Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Interactive Plume Projection:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...ml?ref=science

[we_are_toast]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

From what I understand the situation to be - again relying on MITNSE as opposed to breathless CNN newsbabe reports - is that there is no 'out of control' going on.

What's happening is a predictable series of problems associated with cooling off Megawatts of heat without the normal primary or backup systems functioning, complicated by legal radiation limits forcing limitations on worker on site time (and rightly so).

Yes, they've implemented the Emergency EXPLOSIVE Core Cooling System to blow off the tops of the buildings so they can fly helicopters with water buckets to try and hit exposed cores with a few drops of water. Along with the, set the spent rods on fire if the water gets low, plan. It's all part of the grand plan on how to handle 3 melting cores and several spent fuel rod pools that are boiling away water. I believe it's all on page 346 of the 9.0 Earthquake/Tsunami/meltdown manual.

If it weren't so sad, it would be funny.

Flintlock:
I guess what I'm asking is, what potential levels of radiation are possible if all efforts fail. No additional damage. Are we talking about lethal radiation being spread around the earth, the country of Japan, just 50 km around the plant, what? I just ask because strong words are being used without any definition. A catastrophe can mean different things to different people. I suppose some in the industry would consider the damage to the reputation of the nuke industry a "disaster". While others of us are more concerned with the safety of the people in the area. No doubt, this whole thing is being irresponsibly reported in many cases. But when nations like the US and GB tell their people to get out, that has to mean something.

My best guess is that this is not anywhere near a doomsday scenario, or even a major catastrophic scenario. It's more like a boiling frog disaster.

Even if every piece of radioactive material at the facility melts into a giant blob, the immediate, publicly noticeable effects will not be that great. The radioactivity will be spread on radioactive particles from the rods that have attached themselves to burning material, such as rod cladding material or nearby materials in the reactor building, or steam from the water.

The prevailing winds will carry most of it out to the ocean which will be diluted as it is scattered by the winds. Occasionally, the winds will carry some material over populated areas, but even that will be diluted enough so as not to cause radiation poisoning. There will be lots of panicky days, but the material needed to carry the radioactive particles will be exhausted in a matter of days or weeks. They'll eventually bury the whole mess in concrete or something that will make it not look so bad.

Some of the workers on site are not going to come out of this very well. When the immediate crises is over, the Bullhorns of the industry will be feeding their propaganda machines to show how everything worked as planned. Very few deaths, very few injuries, and the damage was very localized. A rolling blackout or 2 in the U.S. and screams of, radiate baby radiate, will be heard from the sheeple who have their ears glued to the misinformation bullhorns.

Soon there will be another revolution in the Middle East, or a financial crises, or something else to get the media onto a new news cycle. When the hundreds, or possibly thousands of cancers show up years and decades from now, very few will notice and even fewer will care.

[mirana]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

There is a whole industry now debunking the Oehmen posting and his lack of credentials:
See
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03...-astroturfing/ and
http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-...-josef-oehmen/ as examples.

When this first came out I sensed a familiar whiff of the assuring arguments and patronizing tone used by proponents of nuclear
energy in Germany during the Chernobyl incident (I had been a student of nuclear physics during that time).

Nor would I necessarily trust engineering schools like the MIT nuclear department with giving impartial assessments,
because of their likely close links with industry. I think it safe to say that there so many possible outcomes that nobody
can predict anything (or else they would have taken care of it in advance, wouldn't they).

[Shakespear]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

How funny !!!!!

That reminds me of this,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ocial-networks

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

I wonder if they have an iTulip account

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

what's to be made of this:

Special Advisor to the Cabinet Kiyoshi Sasamori, at a press conference on the night of the 16th, revealed that in a conversation with him, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said: "[If the worst case scenario of the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant accident comes true,] we must consider the possibility that eastern Japan will be ruined."

PM Kan graduated from Tokyo Tech with a degree in applied physics before going on to become a patent attorney and then pursuing a political career.

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Villagers of Kawauchi-mura, located between 20 km and 30 km from the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant and told by the national government to just stay indoors, defied the instruction and began to collectively organize their own "complete village evacuation," heading for Koriyama City outside the 30 km-radius zone from the Fukushima 1 reactors. According to Vice Village Mayor Mitsugu Igari, who led the first contingent of evacuees, arriving at Koriyama's "Big Palette Fukushima" shelter in the afternoon of the 16th, the decision to evacuate was made because of the rising fear about the nuclear plant among the villagers.

