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Watch The Attempt To Refill The Spent Fuel Bed At Reactor 3 Live - Webcast
As was reported earlier, nuclear workers had been preparing to spray water on Reactor 3 whose spent-fuel bed is overheating and releasing radioactive steam. The idea is to refill as much of the bed and contain the release for as long as possible. NHK is following the operation in real time. Readers can follow along with the following live webcast.
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Its over with. They couldn't fill a drinking glass, let alone something the size of an olympic size pool.
They need to fence off a 100km perimeter and call it the forbidden zone.
Nuclear power is clean, reliable and efficient. However who can trust anyone, or any government not to cut corners and leave you with a ticking time bomb? There are reactor designs that practically disassemble themselves in the event of excursion. That reactor is less sophisticated and older than a 57 Chevy.
Idiots.
I can piss more then what is hitting the target.
This is from FEMA's NOLA playbook.
Heck of a job, blownie
This take me back to the good ole days last summer watching video of the attempts to cap the leaking oil well. Of course there is now the added enjoyment of watch Bahrain and the Japan stock market.
Bet it's taken your mind off of the American eCONomy, no?
yeah, I remember those days...of reading doomer after doomer on ZH stating with such conviction and certainty that this was the end of the world, that nothing but lies were being spewed, that they would never cap the well, that the earth was going to explode and it was the END so hury and bury some silver under your porch.
So they did cap that well. But all that pressure had to go somewhere, right? It took a while, but look where it came out. Biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan. Blame it on BP.
Ahh ... NHK says lead plate on the bottom of the helicopter ...
It's a pity about the plastic windows.
Obviously the are reacting to what they see as the most pressing problem, trying to get some water in the #3 reactor spent fuel pool. The next step will be water cannons. I think the focus here is to get radiation levels down long enough that they can get some kind of more permanent seawater pumping system in-place. As usual, just a guess on my part.
precisely correct...all NHK and the TEPCO people are talking about is the SFP.
The reactor cores are of secondary concern at this point. They are going to water cannon in from the ocean or else the municipal water supply. I thought a fireboat would have been a good idea a couple of days ago.
My guess is the municipal water supply is kinda out of order for awhile. But, you still gotta pay your bill.
If the translation is correct, the Japanese commentator is talking in circles.
I have decided that the internet is a series of horrifying revelations, punctuated with occasional boobies.
LOL. I read it for the articles.
Unlike my Playboy subscription I like the Internet for the porn. :>)
Double post but this is important and why they are doing ANYTHING they can:
If they don't keep the temps. down the nuclear reactions that were shut down when the quake hit could restart (go critical).
This is not an explosion, but would release a massive amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere - worse than Chernobyl potentially:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/03/nuclear-crisis-radioactive-fue.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
this is wrong. Increases in temperature would tend to decrease neutron cross section.
They are trying to keep temperatures down because hot zircaloy will start burning in the presence of oxygen.
This is a great time to use hard-time prisoners to complete the mission.
Give them the sand and shovels, and tell them to dig until its buried. If they die, who is going to miss them?
Because the water is not even hitting the reactors, the wind is blowing it into a mist, and as hot as those rods get, the water is vapor by the time it gets down there. Is this the best we got? We engineer this crap and build it, yet have no freaking clue how to deal with it after the fact? Typical, just typical.
Unfortunately, it's Japan and not China.
They should "open" the reactors, disperse the fuel somehow without sending it to stratosphere, only then use helicopters, machines and people on the ground to clean the contaminated area. If they allow full meltdown, we may see a nuclear explosion. TV scientists dismiss nuclear explosion possibility. I do not see why.
Zero percent chance of a nuclear explosion, there simply isn't enough mass in a small enough space.
Even if you had the mass and the small space, you do not have the purity, the proper geometric shape, or enough neutrons.
Yesterday I said they can nuke the plant. This can send ash up inthe sky. Today I think they can consider a vacuum bomb. What do you think?
