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It's Official: "Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through Base Of Fukushima Plant" ... "Far Worse than a Core Meltdown"
The Telegraph reports today:
The
nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear
plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is
pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the
Japanese government.
The findings of the report, which has
been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed
by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being
"far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a
nuclear accident."
***
The pressure vessel of the No. 1
reactor is now believed to have suffered damage just five hours
after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contrary to an estimation
released by Tepco, which estimated the failure at 15 hours later.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over
the following days with the molten fuel collecting at the bottom of
the pressure vessels before burning through and into the external
steel containment vessels.
***
"The recovery effort
at the plant is likely to be more difficult as they will not be able
to use their previous plan to contain the fuel," Yoshiaki Oka, a
professor of nuclear science at Tokyo's Waseda University told The
Daily Telegraph."So it may take longer and be more difficult, but it is something they have to do.
Other portions of the Telegraph article underplay the severity of the crisis, such as:
The fuel appears to be stable at present as it is being cooled by water
pumped into the vessels, although it will complicate the emergency
recovery plan put forward by the government.
***
But
we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident,
so I see no particular additional affects on human health, he said.
Alexander Higgins notes:
The
Telegraph report once again echoes statement from TEPCO that the fuel
at the plant is now being cooled and that plant is stable. However, we
have heard the same exact statements from TEPCO day after day for
almost three months now. We heard it when there was no meltdown. and an
were assured the rods were stable so the risk of meltdown was little to
none. The media printed the statements.
When we were told that
there was only a partial nuclear meltdown under way and there is no
comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Again, TEPCO and the media
told use there was no danger because the fuel rods were stable and
being cooled.
Then were found out this was in fact a level 7
incident on par with Chernobyl and were reassured the plant and fuel
rods were stable.
Then they reveal a full meltdown occurred at 3
reactors, and the media again reported the fuel rods were stable and
being cooled.
Now even with news that the nuclear lava inside the
reactor has melted through the base of 3 reactors they once again
print the same lies again that the cool rods are being effectively
cooled and are in stable condition? Should we believe them this time
after 3 months of lies?
The media is also still reporting that
there is no risk to human health in Japan. What a joke. Does anyone
seriously believe these lies?
Indeed, as NHK reported Saturday:
The
operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was
observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and
extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.***
TEPCO
said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and
that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour
was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.TEPCO says the
steam is likely coming from water at a temperature of 50 degrees
Celsius that has accumulated in the basement of the reactor building.
</blockquote>And Japan Times reports today:<blockquote>
The
government should consider evacuating children and pregnant women from a
wider area around the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because radiation
levels remain high even outside the 20-km no-go zone, Kumi Naidoo,
executive director of Greenpeace International, said Thursday in Tokyo.Naidoo's
team of radiology experts found hot spots that had a maximum hourly
reading of 45 microsieverts of radiation alongside a school zone.***
During
the news conference, Jan Beranek, an expert on radiology from
Greenpeace International who joined Naidoo's trip to Fukushima,
recommended that the government widen the evacuation zone to at least 60
or 70 km from the power plant.He said there were parks and public spaces where the level of radiation activity hit 9 microsieverts per hour.
Even
some nursery schools that have already undergone a decontamination
process had a relatively high reading of 0.5 microsievert per hour, he
said. That would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts,
which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl, Beranek said.The
government recommends a maximum intake of 1 millisievert a year during
normal times, but raises that to 20 millisieverts in times of a nuclear
accident.Beranek recommended that people in Fukushima residing
in areas with high levels of radiation wear masks and remain inside
their homes.Radiation from some kinds of particles "is not
something that goes away in weeks or months," he said, explaining that
some chemical elements can be absorbed into organs and bones.While
expressing concern that the level of decontamination "hasn't been
adequate" in Fukushima, Naidoo also said he fears that people there
haven't received sufficient information from the central government.Pointing
out that many children living near areas with high levels of radiation
are playing outdoors without proper masks, he criticized the government
for being "too slow" in explaining the risks of exposure.
»
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http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/03/when-the-fukushima-meltdown-hits-grou...
Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.
The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.
If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode –not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.
Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense — it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different — a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.
A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment vessel to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.
Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did – although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.
Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn’t seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.
Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for ‘mixed oxide fuel‘ which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.
The problem is that you don’t want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can’t stop it.
The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.
+1
Getting close...
Two questions:
#1 At what point will all governments ban all fish-as-protein products from the N. Pacific region? [hint - should have been 2 months ago]
#2 Wormwood, the land of the wolves, ended because of: #1 biorobot suicide, #2 mass evacuation and #3 mass western ignoring of the issue. Japan doesn't have this luxury.
p.s.
I called it a 7 in the second week, once I'd seen data. I was stopped from publishing said data. It took.. slightly longer (ahem "its a 4") for it to be made a 7. The response I got was "Be thankful, this isn't Orwell's 1984". Aka --- this is McDonalds / Disney's control - "All is good, all is sugar coated and brilliant. This is the best you've ever known. There is no radiation. There is no meltdown. If there is meltdown, it is good for funky skies. What do you mean that funky skies are no ozone over the entire northern hemisphere? Oh, poo-you, all is good. Japan is good. There is nothing to suggest that the northern hemisphere is in danger."
No, really. All is good. None of the above has any basis in reality. All is good.
Huh? No ozone over the northern hemisphere?????
the ozone is all in uw's head...
"The media is also still reporting that there is no risk to human health in Japan. What a joke. Does anyone seriously believe these lies?"
Let me ask, have the embassy people from Europe return to their offices? How about all the USS Military ships that ran away even after Japan's PM said,"it's only a tiny leak."
So when will the EPA re-instate radiation level reports for California, Oregon and Washington? Why did they stop?
...mmmmmmm....smeels fishy to me.
Just for info, I heard that the US Carrier group left the region because low level radiation in the air was triggering their own reactor monitoring equipment - in other words, it was more of an issue that they were being blinded to any problems that their own reactor might be having, than it was a health issue to the crew. Not to minimize the issue, however. My dad was a scientist, and he thoroughly trained me, and scared the shit out of me as a child (during the cold war) regarding the dangers of fallout.
The Telegraph is not a neutral source. More particularly, it is right wing, main stream, pro-business, Mercury Investigation Sextant corporation.
In other news: America not the land of the free: shock. Iraq's 14 huge military bases do not suggest withdraw this year: shock. And so on.
p.s.
Your best bet is to contact a naive/native scientist direct, and get the figures without the panopticon being involved. Hint: You're all fucked.
6 weeks 6days-use the weapon on yourself
Troll elsewhere
you know its already melted through the concrete base. the only mystery is when they will confess this.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/03/15/fukushima-chernobyl-redux/
Shan Nair is a British nuclear safety expert who was part of a panel that advised the European Commission on its response to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. For almost twenty years, he worked within the UK nuclear industry for Britain's national energy supply company analyzing both waste arising from spent nuclear fuel and also the consequences of what are called LOCAs--Loss of Coolant Accidents, which is precisely what officials are battling against at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Northern Japan. I spoke to Nair by phone to learn his thoughts on the incident.
Ecocentric: In the aftermath of Chernobyl, Europe faced a radioactive cloud that drifted over the continent. Is that your concern here?
I do not think that a Chernobyl-style cloud is the biggest concern. My main concern is contamination of the water table. If the entire fuel has melted the odds are it will go straight through the pressure vessel and therefore through the ground until it gets to the water table. Then it will cool down, but the problem is that the water table will start leaching actinides and fission products from the melted glob of fuel into the environment. So you will end up with some radioactive contamination of water supplies and ultimately crops and other products. That's a major problem because radioactive particles are much more dangerous when digested—they cause internal irradiation of organs with resulting increased cancer risks.
How bad a scenario will that be from a public health perspective?
The severity of the water table risk depends on the local topography--it depends on the depth of the water table, which itself moves up and down. I would imagine the water table is quite close to the surface right now because of all the flooding, which is not good. Also, the type of soil is important: the more silica there is in the soil the less likely the leaching will be. The silica will melt at high temperature when it comes into contact with the molten fuel and when it cools it will cause a seal around the glob of radioactive melted fuel. That's why radioactive waste repositories are often in desert areas--sand is often almost pure silica. It also depends on the ground water flow--is it toward land or the sea?
Watching the Japanese rush to stop a meltdown must feel like a nightmarish deja vu of Chernobyl for you?
Yes and no. This is not Chernobyl. That's important to know. It can't be Chernobyl because the Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) at Fukushima are designed differently than the High Power Channel-type Reactor (RBMK) reactor at Chernobyl. The RBMK was designed so that the hotter the core gets the greater the reactivity--so you have a situation where you are in a vicious cycle and a race to an explosion. The BWRs are designed in such a way that the hotter it gets the less radioactive the core gets so there is a self-shutdown type of mechanism. But the problem is that before you can get to a safe level you might have a complete meltdown. I believe that's what they are battling against now in Japan.
There are also reports about problems keeping the spent fuel cool at one of the reactors. Did that happen at Chernobyl?
No, that's a new issue. Spent fuel is fuel that has been used in the reactor and is still "hot," still producing decay heat and releasing radioactive particles. The bad news is that the spent fuel pool doesn't have the same level of containment as the reactor core, so if it overheats or causes a fire there's a higher risk of leaks, but the good news is that it should be much easier to cool.
At Chernobyl many first responders to the incident knew they faced certain death. There are reports that all but 50 workers at the Japanese plants have been evacuated. Those that have stayed behind, are they on a suicide mission?
The helicopter pilots who dumped sand on the burning core at Chernobyl knew they were going to die, and they did die. We don't know what the radiation levels are inside the plant but reports of a 400 millisievert figure suggests that it's not a suicide mission for the 50 workers who have stayed. They can do what is called "dose sharing"—rotating workers so that they don't receive an unsafe dose for any longer than needed. It is still a risky operation, however.
And the areas around the plant that are almost certainly contaminated, what will need to happen there?
The best thing people can do is stay indoors. Concrete shields a lot of “the nasties” from you when you are indoors. In the longer, term, I remember that after Chernobyl there was a town in Northern Sweden called Gavle. The radioactive cloud went over the town and it started raining heavily and there was a lot of deposition of radioactive particulate material that was caught into surfaces of roads and buildings. There was a high level of cesium-137. When we went there and waved our Geiger counters about the counters maxed out--it was that bad. Now, what that means was that it was high enough so that it exceeded the safe limit for operating a nuclear power plant, but at the same time it wasn't an immediate health risk. It wasn't higher than, say, the black sands of southern India, which emits that level of natural back ground radiation because the sands are rich in thorium. In any case, in Gavle, the Swedes sandblasted the surface of roads and buildings to take off the thin exterior layer of the concrete out and put it into low-level radioactive storage. We did that because the tiny radioactive particles had lodged in the lattice of the silica of the concrete. Removing that layer reduced radioactivity a great deal.
What will be the long-term lessons from Fukushima?
When you are designing safety features and counter measures for nuclear reactors you do a PSA—a probabalistic safety analysis— which takes into account a range of accident scenarios and their probabilities. The PSA will consider low probability/high consequence events but at some point you have have to draw the line. You can't take into an account a scenario in which an alien race invades from mars, for example. Unfortunately, the size of the earthquake and tsunami exceeded the worst-case scenario that the reactors were designed to handle. The nuclear industry will need to re-examine how severe its “worst-case” scenario should be and push the envelope on the extreme case/low probability event considered in a PSA; that seems pretty clear.
Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/03/15/fukushima-chernobyl-redux/#ixzz1Op8L33htThis problem of fat tail distributions was precisely what Mandelbrot talks about in his book "The Misbehavior of Markets". He discusses the flooding of the Nile, wherein conventional probability models resulted in dams that were too low to deal with the occasional rogue flooding that would occur. Perhaps these same probability models were used in building nuclear reactors over fault zones in Japan and elsewhere. Another thing to consider is the privatization of the nuclear industry, where fiduciary responsibility to shareholders dictates cutting costs and using probability models that confirm the cost-cutting regimen. Well, cutting costs in the design and construction, but not cutting salaries for top management, it goes without saying;viz. privatized healthcare in the US.
I wonder if the cost of term life premiums have gone up in Japan. Cancer may now be a natural causes.
I do NOT think the conclusions of this interview all hold true today. There have been, in fact, PLUMES of radiation in the air and the plant continues to emit radiation every single day.
Clearly the risks to the water table and ocean are great since the current level of contaminated water held (not released, which would increase the total) now stands at 105,000 tons http://www.shimbun.denki.or.jp/en/news/20110607_02.html
Ocean releases have also been significant e.g., http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/05/22/Japan-reports-more-radiation-leakage/UPI-28701306071295/#ixzz1NDKVmgYg
However, we now know that there were 3 major explosions, one of which may have been a nuclear explosion. There was also a fire in spent fuel pool #4. Massive amounts of radiation were released into the air as a result. Indeed, plutonium and strontium are being found many miles from the plant. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/05_21.html
Tokyo residents were under a plume of radiation in March (http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/
#Fukushima Nuke Accident: WSPEEDI Shows Tokyo Was Under Radioactive Plume on March 15)
Seattle residents breathed in between 5 and 10 hot particles a day in April http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1106/07/jkusa.01.html
http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/part-2-arnie-gundersen-interview-protecting-yourself-if-situation-worsens
This disaster is not over yet and is definitely not restricted to the water table…
As soon as any fuel overheated and put a hole in the bottom of the pressure vessel the cleanup was magnified by 100. When the pressure vessel is intact you can fill it with water, drop cutters inside, and carefully pull out all the burned up fuel elements and control rods. Now you have to reinforce and fill the entire containment structure and cut up the pressure vessel piece by piece to get to the fuel rods. We're talking a score of years at least. Poor Japan.
On a long enough timeline.....
"But we now know that this happened at the very beginning of the accident, so I see no particular additional affects on human health," he said.
Have some more Victory Gin
He is saying, if this were a new development, there would be additional affects on human health from this new development. But since it was this bad from the beginning ...
If he doesn't see it, well, then, it must not exist.
Not in any particular way, so to speak.
The USA has 20+ reactors of similar design, some of which are in seismic and/or flood zones. USA reactor maintenance and emergency response is not better than Japan's and I hear of no massive upgrades in progress. The average USA reactor holds 10x the spent fuel as in Japan. There is also no siginificant pressure to upgrade, redesign, harden or shutdown these reactors. IMHO it is only a matter of time until USA has a local production of the Japanese radiation show, but with much more potential.
General Electric does not have any extra money to divert to correct their sub standard manufacturing! they pay to much in taxes! LOL! they dont have enough subsidies! LOL! their Bonds did Not sell so well becuase the F.D.I.C. / Treasury did Not back them.. LOL!
You want a multi Billion dollar corporation that does not pay taxes, who's Bonds are back stopped by the U.S. Tax Payer to fix a problem that they created by being cheap?
what kind of dope do you have? I want some! it must be GREAT Shit Man!
Sorry, no dope here!
We mostly agree about the non chance of GE doing something pro bono. No surprise there. Since they are among those who "own" the government, no chance of regulatory pressure either.
What does surprise me is that the so-called "greens/enviormentalists", who now have actual evidence that some nuclear plants are dangerous, are too busy defending us from the non-existent threat of CO2, to bother with the actual danger from radiation. Out of style, I guess.
A problem is only a problem if it is preceived as a problem. It is only in our minds. Pass the bonge.
Global warming, CO2 emissions are only preceived. Fukushima melting through the earth and coming out somewhere in the Atlantic (not sure 38S 40 W as to what is there) may not be all that bad.
One thing for sure we will not be wiped out by any natural disastor but something we caused all by our selves.
If I was God looking down on our sorry asses I would turn around and head for some other place to start all over again.
if we are given the chance (no matter how) to clean up our act thru purging the evil fucking doers! I would hope that enough of us are out there to try to take a run at it. sarcasm and banter aside, you should be more worried about trying to fix shit if we can get a foot hold. none of us are worthy, never were but it would be nice to at least show him we gave it a try on our watch, no?
A man leaves his cat with his brother when he goes on vacation. Several days later he calls to check on the cat.
"It's dead," says his brother.
"This is a terrible shock!" he replied. "You should have prepared me better. The first time I called you could have said that cat climbed out on the roof, but it was fine and you were just about to get a ladder and get it down. I would have been worried and would have called later to check again. When next I called, you could have said that when you tried to get the cat down it jumped into a tree and was hanging by its claws from a limb. You had to call the fire department to rescue the cat, but you were sure it would be fine. I would have had time to get used to the idea and when I called you the third time you could have finally told me that the cat was dead and it wouldn't have been such a shock."
"I'm sorry," said his brother.
"So, hows Mom?"
"She climbed out on the roof."
+1000
LOL!
They are going to have to create a Level 11. Because 11 is one more than 10.
Spinal Tap, FTW.
Check this out:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/04_16.html
"TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.
TEPCO says the steam is likely coming from water at a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius that has accumulated in the basement of the reactor building."
It is amazing the questions this brings to mind but are not asked. If I recall, there is like a few million gallons of this water in the basement. What kind of heat would cause that to be 50 degrees celsius? (That number seems too low for the amount of steam rising.) Is the escaped fuel in the basement and critical? Has it already burned its way down to the water table?
Bingo, next month, they will reveal, that the fuel burned through the containment vessel 3 days after the earthquake
50C is definitely low considering water boils at 100C. There doesn't seem to be any pressure effects involved so...
I noticed that. Missing a zero perhaps?
500c = 932f...Reasonable?
Nope, just more lies, saying 50 hoping to convince people the freikin water isn't boiling ...but still producing steam ...which infers boiling.
Yeah, 50C = 122F -- no steam -- condensation depending on temp and humidity, not steam.
Having worked with power contractors most of my life (GE included) I would question were they took the temperature reading!!! ie, it was steam (at 212 deg F, but because of the environment the closest measurement they could take was 100 ft away and that reading was 50 deg C...... or maybe the gauges that took the measurement were not "calibrated" etc etc...... oh what a cluster fuck this is.....)
not as good as naked older men...I must admit!
All you need to do is pull up the YouTube videos of individual citizens with geiger counters driving through the unguarded ghost town that surrounds the reactor complex. There are earthquaked roads that can't support rescue equipment, homeless pets and unfenced farm animals roaming everywhere, but no people, no work trucks, definitely not the activity that you'd expect to see for dealing with this magnitude of a disaster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8
More than likely, the reactor site was ABANDONED soon after the initial explosions and TEPCO management never got workers to go back. The actual worker bees were young guys with families, could be they chose to live rather than collect a few more paychecks, and vanished.
"The government should consider evacuating children and pregnant women from a wider area around the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because radiation levels remain high even outside the 20-km no-go zone, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said Thursday in Tokyo.
"Naidoo's team of radiology experts found hot spots that had a maximum hourly reading of 45 microsieverts of radiation alongside a school zone.
"Even some nursery schools that have already undergone a decontamination process had a relatively high reading of 0.5 microsievert per hour, he said. That would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl, Beranek said.The government recommends a maximum intake of 1 millisievert a year during normal times
Seriously? I am in Europe and I have a geiger counter on my wrist and have not got rained on since March. Call me frikkin stupid, but I prefer to be a rain-dodger than a damn, I wish they had told us it was this bad too-later.
And many millions of people are still in Japan only 150 miles away from this? Really?
www.weatheronline.co.uk and click fukushima on left. then hit loop on any of the isotope dispertion models.
Great link. Thanks.
New human/animal species coming soon to earth.
Sure glad I’m old and have No Children. Good Luck to everyone on the little blue sphere hurdling through space
I watched Clerks 2 again a few days ago...... a very very funny film...."its called inter-species erotica" ......
Wait a minute....wait a minute....let me get this straight....they try to scare us by telling us our Cell phones "May" cause Cancer.....and that the Nuclear Cluster Fuck in Japan is nothing to worry about???
When was the last time you stuck a nuclear reactor upside your head? Proximity, my dear fellow.
once again...the 'conspiracy theorists' had it right from the start
its becoming increasingly obvious to me that no one on any level of authority can be trusted to give the truth about anything of any size at any time
bunch of pathological liars and thieves
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
- Otto von Bismarck
You're in good company John Q.
Good to see you too Davey
same. Keep up the fight. Water the garden
+1 - It got to the point a long time ago that only if you were a hyperambitious psychopath could you make it in politics. you have principles? forget it. you want to do something positive for people? forget it.
It hasn't been the same since the presidential coup of 1963