 1-4 are still out of control and unpredictable. There is no other way to put it. All of them are junk.
Despite the explosion at unit 1 the containment vessel seems to be intact. It may take another week or two to get the pumps working. The damage from the explosion and radiation will complicate this.
I was surprised that it took 5 days to run power 6/10ths of a mile. Turns out the didn't even START until Thursday.
Still wildly unpredictable until that time, but it looks like it is holding for now. The guess is that 70% of the fuel rods are damaged.
Unit 2 may have a leak in the suppression chamber at the bottom. A big problem to deal with, but when the pumps are running they will have time to deal with it.
There has been continuous steam coming out the hole in the side of the building. They have been releasing pressure in spurts to control the pressure in all of the units. The continuous steam isn't good. The guess is that 30% of the fuel rods are damaged.
Unit 3 had a large explosion. It was felt 25 miles away. The damage looks pretty severe. There has been a massive steam cloud coming from the wreckage. The spent fuel pool is an unknown quantity. The containment vessel looks like it is intact. This one is the only one with plutonium in the fuel. Still potential for big problems.
Unit 4 is the biggest worry. They are all BIG worries, but this one is the worst. The reactor was shut down for maintenance and hasn't a problem after the earthquake. Nothing was said or noted about the spent fuel pool until there was an explosion. Because there was no fuel in the reactor it had to come from the spent fuel pool. There was no steam coming from it that was in any picture or report. There was no steam coming out after the explosion either. They are reasonably sure that the pool has cracked from the earthquake or explosion or both. Some water sloshed out during the earthquake.
Because of the wreckage and high radiation levels the fix is not guaranteed. If the pool won't hold water then they will probably have to bury it.
I think the biggest obstacle to all of this is Tokyo Electric Power Company. They ran out of fuel on a pump. They let the pool they were getting the water from run dry. They waited almost a week to run a power cable. They have a big history of lying. They pulled everyone out at one point.
You could argue that they pulled the people out to protect them. At the same time they are endangering millions.
The U.S. recommended a 50 mile evacuation zone for U.S. citizens and military. It was also our way of telling the Japanese citizens they should too.
In China there has been panic buying of salt. The rumor was that the radiation is falling into the ocean and they will be buying radioactive sea salt.
I think this is largely the reason Japan has stuck to a level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. (Just raised to 5) It is clearly higher but they don't want to panic the population. On the other hand, that ship has sailed, hasn't it?
I know 4 co-workers that have purchased potassium iodide.
I can only refer to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. "Don't Panic"
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If you think it is difficult to find Iodine pills, try buying a Geiger counter or dose meter.
Reminds me of the Y2K hysteria.
Am I concerned, yes, on several levels. But, I am more afraid of what will happen in the future by "mass hysteria".
John
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Well we can't eat seafood from the gulf, or the pacific now, looks like the atlantic has a monopoly soon to come :P
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Thanx for the thoughtful answers to my question. The depth of knowledge in the group of people on this forum always amazes me.
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Okay... here I am for the present in Quebec, Canada. The only English language programming on the radio is our venerable CBC.... so, the hysteria monger here in Canada are attempting to use the Japanese situation as wa y to "force" the governments to back down on the coninued or expanded use of nuclear power.
The interesting thing is tha all of the nuclear power facilitie in Canada are nowhere near any oceans.... the Great Lakes don't quite qualify as oceans, do they?
The big question tha has been bothering me and, to date, the radio pundits have not even discussed, is this: Did the reactors suffer the damage from the earthquake directly, or did they actually survive it only to have their emergency infrastructure wiped out by the tsunami?..... in essence, was the earthquake directly the cause of the catastrophe or was the resulting tsunami the cause?
Because, if the reactors can survive the earthquake...... in an area like central Canada which is not noted for large magnitude earthquakes, and having virtually no possibility of resultant tsunamis even with a large earthquake .... are the fear mongers really nothing more than that?
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Sea level is referenced from a point on the earth called a bench mark. The bench mark certainly would not be on the Oregon coast where the land drops up to 30 feet in earthquakes or in the Oregon Cascades that measurably rise. The geodetic survey chose a location they felt would be very stable. It would not rise or fall and there would be little chance of an elevation change from an earthquake. The benchmark is somewhere in the eastern Canadian arctic on the stable land mass called the "Canadian Shield." Eastern Canada has some of the most stable ground on the planet.
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Eastern Canada has some of the most stable ground on the planet.
A point that seldom comes up. Mostly granite and gneiss. Geologically speaking, it would also be among the safest places on earth to bury spent nuclear waste.
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Ya'll keep your "spent nuclear waste" off the East Coast...LOL... We already have enough of our own. There is a Nuclear Plant in Point Lepreau, New Brunswick. And it is very close to the ocean. http://poweringthefuture.nbpower.com/en/Default.aspx
I have been following this thread off and on, and appreciate all the information that has been shared. We currently have a International Student with us from Osaka, Japan. She is forunate, that her family is safe. Thanks for sharing the wealth of knowledge.
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I agree, I have been telling my neighbors about this thread. This interaction has been the most informative, very factually presented by people in different industries or professional backgrounds, from a slightly different bias. This is the way the deductive learing process WORKS!! now if I just don't have to much of an AGE bias CRS :? :-o :cheers: :cheers:
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We're resting on the Laurentian Shield here n the UP of Michigan (and neighboring states). The rock is stable and hard - to the point that the Navy used this area to build their submarine communications antenna and system -- Project Elf.
This part of the US is also pockmarked by hundreds, if not thousands, of deep holes dug for mining copper and iron. Up in Hoton, where Walt is going to school, the deep ones were on the order of 7,000 below surface - and since they were angled -- more than 9,000 feet of overall length.
Those two factors would make it, at least at first blush, a great place for storage -- pre-dug holes and very stable geology.
I wonder why the UP hasn't been talked about as a long term repository for nuclear waste? Could it have anything to do with the proximity of the Great Lakes?
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From what I have gathered searching a weeks worth of news is that the Tsunami wiped out the emergency generators for backup AFTER the earthquake/tsunami took out the basic infrastructure. No pwoer, now cool water for the fuel rods. That led to overheating, explosions and leaks. There is also some speculation that the Japanese has "double stacked" spent fuel rods in one of the storage ponds making it easier to overheat when things hit the fan.
Okay... here I am for the present in Quebec, Canada. The only English language programming on the radio is our venerable CBC.... so, the hysteria monger here in Canada are attempting to use the Japanese situation as wa y to "force" the governments to back down on the coninued or expanded use of nuclear power.
The interesting thing is tha all of the nuclear power facilitie in Canada are nowhere near any oceans.... the Great Lakes don't quite qualify as oceans, do they?
The big question tha has been bothering me and, to date, the radio pundits have not even discussed, is this: Did the reactors suffer the damage from the earthquake directly, or did they actually survive it only to have their emergency infrastructure wiped out by the tsunami?..... in essence, was the earthquake directly the cause of the catastrophe or was the resulting tsunami the cause?
Because, if the reactors can survive the earthquake...... in an area like central Canada which is not noted for large magnitude earthquakes, and having virtually no possibility of resultant tsunamis even with a large earthquake .... are the fear mongers really nothing more than that?
