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Tellurium 129 Presence Is Proof Of Inadvertent Recriticality At Fukushima
For those wondering just why TEPCO and Japan in general have been in such as scramble to cover up as much of the reactor in a concrete sarcophagus, after up until now the utility had been perfectly happy to come up with one after another useless idea of delaying the inevitable moment of sarcophagation, here is Arnie Gunderson from Fairewinds and Associates explaining that now there is definitive proof, courtesy of Tellurium 129 and a order of magnitude higher concentration of Iodine 131 in Reactor 1, that the reactor is now undergoing sporadic events of recriticality: in other words, the fission reaction is recommencing on its own, and without any supervision, emitting undetectable neutron beams which are irradiating any and all personnel still on location. For the time being these recritical events are isolated, although courtesy of the whole premise behind a nuclear power plant, all it takes is for some form of critical threshold to be reached, and for a full blown self-sustaining chain reaction to result in Chernobyl part 2. If nothing else, we now know why the authorities are desperate to bury everything literally under the sand. Because at least a few thousands tons of concrete will provide a modest buffer for unprecedented amount of radiation before these hit the surrounding environment. Lastly, all those hoping that natural rod cooling is sufficient, and if the plant is left along long enough on its own, things will get better, are now proven wrong. We can only hope the outcome this time will be a tad more favorable than all the previously disastrously aborted attempts at restoring order.
Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1 from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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that was my thinking at first, too, trav.
gunderson mentioned in the vimeo that in the 70's he was at a start-up and they were getting neutron readings at the guard-post.
now i don't know wtf to think.
zH strikes again!!!
The shielding could be pretty fucked up. Especially if it involved water and concrete...which is probably most of what was in there before the 'unfortunate series of events'.
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4283747180/3-week-update-on-japans-nuclear-crisis
the obvious question is then therefore "do the emissions coincide with the tide tables" and as the french would say VOILA! we have our answer! that is not merely "liar, liar pants on fire (literally)" but "Houston, we have a problem." And I do mean "Houston" as in NASA as in "get movin to there cuz the crisis is already over here."
oh, yeah..."and this expert is an expert."
hey, tyler, thanks for bringing arnie on to zH! good move!
you write above: "...all it takes is for some form of critical threshold to be reached, and for a full blown self-sustaining chain reaction to result in Chernobyl part 2."
i find nothing wrong with this logically or technically, but just from being here for the last 3+ weeks, i think the possibility of the conditions for the sustained criticality is not much above zero.
we were going around about this last friday and aristarchus answered one of my questions to him that the conditions for intermittent criticality are present in these various messes, but not for a sustained chain reaction.
maybe some of the z's who can explain this more fully will show up and explain. maybe later i'll have time to go back and paste up some of the comments from the other night, if the answers aren't here by then.
be cool if you could send arnie and his wife some zH gear. i'm sure there are many others here who value what they do and how they they do it. nice.
on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 02:37
#1127539
This was a station blackout event, which everyone trains for, However....when I went through it, nobody mentioned this kind of dual disaster that would kill all potential sources of power in a matter of an hour or so.
With all power dead, and reactors scrammed, they would have had around four hours before the rods started coming uncovered. In my mind, the type of radionuclides emitted, and the hydrogen explosions show that they started venting excess vessel pressure after the rods had been damaged. It is impossible for me to say how low the water got in each unit, and duration of same. I do not think they know for sure, since it seems they had to abandon the control rooms for some period of time.
A Corium reaction that breached the core vessel would not allow any pressure to be maintained in the vessel afterwards, and per their data, they seem to be doing that.
The spent fuel pools are even more of an unknown. But, I have looked at all the pictures, and none of them prove to me that the pools are compromised. Yes, it is easy to say...look at all the damage, they must be screwed, but I cannot say that with certainty. The damage to the metal panels on the buildings does not play into this, the possibility of the refueling crane down on the deck is more worrisome. I have little doubt that the SFRs came uncovered, and that will let loose a lot of radiation. If a pool is damaged, and rods have been ejected, then you will see much more radiation. As a rule of thumb, spent fuel after a year of storage still creates about 10Kw of heat per ton.
Chain reactions in the classical sense (by low level enriched products) have to be moderated by something...water, graphite, etc., in order to slow down the prompt neutrons. It is theoretically possible, but more likely you will see emission of prompt neutrons with no significant chain reaction. It is my understanding that the neutrons so far detected have been of the prompt type.
Gundersen is a consummate professional, who by leaps and bounds above the rest has provided clear, concise and factual summaries on the events at Fukushima Daiichi.
Back on March 30, from the contaminated water of the Unit 1 trench, they detected some exotic materials also.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-radioactive_14...
Like putting a mintos in a liter coke bottle? Only it last longer and you can't hear it or see it
yep.
