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Fukushima Explosion Update: Core Presumed Intact As Sea Water Used To Bring Temperature Down, Radiation Level At 1015 Microsieverts/Hour
The damage control to the Fukushima explosion reported earlier is coming fast and furious. According to CNN, "the explosion at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant was not caused by
damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as
crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday. The next step for workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be to
flood the reactor containment structure with sea water to bring the
reactor's temperature down to safe levels, he said. The effort is
expected to take two days." While the government is trying to play down the threat from the explosion, it has nonetheless double the evacuation zone radius from 10 to 20 kilometers: "Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no
immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless
expanding the evacuation to include a radius of 20 kilometers (about
12.5 miles) around the plant. The evacuation previously reached out to
10 kilometers." Next steps are to flood the reactor with salt water. NHK reports: "The
TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture is
believed to be exploded, and in order to prevent corruption, the
containment vessel will be filled with sea water to cool containers and
vehicles used by the SDF pump I. According to the Ministry of Defense,
work will begin at 8:00 pm, and that it expected to end around 1:00 am
on March 13 (or roughly 11 am Eastern)." And while containment efforts peak, the radiation level is reported to be in the range of 1015 microsieverts / hr. In the meantime, confusion in Japan is pervasive as up to a million people are without power. And while we hope the outcome of the Fukushima situation will be prompt and favorable, the economic devastation to the country will be pervasive for weeks to come.
CNN reports:
More damage control:
Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless expanding the evacuation to include a radius of 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles) around the plant. The evacuation previously reached out to 10 kilometers.
The explosion about 3:30 p.m. Saturday sent white smoke rising above the plant a day after a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled cooling systems at the plant in northeastern Japan. Four workers were injured in the blast.
The walls of a concrete building surrounding the reactor container collapsed, but the reactor and its containment system were not damaged in the explosion, Edano said.
Before Edano's announcement, Malcolm Grimston, associate fellow for energy, environment and development at London's Chatham House, said the explosion indicated that "it's clearly a serious situation, but that in itself does not necessarily mean major (nuclear) contamination."
Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the injured workers were in the process of cooling a nuclear reactor at the plant by injecting water into its core.
The Fukushima prefecture government said hourly radiation levels at the plant had reached levels allowable for ordinary people over the course of a year, Kyodo reported.
Earlier Saturday, Japan's nuclear agency said workers were continuing efforts to cool fuel rods at the plant after a small amount of radioactive material escaped into the air.
The agency said there was a strong possibility that the radioactive cesium monitors detected was from the melting of a fuel rod at the plant, adding that engineers were continuing to cool the fuel rods by pumping water around them.
Cesium is a byproduct of the nuclear fission process that occurs in nuclear plants.
A spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Agency earlier said atomic material had seeped out of one of the five nuclear reactors at the Daiichi plant, located about 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
"This is a situation that has the potential for a nuclear catastrophe. It's basically a race against time, because what has happened is that plant operators have not been able to cool down the core of at least two reactors," said Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.
Alert.net quotes Chernobyl veterans who are scrambling to calm the public that this will not be a repeat of the Prypiat disaster:
Experts said pictures of mist above the plant suggested only small amounts of radiation had been expelled as part of measures to ensure its stability, far from the radioactive clouds that Chernobyl spewed out when it exploded in 1986.
"The explosion at No. 1 generating set of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which took place today, will not be a repetition of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster," said Valeriy Hlyhalo, deputy director of the Chernobyl nuclear safety centre.
He was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Japanese reactors were better protected than Chernobyl, where just over 30 firefighters were killed in the explosion. The world's worst civilian nuclear disaster, Chernobyl has also been blamed for thousands of deaths due to radiation-linked illness.
"Apart from that, these reactors are designed to work at a high seismicity zone, although what has happened is beyond the impact the plants were designed to withstand," Hlyhalo said.
"Therefore, the consequences should not be as serious as after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster."
We will continue following what appears to be nothing but a prolonged attempt at disaster spin as earthquake aftershocks continue.
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The blast blew off the outer concrete shell of a building housing one of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi (number 1) nuclear power station, leaving behind a skeleton of metalwork.
- - - - - - - - - -
This means, we can now see what is going on with the containment apparatus ...
.
You won't see anything. First big explosion removed reinforced walls, they were going down like cardboard and inside cylinder is intact? Second, they will flood the thing with sea water how? Through pipes, which survived that blast or using buckets, maybe magical powers. Third, if that thing melts it will go through the bottom of external shell of reactor and you won't see it either and will keep going down melting everything on its way until it hits water. That will be second bang.
And what is containment apparatus?
" You won't see anything. "
Right.
" And what is containment apparatus? "
Right; I guess *you* won't be seeing anything ...
.
Roger Highfield, magazine editor, and Yuriko Nagano, contributor, Tokyo
A turning point in the efforts to avert a meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station came in the wake of the blast that destroyed the exterior walls of the crippled reactor.
