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TEPCO Confirms Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool Is Now An Uncontrolled, Open Air Fission Process
It had been a while since we had a factual update (as opposed to just lies and spin) from Fukushima. Courtesy of Kyodo, we now know that what was speculated by some as true, and rebutted by most as mere scaremongering, is in fact, fact. "Some of the spent nuclear fuel rods stored in the No. 4 reactor building
of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant were confirmed to be
damaged, but most of them are believed to be in sound condition, plant
operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday." Naturally, in one month we will learn that most of them are damaged, and in two months, that each and every one has been demolished. "The firm known as TEPCO said its analysis of a 400-milliliter water
sample taken Tuesday from the No. 4 unit's spent nuclear fuel pool
revealed the damage to some fuel rods in such a pool for the first time,
as it detected higher-than-usual levels of radioactive iodine-131,
cesium-134 and cesium-137." These confirm an ongoing fission reaction. In a tremendously ironic development, the No. 4 reactor, halted for a regular inspection before last month's
earthquake and tsunami disaster, had all of its 1,331 spent fuel rods
and 204 unused fuel rods stored in the pool for the maintenance work. Unfortunately, the entire pool ended up being damaged following the quake and the subsequent explosion, in essence nullifying any protection that the containment dome would have provided. As the picture from the Asahi Shimbun below shows, the damage from overhanging structures which have subsequently fallen into the fuel pool likely means that there could well be an uncontrolled, if weak, fission reaction currently going on in the reactor 4 SFP (where the water temperature is currently 90 degrees) unprotected by the elements due to the complete destruction of the Reactor 4 shell.
(picture via of saposjoint)
More from Kyodo:
The cooling period for 548 of the 1,331 rods was shorter than that for others and the volume of decay heat emitted from the fuel in the No. 4 unit pool is larger compared with pools at other reactor buildings.
According to TEPCO, radioactive iodine-131 amounting to 220 becquerels per cubic centimeter, cesium-134 of 88 becquerels and cesium-137 of 93 becquerels were detected in the pool water. Those substances are generated by nuclear fission.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the confirmed radioactive materials were up to 100,000 times higher than normal but that the higher readings may have also been caused by the pouring of rainwater containing much radioactivity or particles of radiation-emitting rubble in the pool.
The roof and the upper walls of the No. 4 reactor building have been blown away by a hydrogen explosion and damaged by fires since the disaster struck the plant. The water level in the spent fuel pool is believed to have temporarily dropped.
In the meantime the latest drywell readiation reading in Reactor 1 is still "out of commission"
(Source: METI)
And lastly, a demonstration from Fairewinds' Arnie Gunderson who shows how the Zircalloy uranium pellets mostly likely melted and shattered, possibly penetrating through the floor of reactors 2 and 3.
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen demonstrates how Fukushima's fuel rods melted and shattered from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
(h/t Robert Breen)»
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There are observations, short-lived bait fish (plankton feeders) with high Cs-137 in them.
In many ways this is a unique event and we are all part of a laboratory experiment. Feel free to act in as risk adverse a manner as you can.
Those limits i.e. milk vs. water do not make any sense to me Aristarchan. Are you saying they think people drink milk to water at an app. 1 to 1000 ratio? Plus it's all cumulative. If the milk is radioactive then likely the water is radioactive.
It is cumulative, and the FDA also posts food-cumulative charts on their website. The difference between water and milk involves not only their average intake, but the applied relatively short half-life of Cesium, which you are more likely to consume via water during its active period than milk. With water, we shower with it, cook with it, drink it, and almost all processed products have water in them, our overall exposure in the active period is much higher, that tends to seem to skew the ratios. Also, Cesium is readily ejected from the body via various means, sweat, etc., this figures into the cumulative body loads, but is biased more from water loading than any other variant. I hope this makes sense.
Excellent set of factual posts based on physics and biology
not uninformed hearsay and rumour.
Well done.
"Cesium is readily ejected from the body via various means, sweat, etc., "
WRONG. Sorry but I've been in medicine too long to know that is not true. Radio active material is readily absorbed by the liver, kidneys and other soft tissue. It is NOT filtered out quickly but must me chelated out of the system. The body will store this material just like heavy metals.