To: Mr. Jeff Immelt:
In talking over your trip to Japan's Tepco and your upcoming discussions with the surviving administrators Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and Vice President Sakae Muto regarding the unfolding nuclear debacle, the idea arose among several of us for you to contact Mr. Timmah Geithner, and ask for his outline of how he travelled to Europe during the previous banking crisis, successfully instructing the elected officials, the bankers involved, and the media on what to say about the bank problem, the planned coverup, and how to respond to presser questioning. Then, after you have substituted Tim's financial terminology with appropriate nuclear techno-babble, announce to the Japanese, the press and the world your finalized and definitive plans for stress tests of the Daiichi reactors.
In the public mind-fog resulting from years of US and worldwide corporate, federal and administrative lies and obfuscation, no one will be surprised at your proposal, and the disaster hiding in plain sight can be further obscured until those responsible are either out of office, retired, or in your case perhaps, fatally affected by I-Melt levels of radiation poisoning.
Bloomberg:
Tokyo Electric's Plan to Plug Leaking Radioactive Water With Sawdust Fails
couldn't see that coming, looks like they're going to give up for now and put that operation on hold. I noticed this part of the article
The leak may not pose a severe threat to the public or wildlife, said Kathryn Higley, department head and professor of nuclear engineering and radiation health physics at Oregon State University.
“You’re likely to have a footprint in the soil and the sands and sediments as that material leaks out, but the impact is likely to be pretty minimal,” Higley said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Even if it does get out into that marine environment, that area around there has been pretty badly torn up, so there’s not a lot of life to be impacting.”
How did somebody as stupid as Katherine Higley ever get to be a professor of anything? She is basically saying fish and birds aren't going to go near the area because "its torn up". I didn't know aquatic life had an aesthetic sense and preferred to frequent areas that weren't "torn up". Idiot.
worse, she's not just a professor
she's the damn department head
good night nurse
OSU is heavily funded by all sorts of powerful industries, and the only profs who survive and thrive there (as well as students) are the ones who tow the company line to keep the money flowing in.
As to how she got to be a professor, well, you see, she had to take many tests and fill-in many little circles with a #2 pencil. Then, after she'd demonstrated she could repeat back the authorized answers to the given questions, was then granted a degree. Then she was hired on as faculty, to further propagate the status quo mythopoetic narrative of the day: nuclear energy is safe, nuclear energy is necessary. I might take her more seriously if there was an M.D. in her c.v.; I'm doubtful that a professor of nuclear engineering can be impartial when it comes to matters of health.
As to her being an idiot, I'm coming to see apparent stupidity as a more insidious phenomenon. After seeing what Trav7777 (who I initially IDed as an idiot) has done here to intimidate anyone suggesting the problems in Fukushima are intractable and possibly catastrophic for large numbers of people, it seems to me that there are some people in this world who practice a kind of counter-intelligence: intelligence applied towards the aim of destroying real intelligence, logic, reason, and most importantly, wisdom. I have seen an almost complete discounting of the future on the Fukushima threads by a small number of people promoting Happy Talk (tm). Just one more example of the 'everyone is fine, nothing to see here, move along' approach. But the price for this failure will likely be playing out for many decades, or possibly centuries...
Geek, One of the best aspects of ZH is the open discussion of ALL perspectives and views. This is a wonderful forum to understand the logic and reasoning behind views you may not share. This is to be encouraged and nurtured.
Having read many of Trav's post I would very much caution you from making the assumption that he is an idiot. Trav specializes in baiting people and forcing them to defend their position. This, in my book is not bad thing, it can also be thought provoking and entertaining, ...... he tends to get "really" vulgar when he is losing the debate. lol Trav doesn't tolerate fools gladly.
I just love how a series of relative obscure ZH posters emerge to defend Trav whenever his misconceived reassurances regarding this crisis are called into question. As I've mentioned on two seperate occasions already over the past three weeks to two other "Trav Defenders"...why don't you let Trav defend himself? What's up with this strange "Defend Trav" group behaviour?....are all you guys members of the same club???
I don't suffer fools very well myself....so please stop torturing me!!!
T.E.I.N. everyone!
hardcleareye, I see the forum a bit differently.
I see it as a wonderful (truly incredible, actually) source of facts, interpretations, analysis, synthesis, art, and opinions, but I also see zh as being especially hard hit by trolls and shills, and particularly on threads relating to Fukushima and radiation issues. The nuclear industry is very powerful, and I take it as a foregone conclusion that psyops - both governmental and corporate, are very much alive and present on these threads. [You folks know who you are]
So when I look at a post by a particular poster, say Trav7777, what keeps coming up for me is the question: who is this guy? Obviously he's intelligent, and seems to have a grasp of nuclear physics, but he definitely has a pro-nuke agenda, and he has posted so many times that I get the impression that posting to zh is all he does with his time. It's suspicious. It makes me wonder if he's working for someone. What is his agenda? Why would someone invest so much effort to try to convince all of us that this is a trivial problem? It's a credibility gap. I don't like authorities in general, even when I know who they are, and when I can see what training and experience they have that bears on a particular problem. In this case, I don't know anything about Trav, so his arguments carry much less weight than say, medical doctors who examined still-births in Europe following Chernobyl. Futhermore, his abrasive attitude and fragile ego are a bit more drama than I like to see in a substantive debate. The reason folks go to ad hominems is that they lost the fight. Trav has lost so badly here that I'm amazed he still shows up. I suspect a new persona is coming soon. (Don't worry, he'll post as Trav every now and then to keep up appearances)
I think you're looking into motivations a bit too deeply here. Some of us have spent considerable time studying our world's energy crises of the past and future. In doing so we also tend to spend quite a bit of time studying "alternative" methods for enegy production, including nuclear. We gain considerable perspective in doing so, learning
What you see as an irrational, shill, or troll point of view may in fact be an informed, calculated, and thorough positioning caused by knowledge and experience. I've worked in the oil business, studied immensely on peak oil and nuclear energy subjects, and am an engineer by trade. When I see people freak out in ways that do not make sense, I interject in attempt to either help them or help others understand the situation more thoroughly.