Vice Village Mayor Igari said, "The Fukushima 1 situation is getting worse every minute. It's been already 24 hours since we were told to stay indoors. You can't stay indoors for ever -- you need to eat, and the elderly need care. I just made my own judgment that people can't live with fear any longer."

According to the vice village mayor, about 1,200 of the total 3,000 village population, and about 4,000 nuclear refugees from Tomioka-machi, which is closer to the nuclear plant, were still in the village as of the morning of decision. The decision to evacuate the whole village was made by a Kawauchi-Tomioka joint disaster response headquarters. 14 buses and other vehicles are being mobilized to transport people from Kawauchi to Koriyama. Village Mayor Yuko Endo will leave on the last bus.

Evacuated from his home in Tegooka, Kawauchi, located on the border with Iwaki City, Toshio Sudou, 44 years old, travelled by car, with his mother (77 years old) and sister (53) and his 48-year-old brother's family and managed to get to the "Big Palette" shelter.

Around 9:30 AM on the 16th, the village alert system blared an announcement: "Everyone, you must evacuate now," instructing car owners to leave by their own cars and those without personal transportation to organize contingents and get on buses to Koriyama. "Not knowing anything, I just followed the announcement and evacuated. What now?" asked Mr. Sudo.

According to the Fukushima Prefecture government, still 141,000 residents and refugees in shelters are left in the 20-30 km zone. Besides Kawauchi-mura, residents of Iitate-mura and Minami Souma City are also seeking to evacuate from that zone.

Asahi Shimbun (17 March 2011, 03:00, JST). Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi

[ASH]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Things are looking a bit less bleak:

Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have successfully connected a power line to reactor 2, the UN's nuclear watchdog reports.

Restoring power will enable engineers to restart the pumps which send coolant over the reactor.

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Possibly the best news since this all began.

Heroic electricians. I like that

[c1ue]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

There is a whole industry now debunking the Oehmen posting and his lack of credentials:
See
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03...-astroturfing/ and
http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-...-josef-oehmen/ as examples.

When this first came out I sensed a familiar whiff of the assuring arguments and patronizing tone used by proponents of nuclear
energy in Germany during the Chernobyl incident (I had been a student of nuclear physics during that time).

Nor would I necessarily trust engineering schools like the MIT nuclear department with giving impartial assessments,
because of their likely close links with industry. I think it safe to say that there so many possible outcomes that nobody
can predict anything (or else they would have taken care of it in advance, wouldn't they).

If indeed MITNSE is an astroturfing organization, then this would be relevant.

However, looking at the links you put up, they consist of:

1) Barry Ritholz pointing to another link which says Oehmen isn't a nuclear scientist, though he is working in a military industrial project. Said link also says MITNSE has nothing to do with the MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering department.

Fair enough.

Except Ritholz, the link he points to, and all the moronic idiots in this web of fantasy are wrong.

MITNSE is in fact directly associated with the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Don't believe me? See for yourself:

http://web.mit.edu/nse/newsandmedia/news.html#briefing

This is MIT's web site. I hope no one thinks this is a fake.

In turn if you click this link: >>visit the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub
near the bottom of the page, you wind up at... www.mitnse.com

So who's astroturfing what then?

2) The second link is just the link Ritholz points to.

Indeed.

So I'm shown that www.MITNSE.com is in fact directly linked to from the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering web site.

Your "whole industry" consists of 1 link with a pile of supposition with few if any facts.

The facts posted on MITNSE have been 100% consistent with the (few) facts shown in various news releases.

And while I stopped reading Ritholz long ago because he frankly is unreliable for any source of information, though he is entertaining, this latest would have prompted me to stop reading his crap.

Anyone else want to get some?

EDIT: More evidence of Ritholz is a moron.

If you go to MIT.edu - you'll note that the landing page itself talks about how MIT is supporting Japan in its nuclear crisis.

This splash page has a link: Institute rallies to inform public and gather aid for victims of Japan's natural disaster

Clicking on this brings you to this page: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/j...donations.html

This page displays this:

Nuclear science and engineering students, with support from faculty, are also maintaining a blog at mitnse.com with information about about the incident at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan.

Ritholz couldn't even be bothered to look on MIT's own web site to confirm whether MITNSE.com was real.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Things are looking a bit less bleak:

Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have successfully connected a power line to reactor 2, the UN's nuclear watchdog reports.

Restoring power will enable engineers to restart the pumps which send coolant over the reactor.

I have an extremely difficult time believing the problems are related to power to the cooling systems. I suspect the cooling systems themselves were heavily damaged early on.

I won't hold my breath, but I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

[don]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Getting power there may be a first step. I understand the crews are working with flashlights.