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Correct the reactors that were in operation immediately did an emergency shutdown (scram) when the earth quake occurred. This shuts down the power production of the nuclear reactor, by inserting the control rods to shut down the chain reaction. This still leaves the decay heat of the nuclear fuel that had just fissioned shortly prior to the shut down. This decay heat starts out at some where near 7% of the power level the reactors were at when the SCRAM occurred,so we are talking about 6-7 mega watts of heat that needed to be dissipated.
The reactor facilities successfully survived the mechanical effects of the earth quake even though the earthquakes were more intense than the design quake they were built to survive (this means they were well engineered for earth quake shaking). Design quake was about a 7.2 if I remember correctly, the actual quake has now been calculated to be a 9.0 This means the actual energy released was on the order of 500 x the energy designed for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/how_much_bigger.php
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/calculator.php
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf18.html
Due to the decay heat, the reactors need to be actively cooled for some time after shut down, normally it takes something like 4-5 days to cool the core to the point it is considered a "cold shutdown", meaning the decay heat is low enough that no forced cooling is needed.
To accomplish the cooling, they had emergency diesel generators to power cooling pumps that kicked on immediately after the earth quake and reactor shutdown and these ran for about an hour cooling the reactor cores when the tsunami hit. The plant had protections for a tsunami event but the design height they were built for was about a 6.3-6.5 meter tsunami (I have seen both figures). The actual tsunami that struck the plant was about a 10 meter wave ( 32 -33 ft). This swamped the running diesel generators and took out external power line feeds to the plant, and destroyed all land access routes to the plants.
With the diesel generators swamped, they switched over to a third layer of emergency backup in the form of stand by batteries that could power some cooling pumps and equipment. These batteries were only good for hours (not sure of the exact duration of emergency battery power), before they were exhausted.
That is when things started to get out of hand. With outside access and power essentially destroyed, it was impossible to bring in additional backup equipment and power fast enough to prevent some over heating and that resulted in the emergency steam releases where they tried to release excess steam pressure in the reactor pressure vessel to protect it from over pressure. When they released steam it contained hydrogen gas which when mixed with air became an explosive fuel air mixture and exploded when it found an ignition source, blowing the exterior weather sheathing walls off the super structure of the upper part of the buildings. Although the explosions were violent and impressive, because the walls were of light construction they acted as blow out panels and most of the energy went up and away from the plant structure, and did not appear to harm the physical high strength containment structure that separates the reactor from the outside world.
Later one of the cooling torus structures in one of the reactors apparently was damaged by an internal hydrogen explosion or some other event. They only know that they heard "loud noises" and that pressure in the torus rapidly dropped to atmospheric pressure.
In short the nuclear reactors successfully survived not 1 but at least 4 insults that were above design limits, (earth quake largest ever recorded in Japan and 5 th largest in modern quake history, a tsunami about 1.5X larger than the design tsunami, and an extended period with no forced cooling due to the swamping of the emergency generators, exhaustion of the emergency battery backups and an in ability to resupply and repair due to the destroyed surrounding area blocking access, followed by fuel air explosions due to hydrogen mixed with steam vented to protect the pressure containment structures).
From an engineering view point the plants did very very well considering all these insults. Whether there were easily foreseeable protective measures that could have been included in the design to cover even these issues (such as elevated locations for the diesel generators, higher tsunami protection etc.) will all come out in time.
I am sure planning for tsunami protection of nuclear power plants near the sea will change construction practices world wide as a result of this event.
Keep in mind that these are 30 year old plant designs and some of the newer plant designs have much more robust cooling systems that are less reliant on external forced cooling in emergency shut down mode.
All things considered I think the plants did very well given what got thrown at them.
Larry
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Hey hotrod larry,
That is a pretty interesting post.... and pretty much the answer to what I was asking.... It was my gut feeling that the sequence that you describe was how it all came to be....
It is remarkeable though that, here in Central Canada, nobody has presented it this way.... but my earlier post in which I stated that newsroom editors strain the wheat from the chaff and then go ahead and print the chaff is probably too close to the truth.... if the facts of the matter were widely published, the fear mongers would be rather deflated and then what controversy would the editors have ongoing chaff with which to fill newspapers?...
It is sort of shameful when these issues and know the facts surrounding them are pretty much life or death issues.... from one had- NOT knowing the true potential dangers of radioactive exposure is a potential death dealing issue.... and the potential for death dealing stress from being unduly worried about non-existent problems which get fomented due to fear mongering and the more or less deliberate barrage of mis-information is, on the other hand, an equal problem....
Gee, I never knew that we had people with this level of knowledge amongst the Land Speed racing community!.... keep it up, guys!
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Ya'll keep your "spent nuclear waste" off the East Coast...LOL... We already have enough of our own. There is a Nuclear Plant in Point Lepreau, New Brunswick. And it is very close to the ocean. http://poweringthefuture.nbpower.com/en/Default.aspx
I have been following this thread off and on, and appreciate all the information that has been shared. We currently have a International Student with us from Osaka, Japan. She is forunate, that her family is safe. Thanks for sharing the wealth of knowledge.
NS Rider.... An interesting post and thanx for the link....
Now, another quetion.... a 10 meter high tsunami could travel uphill to what elevation above sea level prior to its energy being spent.... the Point LePreau plant really does not look to be that high above sea level....
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A measurement of earthquakes I did not know about quantifying ground movement in horizontal and vertical planes, measured in Galileo units - Gal (cm/sec2) or g - the force of gravity, one g being 980 Gal. This is a build spec used for new nuclear facilities.
Also with historical reports of past earthquakes and nuclear power plant events up to this past week.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf18.html
I read about the size of the electric motors for the pumps but cannot find it again. 1000 hp is the number I recall which would take a very large generator.
Nuclear Power Plants & Earthquake Activity
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-power-plants-earthquake.html
Geo
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In the old days of coastal engineering when many of these plants were designed we relied a lot on simplistic conservative design assumptions, elementary computer modeling (by today's standards), experience at the sites, and we included big safety factors. There is no way I can know what went into the Point Le Preau hydraulic design, but I'll bet it is robust. Most of us hydraulic engineers know that wave height prediction is a very inexact science and our motto is "when in doubt, build it stout."
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I wonder why the UP hasn't been talked about as a long term repository for nuclear waste?
The wrong people own the property.
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You mean the good ol' federal government, don't you? As for private parties -- well, we own 60 acres and nobody's asked us for permission. :roll:
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I am sure there was damage from the earthquake. This 40 year old facility was designed with an antiquated knowledge of earthquake dynamics. I'm sure there were seismic upgrades through the years, but it's much harder to upgrade, and cost often trumps necessity.
All large projects suffer from delayed preventive maintenance. Any time you want to save money, yank it from maintenance. TEPCO has a past history of falsifying records and skipping inspections.
The before and after pictures show a lot of tsunami damage to the facilities between the main building and the ocean. That could have been vital equipment.
All of that happened in the first hour. I believe that everything that has happened past that point is largely influenced by human failures.
It didn't take too long to realize that significant damage to the mechanical and electrical structure was caused by the tsunami. Work should have begun at that point to pump the water out and start repairing water related damage. By Saturday morning I would have had spare pumps coming my way.