I recommend you reanalyze your position regarding agendas, suspicions, and authorities while taking into light your own personal bias and subjection to the old FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) routine. When news of the nuclear problems in Japan made their way to TV, there was a tremendous amount of FUD being spread. And there still is now.
Since this episode in Japan began, we in the selfish "west" have spent far more time debating the nuclear power plant catastrophe and its effects on us while for the most part ignoring the outright human catstrophe which has already cost more lives and destroyed more of Japan than has been seen since WW2. When Haiti got their earthquake people were going crazy trying to help the Haitians, yet few give a shit about the Japanese today. The only thing that matters is the nuke and how it will affect the metaphorical us.
You think I am "looking into motivations a bit too deeply here?" How interesting.
I am a practicing engineer with an advanced degree, so I suggest that if you have an analysis based on empirical evidence, please present it. I would be more than happy to critique your perspective. I don't see my position as "freaking out" and I take the lack of counter-argument as evidence there is no counter-argument.
Oh, you're an engineer too? What is your trade?
Where is your evidence that this is all safe, and why the defense of Trav? Or are you another incarnation of Trav?
And you think this is 20 questions? Get to know your opponent? That sort of thing?
At this point, with this disaster still unfolding, anyone defending this industry is supect in my view. The idea that radionuclides are at this very moment being distributed around the world is a fact. They will bioaccumulate in the food chain, and be present in water and precipitation. They will cause an untold number of cancers, miscarriages and still-births. Many will be uncounted deaths.
I would suggest you reconsider your concept of risk as it applies to energy production, especially given that there are readily available methods of producing energy that do not consign future generations far into the future to pay for our "cheap" energy now.
Well, being that you are an 'engineer', surely you know that there is far more to energy production than unicorn piss and skittles.
You also know that burning coal releases more radioactive material than any other form of power generation - including the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. And as an aside, thorium and uranium have half-lives in the billions of years, vs. caesium&strontium's 30 year half-life. But you know this already, you're an engineer. And a quite informed one at that.
I like how you're picking targets and villifying people with opposing viewpoints to your own. That's a very scientific way to debate. Perhaps you should consider applying your skills at FOX news. With Glenn Beck gone, they may have a good job for someone as talented as yourself.
At any rate, I'm sorry to see that you have fallen into the moonbat cult. I hope that when this is all over you either learn from this experience or you promptly turn off the lights, heat, air conditioning, and most importantly, your computer. We need to save all the power we can since we're going to use instead of nuclear and coal, unicorn piss and skittles for power generation.
LOL.
I see your focus is on production. My focus is on conservation and minimizing usage. Energy from the Sun is free. The wind is free. The tides are free. We can tap these sources and meet our needs. This is not moonbat, it is what sustainable will look like faster than you can imagine.
Great idea. Just one question: Where are you going to get the energy to build those solar panels, wind turbines, and tidal generators?
Geekgrrl, I like you, and the world is ending. Are you free for lunch today?
:-) Maybe.
from the article - The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight Rides Again
Tepco said it overestimated the absorption power of the polymer products it used. It believed the material would absorb 1,000 times its volume in water, the company said yesterday. Instead, the rate was 20 times the volume, Tepco said.
What's the problem?
Thank God Tellurium 129 is abound, this means that the Nikkei is up almost 1% and Silver is up almost 1%. The Great ChairSatan is speaking later in the week... oh, and also, we're going to cut 4 Trillion dollars out of the deficit over the next 10 years. That still leave a shortfall of about $500 Billion annually, but who's counting... it doesn't look like anyone in government is.
My only question is how is the US gov't going to finance its deficit once QE2 ends, since we all know that its the Fed that has been doing this to the tune of 84% in the last 6 months.
un#uckinbelievable
best case scenario
.
they have to add boron to the water thats going into unit 1
TEPCO either measures neutron at the West Gate only, or they're not disclosing measurements at other posts. Take your pick.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-neutron-measur...
Good luck in Japan! Japanese lose!
Do not rely on the government!
Kyodo News just reporting:
Don't worry the situation is contained, behind a sheet.
are you sure you heard right? are you sure they said "huge sheet"? LOL
Pardon me but I have to take a huge sheet.
Most junkers are 2 sheets to the wind...