Well, if you nuke it, you are going to take all that radioactive stuff that is in there and excite it to higher levels of radioactivity, and plus, you now have the fallout and blast damage from a nuclear weapon. By vacuum bomb, I think you mean a thermobaric weapon, mostly used as a fuel-air bomb. Yes, you can evacuate oxygen from an area for a very temorary period, but this is designed kill biological problems...people, usually. It would not work on Uranium. But, it could spread radioactive materials over a large area.
I would not worry about spreading radioactive materials within say 20 km radius. I worry about spreading them around the planet. I only know they must crack the cookers open.
I think you misunderstood me, if you initiate a nuclear blast over a large reservoir of nuclear material, you light that stuff up and make it a thousand-fold worse. It is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. It is worse....if you nuke that shit, you are going to send it all up into the jetstream and it is going to land in your own lap.
It depends on the type of the blast. An outward blast is probably not the best idea. Though outward sipping for several years could be worse than an outward blast and fast clean up. An inward vacuum blast which can contain the debris inside a smaller area is probably what can help. Of course you can maximum make zero pressure are which is not sufficient for opening the reactors.
I can also imagine a downward blast using a nuke. Some sort of mid air blast. You can combine it with a vacuum blast to such the nuked debris. But this sounds like a science fiction already.
a fucking "vacuum bomb" WTF is that?
Dude, just STFU
It was a joke you fucking retard.
Vacuum bomb is when you fill some area with flammable vapor then burn it. This creates a low pressure area where the air from outside is sucked in. So the contamination from the explosion mainly remains in the area of explosion. If you have a highly pressured "cooker" in the area of the explosion, it is likely to burst.
Do not underestimate the power of vacuum bombs, my friend. They have been used with great success on things like: common sense, wisdom, empathy, financial regulation, middle class salaries and on people who junk my comments.:)
Boy, you just sucked the air out of this conversation. :>)
Absolutely.
You can start a Zeropercentchance.com
They should "open" the reactors, disperse the fuel somehow without sending it to stratosphere...
Right. Look at the second picture on this page and tell me how you go in there and "Open" the reactors.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366670/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-French-claim-scale-nuclear-disaster-hidden.html
WHO is going to do that? Superman?
Vacuum bomb?
Fascinating. I feel like I'm watching a low budget science fiction movie--except this is real life. The helicopters should be dropping concrete and sand, not a gentle spring shower.
I believe water blocks radiation better than sand or concrete.
Listening to NHK:
09:48 AM Japan time, 7:48 PM CDT Heli Operations started
10:19 AM Japan time, 8:19 PM CDT Heli Operations halted
If the helicopters can't hover overhead and drop water without risking contamination, how can a truck sit there with a water cannon??
Easier correction for windage ...
Probably welding up some shields, affixing some lead plate as we speak to the water cannons ...
just drive them in .. where are the drones???
Water cannon trucks moving in now. Each truck hold 4 tons. 4 tons may sound like a lot, but that's only 4 cubic meters. And most of that will not hit the target.
The pool area they are aiming for is 15 meters deep. The NHK commentator described it as like 15 swimming pools stacked up.
Good luck with the water cannons. It sounds to me like you will need a few thousand loads.
That shit is over 1,000 degrees C.
What fucking difference is 4 tons going to do? Are we trying to create a big steam show or what? You have to CIRCULATE the water to CARRY the heat away.
It's actually a very efficient cooling method. Sure, circulating water would be better, but that isn't an option. If you are going to dump something, water is a good choice.
Yes, of course, water is a great option for dumping. It's just pointless at these temperatures.
so we can add evaporative cooling into the things you are ignorant of...thx
Yes, when you believe we are comparing chilling your Past Blue Ribbon in a Whirlpool refrigerator to cooling a nuclear reactor core...sure, go right the fuck ahead.
Helios were dropping 7.5T =1797 gal = 8.9 cy = 1 concrete truck load by volume.
Of which, about 5% actually lands in the desired area and, of which, actually immediately vaporized due to the extreme heat.
you DO understand that vaporization involves a transfer of heat, right?
Are you fucking serious? You are a fucking imbecile. You're parading around here like some kind of fucking expert. You're a fucking joke. Look dickhead, you may not want to hear this but I actually HAVE Mechanical Engineering degrees, including a graduate degree. You have, categorically, no fucking idea what you are talking about. The heat transfer of vaporization at these temperatures would be fucking negligible to say the least.
GO...FUCK...YOURSELF.
there are things I know and things I don't and some things I am highly confident of.
One of these is that there is NO WAY you have any kind of engineering degree whatsoever, because NOBODY with an ME degree (and several of my friends are MEs) would be STUPID ENOUGH to think bombing a reactor is a good idea.
There's simply no way someone as dumb as you could possibly pass calc. The amount of heat transfered depends upon how much water, not the temperature, jackass. No engineer would imply that the temperature of the heat source somehow changes the specific heat of water or the heat of vaporization.
There is a serious problem in modern education. It converts money into degree. I especially love A, B, C or D tests. Until you understand that you do not understand much, you cannot solve difficult problems.
the anxiety in her voice is really sorrowful... seriously, I love Japan and this sux
Yes, I noticed that, too. The translator sounds like she's scared to death.
Speaking of being scared, it looked to me like the helicopter pilots were scared, too. Wouldn't get anywhere close to the buildings. I don't blame them.
yes this didnt last long... a lot of soviets died throwing that shed on chernobyl - Japan has to get some help fast
A bambi bucket? Really? Where are the water bombers?
Dude on the video just said the temp in storage pools in 5&6 are going up now, was this already known?
Yes.
Obama with his pitching wedge and a truckload of thick water balloons will be up next?
Geez on and on about lack of power. Its been almost 6 days? This is mortifying - the radiation must be massive on the ground?
We need a miracle, like another huge tsunami washing over Fuku
If they set off a nuke underwater just off shore, would that soak the reactors?
That plan got buried with Matt Simmons, may he R.I.P.
seriously, though, lotta smart people on this site, any original ideas?
Run.
Sadly, this is probably the best advice.
Start dozing fill dirt toward the site as a natural embankment and form an outer boundary around the site. Then, start airdropping concrete + whatever else the Russians used to bury the Chernobyl reactor. That buys them time and limits the escape of radiation. Then, come up with a better containment system and permanently bury the whole site under it and never let anyone live within a certain radius of the site.
water cannons are it. Everything should focus on fire suppression.
get water into the SFPs and they will be able to address the reactors.
At the end of the day, all of this stuff is going to be entombed anyhow; the plant complex is almost a total loss. But in the meantime, whatever will prevent fire.
No, no...neutron nuke or "Rods of God" underneath reactor cores to blast them into the ocean or bury them in soil and sand, then build a dyke of concrete to make a stone coffin.
I've got an idea.
Let's hope they loaded the X37-B with some "Rods of God".
Placed correctly, they could bury the melt-down reactors under soil or even push them out to sea:
http://www.space.com/11040-secret-x37b-space-plane-launch-attempt.html
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god
I was in Japan when this happened. No English news coverage, but similar news coverage. Manager then resigned. Expect similar from TEPCO
Japanese Nuclear Accident - September 30, 1999
October 1, 1999
The Indepedent (London) Website || Nuclear Accident Index || News File Index
Radiation Leak: a flash of blue light, and Japan is forces to confront a nuclear nightmare once more
(by Charles Arthur) IT BEGAN with a flash of blue light, the event no nuclear worker wants to witness. Seeing such a phenomenon means you have witnessed a nuclear chain reaction, and it could well be your death sentence.
Yesterday, at 10.30am Hisashi Ouchi, 35, Masato Shinohara, 39, and Yutaka Yokokawa, 54 were at work in the JCO company's uranium reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, a town 70 miles from Tokyo.
If any of them dies - and, regrettably, it is likely - they will probably be the first people to die of radiation exposure since Japan's first brutal experience of the effects of radiation, with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.
It is perhaps ironic that, despite this terrible history, Japan's lack of natural fuel resources has prompted it to invest massively in nuclear power. One-third of its electricity is nuclear-generated, meaning the risk of accidents is ever-present. There have been seven significant nuclear accidents in the past four years.
Reprocessing plants carry fewer hazards than power plants. They extract "unburnt" uranium from used fuel rods, remove impurities, and produce new fuel elements to be used again by the generators.
The workers who triggered yesterday's calamity were cutting the spent fuel rods underwater, a tricky task: it is essential to make sure that you do not get too much radioactive material within a certain volume. If you do, the slow neutrons being fired from the decaying nuclei will hit other nuclei and make them break up too - setting up a self-sustaining process.
This is "criticality": it is not an explosion, but when it occurs, an abrupt blast of high-energy neutrons is released and continues as long as there is enough material to keep the reaction going.
It takes about 10kg of 90 per cent pure uranium-235 isotope to make an atomic bomb. But if you get the same sort of mass in a larger space while there are lots of radioactive sources around - which can happen during fuel reprocessing - then you could conceivably reach criticality while not intending to.
That happened yesterday: a JCO official said there was about 16kg of enriched uranium in the tank, eight times the normal working amount. Nobody had an early explanation for why so much was being used.
Messrs Ouchi, Shinohara and Yokokawa saw a blue flash. Scientists think that in fact there is nothing blue about the light from the reaction, but that its colour results from the high-energy neutrons blasting the nerves in the back of the eye.
To those exposed, it does not matter. Anyone who sees the flash has been exposed in an instant to thousands of times more radiation than they would expect in a year.
Inside the plant, alarms went off as the radiation levels rocketed to at least 4,000 times their normal level. The trio of workers abandoned their work as quickly as they could - which left officials yesterday still unsure whether a critical mass of materials might still be bathing the working area in a deadly wash of neutron radiation.
Never heard of this story, I feel sorry for those men.
would have thought it was cerenkov from beta emissions...
neutrons are usually far worse in terms of absorbed dose than photons
BTW, they probably had to ditch the chopper in the ocean because it was too "Hot" to bring back to the base.
(D)
Neat thermal view
http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-191816-galleryV9-nhjp.gif
RIP Nate Dogg!!!
That's really interesting. Notice on one point how it clearly went over the top of Tokyo?
http://images.derstandard.at/2011/03/15/1297907586053.gif
Would be nice to have one of those new 747 firefighting tankers that can drop 20,500 gallons from 500 ft.
I wonder what would happen if you got a direct hit on the pool with a shitload of water from altitude?
It might actually do more damage than good.....
Did they even get one H2O molecule into the tank? Christ.
Airplane loads of boric acid coming in soon... we'll see if they are able to get it where it needs to go.
That should slow enough neutrons down to start the chain reaction.
Actually, boron should absorb the neutrons. My bad.
Boric acid has its own problems but nothing like what they're up against now. I guess the bonus will be no ant piles anywhere.
So they limit is 40 minutes per helio per day... SO what should we do? Lets get a whopping TWO helicopters over there ASAP? What is that - 3 dumps x 2 Helios = 6 total trips PER DAY? I know the troops are putting up a heroic battle, but not sure what the leaders are thinking? Are they gonna say afer a week they could only muster 2 helicopters. They must have gotten the guy who designed the location of the generators to plan the water drops. Later they will discover that the water drops caused airborne radiation to be rained down on people on the ground?
If they can get enough water...and more importantly for what I think they should (and may) be doing - water vapor in the building, they can not only cool the rods a little, they can suppress the radiation. Plus, water that hits a 1000 F source will vaporize to a dispersed, oxygen-displacing mass 1,700 times greater than the original volume of water. taking the oxygen away helps prevent rapid rod oxidation. But, you have to keep doing it until some alternate plan can be executed. Again, just guessing based on the evidence.
Your all doing well by posting. In the meantime, plans that were discussed in 2009 can easily be disguised under a new crisis. Since BOJ (#2 in UST), cannot aid in future auctions, #1 UST will help precipitate future global goals & expansion plans.
This 2009 China video is complete bullshit. You must watch to understand the chess game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QVWVX4cFhw
Our US foreign policy leaders are so lost and have zero credibility. Please excuse us global community. We have to purge the cockroaches that infested this great nation. Give us time. :)
If my math is correct then 7500 kg of water at 10C has cooling capacity of about 20 GJ of cooling capacity by heating water up to 100C and then latent heat of evaporation. Of this about 3 GJ is in heating the water, which is the more desirable cooling method.
So if you do that once an hour then you can contain 20 GJ/3600 =6 MW of heat generation. But you don't want the evaporation so it really is more like 2 MW of heat generation for one dump per hour after you get the temperature down. But being able to replenish water assumes some evaporation. Well you get the picture......
According to MIT's DNSE back of the envelope calculation the thermal heat of the reactor is about 12 MW (for the larger 2 and 3 reactors) at this time. The thermal heat of the pools should be lower. I think 4 had the entire reactor load in the pool, but the others should have far fewer rods.
Ok ZH people, I have a really shitty internet connection, so I am getting bits and peices from the live feed. Are they still dropping with the bambi buckets or have they stopped?
It wasn't effective so went to super-soaker guns.
Perhaps I'm being too simplistic, but I don't understand why they don't put one end of a very nigh pressure powered fire hose pump into the ocean, and then simply get someone in a moon suit to walk it up to the rod cooling pools and fill it up.
Well, they are preparing to use the water cannons.
From water wagons with realtively little water. It's not from a water main or some other constant feed system.
It's one-and-done.
Elevation rise.
Even twenty feet of rise from ocean to reactor requires exponentially more power and PSI (pounds per square inch) to get the water up there.
Consider that the top of the #4 reactor is probably at least 50 feet above the base at least, and likely a 200 foot rise above the ocean from which they would pump, so the pressure required is huge.
This means that fire trucks and portable pumps just don't have the torque or pressure capacity to get the water up there.
True, my first job was a water pump designer (seriously). It's known as 'head' and it's a bitch to overcome. They won't have enough power in the pumps to do that. That much head (measured in feet) would take a very large impeller and, of course, motor. Not what I would guess would be portable in nature.
we all pretty much figured you gave head at your jobs
Now, now...
Bhahaha!! Fucking beer out of my nose..fuck
Fire engine pumps can typically buck up to 600 PSI. At your 250 ft rise, considering seawater exerts .44 PSI per ft. of rise, you are only talking 110 PSI. Losses increase if you do not have a positive pressure input (fire hydrant), or if you have to lay a long input hose (involves input friction losses). Losses increase even more if you have to suck the water from a static source. But, a fire engine can put out 1,000 GPM at 400 PSI with a suction hose less than 1 atmosphere in vertical drop.
Rad suits do not protect you from gamma rays.
And, unfortnately, turn you in a raging muscle bound green skinned beast...with a soft side, of course.
With really un-stylish pants.
problem is they can't pump enough water fast enough to do any good. What's being pumped up there is probably insufficient in quantity to do anything other than evap when it hits.
They need pumper trucks pulling water from ocean side and they need a lot of them.
My wife (who is Indian so can say this) jokes if the damn thing was in Kolkata, it would be self un-sustaining, since every few days the sewers would back up into it. My response: they have sewers in Calcutta?
The rad levels in the studio must be insanely high, the interpretors just keep repeating themselves.
That's really the main problem--radiation levels are too high--no one wants to get within 100 miles of this slow motion disaster. But aren't there "moon suits" that would protection someone well enough that they could walk through it without serious radiation exposure?
No, there aren't suites. The only reasonable way to block radiation is with mass (normally lead). Not feasible.
There was this one from the past which proved just to be funky...
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.80stees.com/images/products/Devo_Radiation_Suit.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.80stees.com/pwr/product-reviews/Costumes/p/DEVO007-DEVO-Radiation-Suit-with-Energy-Dome.html&h=500&w=500&sz=29&tbnid=PMBet7Cr0mUBuM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dradiation%2Bsuit&zoom=1&q=radiation+suit&hl=en&usg=__ylwR99EmmRfwzT6RX2Z3M_Bx2T0=&sa=X&ei=H3SBTcjuOY6ctwfUz7m3BA&ved=0CD8Q9QEwBA
What they need is a good heavy rain to help out, just like wildfire efforts.
No offense, I know you mean well. But, even a fucking monsoon wouldn't help. The temperatures are way way way too high for 'sprinkling'. You need depth and circulation and ALOT of it.