In another setback, the plant's operator said Monday it had just discovered that some of the cooling system's key pumps at the complex's troubled Unit 2 are no longer functional — meaning replacements have to be brought in. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it had placed emergency orders for new pumps, but how long it would take for them to arrive was unclear.
It took them 10 days to figure out that earthquake damaged, tsunami flooded, seawater choked pumps wouldn't work? They couldn't yank a pump from a facility that is under maintenance? The pumps from the shut down unit #4 wouldn't work?
Shortly after the batteries died and all power went away, the water temperature reached the boiling point. Pressure exceeded design limits. Three hours after the earthquake the first steam was released. Now the workers risk goes way up because that steam is mostly carried away, but some comes back down on the plant.
The steam internally is used to run a pump that circulates the water inside to cool things off, but at some point all the water is overheated. The heat has no place to go so temperatures continue to rise. Venting steam helps, but more water has to be added. At some point they start running out of clean water to inject.
Batteries from other nuclear plants were sent to the site and mobile generators arrived within 13 hours, but work to connect portable generating equipment to power water pumps was still continuing as of 15:04 on 12 March. Generators would normally be connected through switching equipment in a basement area of the buildings, but this basement area had been flooded. After subsequent efforts to bring water to the plant, plans shifted to a strategy of building a new power line and re-starting the pumps
Plans shifted? Really? Wouldn't you bring in enough people to work as many strategies as you could, only stopping when something else actually worked?
As the reactor heated past 2,200 degrees early last Saturday, hydrogen started building up. This is a well known and documented problem. This happens when the water level drops below the radioactive rods and there is nothing to cool them.
TEPCO knew that they had run out of water and the rods were exposed. Caesium-137 and iodine-131 were detected and that could only happen through uncovered degrading rods. I can't fathom why, but the hydrogen gas was vented into the containment building. It should have been harmlessly routed to a flare stack to burn off, but that may not have been possible without power.
25 hours after the earthquake there was a massive explosion of hydrogen gas. 8 hours earlier there were indications that the rods were uncovered. 5 hours after the explosion the decision was made to start injecting sea water.
There is speculation that the Japanese culture had a lot to do with decision making. The desire to save face, and profits led them to delay far, far too long on the decision to inject sea water. That decision means that a multi-billion dollar investment is toast.
Also the pool that was being used as a seawater source for the pumps ran dry and caused the fuel to be exposed. The pump ran out of fuel again causing the fuel to be exposed.
While all of this is going on nobody thought to check the spent fuel pool in unit #4? There have been reports that the spent fuel pool on unit #2 may have been a problem early on, the spent fuel pool on unit #3 definitely was a problem.
There has been a lot of heroic mention of the "Fukushima 50" fighting to save the plant. At one point it was the "Fukushima Zero" when everyone was pulled out due to high radiation levels. Several analysts have mentioned that due to the danger to tens of thousands of people around the plant that suicide missions shouldn't be ruled out. They should have bought in enough people working in short shifts to keep the required number of people working the many, many problems.
There have been reports that power will be supplied to units 3 and 4 soon. Have you noticed the tons of water they are still pouring into that building? If you stop pouring water the radiation levels soar. If you don't stop you can't fix the electrical. Both units have massive damage from the explosions.
There have been mentions of entombing some portion in concrete. There are serious problems with that approach. If the reactor vessel is entombed the heat has no place to go. It could cause the original concrete containment structure to crack, along with the new.
The spent fuel pool is a bigger problem. You can't put concrete where there is high heat, it crumbles to sand. You can't put much weight on the pool because it is hanging off the side of the reactor structure and the whole thing might collapse. That means you have to put a structure underneath to support it.
These boys have many months of work before they have a handle on this problem.
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Geez Dean, don't paint such a rosey picture now will ya!? :-D
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WOW!
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Well the cracks have started. Not in the reactor, in the history of this plant and the Japanese nuclear industry.
The Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, a mostly government-funded group monitoring safety and conducting inspections, reported Daiichi had the highest accident rate of any big Japanese nuclear plant. The data shows Daiichi's workers were exposed to more radiation than their peers at most other plants
Tokyo Electric missed 117 inspections at Kashiwazaki, the nuclear safety agency late last year ordered the utility to conduct a companywide review of its inspection systems. In response, Tokyo Electric reported that it skipped 54 separate inspections, the 33 at Fukushima Dai-ichi — whose Unit 1 is one of Japan's oldest reactors in operation — and the rest at the nearby Fukushima Daini.
Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the centre of Japan's nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.
The committee reviewing extensions pointed to stress cracks in the backup diesel-powered engines at Reactor No. 1 at the Daiichi plant, according to a summary of its deliberations that was posted on the Web site of Japan's nuclear regulatory agency after each meeting. The cracks made the engines vulnerable to corrosion from seawater and rainwater.
Tokyo Electric had met all required protections from earthquakes. Inspectors, however, had spent just three days inspecting the No. 1 unit, a period that industry experts say was far too brief because assessing the earthquake risk to a nuclear plant is one of the most complex engineering problems in the world. It did, however issue caveats that the operator TEPCO to monitor potential damage from radiation to the reactor’s pressure vessel, which holds fuel rods; corrosion of the spray heads used to douse the suppression chamber; corrosion of key bolts at the reactor; and conduction problems in a gauge that measures the flow of water into the reactor
In 2000, a whistle-blower at a separate company that was contracted to inspect the reactors told regulators about cracks in the stainless steel shrouds that cover reactor cores at Fukushima's Daiichi plant. But regulators simply told the company to look into the issue, allowing the reactors to keep operating.
Nuclear regulators effectively sat on the information about the cracks in the shrouds, said Eisaku Sato, the governor of Fukushima Prefecture at the time and an opponent of nuclear power. He said the prefecture itself and the communities hosting the nuclear plants did not learn about the cracks until regulators publicized them in 2002, more than two years after the whistle-blower reported the cracks.
In 2003, regulators forced Tokyo Electric to suspend operations at its 10 reactors at two plants in Fukushima and 7 reactors in Niigata Prefecture after whistle-blowers gave information to Fukushima Prefecture showing that the company had falsified inspection records and hid flaws over 16 years to save on repair costs. In the most serious incident, Tokyo Electric hid the large cracks in the shrouds.
Eighteen months before Japan's radiation crisis, U.S. diplomats had lambasted the safety chief of the world's atomic watchdog for incompetence, especially when it came to the nuclear power industry in his homeland, Japan.
An unnamed IAEA official told the G8 Nuclear Safety and Security Group in December 2008 that guidelines for seismic safety had been revised only three times in the past 35 years and the IAEA was re-examining them, another cable showed.
"Also, the presenter noted recent earthquakes in some cases have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants, and that this a serious problem that is now driving seismic safety work."
Tepco's 17 nuclear reactors were temporarily shut down after it admitted in 2002 that it had falsified inspection findings and covered up serious flaws for 16 years. The company's president and four other executives resigned after the news became public.
In 2004, Kansai Electric's officials at the Mihama plant admitted they had not acted on safety warnings before a corroded pipe burst, spewing superheated steam that killed four workers. (The steam was not radioactive.)
It wasn't until 2007 that Hokuriku Electric Power Co. revealed that its Shika nuclear plant had a critical accident in 1999.