Eyes rolling with low groan and laugh.........
Note that Strontiium-90 has insidious and harmful effectsdue to causing weakening of human immune systems. Resulting fatalities/disease are often after long time-delays. Sr90 is created in large amounts from reactor fission and fallout is easily ingested via milk, meat and vegetables, etc. Infants and children most susecptible.
Red blood cells and most white blood cells arise in red marrow.
[from http://www.dhss.delaware.gov/dph/files/strontiumfaq.pdf ]
"Since radioactive strontium is taken up into bone, the bone itself and nearby soft tissues may be damaged by radiation released over time. Bone marrow is the most important source of red blood cells, which are depleted if the strontium-90 level is too high...Problems from lowered red blood cell counts include anemia, which causes excessive tiredness, blood that does not clot properly, and a decreased resistance to fight disease."
Awareness of this and other fallout effects are heavily suppressed. For education, reccomend work of Dr. Ernest Sternglass. I will quote from 1995 interview in a following post, so all can evaluate inportance.
Thanks for the info...
I heard that Fukushima was scheduled to be decommissioned last year?
May God help the people trying to fix it.
Here is graphics on Chernobyl NewSafeContainment structure, currently under construction and targeted completion 2013.
The Youtube NSC construction model is awesome, re Fukushima:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9URUQvGE9g
things that make you go hmmm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI-ENqgjQXM
For complete 1992 interview with Dr. Ernest Sternglass, go to:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tellurium-129-presence-proof-inadvertent-recriticality-fukushima#comment-1130973
Excerpts by interviewer:
The following excerpts are taken from the complete interview which begins on page three:
. . . the atomic bomb project was always a secret project. It was born in the lie. The very first detonation at Alamogordo--it was announced that it was an ammunition dump that blew up. So it was a matter of public policy to deny and lie about the existence of the bomb, its manufacture, its health effects, and all the effects of fallout were classified secret until 1957 when Congress held hearings on the need to build bomb shelters. That's the only time when they were forced to come clean and talk about how to protect yourself from fallout, whose existence they had denied. It was only by accident that some Japanese fisherman aboard the boat the Lucky Dragon were dusted by some explosions in the Marshall Islands in the late fifties and that caused a huge outcry all over the world.
Until then all this was secret. In fact they did studies on animals as early as 1942, `43, `44 that showed that very small amounts of radioactivity would lead to low birthweight and crippled new-born dogs and rats. They knew all this. In fact they were actually planning that if the bomb should fizzle or if the bomb could not be built in time, that they would use the radioactive wastes from their reactors that made all the enriched uranium and plutonium . . . and spread it over Germany to kill as many people as possible. . . .
That's all in a book that describes the whole atomic age. It details a story about the plans to use the strontium-90 that was being manufactured in the plutonium reactors to poison the water supplies in Germany (and also later on I suppose in the islands in the Pacific). The book is by Richard Rhodes and is called, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It's a comprehensive history of the whole thing. . . . In it is the story in which Oppenheimer and Fermi discuss the possibility of using all of this radioactive strontium-90 to kill as many Germans as possible. And in fact they were themselves afraid that the Germans, who were also trying to build nuclear bombs, would send missiles filled with radioactivity over to Chicago. They literally believe that what was called radiological warfare was going to take place.
In other words warfare with these fission products which are of course the most powerful biological weapons that man ever invented. So instead of just being an ordinary explosive like TNT, this is really a biological weapon and it it turns out to be far more deadly, a hundred-million times more deadly than any micro-organisms that you could put into the atmosphere. Because any other toxins are not nearly as insidious as strontium-90 going to the bone like calcium and then irradiating the bone marrow with long-range beta rays that cause a weakening of the immune system and then people die of all kinds of conditions.
They die of every kind of cancer because when the body is unable to fight these cells then naturally any type of tumor multiplies much faster. That has now been seen in the September 3, 1992 issue of Nature. There is a story that completely confirms that we were lied to about the enormous increase in cancers that would take place after Chernobyl. It shows that in the Byelorussia area just 100, 200, 300 miles north of Chernobyl where the fallout came down, instead of two or four children dying of thyroid cancer per year it increased to a maximum of fifty-five within only a few years. And that's only the beginning. We haven't even seen all the other cancers and therefore we are headed for an enormous economic and health crisis in all of Eastern Europe and I'm sure now that the recent downturn in economic productivity both in East Germany and Poland and Russia and many European countries, was vastly aggravated by the enormously unanticipated effect of the Chernobyl fallout.
. . . Oyster Creek is near Atlantic City and New Jersey and it affected all the vegetables and the food that was delivered to New York City. Another serious accidental release occurred at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant (which we only discovered earlier this year) that actually took place in '85-'86 according to the Brookhaven National Laboratory's reports about the releases. Those releases in '85 and '86 combined were equal to what was released from Three Mile Island and yet nobody was told about it. All this occurred right next to the water reservoirs of New York City and Groton, right near where the large amounts of water are stored that are shipped into the metropolitan area.