The emergency began when the magnitude 8.9 earthquake which rocked the region on 11 March put the 439 MWe Boiling Water Reactor into shutdown mode.
Even after shut down, however, a reactor still requires cooling.
Diesel generators initially supplied cooling water but they failed about an hour after the quake as a result of the tsunami, prompting fears of a meltdown.
The pressure in Fukushima 1 started to rise, as the cooling water covering the core boiled into steam.
Malcolm Grimston, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, said that the fuel began to overheat.
At around 1500 degrees Celsius, the zirconium metal cladding the uranium fuel would react with the steam to form hydrogen.
If any of the fuel rods have been compromised, there would be evidence of a small amount of other radioisotopes called fission fragments (specifically radio-caesium and radio-iodine), according to Paddy Regan of Surrey University.
Regan added that while the intergrity of the pressure vessel is secure, the vast majority of the fission fragments and radioactive fuel material is safely contained within the pressure vessel and should not escape.
However, the pressure in the steel vessel would have increased inexorably.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tepco, had the flexibility to use pressure release valves to vent some steam, even though it was mildly contaminated, because it had taken the precaution of evacuating the local population within a 12 mile radius.
Grimston described this as "extraordinary forward planning".
The steam was released from the pressure vessel into the surrounding building and this was consistent with reports that radiation levels had soared to around 1000 times the background level. Officials also said they had detected caesium, an indication that some fuel was already damaged.
The blast occurred at 3:36 PM local time after a large aftershock shook the plant, though Grimston said that it was not clear the two were connected.
The shock wave that can be clearly seen in video of the blast suggests a point ignition source detonated the released hydrogen when it came into contact with oxygen in the air, he said.
Four workers were injured, according to Atsushi Sugimoto of Tepco.
"At this point, we don't know how much radiation has escaped," said Shinji Kinjo of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. "Should the situation change, the evacuation zone could become larger."
Yukio Edano, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, said the cause of the explosion was a mixture of hydrogen, from steam escaping the core, and oxygen from the surrounding air.
He added that the pressure vessel was unaffected and the incident would not be a cause for a large amount of radiation to leak.
Although the concrete cladding disintegrated in a spectacular fashion, Grimston said that the fact that the metal frame of the building was left intact suggests that the explosion was not as violent as it looked.
Because the plant went into operation in 1971 and is due for decommissioning, the decision was taken by Tepco to flood it with seawater containing boric acid to kill the nuclear reaction.
This began just after 2pm UK time and would take up to ten hours.
The use of corrosive seawater would render the reactor unusable but would ensure that the risk of a meltdown had been averted, said Grimston.
He said that, if the information he had received was accurate, it looked a "textbook example" of how to deal with a nuclear emergency.
Tepco said Fukushima was stable but remained sketchy on key details.
More measures are under way to protect the local population. "The authorities also say they are making preparations to distribute iodine to residents," said the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Meanwhile, an official at Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the incident a 4, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Three Mile Island was rated a 5, while Chernobyl was rated 7 on the 1 to 7 scale.
The Kyodo news agency reported that some 10,000 people in the town on Minamisanrikucho, in Miyagi prefecture, are missing in the wake of yesterday's tsunami.
i.
The outer shell doesn't look like it was made of concrete.
Meltdown and melting are not the same thing. If the control rods were fully inserted to stop the chain reaction then this situation could turn out to be more similar to three mile island than to Chernobyl.
News on an American stranded there:
"They're waiting to be rescued, and they're in bad shape," Janie Eudy said of her husband and other workers in a telephone interview.
Danny Eudy told his wife the quake violently shook the building where he was working. "Everything was falling from the ceiling," Janie Eudy said.
Eudy and other workers were evacuating the plant when the tsunami swept through the area, carrying away homes and vehicles. "He walked through so much glass that his feet were cut. It slowed him down," Janie Eudy said.
After the water started to recede, Eudy and other workers drove to their hotel, only to find most of it had been destroyed, Janie Eudy said.
Danny Eudy had to borrow a resident's phone to call his wife early Friday.
"He sounded like he was in shock. He was scared," she said.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/la-man-stranded-but-safe-after-japan/ecd9e03b6ff74bfdbb34faece1147d3a
Discover the handy "Gov/MSM Speak" translation tool.
You all remember that one, eh?
"The radiation levels are low." Means?
"The reactor is intact." Means?
Detection of wishful thinkers in the above comments maxed out.
/lol/
Back of envelope...1015 mic Sv == 3700X background radiation.
BOE is that "reading" worth squat.
Good questions. The reported dose is 1015 microsieverts or .1 rem. That is 50 times the "safe" level of 2 millirem. The LD 50/30 where 50% of people will die in thirty days, is from 400 to 800 rem depending on who you ask. Supposedly the radiation comes from gas being vented to lower pressure in the containment vessel. I used to work for a company that manufactures air filters for containment vessels. The filters are supposed to stop radiation form escaping in these situations. There must be some damage to the containment system. Only time will tell the extent.
Have not seen any indication of where the .1 rem reading was taken.
Adjacent to the containment vessel?
Or 20 KM upwind?
Another mystery. What is more troubling is that they are measuring levels of cesium. That should been stopped by the hepa filters in the containment exhaust. At Three Mile Island they only released Nobel gasses.
Key idea: "They found cesium.." Remember that years ago, Sweden monitored air quality from the USSR and found a small cesium spike. When they confronted the Soviets with this info, the Soviets went berserk diplomatically.
But you don't get cesium unless there is an incident!
We still don't know (Well, the CIA probably knew...) what happened but when Cesium is involved, it is not good on the face of it.
CW
The unexpected Black Swan event is really a bitch, isn't it.
Hopefully that explosion didn't damage any controls or pipes for the other 4 reactors at the site.
If Japans nuclear plants experience meltdown, it will send oil price up immediately, as nuclear alternative will look less problem free.
Here are scenarious for oil and DJIA I charted on february 6th, so far they look good:
http://saposjoint.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2626&start=0
http://saposjoint.net/Forum/download/file.php?id=2609
http://saposjoint.net/Forum/download/file.php?id=2608
I did not expect nuclear power problems to compound on supply problems from revolutions, but, the curves does not depend on causes, they are systemic, the causes provide themselves readily, as we have seen so far.
The curves are the cumulative result of all unpredictable causes, but the curves themselves are predictable.
That is a common feature of forecasting- the more aggregate forecasts are, the more accurate they are, despite the fact that on individual even level deviations are huge both in time and scale. Law of big numbers.
I think, forecasting DJIA and Oil prices are about as aggregate as information on this planet gets. So, one has best chances to be accurate at forecasting at this aggregate level.
The curves itselves are results of visual studies of long term patterns of Oil and DJIA after sharp shocks that make the world information systems almost linear and synchronized , so that at first reaction is like that of a linear damped oscillator, or many oscillators at sync, while later decooperation kicks in and nonlinear, non-sync reactions of different systems cumulate at typical patterns far away from shock event. (See Sornette for predictions of crashes and long term buildups of booms and long term aftershocks of crashes )
Breaching the containment structure is a DISASTER! That's the last protection in the event of meltdown. Downplay it all you want that's a mess. Also, any force large enough to blow three feet of reinforced concrete apart must have also damaged internals to the reactor building. It means all the coolant spray heads in the roof are knocked out and stean carrying radictive particles is free to roam the countryside. What's worse is that only a breach of the primary coolant lines could have caused this much damage. They can try filling what remains of the dome with water but how will they circulate it? Worst of all, the radiation levels are high enough now that they can't get workers in to make temporary patches. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near this old 1971 reactor.
^^^ ALL THAT ^^^
Government already planning to hand out potassium iodide
http://on.cnn.com/gzqBrm
Boy oh boy. I hope the spin, for once, is right!
It's Not! This is "Extend and Pretend" as the worst case scenario comes into full view.
Disaster speak: one worker has been transferred to hospital for treatment of low level radiation (From SkyNews). Lol. Nobody gets treated for low level irradiation. There is no treatment.
It's better than high level no treatment where you wait for your guts to liquefy and leak out of your body orifices.
That was a mental image best left unviewed.
micro = x10^-6 ... So somebody would need to get dosed for 1000 hours at that rate, before they get into the 1 Sv range...ie, when a human starts to get a headache and a 5% to 50% chance of puking.
If this is as high as the exposure gets, it's good news.
so the best thing that could happen based on the "sea water solution" is another Tsunami aimed directly at Fuku. There's something about the concept of drenching the thing with sea water that just doesn't seem quite right
those tsa scanners are far worse than sucking on a reactor rod!
http://www.google.com/search?q=tsa+radiation&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=...
Watching the leader of the Scottish national party on the Beeb
He seems quite pleased with himself as he is vehemently anti-nuclear.
He wants to destroy the landscape of my beloved Caledonia with almost useless wind turbines.
Looks like the little shit will get his way.
Fucking Gaelic idiot - we have enough of them in Hibernia.
even worse than the landscape are the headaches, e.g.:
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2010/10/the_new_york_times_weighs_i...
- Ned
If we can leave aside the practicality of these Quixotic machines, they can be quite aesthetically pleasing in certain urban areas but there is advanced plans to put dozens of giant wind turbines near the Cairngorms national park in Scotland.
Scotland has the only semi- wild landscape in the British isles - it gives the little hobbits some adventure beyond there own miserable suburban lives.
If you take that away from people you take away their illusion of freedom with disturbing consequences for society.
All for a few miserable Mw of unreliable electricity !
U.S. windfarms in e.g. Altamont Pass and above Palm Springs were highly subsidized by the new "Department of Energy" during the reign of Jimmy Carter I. Today, not so well maintained/operational. You have Denmark and Spain experience to point to. Good Luck! - Ned
There is more than enough power in wind to cover all of mankind's energy needs, it's just that wind turbines are inherently inefficient. A much smarter, cheap way to extract this clean and plentiful energy is:
http://www.kitegen.com/en/?page_id=7
No, its that wind power is unreliable unless its a very rare location with very constant wind patterns. People expect power when they flip a switch. If the wind isn't blowing, nothing happens when you flip the switch. Wind can be useful in a larger design where it might provide 5% or 10%, but in and of itself its unreliable.
Cooter
Right. I've never seen those wind turbines Ned was writing about turning.
Didn't look at the link, did you? The idea is to tap into the much stronger and constant winds at 1Km altitude.
When there is no wind at ground level for a turbine, typically there is still enough usable power higher up in the sky, which kites can reach.
Wind turbines are expensive heavy machinery, and they are limited to whatever wind makes it to the ground. Kites are light and cheap, and they can go higher where the wind is.
If only there was some technology that could store power for retrieval and use later...or several.
Shipstones in RAH "Friday" - Ned
E = 1/2 * I * w^2
ya, and that's why electric cars will have a limit, when the w/cc number gets really good, you got urself a really good energy release mechanism.
- Ned
{but don't worry, your secret is safe here, kinda' public key thing. I have not been able to convey "I squared R" losses, and I dumbed down the math to boot.}
Local generation shouldn't have the what...7%?...transmission loss, no?
But I was talking about flywheels ('w' being angular momentum).
Wind/Solar -> Flywheel/Capacitor/Battery -> Car Battery -> Vroom vroom (okay, more like whzzzzz, but you get the idea).
I've been trying to figure out how to do "omega"/inf/beta/... in greek/symbolz. Some of us posterz have the secret handshake--please let us poor common porcinez in on the secret handshake. Please?
- Ned
At what human cost?
Via a report:
44 fatal accidents in wind energy, verses 5 in nuclear in the last ten years . In those ten years nuclear provided thirty times the energy of wind. 44 x 30 equals 1,320 deaths verses five. In the last decade nuclear has been 240 times safer then wind energy on a energy produced verses fatal accidents basis.
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf
Wind to electricity production peaked when it was invented. What we need now are big assed batteries.
"...in the last 10 years".
How many since it was introduced? (Hint: much greater than 1320 or 44)
It costs how much to build a reactor?!
How much toxic waste is produced by wind turbines (heck, you can even count dead birds in the total)?
What's the lifetime of the availability of wind vs say...uranium?
I'm sorry. Was that a leg you were standing on?
Oh, I'm so sorry, ... I forgot they had fixed the 24/7 availability issues with solar, wind, earlier this year under Chu.
My bad.
.
Because batteries and flywheels are such arcane technology, right?
" Because batteries and flywheels are such arcane technology, right? "
Right.
Might as well throw wind-up rubber bands and watch mainsprings in there while you're at it ...
Just curious ... are you at all familiar with the equation P = 1/2 MV^2
.
I think you mean Ek = 1/2Mv^2, but yeah.
Sounds a lot like Ek = 1/2 Iw^2 doesn't it?
The important part is the M * V squared part ... you _know_ what this does as speed increases right?
And how this relates to the forces involving a flywheel?
Or would you rather talk about batteries (chemical storage of energy)?
And lack of really significant progress there (NOTHING like Moore's Law for semiconductors) ..
.
Salmond is dangerous, if he keeps going I will be campaigning for an
Independence vote organised by the English. No Scottish participation.
Godspeed to the engineers and technicians putting their lives on the line. And hope for less F.U.D. and more info.
I recall vividly during Three Mile Island that spin control and disaster speak were fully operative at all times. The power company and government put an absolute lid on any information leaking out.
Bottom line there was a meltdown. They denied that it happened at the time of the disaster. They only went public with that information over 20 years later.
To be fair - noone knew the TMI Rx had melted down until they were able to get robotic assistance to view inside the Rx vessel...Of course at TMI the Rx vessel was never compromised and neither was containment building. TMI was a Pressurized Water Rx...but principles of containment integrity are the same. IF Fuk 1 lost its containment building integrity...that's a big increase in risk of a release of significant radiation to the public.
So then, where does the overheated and probably radioactive sea water go, back into the ocean?
Assuming they can even pump it back out.
Godzilla will use it for his bath!
LOL...
Seriously though, it sounds like they're just flooding what's left of the containment vessel, in order to buy another ~12 hours for evacuation.
make it 24hours to let them get their transportation system back online to do so.
AND WHERE DO YOU RELOCATE HALF OF A COUNTRY?!
CHINA?! HAHAHAHA!!
Wouldn't that have a fieldday with that one.
The Chinese would put all of them in their saltmines.
Strange China didn't offer any help so far. HA!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR201103...
Japan quake: China sets aside disputes, offers helpWhen it comes to things Japanese, the Chinese have sweet memories....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
nice!
overheated --> steam
it's rebottled as body hair remover!
Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet; shifted Earth's axis
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.earthquake.tsunami.earth/index.html
hopefully canada moved closer to the equator!
Flash: US choppers dropping propaganda leaflets in tsunami-ravaged districts.
"All is well. Do not discuss what you have seen. Work will resume in the morning. Banks will be closed"
Now that the sheep are throughly distracted, the PigMen are secretly cutting deals...
Like clockwork.
In the event of emergency
Please follow these directions with the utmost care for workers' safety:
1. Insert executive A into reactor core B.
2. Decontaminate workers.
3. Coffee break.
+1
Why should Lehman executives suffer for what was clearly the fault of Wisconsin's working class?
It's a wall street government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT-I-6OfDao
Working Class Hero lyrics
Songwriters: Lennon, John;
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
( From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/j/john-lennon-lyrics/working-class-hero-lyri... )
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me
If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me
How Exxon got away with the Valdez disaster: Court reduced payment by half in 2007
No Surprise. Accountability has left the country...
Sea water pumped in (if so) means that there is no expectation of future recovery. That could make sense because the unit was commissioned in 1971.3 + 40 years design life = this month and year. - Ned
Just another 100yrs until the next US reactor will be built.
OK, back to oil. A few years back Japan had an issue with some doctored inspection reports at its nuclear power plants. A bunch of them had to be shut down just as is happening now. As I recall Japan then had to use about 500,000 b/d of additional oil to keep the lights on. Assuming they still have the capability to switch over to fuel oil electric power generation and have to do this again ( and for a more prolonged time) Friday's fall in oil prices would seem to be a 'mirage' that will disappear this week. ZH posted a piece earlier from GS that suggested the same but made no reference to the above which is why I am mentioning it.
They can circulate the water through with diesel generates running pumps and gravity enhanced system, this should being down the interior temperatures quickly. Prayers to them,,,please no after-shocks
So there's no containment building and they are only reporting external radiation readings, i.e. someone carrying a counter like in a Godzilla movie.
They are just visually watching this naked steel reactor vessel with some hoses going into it. There probably aren't any controls left. Wonder if they have any functioning interior sensors.
Pray would be the word.
How exactly do they run the sea water in at this point? What can be left of their infrastructure to control anything down there? What effect did the explosion have on the problems they were still having at core 2? Have they lost controls to the valve network for other reactors? Do they even have pipes remaining for the sea water to the core?
Those are just some of my questions this morning.
Doesn't salt water have a higher boiling temp? Works on my pasta
lower
http://www.saltwaterburns.com/
Riddle me this wise sages of ZH; Will the magnitude and impact of this disaster effect the Japanese economy to the degree that it will (1) exacerbate or accelerate the OPEC de-coupling of the USD from the barrel of oil? (2) Send the price of gold through the roof since Japan holds a fair amount of US debt, and the Yen to USD ratio will drop far enough to dramatically impact the viability (what’s left!) of the USD?
Fuku fact sheet (PDF)
(any liability for Jeff's company?)
These reactors are:
Date of
Reactor Design Size Commercial operation
Fukushima I-1 General Electric Mark I BWR 439MW March 1971
Fukushima I –2 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW July 1974
Fukushima I - 3 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW March 1976
Fukushima I - 4 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW October 1978
Fukushima I - 5 General Electric Mark I BWR 760 MW April 1978
Fukushima I - 6 General Electric Mark II BWR 1067 MW October 1979
more from this anti nuclear organization on the Fuku situation
http://www.nirs.org/
Fukushima I-1 is a BWR 1, Mk I containment. First of the GE-->Toshiba/Hitachi-san tech transfer units. - Ned
That power plant needs a few big elect. generators to run the cooling pumps.. Like the ones you see at the county fair...An easy fix... maybe the pipes broke that move the cool water...
CNN REPOERTS 9500 MISSING IN JUST ONE TOWN !!!! http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.quake/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1
Cramer to recommend WY and basic materials stocks for the rebuilding Japanese. That sick dude that he is...every disaster is a bull market for someone....wtf
Those poor people...shit storm for them...
If they are showing the internals of the Containment Bldg - and you can see the Rx - statements about having this under control are really questionable. Pumping Seawater into the Rx is a last ditch move. I work at a US GE BWR...
is there any precedent theoretical or otherwise for the salt water approach or is it a Star Trek never been tired before final attempt to escape from a worm hole?
How nasty would the worst case scenario be with a GE BWR of this vintage?