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The possible cause of the leaks in the spent fuel pool.
(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_libecrgLyW1qbnrqd.jpg)
A possible source of the leak in the Unit 4 pool may be the seals around the doors (or “gates”) on one side of the spent fuel pool. These gates are shown in the diagram below. They are located between the pool and the area above the reactor vessel. They are concrete with metal liners, and are roughly 20’x 3’.
When fuel is moved between the pool and vessel, this whole region is filled with water, the gates are opened, and the fuel can be moved to or from the reactor core while remaining under water. The water not only keeps the fuel rods cool but acts as a radiation shield.
When the gates are closed, they are made watertight by an inflatable seal, similar to a bicycle innertube, that runs around the sides and bottom of the gates. Electric air pumps are used to inflate these seals and keep them inflated as air leaks out of them over time.
These pumps are powered by electricity from the power grid, and not by backup diesel power or batteries. So once the power grid in Japan was knocked out, these seals could not be inflated if they lost air over time. If these seals lost air they could lead to significant water loss from the pool, even if there were no direct physical damage to the pool from the earthquake or tsunami. This may be what happened at pool 4, and could affect the other pools as well.
We saw an example of this in the US at the Hatch nuclear plant in Georgia in December 1986. This reactor is very similar to the reactors at Fukushima. In the Hatch case, the line supplying air to the inflatable seal was accidentally closed, the seal lost pressure and created a leak, and by the time the problem was identified several hours later some 141,000 gallons of water leaked from the pool—about half the water in the pool Fortunately, the source of the problem was discovered and fixed before the water level uncovered the fuel.
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Keep posting Dean. All the rocks have not been turned over yet.
I have been looking at the newest design using liquid metal as the cooling and heat transfer medium. Passive cooling with no need for electricity. I'm sure there is some switch or valve that needs power to get through a disaster. However, if no water is needed to cool it then there is no need to build by any water. However what happens when the liquid metal leaks out? What do you cool it with then?
Then there are the human decision makers... Can we get rid of them?
Geo
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Then there are the human decision makers... Can we get rid of them?
Geo
Complex systems are always more vulnerable to failure due to human interactions and decisions than they are due to mechanical failure.
Even the best system can be compromised by a poorly thought out decision to save $30 by someone who has no clue what they are doing.
Accountants are by far the most dangerous decision makers in an industrial environment, immediately followed by managers with MBA's and no technical experience.
The accountants drive poor decisions by management types that have MBA's but no technical background in the systems they are managing. As a result they do not listen to the technically trained staff that try to tell them they really should not be doing something that cuts some corner to avoid some paper work or the the nuisance of actually doing safety inspections, or failure analysis to determine the real cause of problems vs the symptom.
Unfortunately it is the symptom that usually gets treated just well enough so it goes away and although the device is trying to tell you something is wrong they just duct tape it or squirt WD-40 on it until it stops complaining and go on blissfully ignorant of the impending problem.
Larry
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Your words- hotrod larry
Accountants are by far the most dangerous decision makers in an industrial environment, immediately followed by managers with MBA's and no technical experience.
The accountants drive poor decisions by management types that have MBA's but no technical background in the systems they are managing. As a result they do not listen to the technically trained staff that try to tell them they really should not be doing something that cuts some corner to avoid some paper work or the the nuisance of actually doing safety inspections, or failure analysis to determine the real cause of problems vs the symptom.
Unfortunately it is the symptom that usually gets treated just well enough so it goes away and although the device is trying to tell you something is wrong they just duct tape it or squirt WD-40 on it until it stops complaining and go on blissfully ignorant of the impending problem.
These are now my words-
Having been a mechanical maintenance technician almost all of my working life, I SAW the company I worked for go through the various phases until the division I worked for was just another operation that broke like all the other ones.... for decades, the veneer and plyood operation was wold renown for duality product, being arguably the fastest veneer lathe in the world, running with a downtime percentage of less than 1%.... etc....
What I saw take place was accountants and college educated buffoons become "the flavor of the month" people- the "saviors" of the company etc.... we maintenance people became greedy featherbedders who were only in it for the overtime we could make and nothing els.... and NOT to be trusted.....There are reasons that I no longer work for them...
So, in my "new" career path I work as a service engineering technician... a bit less hands on but in the midst of everything to do with rebuilding ore processing equipment in mine concentrators.... and the bean counters and book learned people are the lords and saviors to the mining companies as well!!!!.... OMG!... the "bone-headed" decisions that we see being made on an alarmingly regular basis is incredible.... just one example- run the grinders until just before the liners wear out.... we can save a the equivalent of two liner changes a year for 10 machines at a cost of 1/2 a million dollars each and the week of down time each with the resultant lost production....the only trouble is, based on empirical data, they were already running the liners to the ragged edge.... the times between had been stretched by several weeks already- due also in part to better quality liner material as well as weekly inspections (which also got pushed back- first to bi-weekly and then monthly)...
And then, in the course of one year.... wearing seriously through the liners and compromising the integrity of the mill shells on three of them.... oops!.... now they are looking at replacing the mills and the truth as to why is not being told.... production is down because they cannot run full charge through the mills.... and several million dollars is what it will cost to repair.... with months of down-time.... but the "spin-doctors_ also known as bean counters and MBAs are touting the "new investment" in labor saving costs and new efficiencies that will ultimately make the mining companies even more money... and they have the spreadsheets to prove it... the shareholders are generally completely lacking in knowledge, the boards of directors pretty much the same as well.... and now. pathological liars firmly in control where it matters most and they should be nowhere near....
It is very difficult that, in an era where it is "profits before people" and increase the profitablity by 20% more than the industry trailing average on a year over year basis, there would be none of these so-called management techniques pervasively ensconced within the power utility company over in Japan too.
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If you want to look on the down side of nuclear:
http://allthingsnuclear.org/ (http://allthingsnuclear.org/)
Interesting reading, very interesting.
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3581726548/fission-stories-35-down-is-up-up-is-down (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3581726548/fission-stories-35-down-is-up-up-is-down)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3309040106/fission-stories-33-not-so-cool (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3309040106/fission-stories-33-not-so-cool)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3179948287/fission-stories-32-luckiest-workers-in-tennessee (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3179948287/fission-stories-32-luckiest-workers-in-tennessee)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3048174782/fission-stories-31-boston-t-party (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3048174782/fission-stories-31-boston-t-party)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2810919384/fission-stories-29-a-133-000-gallon-drop-in-the-ocean (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2810919384/fission-stories-29-a-133-000-gallon-drop-in-the-ocean)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2492730228/fission-stories-26-three-weeks-below-the-mast (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2492730228/fission-stories-26-three-weeks-below-the-mast)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2401726417/fission-stories-25-please-dont-flush-the-toilet (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2401726417/fission-stories-25-please-dont-flush-the-toilet)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2312059880/fission-stories-24-drainy-night-in-georgia (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/2312059880/fission-stories-24-drainy-night-in-georgia)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/1350931673/fission-stories-16-candle-in-the-wind (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/1350931673/fission-stories-16-candle-in-the-wind)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/966875429/fission-stories-7-indoor-pool (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/966875429/fission-stories-7-indoor-pool)
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/897763210/fission-stories-5-where-theres-smoke-theres-a (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/897763210/fission-stories-5-where-theres-smoke-theres-a)
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Sorry, Dean, but UCS is, in my opinion, a lunatic group.