We have unwittingly destroyed our own health, and if we continue to do this--and this is the real tragedy--future generations will become increasingly weakened, increasingly unable to fight off infections and all the new bugs that are mutating more rapidly (as Sakharov warned). And we are seeing the return of an enormous increase in deadly TB (tuberculosis), many venereal diseases and of course we see the AIDS epidemic ravaging the world because a generation of young people, who are now twenty-five to forty-five, were born during the height of all this bomb testing, when 40,000 nuclear bombs were detonated in the atmosphere.
You can't do that and expect the world not to suffer the effects. And especially because we know--and have long known--that radiation, especially strontium-90, goes to the bone and irradiates the bone marrow where the white cells are always formed that are the policeman in the body. If you weaken the police force and the cancers rise and new viruses come in, there are no defenses against them. So many young people died at an enormously higher rate than ever before of diseases that were new. Often the bugs had mutated from relatively harmless varieties to much more deadly ones under the influence of all this fallout. So we see in our world today a rise in infectious diseases like a renewal of cholera epidemic, a renewal of the measles epidemic, a renewal of a huge rise in gonorrhea and syphilus and hepatitis and all the diseases that are related to chronic fatigue, believed to affect millions of young people. This is bound to affect our health and our productivity for decades to come and this is why we're in such deep trouble.
Anonnn,
+1
Thank you for sharing.
Why would this be flagged as "junk"? Epidemiological research, when funded, demonstrates clearly that lead and other toxins bio-accumulate and can cause damage to germ line cells that are heritable. Children, particulary the youngest, are particularly susceptible.
Having studied autism, it seems clear that the disease is not primarily genetic. The leading genetic accounts of autism emphasize single point mutations that increase susceptibility to environmental factors. It seems probable that radiation could cause such single point mutations.
I have little doubt that fission-produced radiation adversely impacts the immune system and wonder why anyone would junk this type of analysis unless they have a particular agenda to de-legitimize concerns about environmental risks...
I agree.
For the most part I concur. However, some of the statements in the post are phrased in "absolutes" and there are other variables that also contribute to some of the observations noted, (ie over use of antibiotics, etc...) Post is a little long winded, but not worthy of a junk and appears to be written "from the heart".
The control rods that keep these reactors under management are inserted from the bottom. When they are driven into the bundles they moderate neutrons, slowing them down, and therefore allowing a self-sustaining reaction. In the event of an accident, such as losing power, the control rods essentially fall out of the bundles and stop the reactor. All very cool. But, if the reactor overheats and melts into a heap into the pile of control rods it takes off again and goes critical in areas. Then how do you control it? It won't very far down because there is twenty feet or more of heavily reinforced concrete but the concrete heats up, loses waters of hydration and this outgasses water furiously. At the same time the Zircalloy cladding for the fuel elements begins to react with air and the water vapor and release hydrogen. All this mass spews out the top of the reactor carrying heavy elements, trans-uranics, etc. Probably the only way to save this is to fill the entire containment dome with water (if they can) and circulate the water through filters in a waiting barge to capture the mess that comes out. After ten years or so it may quiet down enough to clean up.
They would clean it up by pulling the top off the reactor and, while everything is kept underwater, use grab buckets to grab the mess and drop it into buckets.
see Gundersen's diagram: http://www.fairewinds.com/content/projected-radioactive-leak-path
Control rods poison the nuc fission chain-reaction by absorbing neutrons. The control rods are driven into the fuel bundles to STOP the chain-reaction.
The GE BWR design uses Control Rods mounted underneath the steel Pressure Reactor Vessel. Thus they are driven upward to poison the reaction. They are hydraulicly driven and held in position.
My own experience is with PWR steam-driven generators...and top-mounted ControlRods.
You are right. My apologies. That came out all wrong. The control rods melt and fall out of the bundles and then the system takes off like a shot.
and you are right...there is some potential for the Control Rods to back out of the core because the whole situation likely exceeds the 45 year-old design-basis.
At long last, the pure play Tellurium mine I've been searching for.
Not to worry - these guys are going all-out, balls to the wall:
"After an unsuccessful attempt to flood the pit with concrete to stop the leak, workers on Sunday turned to trying to plug the apparent source of the water — an underground shaft thought to lead to the damaged reactor building — with more than 120 pounds of sawdust, three garbage bags full of shredded newspaper and about nine pounds of a polymeric powder that officials said absorbed 50 times its volume of water. "
International Herald Tribune 4/4/11
Needs more golf balls and shredded tires!
don't forget the nets filled with human hair. essential.
i wonder if the absorptive material is the same stuff they put in camera and electronics stuff. looks like they used enuf to soak up 50-55 gal of water. maybr we should send em a coupla bags of vermiculite. might help. can you freaking imagine how badly these poor guys must wanna kill those motherfukers they work for?
This thing is going to burn. Once the zirconium tubes catch on fire there will be no stopping it. There is no known way to put out a zirconium fire. The fuel in the rods will vaporize and rise into the air and we all will be exposed to the radioactive fall out.