[CNiko]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

Things are looking a bit less bleak:

Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have successfully connected a power line to reactor 2, the UN's nuclear watchdog reports.

Restoring power will enable engineers to restart the pumps which send coolant over the reactor.

It's been almost a week since the incident started. Power line? Why they didn't fly in Diesel Generators by Helicopter? The power connectors don't match? The place has a Harbor, there were never any support ships visible. At one time they pulled all personnel except 50. That is 50 people to run 6 Nuclear Power plants! Eight - nine people per plant! The people working at the plants and their families suffered from the Earthquake. This is a big utility with more Nukes. Upon the initial damage did TEPCO move people from other plants outside the affected area to let people go home and check on their families? Just yesterday the US military started flying in Boric Acid from US Power Plants. We don't know now, but we will find out once the accident is over and investigation is completed. Things just don't seem right.

[Master Shake]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

There is a whole industry now debunking the Oehmen posting and his lack of credentials:
See
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03...-astroturfing/ and
http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-...-josef-oehmen/ as examples.

When this first came out I sensed a familiar whiff of the assuring arguments and patronizing tone used by proponents of nuclear
energy in Germany during the Chernobyl incident (I had been a student of nuclear physics during that time).

Nor would I necessarily trust engineering schools like the MIT nuclear department with giving impartial assessments,
because of their likely close links with industry. I think it safe to say that there so many possible outcomes that nobody
can predict anything (or else they would have taken care of it in advance, wouldn't they).

They are debunking his credentials (see argumentum ad hominem), but not the facts of his post.

Buy your KI tablets yet?

[Master Shake]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

It's been almost a week since the incident started. Power line? Why they didn't fly in Diesel Generators by Helicopter? The power connectors don't match? The place has a Harbor, there were never any support ships visible. At one time they pulled all personnel except 50. That is 50 people to run 6 Nuclear Power plants! Eight - nine people per plant! The people working at the plants and their families suffered from the Earthquake. This is a big utility with more Nukes. Upon the initial damage did TEPCO move people from other plants outside the affected area to let people go home and check on their families? Just yesterday the US military started flying in Boric Acid from US Power Plants. We don't know now, but we will find out once the accident is over and investigation is completed. Things just don't seem right.

Gee, too bad they didn't call you right away. You obviously have more knowledge of logistics and the situtation at the plant than the boots on the ground.

[c1ue]

Re: Excellent article explaining the situation at the Fukushima plant

More from MITNSE on the 'worst case' scenario.

Any more questions about the provenance of this web site?

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/17/on-worst-case-scenarios/

The blog has received a great number of questions surrounding worst case scenarios. This is not surprising given that such scenarios, with varying degrees of scientific merit, have been advanced in the media. The intent of this blog is to educate, using our best available information, and so we intend to refrain from making predictions of our own. We do, however, want to review some of the terminology used in these predictions, and describe the methods used by government agencies and scientific organizations to determine what actions must be taken to inform the public.

Meltdown

The term meltdown describes melting of the zirconium alloy cladding, and uranium oxide (or mixed oxide, in the case of Unit 3) fuel pellets. These two structures are the first two barriers to fission release, since radioactive fission products normally exist as either solids within the fuel pellet, gases within pores in the fuel pellet, or gases that escape the pellet but remain in the cladding. When a reactor is shut down, these fission products continue to decay, generating heat. This amount of heat is produced at first at 7% of its initial rate, and then decreases as the isotopes responsible for generating it decay away. If this decay heat is not removed by cooling water, the fuel and cladding increase in temperature.

At temperatures above 1200 C, the corrosion reaction which is constantly ongoing in the zirconium cladding accelerates dramatically. The reaction’s products include zirconium oxide, hydrogen (for more on this hydrogen, see our post “Explanation of Hydrogen Explosion at Units 1 and 3), and heat. This heat continues to both fuel the corrosion reaction, and to prevent the fuel rods from being cooled. Because of the self-catalyzing nature of this reaction, safety systems are usually actuated in such a fashion as to provide a large margin of safety to the clad reaching 1200 C.

If multiple failures prevent these actions from being taken, as was the case at Three Mile Island, the fuel rods heat up until the uranium oxide reaches its melting point, 2400-2860 C (this figure depends on the makeup and operating history of the fuel). At this point, the fuel rods begin to slump within their assemblies. When the fuel becomes sufficiently liquid, slumping turns to oozing, and the “corium” (a mixture of molten cladding, fuel, and structural steel) begins a migration to the bottom of the reactor vessel. If at any point the hot fuel or cladding is exposed to cooling water, it may solidify and fracture, falling to the bottom of the reactor vessel.