The first few words from their website under the heading Global Warming: Global Warming The Earth is warming and human activity is the primary cause.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/ (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/)
Having read that, I don't have time to read their (presumably) anti-nuclear energy rhetoric.
Mike
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I like nuclear energy when its done correctly. Plus we need depleted uranium shells for our ammunition. Cutting buildings in half in Iraq was very amusing, and helpful. When people would barracde themselves in, we would use LAV 25s with Thermal Sights to remove the threat. Without those depleted uranium shells we could have never cut through walls like they didn't exist.
Also nuclear power is great when its done correctly. Im sure you can read up on horror stories about how power plants of all types have caused some pretty big disasters. This plant got too complacent. Thats what we need to watch out for. They got to comfortable and forgot about the hazards they needed to be protected from. Now they have dumped massive amounts of cooling water in to the pacific via the fire hose cooling.
Complacency Kills - Always remember this. We would say it every time we left the wire on a patrol in Iraq.
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applies to equipment also---you take it for granted ---it is probably going to BITE you
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Hats off to the technicians who continue to work on the reactor. News reports now indicate they are willfully sacrificing their lives to save others. They have received huge doses of radiation, but continue to work.
There is a need to retire the first gen powerplants. Newer models are far safer. The Fukashima reactors were very old designs.
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They are old designs - AND THEY ARE BUILT IN THE WRONG PLACE.
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We we should just retire all things old and be done with it :-P
Just teasing.
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It seems time to post a snap of events as of three weeks after the disaster in Japan. First is the status of the damaged power plants. I have read some reports that are not correct so I gathered the info from source documents.
The easiest description of cold shutdown was from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A reactor is in cold shutdown when, in addition, its coolant system is at atmospheric pressure and at a temperature below 200 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. 95 degrees Celsius).[1] This temperature is low enough that the water cooling the fuel in a light water reactor does not boil even when the reactor coolant system is de-pressurized.
For the four units not at cold shutdown pressure readings are not available and some may be leaking as known by radiation found in the air and ground around the plant.
NISA as of March 29, 2011 almost three weeks after the disaster. Up date 4-1
Note: The first four reactors have (-) negative water levels.
Dai-ichi
Unit 1 (460MWe): automatic shutdown Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] -1,650
Temperature at the bottom head of RPV: 135.8℃
Unit 2 (784MWe): automatic shutdown Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] -1,500
Temperature at the bottom head of RPV: 143.6℃
Unit 3 (784MWe): automatic shutdown Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] -2,250
Temperature at the bottom head of RPV: 121.1℃
Unit 4 (784MWe): in periodic inspection outage Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] ?
Reactor water temperature ℃ ?
Unit 5 (784MWe): in periodic inspection outage, cold shutdown at 14:30 March 20th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +2,333
Reactor water temperature ℃ 3-29 40.5 4-1 44.1
Unit 6 (1,100MWe): in periodic inspection outage, cold shutdown at 19:27 March 20th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +1,904
Reactor water temperature ℃ 3-29 30.3 4-1 29.8
Dai-ni
Unit1 (1,100MWe): automatic shutdown, cold shut down at 17:00,
March 14th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +9,296
Reactor water temperature ℃ 27.2
Unit2 (1,100MWe): automatic shutdown, cold shut down at 18:00,
March 14th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +10,296
Reactor water temperature ℃ 27.7
Unit3 (1,100MWe): automatic shutdown, cold shut down at 12:15,
March 12th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +7,823
Reactor water temperature ℃ 39.2
Unit4 (1,100MWe): automatic shutdown, cold shut down at 07:15,
March 15th Reactor Water Level*2 [mm] +8,036
Reactor water temperature ℃ 34.0
This got me thinking about what training and preparations are made to respond to these events. Reading the reports reminded me of the roadster drivers telling about the things they do during spins and after all the steering, switching off systems and pulling the chute it all ends up with "hold on tight", wait for the spinning to stop and check for damage. Just what is a Monte Carlo Dynamic Event Tree – MCDET? And why is Monte Carlo part of the name?
Then I investigated environmental changes over the years from previous radioactive release events, i.e. Chernobyl because I came across an article on radioactive wild boars in Germany, which led me to other releases of radioactive material.
And taking another step to finding out what happens to radioactive waste at nuclear power plants and can this be applied to the Japan debris field around the plant?
Enjoy the links and be concerned because the people in charge seem to have the Alfred E. Neuman approach "What me worry?" Perhaps they do not worry enough$
An intriguing report that brings up the issues causing and resulting from the Japan incident without a good outlook for the future safety. Much of what we have been discussing here. Not much hope when a disaster occurs.
http://www.euronuclear.org/pdf/HIGHLIGHTS-TOPSAFE2008.pdf
All papers from TOPSAFE can be downloaded freely from
http://www.euronuclear.org/events/topsafe/transactions.htm.
A well thought out disaster scenario that needs updating after the Japan incident to make it closer to reality.
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=osu1158672136
SARNET - Severe Accident Research NETwork
http://www.sar-net.eu/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11345935
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,709345,00.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_germany_radioactive_boars
Canadian water release
http://www.opg.com/news/releases/110316lowlevelwaterrelease.pdf
Ground water contamination events. Wow, quite a lot.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/sites-grndwtr-contam.html
Incident reports
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/plant-info.html
What may become of the vast debris field caused by the tsunami destroying the adjacent town?
Is there a rapid response team for cleanup of radioactive debris like the fire department has?
Waste management
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull314/31404683742.pdf
http://www.nucleartourist.com/systems/rw.htm
New reactors produce more rapid release isotopes than old style reactors.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/new-nuclear-plants-will-produce-far-more-radiation-1604051.html
Geo
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The United States DOE says that 70% of the core in reactor #1 has suffered severe damage.
The Japanese experts said it's only 3%.
No one will be able to actually look at the core for many years, if not decades to actually make the call.
It was 5 years before the actual damage to Three Mile Island was known.
To fill in the gaps a very sophisticated program was developed to look at the radiation signatures to be able to tell the actual damage without examining the facility. For instances like this one where it looks like everybody on site is giving little information and much of it suspect. Trust the DOE number.
TEPCO admitted that it only had 450 radiation dosimeters. Only the team leaders get one. They claimed that they had 5,000 but the rest were destroyed in the earthquake. I read that to say that they only had 450 in the first place. Seems like those could have been acquired from their other facilities.
Two weeks ago a spike in ocean radiation was detected. I just figured they were illegally pumping the overflow from the fire pumps in the ocean. It was clear to me that water had to be pouring in at a high rate to get the readings they were seeing. Now they are trying to seal a huge leak because they just discovered water was going in the ocean. I don't need to be on site to detect these things either.
As the days go on the damage from the earthquake alone it seems was pretty severe.
There are over 1,000 corpses in the evacuation area that no one will touch because of the radiation levels.
This disaster is very far from over.
It was mentioned that the 50 mile evacuation zone that the U.S. is recommending in Japan, if it were applied to the San Onofre nuclear plant in San Clemente, CA, half way between Los Angeles and San Diego would involve evacuating 7 million people.