Almost no way...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhQM1FvIcM
'Zirconium Fire Extinguished'
'Zirconium fire extinguished'
Ha ha ha! Looks more like the small zirconium sample they had in their tiny sandpit simply all burned away. DESPITE having numerous exotic fire extinguishers fired directly onto it from 4 feet away.
Now, about the many tons of zirconium burning underneath hundreds of tons of rubble high up in those unapproachably radioactive reactor buildings...
We are so fucked...
One recommended way to qench a zirconium fire is to cover with dry salt and add boron to absorb neutrons.
Transient chain reaction produces a large amount of heat, intensifying the chaotic atomic movement - making it more difficult for a slow neutron to promote fission. As fission slows, heat is reduced, and the odds of a neutron 'hit' increase. Rinse, repeat.
i have dreams like that, sometimes; the same 10-20-sec clip, for about 1/2 the night. intermittent criticality slewie dreams. i'll go for japanese sub-titles, next time.
http://weather.weatherbug.co.uk/Japan/Sukagawa-weather/local-forecast/detailed-forecast.html?zcode=z6286
Fukushima Airport: Winds slated to shift to consistent SSW-SW around Thursday.
The weather network reported that all day and night Sunday winds were coming in to Tokyo from the North and the East, coming in from the NE all day today and from the East all day Tuesday.
I see no doubt that transient criticality events are ongoing. The presence of Tellurium, lanthanum products and chlorine-38 is de-facto evidence of that, especially when combined with the other products being released. The chlorine-38 is, to me, the most telling, since its existence requires the interaction of neutrons with Chlorine-37, a constituent part of seawater. The "neutron beaming" can only come from large quantities of neutrons created via fission. The reported Auroras...or blue light emissions, is also caused by rapid fissioning. Basically, the blue glow comes from spectral emission of ionization of oxygen and nitrogen in the air. However, in my view the chance of any kind of sustained chain-reaction is very minimal, since it would require a relatively large amount of materials, and a moderator. In the case of Fukushima, the likely moderator is water, which would evaporate quickly from the rapid heat buildup. In fact, that may possibly explain a mechanism for the transient criticalities.
Thanks Ari. A question about that though:
Aren't they in a catch-22 where they have to cool the core, but every time they add water to do that, criticality begins again?
What do you do in a situation like that, if that is what is going on?
This seems to be the circumstance Mr. Gunderson is describing in the video.
That is a real possibility. My take would be to try and walk the line of temperature control/ criticality control and get as much boron in there as possible, and try to finally establish enough flow to maintain the criticality and temperature....if this is possible under the circumstances. It is a given that spent rods must be stored under wetted flow conditions until it is possible to remove them to dry casks, so what better place to store the core rods than in the core? assuming it can be made viable.
Ari, I just noticed in the UN report on Chernobyl the reference to Unit 4 being 3200 MW...thermal. I am used to electrical ratings, which for Unit 4 was 1,000. Of course when boiling water for power you lose two-thirds of the energy.
Both 3200 and 1000 MW are correct, for what it's worth.
Agreed. I typically think in electrical units as well, but when thinking back across the process, I have to adjust due to the inefficiencies of the system in question.
Radiation puts hair on your chest
Bitchez should just relax.
Thanks for all your great insights. I've really appreciated your posts.
But do you realistically see this situation "resolved" in 6 months? A year?
anonymous.... where are you?
Interesting discussion of neutron flux around properly operated reactors:
http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q2877.html
I agree with Aristarchan that criticality is probably minor compared to the decay heat problem...and the cladding reactions whenever the rods get very hot. Criticality is the main source of heat when a reactor is operating, but here it's third on the list. Barring a pretty unlikely internal configuration in one or more core.
Still, any chance of unmoderated neutrons is very bad indeed. The water and concrete that normally shields neutrons is...how damaged? Another known unknown.
The effects of neutrons on materials is pretty well known....if you can quantify the neutron flux. Neutrons degrade materials by various means depending on the material, and can also cause activation in materials, resulting in them becoming radioactive. I may have mentioned it before, but when I was on the 688 class subs, we would have to leave the reactor rooms above certain power levels...and after a subs lifespan, the materials in the reactor room had to be disposed of as low-level waste due to neutron activation.
Hi guys, I am a dumbass on this topic but I have a question. If the bottom of the reactor is designed to create a shape that makes it so that when it melts down, it spreads out instead of pooling, then is it possible that the dispersing shape changed in the quake and not only is material/radioactivity leaking from cracks, but the new dispersing shape could be making it lump and pool in ways that would encourage naughty nuclear behavior?
The bottom of the reactor vessel is about 8" thick, so it is unlikely its shape would change without a catastrophic failure, which there is no evidence of, and as far as I am aware, their is no device in the GE-type 1 vessel that spreads out a potential melt body, other than the lower baffles, which are not going to act in this manner. It is my understanding that none of the vessels have gone completely dry, but are undergoing level cycling, which is a possible source for naughty behavior, and, there is a possibility of piping and vessel leaks.
In his March 31st video, Gundersen stated that either the vessel bottom had been compromised, or the seals, at the very least, had been compromised.