No precedence in commercial nuclear for injecting seawater - or lake/river water that I am aware of. It means they've lost their normal backup water sources or the power to pump this water into the Rx. Exactly why remains unknown and that matters a lot. If they have no ac power (which conflicts w/ TEPCO 5am status update saying offsite power is available), then how do they pump any water? If there is a physical integrity problem (broken pipe), you could have power but no ability to get it into the Rx vessel where the fuel is. IF that was indeed an H2 explosion and I think that's likely given the high force that is seen in the video - its likely from H2 evolving from the zircaloy cladding in the fuel rods. This only happens when fuel temps have exceeded 2200F. Normal operating temp of a BWR is about 520F. If the Rx vessel is still intact then there is some hope that they can keep the core cooled. Sounds like they've lost level though - which will happen when safety valves lift to relieve pressure from the vessel - and into the suppression pool (inside containment). At some point you can't lose too much water inventory from the vessel so you need to inject water...an explosion of that magnitude - if it was ctmt building - doesn't give me optimism that they have piping integrity or a coolable core geometry...
thanks for the response - comments here and in the media cite Three Mile Isl and Chernobyl as analogues - what happens if things go from bad to worse with this kind of unit?
Results are largely the same...nuclear fuel is either Uranium or Plutonium, along with fission products (Cesium-137, Iodine, etc.). TMI is a good analogy but Chernobyl is also but only IF they melt the core thru the vessel. They'd still have to then have fuel melt through the drywell and out into the Rx Bldg - which appears to have blow apart. So we're still a ways from a Chernobyl event where raw fuel and fission products escaped en masse to the environment. We are certainly not at a Chernobyl moment at least not yet. Doubtful they get there but the tech details being released are sparse.
To be precise here, which I may not have been, the explosion may have been the Unit's Rx Bldg which is called secondary containment. Primary Containment is the drywell (inverted lightbulb looking structure shown in a diagram in another thread here). The Rx vessel is inside the drywell. Steam is vented into the Torus (surpression pool) and then into the drywell. To avoid the drywell exceeding design pressure limits (which could compromise its integrity) they have to vent pressure - which releases steam, which is radioactive but normally not highly so and mainly short lived N16 gamma radiation. IF they had an H2 buildup of sufficient amt to cause that explosion...I have to think its from fuel/cladding melting. Hopefully primary containment is still intact or any future venting from the Rx vessel will result in the release of radioactive products to the environment and if its fuel related fission products rad levels will really spike higher. No reports of that as of yet.
To be precise here, which I may not have been, the explosion may have been the Unit's Rx Bldg which is called secondary containment. Primary Containment is the drywell (inverted lightbulb looking structure shown in a diagram in another thread here). The Rx vessel is inside the drywell. Steam is vented into the Torus (surpression pool) and then into the drywell. To avoid the drywell exceeding design pressure limits (which could compromise its integrity) they have to vent pressure - which releases steam, which is radioactive but normally not highly so and mainly short lived N16 gamma radiation. IF they had an H2 buildup of sufficient amt to cause that explosion...I have to think its from fuel/cladding melting. Hopefully primary containment is still intact or any future venting from the Rx vessel will result in the release of radioactive products to the environment and if its fuel related fission products rad levels will really spike higher. No reports of that as of yet.
Thanks for the clarification - saves me the trouble. The drywell is stated to be intact. The reactor vessel is intact. All containment isolation functioned as designed. They still have not stated the if they suffered a LOCA or if the recirc and/or feed system has been compromised.
You should also mention that the sea water injection is procedurally driven in the EOP's, albeit way down into the flow charts.
I guess that the effectiveness of inerting the drywell will now come into question, as it is required (above 15% pwr) to prevent just such an issue.
Hopefully they just forgot to shut off the Hydrogen Injection system and its not zirc hydriding. Also, seawater when injected against a hot metallic surface can cause its own nasty type of "chlorinated steam explosion". I'm sure that the charcoal beds in the drywell purge/exhaust system are toast too.
" TMI is a good analogy but Chernobyl is also but only IF they melt the core thru the vessel. "
Let's get on with the proper analogy -
- Cite: The China Syndrome
mild /sarc
.
Or in this case, the Africa Syndrome since (given that we are already in Asia) that's where the melted uranium soup from the three Fuku Daiichi reactors will end up...
Good point.
anonymous:
Fermi 2 had a catastrophic main turbine failure mid-'90s, e.g.:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/fermi-2.pdf
Fermi 2 is a BWR, so flying buckets shredded the condenser tubes, put river water into the hotwell and into the reactor, before it tripped. Chlorides + stainless steel = one bitch of a situation.
Why I'm guessing that sea water into Daiichi-1 will sacrifice the unit.
- Ned
thanks KZ and NW
New Start Programme, not really. Just new players shuffling the old.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7091372.ece
What some of you already know
TENEX
www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/te_1452_web.pdf
USEC/DOE
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=93662&p=irol-irhome
USEC - Google Query
About 31,000 results (0.11 seconds)
Search Results
Megatons to Megawatts: Recycling Nuclear Warheads into Electricity
File Format:- Block all usec.com results <<<<<-------------- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Google is a real fucking twat!! Better not click on that, it looks fishy.
Not helpful? You can block usec.com results when you're signed in to search. usec.com
PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Shipments of recycled weapons-grade uranium from Russia to the United States ...
www.usec.com/Downloads/.../MegatonsToMegawattsBrochure.pdf - Similar
Here is your download link
http://www.usec.com/Downloads/MegatonsToMegawatts/MegatonsToMegawattsBrochure.pdf
While attending college, I was fortunate enough to land a job handling (NRC) Nuclear Regulatory Commission audits. We manufactured the x-linked (cross-linked) cables that were integrated within every reactor.
40 years was the product life expectancy of the product we manufactured. I still have another 20 years before my signature becomes null and void.
You could/should take what MSM says, and inverse it and be closer to the truth.
Where's Johnny?
Explosion could only have been caused by MELTDOWN per nuclear safety body:
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110312D12JFF03.htm
Japan, Radiation Fallout and Iodine Recommendations
http://drdavidbrownstein.blogspot.com/
At best it's another Three Mile Island already except the hydrogen did explode, partial core melt pretty much guaranteed.
The KILLER was the water..... more than 10.000 people unaccounted for
Hopefully, they're evacuating 180,000 people in the area surrounding the site. Iodine and Cesium isotopes detected;
Curious but the NEI is maintaining a rating of 4/7 on this TMI was 5/7 Chernobyl 7/7, but Fukushima has already released more radiation than TMI, and has at least 2 reactors in the same shape.
Um guys... this came out 35 min. ago:
Meltdown Caused Nuke Plant Explosion: Safety Bodyhttp://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110312D12JFF03.htm
So the Day of Rage turned out a bit different.
A few recent snippets from the bbc site.
1459: At least three residents evacuated from a town near quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 plant have been exposed to radiation, both Kyodo and NHK report.1320: Noriyuki Shikata, from Japanese PM's office tweets: "TEPCO's [Tokyo Electric Power Company] efforts to depressurize the container was successful. Additional measures are now taken tonight using sea water and boric acid. "
get the Iranian nuke techs
on the phone
maybe they can help...
...and grab the Tandy TRS80. It's the only platform not infected with stuxnet.
Like WTC 7, they had to "pull it."
Did the BBC announce it in advance? Bahhahahaha.
Up thread Sudden Debt thinks he heard 'sonic booms' (on the video) as whatever airborne platform came out of a steep dive (to avoid ground-based cameras and other ground obsesrvers) to deliver what another poster (later on) thinks were JDAM ordnance thereby 'pulling' the bldg ...
'Conspiracy' enough to fit the scenario - and credible?
(PS: The above is fiction, analysis and observation, though not neccessarily in that order)
.
" ...the economic devastation to the country will be pervasive for weeks to come."
Should be: " the economic devastation to the country will be pervasive for years to come."
"the explosion at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday."
Bullshit...
"A pumping system that failed" to keep reactor temps below the 2780 F level where H2O separates into H2 and O2 and then, with a spark, goes back to H2O rather energetically.
The pressure vessel around the reactor core may very well be intact, but H2 and O2 got out and did the deed.
Sorry to be a double post whore. Once & last. :)
Your Timeline to research:
President Obama will fly to upstate New York on Friday to take a tour of a General Electric branch in Schenectady, the birthplace of the company. Joining him will be the company's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt. Afterward, Obama will speak about "the importance of growing the economy and making America more competitive by investing in jobs, innovation and clean energy," the White House said in guidance to reporters.
Obama: Hello Jeff, what's the latest good news?
Jeff: Everything is to plan Mr. President.
Obama: How are your plans in introducing the new reactor?
Jeff: Well, we blew it up old technology today & will blame it on the procedural shutdown inaccuracies within the IAEA charter.
Obama: Are you sure this story is airtight?
Jeff: C'mon Mr. President, we own the air waves.
Obama: Has all the approval steps been met with the NRC & IAEA? Don't wish to walk down the path Rumsfeld took with NK plants.
Jeff: Stop being so paranoid. Let's review our plan.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/new_reactors/esbwr.htm
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert.html
Obama: Nice work! How will this be sold to the taxpayer's?
Jeff: Don't worry about it, we're filling their brains with images of chaos. They'll sign up soon.
Obama: You’re a genius Jeff, so glad that the party of 6 recommended your services.
Jeff: We all pleasure to serve the Party of 6.. Mr. President.
Obama: Indeed we do.
David Piper, reporter from Fox News, says there is a 'red alert' on 2nd reactor there.
That stupid nigger is talking about equality in the workplace. not a peep about japan
OH go ahead junk me losers. Im sure your lips will be tightly wrapped around lord purple drank's wrinkly cock next fall.
Get a grip.
Why? The teleprompter in chief is an embarrassment
I agree but I don't go around calling people niggers. My mamma raised me better than that. Douche.
baconater, thanks for adding your technical expertise and highly developed political ideas to this page. you have enriched all our lives.
I agree Obama is an embarrassment, but his race has nothing to do with it. W was also an embarrassment, as are you.
Japan didn't come up in Lord Ruxpin's tape
I am sure everything said by the authorities is accurate, that the government has a highly effective method of keeping the damage and fallout from getting any worse, that the other reactors are all in really good shape, that the ongoing earthquakes (not aftershocks, but earthquakes in their own right) are not causing additional damage to what are now stucturally compromised containment walls, and that Chicken Kiev is not supposed to glow on a dimly lit restaurant table.
/sarc
Some call me a 'pessimist,' but all I ever wanted to be was a realist.
View from Germany on EURO summit
http://dawnwires.com/investment-news/eu-summit-cements-the-euro-view-fro...
Nice link thanks. Mo money!
RE the Euro:
"It is likely that the temporary rescue system (EFSF) will be enlarged from the current amount of €750 billion ($1.03 trillion)."
I'm sure we'll find out post hoc that the engineers were clamoring for immediate emergency action but that management pooh-poohed it to try to save face or appear in control. This phenomenon of ego and arrogance seems to replay in every disaster.
The Japanese are trying to save face, but they fail to realize that misinformation spread by them now will rip their faces off moreso later.
Seppuku will ensue.
David Piper again... three of four reactors there on 'red alert' & 190 people reporting radiation sickness.
Faux news reporting 3 of 4 reacters at RED ALERT.......
Nothing to see here...... move along.
As a point of reference Chernobyl is still a problem from what I've read.
It would appear that the situation in Japan is worsening and that is not good.
Pumping in salt water with boron is a last ditch effort...the last tool in the box. The presence of Cesium shows without doubt that rod damage has been done, and fission is going on. Hydrogen gas is also a byproduct of fission. If the seawater/Boron does not work, then the fuel can melt into the inner drywell containment, and in some cases, melt through that....if the outer engineered containment in no longer viable, significant radiation release will occur.
The new Mantra: Radiation levels are not rising!
President Obama,
We need to cash in some of these treasury notes now. We need the money real bad.
Reactor #3 has the plutonium mixed fuel, as the owner points out in their corporate brochure:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/useful/pdf-1/brochu-e.pdf
Bottom of page 12.
Message to the Sheep... The well is only leaking 5000 barrels a day.. I've learned to wait a few days before I believe anything the MSM says.
I'm sure BP would gladly sell TEPCO the Top Hat to place over the reactor core to contain the radiation leak. Best part about a televised operation, it will be above sea level -- no submersibles required!
I always assumed that modern nuclear plants were 'fail safe' and under most disaster circumstances they would shut down and could be left alone without needing external power or attention from humans.
It's worrying that the authorities are having to actively do something to bring the situation under control. What would happen if for some reason they couldn't get to the plant?
monkey:
"I always assumed that modern nuclear plants were 'fail safe' and under most disaster circumstances they would shut down and could be left alone without needing external power or attention from humans."
Daiichi - 1 is a 1971 plant, built during the 1960s. 40 years old this month. For comparison, those inherently safe plants are mostly paper power plants. If you use the analogy "paper power plant is to real plant as paper PM positions are to physical PM in your possession" you won't be far off.
- Ned
I wouldn't want to take physical delivery of Daiici 1.
None of the current commercial designs are safe to just put in the control rods and turn off the lights. Residual decay heat still needs to be carried away, or else the reactor core melts.
The thing that makes me wonder about what they're doing here is that that residual decay should be much, much less 24 hours after shutdown, and yet they're still talking about injecting seawater along with boric acid, a strong neutron poison. This leads me to believe that they have reason to be unsure whether the reaction in there has actually stopped, and of course if it hasn't, just injecting seawater is going to make it go a lot faster.
GF, good points.
Guessing here: a) unanalyzed core configuration ('wtf is really there?'), b) the CANDUs can go local-critical, c) BWRs are especially sensitive to water moderator density vs. steam, so pressure control is important, more water, more moderation, and more importantly, some big kahuna in TEPCO technical management has said essentially: "We're putting all the water we can into this puppy. It ain't never coming back--we will never use that BA water, so in it goes--it won't hurt."
but wtf do we know? We're through all kinds of layers of fog.
- Ned
"c) BWRs are especially sensitive to water moderator density vs. steam, so pressure control is important, more water, more moderation,"
Awww, come on - you can do better than that! Shut down margin - it's all about maintaining a larger amount of negative reactivity to ensure that when cold water is injected, the core remains shut down (hence the borated water). See, the problem with your statement about more water - more moderation is that you make it sound like more moderation is needed. In the long run, it has been postulated that using steam cooling (after channel dryout) can effectively maintain a coolable geometry. The trick is keeping a flow of water and level just below the core plate up to the lower 1/3 bundle height. RCIC or HPCI trubines should be capable of that - providing you have at least 95 psig and the steam lines are intact. I don't remember when the doppler shift comes into play though, but it is exacerbated by boron buildup on the clad - isn't it?