The future of nuclear power is not going to be determined by newer safety measures, better storage of waste fuel, the push for green energy, or the absolute need for more power generation.
It's going to be determined by the bankers and insurers. The huge liability in this situation and massive payouts will make the bankers take their money away from nuclear projects. The insurers won't touch them either.
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Dean, I agree with you on all those points. All that water HAD to be going somewhere! DUH!
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Oh, boy, how do I say this right?
I know the thread here (Non-LSR) is theoretically open for most everything. And I know that I am personally reading the poss here with avid interest. But -- I also have to watch it with the eyes of the administrator of the biggest (and best, he modestly proclaims) site on the internet for all things land speed racing-related.
So I'm faced with a quandary. I would think that at this point it's time to take the nuclear reactor situation resulting from the earthquake and tsunami - take it of the land speed racing website. I say that because theoretically, discussing nuclear stuff would imply that anything else is okay for "non-LSR" discussion, too, and I don't want recipes for pumpkin & curry soup and lawn seed mixtures for temperate but humid areas and so on ad infinitum to show up under the same general and very-wide-open topic. There are apparently only a few of us that are avid readers of the thread - and maybe we should consider going private - PMs and emails, or maybe a completely different Forum where this subject is discussed and watched by all.
But - again, I don't want to simply throw my "administrator" status around and dictate harshly what should and shouldn't be said. I'll keep an eye on the new posts here to see if there's any obvious input that would lead me to making a go - no go decision.
Thanks for your forbearance and understanding.
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We are considering a nuclear-powered entry under the Steam class.
Is this bad timing? :?
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Don't know about the timing -- but your self-proclaimed reputation for blowing things up might get in the way.
Stan
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Just give us enough warning we can get into our sperm suits and gas masks!!
Lynda
Sorry, couldn't resist
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Don't know about the timing -- but your self-proclaimed reputation for blowing things up might get in the way.
Stan
After receiving a nasty call from the Sierra Club, we are considering making all our engine parts out of biodegradable materials. Although we have been told our truck is purely BS (manure is bio-safe) by the peanut gallery, it currently mostly metal. :-(
EDIT: Seriously though, we have never lost a part off the truck that we know of during LSR. All my wounds have been internal or emotional ...
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All my wounds have been internal or emotional ... oh boy how I can relate
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"All my wounds have been internal or emotional"
How about to that pigskin in your back pocket?
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"All my wounds have been internal or emotional"
How about to that pigskin in your back pocket?
I really wish I was addicted to cocaine, it would be a much cheaper way to spend my free time.
During race season, someone stole my credit card. I didn't report it because the thief was spending less than I was... :-(
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"All my wounds have been internal or emotional"
How about to that pigskin in your back pocket?
LOL Stan, you have such a way with words. LOL I don't even have a pigskin anymore, nothing ($$$$) to keep in it.
Tom G.
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Oh, go ahead and fold it up. It's just nice to have some place to rant.
Last rant?
A week after the explosion, TEPCO went to the Fukushima prefecture and asks permission to start construction at that facility on new units #7 & #8.
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I've found it really interesting and informative. I think it's losing momentum anyway and unless something further of interest happens it will go the way of all the other subjects. It's definitely given a better insight than the normal news reports.
Pete
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:cheers:
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I think it's losing momentum anyway
I think you are wrong. The worst has yet to happen.
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I can see the glowing fish from here. :-(
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I just got a shipment of Cro-moly bicycle tubing from Kasei..................located in Fukushima Japan! :-o
Slim, thanks for letting this thread run, I have learned more about the issues here than anywhere on the web these last few weeks. :cheers:
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Slim, leave it going please. I for one find it a great read with better perspective and insight than most anything else I can find.
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Slim,
Leave the thread open. There are differences of opinion here, healthy for debate. Please.
While I don't believe the sky is falling.......yet. I do feel that the truth and the lessons learned will be good for all to see/hear.
We sure cannot trust the media sensationalism.
It is not one failure or mistake that causes airplanes to crash, it is a series of failures and mistakes. This disaster is a perfect example.
Could it happen here? Sure, and with the Graduates coming from the schools today, I am sure it will be a disaster.
John
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I'll admit that I have found this thread to be very educational and not hysterical at all - and that's good. Indeed, I've learned more than I expected about the Fukushima incident here than I have from other sources. Good thing I don't watch TV at all -- otherwise I'd probably be trying to bury our heads in the sand.
I'll let the thread keep running at least for a while. Thanks for your input, ladies and gentlemen.
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After two months it’s amazing how much this has dropped off the radar. If news isn’t fresh it disappears.
My first impression within days was there was far worse things going on then they were saying.
Now it comes out that now that they have gone inside reactor #1 for the first time since the explosion that reactor #1 melted within hours. And they knew it. Not 5% like they initially said, not 70% like the U.S. said later, but virtually all of it. It appears that reactors #2 and #3 probably are in the same condition. No one has been in reactor #2 since March 14.
The key was the huge amount of water they have been pumping in. Water has to go somewhere. There hasn’t been enough steam to account for the water, so it must be leaking out the bottom. There isn’t enough space to store all that water. The tsunami flooded all of the buildings. Where did that water go?
So helpless were the plant's engineers that, as dusk fell after Japan's devastating March 11 quake and tsunami, they were forced to scavenge flashlights from nearby homes. They pulled batteries from cars not washed away by the tsunami in a desperate effort to revive reactor gauges that weren't working properly. The meltdown started almost immediately—and workers didn’t even realize it.
Workers thought the reactor’s backup batteries would buy them eight hours, not realizing those batteries were down.
The effects of the earthquake alone appear to have been catastrophic. The concrete containment vessels may have broken, some of the pipes entering the reactor certainly did. The containment vessel and spent fuel pool may be near collapse in reactor #4.
The extreme delay between the time that gases should have been vented and actual time the valves were opened manually (the operator received a very high dose of radiation.) allowed the pressure inside the vessel to be 50% over the designed maximum pressure.
Tests done in the U.S. on the same reactor type showed that at lower pressure the containment dome may not hold pressure. This may account for the hydrogen gases accumulating in the building. Normal venting takes place out of the very tall stacks in the pictures.
In the numerous pictures linked below I don't see any heavy equipment. I don't see any clean up of the extensive debris outside the building. I don't think ANY work has been done in two months. Tepco realized early on that there was no fixing the situation and has decided to squirt water until . . . no one knows. I think they will eventually have to inject liquid nitrogen to freeze the water so that repair work can start. As long as highly radioactive water continues to leak out no work can be done. They keep saying cold shutdown within months and cleanup in a few years. How can you predict something that you have no idea what the condition is right now? I don't think there will be a clean up. I think they will end up entombing it like Chernobyl.
The only changes to the initial effort to spray and inject sea water with fire engines is the replacement of the fire engines with electric pumps and sea water with fresh water. There was a lot of press mid-March about the lights being on in the control room. You can see the red and blue power cables in the outside shots. That seems to be the only power that has been restored. Later pictures still show blank screens and indicators in the control rooms.
The damage from the explosions was massive. It's interesting that reactor #4 had a huge hydrogen explosion that had to have been from exposed fuel rods in the spent fuel pool. The fuel from the reactor had been removed. That has never been explained, and the next mention was pictures that show water in the pool.