His take was that this was the only way highly radioactive water could be pooling in the reactor housing basement.
Available failure models suggest a possible flow through a stuck-open vacuum breaker, or compromised seals or piping in the drywell, as well as vessel failure. If the bottom of the vessel is gone, then you have a Corium event that puts molten fuel in the drywell, this will last minutes at best, so you have a molten fuel pool spalling on a concrete base....no reported emission of radionuclides that I have seen suggest that. And, maybe I have missed something, but it seems the pooling water is in the basements of the turbine buildings, which suggests either a piping failure, or a failure of some type in the reactor building which flooded the trenches going from the reactor unit to the turbine building.
The bottom line is, if you have an accurate reading of the radionuclides released from a definable source, you have a 100% method of understanding what is going on. In this circumstance, you not only have four reactor cores in different circumstances, you have fuel pools in unknown circumstances as well. The combination of all of these in close proximity tends to skew the results. Therefore, unless somebody is lying, then there is not enough data to model this failure.
Your posts are a pleasure to read.
My working mental model of the cores involves a low level of water, fuel assemblies sticking up out of the water maybe 4-5 feet, and pellets from damaged fuel rods lying on the bottom of the reactor vessel. Kind of a pile of rat food pellets is what I am imagining. If they are immersed in water, they are warm/hot but not melting, and emitting residual fission product but that's about it. But the residual fission product is nasty: cesium and strontium. That's what I am estimating and worrying about in my spare time. Steady state cesium emissions going on for months.
If there have been partial meltdowns, there are probably also lumps of fuel that would tend to drip/fall off the rods like candles melting. Hard to get a Three Mile Island type meltdown with a large molten flow but we can't rule that out either. Pellet piles, core melt or a mix of both could set up naughty behavior...particularly with the water on top. This model is just a capsule shape, so pooling is encouraged but disrupted by various non-smooth structures/intrusions in the vessel; in the TMI accident debris also helped break up and cool the melt.
But nobody has even looked at the cores, from what we know, so your guess is as good as ours.
Jim: resign yourself to the fact that there is going to be emissions of iodine, cesium and strontium for a long time. Plutonium and neutrons and some of the other esoteric stuff is not much of a concern for non-local populace. And, in my mind, this is not going to be near a Chernobyl event. Could I be wrong? Theoretically: possible. Practically: I don't think so.
If they popped a w-87 underneath this thing and turned it into an artificial lagoon, wouldn't that immediately isolate most of the water soluable fission products into the lagoon? If they could enclose it with an artificial seawall, it would allow them to shield the problem from the sea at large and buy time with much more limited releases. Perhaps the detonation cavity below would provide additional environmental sheilding for the water table (just a guess really)? It may also disperse the loose fuel elements inside the SFPs once the water rushes in, preventing further criticality. If criticality does occur again, they could just dump loads of borax into the lagoon.
Tell me I'm crazy.
These transient fission events that produce neutrons are very dangerous to the workers at the plant, but in that manner carry no danger for distant residents of the area, but the potential contaminats produced certainly are an issue there.
Jim,
Is the situation getting better?
Is the situation getting worse?
Uhm....no. At least not at the plant itself. Same old relentlessly dynamic emergency.
For me, the question is, how bad is the status quo? Working through the health impacts--at Chernobyl for instance the widespread radionuclide deposition didn't result in high enough doses to cause acute radiation sickness, but instead contributed enough to have the kind of statistical link to cancer that some people love to argue about.
Maybe the Japanese have gotten lucky so far and blown a couple of Chernobyls worth out to sea. Maybe the reason they are looking more serious/panicky is because they are well aware of the seasonal wind patterns. Maybe if we superimpose five or ten Chernobyl dispersion patterns on a map of Honshu...but with the mountains and more focused wind patterns...I don't like the picture I am getting.
It's not the accident getting worse, it's the wind.
NewSafeContainment for Chernobyl has begun construction for completion 2013. May be adopted for Fukushima???
Here is awesome animated Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9URUQvGE9g
NewSafeContainment for Chernobyl has begun construction for completion 2013. May be adopted for Fukushima???
Here is awesome animated Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9URUQvGE9g
Hahahahahaha,can't get any better! The "tracer" that TEPCO used was bath salt that Japanese use to simulate onsen (hot spring) water.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tracer-was-bat...
Suggest numerous small rubber duckies.
US mortgage documents might work.
because they were all shredded?
In my mind becasue they are worthless...but you might be right there. All that false ink should make a great tracer.
Is there any end to this Isotope Madness? I hope battery manufacturers are paying attention.
"Isotope madness." Sounds like a good movie title, maybe in the same vein as "Reefer Madness."
Gawd! one of my movie classic's from 1948 in L.A. Milestones
Bloomberg:
Tokyo Electric Plans Silt Barrier in Sea to Stop Fukushima Radiation Leak
That link and the photos (link below) show a crack extending across a concrete slab to the pit with the crack that TEPCO tried to plug with concrete and then with other materials. It appears the crack in the pit is part of a longer crack from a significant failure of the structure or the foundation (soil and/or bedrock) beneath the structure
Does anyone know exactly where the cracked pit in these photos is located? The Crytome link has the highest resolution image. I have been trying to triangulate the exact location using the tower and the circular tank in the distance, but can't seem to find the structures next to the pit on any of the aerial photos.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/02/japan-fukushima-radioactive-...