A similar sequence of events takes place if cooling to spent fuel pools is not maintained, but at a reduced rate of progression.

Breakthrough: Operating Experience and Experiment

With the fuel at or above temperatures of 2400 C, there exists the possibility that the fuel could cause damage to the reactor vessel. The melting point of the steel making up the vessel is in the neighborhood of 1500 C. In addition, the vessel in question may have been weakened by its exposure to seawater. The sodium chloride within seawater accelerates the corrosion of steels, but usually on the order of weeks or months, not days. Nevertheless, some uncertainty as to the condition of the vessel does exist.

Thankfully, operating experience with melted fuel speaks favorably. At Three Mile Island, approximately 50% of the core’s nuclear fuel melted, and just 5/8 inch (out of 9 inches) of the reactor pressure vessel’s internal surface was ablated. During the corium’s contact with the bottom of the vessel, the vessel glowed red-hot for about an hour. The heat to which the vessel was exposed induced metallurgical changes in the steel, rendering it more brittle. Instrumentation penetrations in the lower vessel head also suffered damage. Nevertheless, the molten core was contained by the vessel.

In the event that molten corium does, as has been the case in some experiments, penetrate the lower head of the reactor vessel, it will drop onto the concrete basemat of the containment and spread out as far as possible. The interaction of corium with concrete is known to produce a buildup of non-condensable gases within the containment, a process called molten-core concrete interaction (MCCI).

In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, a number of agencies undertook programs to determine experimentally how corium would behave when placed into contact with a concrete reactor pad. These experiments have been used to measure concrete ablation, and also the rate of generation of non-condensable gases. Over the past twenty years, these studies have focused on quenching of the corium with water.

The experiments are performed by producing a melt of un-irradiated uranium dioxide (extremely low levels of alpha radioactivity, easily avoided by the experimenters), zirconium alloy, and structural steel, in the proportions that would be present in a reactor core. This melt is sent through a nozzle used to simulate a pressure vessel lower head breach, and dropped onto concrete. Measurements are taken during the hours-long experiment using thermocouples and camera equipment, and the solidified material is examined after completion.

The experiments have shown that without water quenching, corium under conditions similar to those present at Fukushima Dai-ichi will ablate the meters-thick concrete pad at a rate of just millimeters per minute. Gases would build up within the containment at a rate which would require filtered ventilation of the containment in order to prevent rupture.

If, however, water is supplied to quench the corium as it spreads onto the reactor floor, the ablation occurs at 5-7% of the pre-quench rate, and production of gases is suppressed. The rate of ablation continues to undergo fits and starts, as the corium forms a solid crust, and then this crust is broken and re-formed.

Again, this summary is intended to explain the different pathways which molten fuel could potentially take. We do not aim to predict what’s going on in each of the reactors and spent fuel pools in question.

Analysis: How it’s done, what it means

The experiments described previously are used to validate, or confirm the results of, calculations which predict what will happen to a reactor or spent fuel pool’s fuel if it should melt down. These calculations are then used to provide the source term for an advection calculation, which predicts doses at sites removed from the plant as a function of time.

These calculations involve complex interactions between a number of different factors, such as

• The method of release: Explosive, or a slow, steady stream? Carried away by air currents, smoke, or water? How high off the ground?
• Weather patterns, both local to the site and further away
• Physical geography, both local to the site and further away

Like the methods used to model the disposition of molten fuel, these methods are validated against the best available data, which include both real-life experience like post-Chernobyl data, and the results of small-scale experiments.

The calculated doses are used by the agencies which calculate them, national and local governments to make decisions about when to evacuate or apply “take-cover” orders to people at different distances removed from the situation. Again, we recommend that our readers close to the facility heed the instructions issued by their governments.

A note about predictions of future radiation doses: in recent days a map has circulated the internet, purporting to predict high doses to the Western U.S. This map bears the seal of the Australian Radiation Service, which did not produce it. The map has been refuted by the U.S. NRC, and experts state that it more closely resembles predictions for doses after deployment of a nuclear weapon than those for a situation such as that unfolding at present.

The key numbers here are:

1200 degrees C - zirconium cladding on rods started rapid deterioration.

2400 degrees C - uranium fuel starts melting

Does anyone have factual data showing that temperatures are anywhere in this range?

The last report of the SNF in Fukushima #1, unit 4 was 84 degrees C. Only 1116 to go.

The reactors in 1, 2, and 3 are all shut down now. They are generating heat still, but it is far from clear that the temperatures are now in any of the above ranges.