Damage photos
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm (http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm)
All of the photos are here. There are 15 pages and a zip file.
http://cryptome.org/#more (http://cryptome.org/#more)
Identify the tsunami barrier in this photo. The breakwater is to separate the cool inlet water from the warm outlet water. This is a conventional breakwater made from concrete forms that look like kids jacks. They are effective at keeping normal wave action from eroding the breakwater. On the left side you see the beach and some rocks. I don't see anything that looks like a purpose built tsunami barrier.
(http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/pict56.jpg)
This photo is the wave hitting the Fukushima Daini plant 10 miles up the coast. How did they escape the same fate?
(http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp5/pict19.jpg)
An elevator in the building.
(http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp5/pict2.jpg)
Reactor #3 is in there somewhere. Everything in this photo is extremely radioactive. How do you start fixing it?
(http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp15/pict17a.jpg)
70 photos in zipped format
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-70/daiichi-70.zip (http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-70/daiichi-70.zip)
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Stories have already come out that one meltdown has occured and a couple of fuel rods have melted through a containment vessel. I don't have time right now to look up exactly which one, but its bad. Nothing can be done at this point except wait for them to melt far enough down then cap it like russia did. The real issue here though is how close they are to the water. Radiation levels in the ocean and drinking water are at horrible levels. The damage from this hasn't even yet to begin.
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Shots of the moment it hit the plant
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388629/Japan-tsunami-destroyed-wall-designed-protect-Fukushima-nuclear-plant.html
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This year my 1986 Yamaha TT-225 has been taken apart and is being rebuilt. The engine is amazing. The main bearings are as big as the ones I had on the 500 cc Matchless. There are steel inserts in the cases where the main bearings rest. Everything is strong, well designed, and made from good materials. This was their bottom of the line trail bike. A simple rebuild will give me another 10 or 15 years of use. Engineers designed this bike, managers allowed this bike to be built, and people made it. All cared about me, the customer. They did more than the minimum that was needed.
The old service manual is easy to understand. Lots of nice drawings and pictures. Areas where a fellow could easily make a mistake are clarified. Some real live mechanics and engineers wrote this book. They care about me, the fellow fixing the thing. They put in extra effort.
This bike is 25 years old. All the parts I order from Yamaha. They have all that I need for a complete rebuild. The parts arrive at a reasonable time after they were ordered. Everything is made in Japan at a reasonable price and all fits together perfectly. Company management set up this supply system and they run it well. They really care about the person who uses their product.
This makes no sense and is a waste of time according to the modern business model. The walrus in no expert on anything, but I feel that this is a window showing Japanese culture. These are a hard working, caring, meticulous people, and selfless in some ways. It is a real shame that they are victims of this BS. I sure hope this mess gets cleaned up soon.
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It is extreme events and rare circumstances that teach us the most valuable engineering lessons.
This plant was built using the engineering best practices of the day it was designed and built. It had tsunami protection walls 18 ft high, but the actual wave that struck had peak wave heights 45 ft above sea level. Some areas of the coast also dropped 4 ft below their pre-quake elevations. This was the strongest quake to hit Japan in about 1000 years. In some areas the tsunami ran 6 miles inland.
These circumstances will change design limits for major structures for every coast line in the entire pacific basin, as we now have a new bench mark of what is reasonably possible in the way of combined earthquake tsunami threats to harbors and coast facing facilities.
Many times post disaster reconstruction is in the long term very beneficial, like a forced urban renewal program they have a unique opportunity to make major design and urban planning decisions without all the typical private property constraints imposed by existing structures. I suspect you will see coastal cities built with high ground refuge locations or roadways designed to allow residents easy movement inland to high ground. Tsunami protection levies will likely be strengthened and increased in design height and perhaps built in depth with double protection for some facilities and locations.
It has basically rewritten the urban planning and construction rule book for coastal areas at tsunami risk. Due to the location of the quake in a highly industrial country, it is not only one of the 5 strongest recorded earth quakes in modern history, but with produce a vast amount of instrumental data both from formal seismic instrumentation but indirectly from security camera, and hand held video camera footage they will have enough raw data to keep researchers busy for 20 years evaluating how various structures responded to the quake, and analyzing the damage incurred by various designs.
Due to the nature of this quake, it will serve as a dress rehearsal for the quake we will have someday in the pacific north west. Hopefully planners and the public in northern California, Oregon, Washington state and British Colombia are paying attention.
Larry
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There is an excellent presentation put together by Areva:
http://www.slideshare.net/dungeon_keeper/areva-fukushima-7556450
or do any search for areva fukushima presentation
Have read most of the thread, and generally agree with Hot Rod Larry, (I'm a lifelong HP) but if anyone really wants to talk about this PM me, been around them all my life and yes there are several GE MK III's in the US and yes I have been in/on them too.
As for the explosion, that is the way the plants are designed.
As for exposure, TEPCO has reported no one has been exposed to > 25 Rem......so radiation induced lethality is a non-starter for me.
As commentary, the Japanese, IMHO, are way ahead of the US on the spent fuel issue, as they reprocess, and the spent fuel pools contain a minimum amount of spent fuel, drastically different in the US, and this event has caused a pendulum swing in the US regulatory arena.
For Tepco:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/110311/index-e.html
site boundaries currently:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/index-e.html
and daily reports:
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/
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This is what Rapid City SD (my home) did aftrer our disastrous 1972 flood. The entire greenway along the creek was turned into park/floodway so we dont have to lose another 238 people. Houses, businesses etc were removed from the path of destruction. Areas on the Red River in ND/MN have done the same, my wifes cousins have pictures of their flooded hood in the 90s and now after it has all been razed and turned into park.
I have always agreed that us humans are stupid, we alwaysw live as close tyo water as we can for conveniance then wonder when Mother Nature spanks us!
AND THANKS FOR ALL THOSE LINKS! This facinates me.
Many times post disaster reconstruction is in the long term very beneficial, like a forced urban renewal program they have a unique opportunity to make major design and urban planning decisions without all the typical private property constraints imposed by existing structures. I suspect you will see coastal cities built with high ground refuge locations or roadways designed to allow residents easy movement inland to high ground. Tsunami protection levies will likely be strengthened and increased in design height and perhaps built in depth with double protection for some facilities and locations.
It has basically rewritten the urban planning and construction rule book for coastal areas at tsunami risk. Due to the location of the quake in a highly industrial country, it is not only one of the 5 strongest recorded earth quakes in modern history, but with produce a vast amount of instrumental data both from formal seismic instrumentation but indirectly from security camera, and hand held video camera footage they will have enough raw data to keep researchers busy for 20 years evaluating how various structures responded to the quake, and analyzing the damage incurred by various designs.
Due to the nature of this quake, it will serve as a dress rehearsal for the quake we will have someday in the pacific north west. Hopefully planners and the public in northern California, Oregon, Washington state and British Colombia are paying attention.
Larry
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As for exposure, TEPCO has reported no one has been exposed to > 25 Rem......so radiation induced lethality is a non-starter for me.
You trust TEPCO to provide accurate information? This is the same company that sent workers in without a dosimeter. "We had 2500 but all but 400 were destroyed in the earthquake". Really? You couldn't borrow some from another facility?