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm
I don't know where it is, but it sure looks like a cable vault. What appears to be electrical cables are strung in it (although their routing seems odd....but I do see a green ground cable), and on the facing wall of the pit, you can see blocked-off conduit headers for future expansion, and unistrut on the walls.
Thank you.
See this pic. The red square near the bottom center is the pit.
http://www.asahi.com/national/gallery_e/view_photo.html?national-pg/0403...
Thank you.
How are the neutrons getting out, and why do they not normally get out? Sounds like there is an aperature (hole) in the reactor core (thus the idea of a "neutron beam" as described previously).
In this scenario, neutrons are created by fissioning, and they can get out via leaks, on-purpose venting, or even low water levels in the cores, since neutrons are not shielded well by materials that are not high in hydrogen (water), and can penetrate steel. Concrete works pretty well, but the older the concrete, the less well it works, as more hydration liquid has devolved from its structure. There is a lot of confusion per neutron beaming. Neutron beaming is typically a focused beam of neutrons from a source that is created on purpose and used for various reasons. In this case, I think neutron beaming just means the detection of neutrons in large quantities.
I should also add - to further complicate things - that neutrons can be detected by their interaction with the nuclei of other substances, which can create radioactive emission of isotopes from previously non-isotopic sources.
Neutrons from one reactor can fire another reactor or spent rods. This has never happened before. But I think there is such a possibility in high energetic development in the first reactor. If chain reaction in the first reactor is going to build up, the only solution is to crack it open and to disperse the fuel before it explodes with higher energy release including high energy neutron "beams".
In my view they cannot. Despite the close proximity of the reactors, the distance, plus the shielding of each reactor would lessen the kinetic energy of neutrons to such a small degree they could not accomplish that. Reactor cores explode from heat buildup and steam from water. What we are seeing is transient fission, not sustained chain reactions.
previously non-isotopic sources
WTF?
It happens...the evil beauty of neutrons.
All elemenst are isotopes. Isotopes are variants of elements with different number of neutrons. So there cannot be non-isotopes. He meant that non-radioactive isotops can become radioactive if aquire or loose neutrons. Radioactive means actualy unstable. Unstable isotopes can split without external force.
True that. I'm a stickler for technical correctness. It is the engineer in me.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-skills-of-engineer.html
Thanks for the correction...I had a late-night disconnect between brain and typing finger.
It seems that now a plan is being considered to wrap the stricken 1-4 plants at Fukushima in a plastic skin over some kind of skeletal shell. Ok. It wont stop what is going on inside the units, it will not stop neutrons, and it will probably create a radioactive hothouse that nobody can enter...and, how do you pump water into the spent fuel pools? This has to be a bogus report. I would be willing to enter the buildings in their present state if I have good instrumentation, and can make my own decisions whether to go in or not based on factual readings. But, from what I know, I can promise you I would have zero interest in it if they contain in a shell the the emitting contaminants and hydrogen.
The plan should be to open all 6 reactors up. Bombing or with a can opener.
Tyler I look forward to reading your economic analysis and comentary but please give up this Fukushima rpeorting. It's very speculative and inaccurate. I suspect cause your spurces on the subject are not reliable in that field.
I don't get it. If you are not interested in the issue then don't read the thread. But you come i here specifically to tell ZH how it should be run?
The large number of post it generates tells everybody that it is an issue of interest and that we want this followed through, especially since the MSM are giving it low profile, a potentially globally significant situation.
It is as accurate as any other source and has better knowledgable commentrary from some posters who know what they are talking about and so forth.
On the contrarty ZH IS the place to come for this issue.
What Kina said.There are articles I don't read and things I only glance at, I don't have the time for all of it. This may be THE issue that defines the decade, or even century.
me2
TEpKo.nukular. (Tuna packing even Under radioactive opperation) Tepko.
This will be going on for months/years.
It well may bang tomorrow. This is a qustion of human luck. I mean the Luck of all Humans.
TEPCO just announced it's going to dump low radioactive water into the ocean.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tepco-will-dum...
Fukushima is already several times worse than Chernobyl. They just haven't admitted it yet.
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
http://www.kidstube.com/play.php?vid=4536
Winning! Everything is going to plan!
I wonder what failure would look like?
The day after this happened, a parade of experts assured us that this was all under control.
Even Glenn Beck was telling his listeners that nuclear power plants are desigend to explode under these conditions.
The daily assurances that this can't get worse, weren't believable to begin with.
Why should i believe the endless stream of folks saying it now?
I hope they discover a way to clean up this mess quickly. Some radioactive isotopes have long half lives and can continue to poison the environment and our health for quite a long time.
http://www.prlog.org/11417424-natural-treatment-for-radiation-exposure-w...