Unfortunately, this is all just for show and, sadly, a suicide mission.
They should throw in some jello and let it drop. Thicken it up with less spray. Make it tastier too
So how deep is that bay right there?
Could you park a (likely small) sub there mostly submerged with 1+ water cannons welded to the main deck? You have all the water you need and a few feet of water would be enough to provide decent short-term shielding. It could stay for a while where a fireboat could not. Perhaps drape the already water-resistant electronics with lead tarps.
Crazy idea most likely, but less so than the teacup heli drops.
Q was working on that, but M overruled it. But, from another forum someone suggested dumping a big snowball on the cooling tanks. Actually ice or snow would hold together better in that wind and might really cool something down.
Hmm interesting... I did notice that the helicopters weren't hovering over it, so i'm guessing that is because radioactivity is too high. So, they would have to be pretty accurate dropping a giant snowball on the run.
Squadrons of balsa wood planes, with only enough fuel to reach the reactor, packed full with ice...Hmmm........
Does anybody know where the spent fuel tanks are in relation to the square reactor buildings?
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=37.31699885564094~141.02502...
ON TOP of reactor #4, which is a huge fucking problem...of course.
Chernobyl helecopter drop attempts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2QWSAn4zjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS-HngPwYYU
4 drops and Sucess.
All over, everyone can go home.
Tomorrow we bring in the painters.
...and the Mexican "Emergency Relief Landscapers"
Why not start dozing fill dirt toward the site (from the side of the reactors opposite the sea) as a natural embankment and form an outer boundary around the site. Then, start airdropping concrete + whatever else the Russians used to bury the Chernobyl reactor. That buys them time and limits the escape of radiation. Then, come up with a better containment system and permanently bury the whole site under it and never let anyone live within a certain radius of the site.
Earlier NHK had a segment on this Nuke Plant with two experts and precise miniature model, nice graphics. Someone posted that on youtube, and here it is:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/03/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-nhks-detailed....
The translator keeps saying "dropping water" like its ongoing? The expert cannot say what is most effective. I am not an expert, but I can say that helio drop was a clusterfuck. People talk about the height for pumping water? Concrete pumps with booms pour slabs in multi-story buildings and parking structures. Is that impossible - they are deisel-powered? That lets you drop water where it will do some good on a sustained basis? The boom can be farther away than the water cannons. That reminds me of the carny games at the county fair? I went to Uni in Japan and respect the people and loved living there, but this looks like the polis are making the choices rather than teh engineers?
Seriously? You're a returd.
The half-life of the plutonium used in the MOX reactor (#4) is over 20,000 years. But it's cool, you said everything is going to be OKAY.
I'm not gonna get in a food fight. IF they are going to use water cannons from 30' through a hole in a wall, why can't they use some type of rig like below. The cannon will draw water from the tanks in individual water trucks. The quake was like 6 days ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pugFLLwABHU
It would take an eternity. Weeks to even make a dent, assuming no evaporation or cracks in the concrete.
Maybe they can get a siphon going from the ocean...of course, it would have to return to the......ocean. Anybody wanna volunteer to suck on that hose?
dupe
Watching these Japanese bureaucrats give press conferences is like watching a bad Sci-Fi movie where all the authorities have been zombified by the alien brain-weazels. They look like people, they say something when asked a question, but it's 90+ degrees out of sink with the urgency and the needs of the situation. Hive-mind, but with no Queen Bee. Just worker drones roaming around going through the motions. Maybe they know it's all useless, or maybe 1,000 yrs of cultural indoctrination of a certain kind makes them unable to act in a basic survival of the species manner. Japan is being challenged. I think they need to change in order to do more than just survive, barely. Maybe this disaster will provide the impetus for change; crack the cultural ossification that inhibits acting quickly and freely and effictively when it's literally life or death.
-- get a robot to drag a firehose to the pool and giver.
I have just seen the video of the helicopters dropping the water.
No more than 5% hit target.
Of that I doubt 5% got into the cooling pool.
Back to square one I think.
Meantime no news on those "cracked" containments.
They are not yet in control.
And time is running out.