This may have been "UNCONTROLLED" for some time now.
Perhaps ongoing even before the Mar 11 super-quake.
Here is a EPA page you can go to that still has the historical graphs of the 'Gross Beta Air Monitoring Data' from all the cities they have balloons in. HARD COPY THEM BEFORE THEY ARE GONE.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/radnet-data-map.html
Click on some of the western states balloons like Billings, MT, Las Vegas, NV, Rich-land, WA, Rapid City, SD, Bakersfield, CA, Grand Jct, CO, Salt Lake City, UT. If you look at the pattern of a bunch of them, starting from the west, you will notice that just before the Japan quake there were huge spikes in the days prior to the horrible Event on the 11th.
Again...look at the pattern on these graphs that shows spikes before the Mar 11th quake that is marked by a black line on the Gross Beta Air Monitoring Data graphs and especially Billings, Mt and Rich-land, WA. The question is, why were there spikes that were even higher then what is coming in now and WHY was no one told? Where did all that come from? Was there a radiation release before the quake and what could have caused that? What was in it? Last, why did the pres go south PDQ after all this happened?
Please check this out and share it if you choose to. Everyone is all concerned about what has seemingly become the new norm now, when it appears that we have been getting hit with some thing from some where for some time.
Thanks to all for your great works.
***
weird! from my analysis of the chemtrails, i think it was a trascontinental flight, probably with an X-ray exposure, at the same time!
Rather than playing with numbers and half life figures I think the real question is rather or not someone wants to ingest radio active material into their body and take the risk of future disease.
Do you want to risk crossing the street?
no shit! we gotta eat! i actually considered buying about $100 of pre-fuk_u fishoil buy one get one free. then i just said, that's ok. acceptance. fate. mortal moi. mortal vous. nice ta meetcha along the way. no crying in fight club. except when we can't help it, of course...
Thought I'd do my usual "look around" and to my surprise (not really) I found that none of the major mainstream news outlets are running this story (not even buried).
If you're looking for really bad news, this is it (and deserves it's very own post here on ZH, perhaps with the title "Where have all the journalists gone?")
Yeh. MSM eh? Playin' it down coz they know what it means. Meltdown. Uncontrolled nuclear reaction. Fission. So....strontium, plutonium. Let's get real. We ain't lookin' at Chernobyl i.e. massive explosive release of high level radioisotopes over ~600 km on land. But what we are lookin' at is a densely populated island close to a city of 35 million people, in an earthquake prone region, next to the Pacific Ocean and the Kuroshio current. It is impossible to stabilise. I'm givin' it 600 years.
Cue to Titanic bridge: "Number One. How are the markets holding up? We don't want any untidy panic. Chain and double padlock the doors to steerage class."
You mean droppin' buckets of water outta choppers didn't work!?! Wothu...
Couple of interesting articles in the Mainichi Shimbun of April 14. One notes that Strontium has been found ( in minute amounts) outside the 30 km zone.
The other is that TEPCO still has 3 reactors down at its Niigata power plant from a 6.7 earthquake in July,2007! Over 50 leaks of radioactive material were found there. Shimizu, the sometimes CEO of TEPCO, said he would like to try and bring reactor number 3 back on line by the end of the year.
This would seem to mean that NONE of the nuclear power plants in Northern Honshu are going to be able to go back on line this summer and maybe not for years. If a 6.7 quake disabled plants for 4 years on the western side of Honshu the condition of the nuclear power plants ( other than the big 4 at Fukushima) from the March 11 quake and aftershocks must be appalling.
Long, technical analysis of Chernobyl:
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
Probably best left unread if you value your peace of mind.
What's up with the cooling effort? Reactors 1-4 are historically near their peak-heat tempuratures. http://falloutphilippines.blogspot.com
Somewhere in our gut, we all knew this was happening. Reports of little lies and disinformation by the Japanese and US government along with the IAEA were popping out here and there. All in the name of keeping a lid on panic. But you cannot hide from the truth. Radiation levels are rising on the west coast. Now the US government is increasing the safe level standards to make us believe we are safe. And the environmentalist are nowhere to be found. Guess they must be working together.
http://www.TheAngryGrapes.Com
hey MadMoby! heluva lotta "environ-mental-ists" are/were pro-nuke: nukuler renaissance bullshit. global warming hype, peak oil, who cares that the disposal issues have not and can not be solved? fukin moronic asswipes! now, they're all in a huddle or something, trying to reach a concensus abt what convenient lie to buy into next. faustian fools. yeah, big nanny state fans, working for big goobermint and more rules, less liberty. shitheaeds uber alles! just asswipes, really.
Postings at ZH are fantastic! You can post a partially correct statement at ZH and someone will provide the correction. Msimon correctly edited my earlier post. I bet He’s on some Watch List now!
Where could you find that in the MSM? Remember ZH is probably the most scrutinized or watched site on the web.(Not including Girls Gone Wild) The Big Head (Max Headroom) is watching everything that is posted on ZH for further recording and examination. Remember the six year old who was frisked for weapons! She looked like a tuuerrist, right? I can’t believe the Big Head hasn’t shut Tyler down yet.
I use the real Wally’s cue and give out my boss’s business cards at meetings.
It helps keep the fog level down.
I’m with ChuMumba, I put things down and pick them up”.
Request for informed speculation:
I'm looking at the diagram of steel beams constructed outside of the reactor building at the top of this thread. For now, ignore the question of how such beams might be put into place. Instead, imagine those beams placed properly outside all four walls and across the top.
Assuming that a way could be found to properly fasten them to the steel beams:
Q1. Could pre-fab concrete slabs be hung on these steel beams outside the building in such a way as to completely enclose the reactor building? (Rhetorical question, mostly.)
Q2. Assuming the answer to Q1 is yes, what would the thickness of the pre-fab concrete slabs need to be to provide an effective shield against the radiation that is being vented freely into the air now? I realize that the concrete might need to be so thick that the answer to Q1 becomes no.
Q3. Assuming the answer to Q1 is yes, could chilled air be then pumped into the enclosure to control the temperatures? Or would the cooling agent need to be water?
Q4. If the technology allows them to get to the point depicted in the diagram at the top of this thread, I'm guessing they could go just a bit further and enclose the reactor building sufficiently with steel beams and then hang pre-fab concrete slabs on them. What am I missing?
Should it be possible to build such an enclosure, the need for proper venting would have to be addressed. But scrubbers and filters could be built outside the enclosure if it was effectively blocking the radiation.
Off the top of my head- 1 ft of concrete is 5 halving thicknesses and a 1 ft slab will span 30 ft. I can pull the tables if I know the required thickness and type of concrete, but nuclear physics is outside my areas of engineering knowledge.
There are methods to expand the span without a thicker slab (fiber reinforcement, AAC, pre-stressing, more or larger rebar, etc), But large spans are generally achieved with engineered forms which aren't desirable since you don't get uniform thickness all the way across the form.
(1) Given the approximate building dimensions the foundations and footing would be extremely difficult especially since there isn't a lot of room to go digging up material for proper anchoring, which is why if you need several feet of thickness you will have serious headaches and engineering obstacles to overcome.
(2) The difficulty with pre-poured or fabricated slabs is that they are difficult to maneuver and join to a steel superstructure, as opposed to poured in place or shotcrete. This would require a higher number of people to be exposed on the site for a longer period of time.
(3) The final engineering headache is earthquake resistance, since they are getting 5.0 or 6.0 jolts daily, (1) the foundations have to be right, (2) the joints have to be right, and (3) the thicker the concrete, the larger the mass that must be reinforced and/or seismically dampened
more info in this post and the responses
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tepco-knew-radiation-seawater-75-million-above-normal-it-started-dumping-radioactivity-sea-m#comment-1136077
Thanks for the link. I had not seen your post and its responses.
I'm thinking something quick and dirty here to slow down the spread of radiation. If they are going to put up a few steel girders like in the diagram, they should be able to put up a few more. Maybe just lay concrete pre-fab slabs across the top and hand canvas or plastic sheets down the the side. The world need something quick and doable, even if it only cuts radiation by half or 3/4, rather than the perfect plan that never gets implemented.