In 1952 a nuclear weapon test series called Tumbler-Snapper consisted of 8 low yield weapons.
Tumbler-Snapper released about 15,500 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere (for comparison, Trinity released about 3200 kilocuries of radioiodine). Although this was only some 40% more than that released by Buster-Jangle, unfavorable weather patterns caused dramatically higher civilian radiation exposures (about 15-fold). The total thyroid tissue exposure amounted to 110 million person-rads, about 29% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests. This can be expected to eventually cause about 34,000 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 1750 deaths.
During Operation Upshot-Knothole in 1956 John Wayne filmed a movie called the Conquerors, about Genghis Khan. The movie was filmed outside St. George, Utah. The federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health. The cast and crew numbered 220. Statistically there should have been about 30 cancers in this group. 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease.
Yes, we all need clean, safe, green nuclear power. Our government will protect us all.
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One of the geotechnical engineers at the other end of our office showed me this. It looks like we are going to build something big right over the top of an earthquake fault and he doing some research.
Ultimately we need to figure out a safe place to put these atom plants and to know when to prepare them for an imminent earthquake. Science is making baby steps in that direction. This little movie shows the types of information they are working with to come up with a solution. It is amazing. All of this is happening right under the Team Go Dog Go world headquarters and I did not have a clue. The Pacific tectonic plate is grinding against the edge of the plate Oregon is on as it curls downward into the mantle and melts. The movement sets off all sorts of tiny earthquakes. The movie is here: http://www.pnsn.org/tremor/overview (http://www.pnsn.org/tremor/overview) Go to "TREMOR MAP" at the top of the page.
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WW A mind could be occupied for hours on that link---wow
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www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/24-3 Obamacare will fix that right up. :cheers:
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www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/24-3 Obamacare will fix that right up. :cheers:
"Page not found
The requested page could not be found."
It didn't take them long to find your link Jerry!
Pete
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www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/24-3 Obamacare will fix that right up. :cheers:
"Page not found
The requested page could not be found."
It didn't take them long to find your link Jerry!
Pete
I knew that would happen if I removed my foil hat
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Link fixed....Off to typing class I go.......................
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The link is working. The article is:
Published on Thursday, October 24, 2013 by Common Dreams
Fuel Removal From Fukushima's Reactor 4 Threatens 'Apocalyptic' Scenario
In November, TEPCO set to begin to remove fuel rods whose radiation matches the fallout of 14,000 Hiroshima bombs
Just when you think it couldn'd get any worse.
Geo
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As a considerable amount of time has passed since the incident occurred, I wish this thread could be reopened with the same amount of insight and expertise as at the beginning when we really knew very little. It's a fascinating read through all the pages. Am just hoping for some updates with a real historical perspective now that we are down the road as far as we are. Would like to know what parts of doom and gloom have happened, what do we actually know, and maybe what the actual damage, plants and people, has turned out to be.
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hear yee!, hear yee!
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20Dec14
TOKYO — The cleanup of Japan’s devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crossed an important milestone on Saturday when the plant’s operator announced it had safely removed the radioactive fuel from the most vulnerable of the four heavily damaged reactor buildings.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, removed the last remaining fuel rods from the ruined No. 4 reactor building, putting the rods inside a large white container for transportation to another, undamaged storage pool elsewhere on the plant’s grounds. The company, known as Tepco, had put a high priority on removing the No. 4 unit’s some 1,500 fuel rods because they sat in a largely unprotected storage pool on an upper floor of the building, which had been gutted by a powerful hydrogen explosion during the March 2011 accident.
This had led to fears of additional releases of radioactive material if the pool was damaged further, such as by an earthquake. By succeeding in the technically difficult task of extracting those rods, Tepco eliminated one of the plant’s most worrisome vulnerabilities. This is also the first time that the fuel has been removed from one of the four wrecked reactor buildings.
It took almost four years to reach this goal, as the cleanup has been plagued by mishaps and a so far unstoppable flow of groundwater that has flooded the basements of the crippled reactor buildings. The aging Fukushima Daiichi plant suffered a triple meltdown after a huge earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, knocking out vital cooling systems.
Tepco still faces the far more challenging task of removing the ruined fuel cores from the three reactors that melted down in the accident. These reactors were so damaged — and their levels of radioactivity remain so high — that removing their fuel is expected to take decades. Some experts have said it may not be possible at all, and have called instead for simply encasing those reactors in a sarcophagus of thick concrete.
The fuel cores from those three reactors, Nos. 1-3, are believed to have melted like wax as the uncooled reactors overheated, forming lumps on the bottom of the reactor vessels. Scientists have warned that the hot, molten uranium may have even melted through the metal containment vessels, possibly reaching the floor of the reactor buildings or even the earth beneath.
However, it was the storage pool at the No. 4 unit, and particularly its highly radioactive spent fuel rods, that had caused the most intense concern in the first weeks after the accident. While the No. 4 reactor itself had been safely shut down when the accident happened, hydrogen released by the meltdowns at the other reactors caused an enormous explosion that blew off the reactor building’s roof and walls, leaving its storage pool exposed to the air.
Japanese and American nuclear officials at first worried that the pool may have been cracked in the explosion, but this proved not to be the case. Still, falling water levels in the storage pool caused anxiety that the fuel rods within could be exposed to the atmosphere. This would have caused a far larger release of radioactive materials than what occurred during the actual accident, which spewed contamination across a wide swath of northern Japan.
Correction: January 7, 2015
A headline in some editions on Dec. 21 with an article about the removal of nuclear fuel from the most vulnerable part of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, where a triple meltdown occurred in 2011, referred imprecisely to the location of the fuel rods that were removed. As the article correctly noted, they were removed from a reactor building, not from a reactor.
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About 16,000 people were killed by the earthquake and tsunami. Any deaths due to the release of radiation from the reactor appear comparatively miniscule.
From people who risk their lives for fun, this worry seems odd.
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We are supposed to be having FUN!!!!!!
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I guess no more hysteria about an impending possibility. Not much response for all the initial hype.
Richard
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All political energy has been 'safely' extracted by those who cannot pass an 8th grade science test from my generation! Next crisis please! :cheers:
Is it just me or does everything people do seem to have consequences? :? :? :?
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All political energy has been 'safely' extracted by those who cannot pass an 8th grade science test from my generation! Next crisis please! :cheers:
Is it just me or does everything people do seem to have consequences? :? :? :?
Ah, the grey area, where Isaac Newton's third law of motion collides with Tip O'Neil's first law of politics -
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction - except in my district.
They're going to be trying to engineer their way out of this one for a really long time.
I expect a nuclear engineering student graduating today could easily retire on the decommissioning of Fukushima.
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While driving back from El M today we got to wonder about this thread and we would like and update if possible!
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Jeez Mate, I thought somebody had started a build diary on my liner! :-D
Sid.
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lol :cheers:
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Sid, it is time though!!!.
I vote for the KBT diary. :-D
Teach me.
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I find it not only amusing but true to life that the Subject Title is misspelled... or perhaps it should be retitled "The Blind Leading The Blind."
O.R.B., out...........................................................
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ORB said: "..."The Blind Leading The Blind."..."
Perhaps better could be "The Blonde leading the Blind." Far more cornfusing. . . :cheers: