Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

The zirconium cladding of the fuel rods themselves can burn at sufficiently high temperature.

A co-worker who does radiation testing for my company pointed out that after a few years, spent fuel can be safely stored in dry containers without risk of fire, so it's really only spent fuel that has recently been unloaded from a reactor core which can spontaneously combust (due to decay of fission products). However, if older rods are stored next to newer rods in the same tank, then a fire started by decay in the newer rods could still potentially ignite the older rods. So lets hope they keep those pools topped off.

I read your link, that was my fear. If the zirconium sleeves of the fuel rods are burning, then little bits of the uranium pellets inside the tubes will be atomized and become an aerosol to float out in the smoke. Burning metals are outside our normal everyday experience; these fires are very energetic events. The finely divided uranium (and perhaps plutonium from one reactor with MOX fuel) will get out into the world.

A mild or medium dose of radiation from a sealed source is one thing; a particle of radioactive uranium or plutonium lodged in your lung tissue is quite another.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Let me re-phrase what I have written: Almost all men at age 70 are showing some of the symptoms of prostate cancer, but not all men with such symtoms have prostate cancer. The classic symtom of prostate cancer is an enlarged prostate. And you may google: prostate cancer symptoms, age 70. I think the source was CDC.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Please read: "An Introduction to Radiation Hormesis" by S.M. Javed Mortazavi. I think this article is in The Journal of Health Physics, too.

Dr. Mortazavi shows how small doses of radiation are actually helpful to human beings and all living-things.

How about those who have worked and slept inches from the core of atomic submarines: Why haven't they died of radiation exposure?

This argument about the danger of low doses of radiation is fishy, to say the least. But let's do the real science now, and see what comes of this so-called, "toxic cloud" of radionuclides?

Where are all of the pre-mature deaths from those eating root vegetables grown in the soil around Chernobyl? They eat berries too. They eat mushrooms too...... If the entire world is to be afraid, at least make the story hang together with the data.

[c1ue]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Please read the findings of Dr. S.M. Javad Mortazavi: "High Background Radiation Areas of Ramsar, Iran". He found Ramsar, Iran, an inhabited area or settlement in Iran at 10.2 mSv/year with a maximum of 260 mSv per year as background radiation. His study found no ill effects from such radiation, and he wrote that the radiation might even induce radiation resistance in living things including human-beings. Dr. S. M. Javad Mortazavi at Kyoto University, Biology Education Division, 612-8522, Japan.

There is a considerable difference between 10.2 mSv/year (I assume milli-sieverts) = 1 microsievert/hour and the 400, 3000, or 8000 microsieverts/hour which Fukushima #1 has exhibited at various times.

The 260 milli-sieverts/year equates to 30 microsieverts/hour. Again, significant difference.

Of course the population in question isn't standing on the immediate premises.

[cjppjc]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Lektrode - The plant operator pulled out 750 workers, leaving just 50 brave souls to deal with the situation, these brave souls are charged with keeping the fire apparatus running on diesel fuel and pumping sea water into the reactors to cool them and I would also gather if the fuel ponds catch on fire again they will need to put it out if possible.


The winds by definition are "prevailing westerly winds" and the coming week is going to be a test for everyone in North America not to panic, however I fear panic may rule the day. Might I suggest instead of worrying about fallout from the prevailing westerly winds say a prayer for these brave workers, they probably have all resigned themselves to fight until their last breath in a heroic attempt to keep Japan from becoming the Pompei of the Nuclear age.

Thank you for pointing this out. It may be as sunskyfan says, that the men have little objectity on the risk, but I can't imagine that these men don't know they are the last line of defense and are facing mortal danger.

[Penguin]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

I am going to temper my remarks by stating right up front that I come to this issue without any expertise whatsoever. The only nuclear engineering stuff I did was a multi-phase flow class in grad school which was split between flow within the reactor and diesel sprays (which is why I was in it) believe it or not.

It is all well and good to be cavalier about this type of thing when it is a continent and a good sized ocean away. But exactly how under control can things possibly be?

I mean you have the plant evacuating its employees and advising those who live miles removed from the plant to leave. Explosions shooting huge fire balls into the air. Workers making the decision to deep six hundreds of Millions USD worth of reactors by flooding them with sea water. Radioactive steam and smoke being released into the atmosphere. Word of fuel depositories melting, catching fire, and boiling off their coolant. A Herculean effort underway trying to cool these wounded reactors to prevent a complete meltdown.

That doesn't sound at all like normal operating procedure to me. Sounds to me like they are one bad break away from Armageddon in that neck of the woods. I'm not the scaring type and this kind of activity would have me pulling a Vanishing Point trying to get out of town. What the hell are people supposed to think?

You just can't have this kind of shit going on in and around a nuclear power plant. It scares the hell out of people. And I don't blame them.

Will

[cbr]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

we need some balance... the nuclear story is fascinating because it is outside everyone's experience, mankind bringing together elements not normally found in concentration in nature at the earth's surface, in order to generate 'free' energy.... however, the real story is the tsunami, the earthquake, and the lack of power or working infrastructure. thousands dead, millions without normal resources, no matter how bad the nuclear situation gets, it wont match that.

frankly, though acute radiation poisoning is a miserable death, no one has suffered that yet. cancer sucks. i am on the board of a curing cancer foundation; but the reality is that chernobyl is a lush wildlife refuge just 20 years later, and hiroshima and nagasaki were never abandoned, when everyone thought it would be a lunar wasteland for a hundred thousand years....

[Master Shake]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Don,

Thanks very much for posting that.

[ASH]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

It is reported that all work crews have been withdrawn from the reactor complex.

A spike in radiation levels at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has forced workers to suspend their operation, a government spokesman says.

[oddlots]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

God that is disheartening news.

It's the sorcerer's apprentice in real time and with deadly consequences.

[sunskyfan]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Well, if there were 15 million people within 200km of Chernobyl (as there is with Tokyo near Fukushima) that story would be looked at differently and I am sure we are coming close to the point where a 20 kiloton Nagasaki bomb with its pound of Plutonium would be preferable to the tons of radioactive debris that is about to be unleashed on the surrounding area. This has the potential to be a seminal event for human kind.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release


However, in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying the possibility that the No. 3 reactor had “ suffered severe damage to its containment vessel is low.” Earlier, he had said the vessel may have been damaged.

As important as the severity of the damage is, the location of the damage may be just as important. If the vessel has ruptured below the top of the core, it could make the ability to keep water on the core extremely difficult.

When those workers were forced to suspend operations, the spent fuel rod pool began heating up dangerously. Earlier, Japanese broadcasters showed live footage of thick plumes of steam rising above the plant.

The spent rod pool should have 20-30 feet of water on top of the rods. These "spent" rods should not be able to heat that water "dangerously" in a matter of a few hours, even without a continuous supply of water. With the reports of fire in the area, it sounds like maybe the pool is leaking water. If the pools in the reactors that were shut down are leaking water, it's hard to imagine what's going on in the spent rod pools in the reactor buildings that underwent hydrogen explosions.

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release

Workers are struggling at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, seen in a satellite photo at 9:35 a.m. Wednesday.

TOKYO — Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified dramatically on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

Such were the radiation levels above the plant, moreover, that the Japanese military put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally used to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was overheating dangerously.

However, in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying the possibility that the No. 3 reactor had “ suffered severe damage to its containment vessel is low.” Earlier, he had said the vessel may have been damaged.
His assessment came as the reactor’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it had been able to double the number of workers at the plant to 100 from 50. It was not immediately clear when the additional workers returned to the plant after the evacuation of 750 workers on Tuesday, leaving only a skeleton crew of 50 struggling to reduce temperatures in the damaged facility.

When those workers were forced to suspend operations, the spent fuel rod pool began heating up dangerously. Earlier, Japanese broadcasters showed live footage of thick plumes of steam rising above the plant.

The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, reactors No. 3, left, and No. 4

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?_r=1&hp

[sunskyfan]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

A few points:

1. There is clearly a lack of accurate information coming out of the internal scope of the crisis.
2. The amount of nuclear material on site and affected appears to be much greater than any previous accident.
3. The only importance to this point of the measured levels outside the plant it forces "officials" to give some kind of narrative to what is going on.

My sense of alarm comes from the amount of material on site beyond the reactors.

[Shakespear]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Does someone know how quickly the tsunami arrived at the plant once the quake happened?

The speed of it is just amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJN3...layer_embedded