I'm still seeing the occasional report of a Reactor Fire in Unit 4 - the moment you see any such statement, whomever said it has just lost ALL credibility.

Unit 4 was shut down even before the earthquake. I had some concern that the entire core which was just moved to the SNF might have been exposed due to a leak in the SNF structure - plus the core itself could possibly be both hotter and have more fuel than normal - but there are no indications that any of this is true.

In addition, the latest progress report. Note there is no whitewashing - injuries are reported including deaths. As I noted previously - the issue is that those workers on site are only permitted a fixed yearly amount of radiation exposure. This makes staffing the ongoing emergency cooling effort very difficult.

The high levels of radiation braved by workers at the scene in Fukushima Daiichi appear to have reduced after the expansion of the workforce and announcements of infrastructure improvements to come.

In recent days emergency managers were faced with an extremely complicated task to prioritise jobs across all four struggling reactor units in the main part of the site, while a skeleton operating crew maintained the status of units 5 and 6 about two hundred metres away.

There have been about 50 staff engaged in pumping seawater into the reactor cores and primary containment vessels of units 1, 2 and 3. From time to time these need to vent steam, which causes radiation to rise across the site and required the workers to move to a safer location.

Another 130 were also on site, according to reports, including soldiers from the Japan Self Defence Force.

Normally nuclear workers are allowed to receive a dose of 20 millisieverts per year, although in practice they often receive very much less. If that limit is exceeded in any year, the worker cannot undertake nuclear duties for the remainder.

A helicopter shot of Fukushima Daiichi 3 earlier today

In emergency circumstances safety regulators allow workers to receive up to 100 millisieverts with the same conditions applying, that they must leave the site should that limit be reached. The 100 millisievert level is roughly the point at which health effects from radiation become more likely. Below this it is statistically difficult to connect radiation dose to cancer rates, but above this the relationship starts to become apparent.

Under a special allowance from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, workers at Fukushima were permitted doses of up to 250 millisieverts. Managers must be careful to make the best use of those experienced workers with the most detailed knowledge and experience of the plant.

The small workforce battled to spray water into the damaged buildings of units 3 and 4, working when and where they could to avoid exceeding those radiation dose limits. World Nuclear News understands that the army fire engine was able to “deliver 30 tonnes of water” towards or into unit 3′s fuel pond, but this is not confirmed, nor is the expected drop in radiation levels expected to accompany it. However, Tokyo Electric Power Company has been able to significantly expand the workforce and a range of other activities are now taking place.

External power, diesels coming

The Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry said at 8.38pm that a cable was being laid to bring external power from transmission lines owned by Tohoku Electric Power Company. This was to be connected when radiation levels had died down after a planned venting operation at unit 2.

In addition, one of the emergency diesel units can now be operated and will be used to supply unit 5 and 6 alternately to inject water to their used fuel pools. Later, the power will be used to top up water in the reactor vessels.

Casualties among power plant workers

• Two Tepco employees have minor injuries.
• Two contractors were injured when the quake struck and were taken to hospital, one suffering two broken legs.
• A Tepco worker was taken to hospital after collapsing and experiencing chest pains.
• A subcontract worker at an “important earthquake-proof building” was found unconscious and was taken to hospital.
• Two Tepco workers felt ill whilst working in the control rooms of Fukushima Daiichi units 1 and 2 and were taken to the medical centre at Fukushima Daini.
• Four workers were injured in the hydrogen explosion at Fukushima Daiichi 1. They were all taken to hospital.
• Eleven workers (four Tepco workers, three subcontract workers and four members of Self Defence Force) were hurt following a similar explosion at Fukushima Daiichi 3. They were transferred to the Fukushima Daini plant. One of the Tepco employees, complaining of pain in his side, was later transferred to hospital.
• The whereabouts of two Tepco workers, who had been in the turbine building of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4, is unknown.
• Only one casualty has been reported at the Fukushima Daini plant. A worker in the crane operating console of the exhaust stack was seriously injured when the earthquake struck. He subsequently died.

Contamination cases

• One Tepco worker working within the reactor building of Fukushima Daiichi unit 3 during “vent work” was taken to hospital after receiving radiation exposure exceeding 100 mSv, a level deemed acceptable in emergency situations by some national nuclear safety regulators.
• Nine Tepco employees and eight subcontractors suffered facial exposure to low levels of radiation. They did not require hospital treatment.
• Two policemen were decontaminated after being exposed to radiation.
• An unspecified number of firemen who were exposed to radiation are under investigation.