Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

[don]

May 12, 2011


Officials find damage is worse at Japanese reactor

One of the reactors at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant was damaged more severely than originally thought ... news that represents a serious setback for efforts to stabilize the plant.

new data ... showed that the water level in the core of #1 was much lower than was previously thought, fully exposing the fuel rods in the reactor that were still intact. Other portion of the fuel rods had slumped to the bottom of the pressure vessel.

Radioactive leaks in the vessel are worse than anticipated. Radioactive water pouring from several of the troubled reactors has pooled around the complex.

New data indicated that it was likely that partly melted nuclear fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressurized vessel that holds the reactor core together and possibly had leached into the drywell soon after the earthquake and tsunami.

The level of damage could complicate plans ... to bring the plant to a cold shutdown within 9 months.

Cooling water has also been leaking from the cores of #2 and #3, allowing an estimated 70,000 tons of contaminated water to pool inside the complex.

(The above are excerpts from the printed edition of the NYTimes. The online article has been drastically edited under the title of: Japanese Reactor Damage Is Worse Than Expected (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/wo...a/13japan.html)

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Why do you want to kill nuclear power? What do you get out of doing so?

You see that the developed world is in a depression i.e, a recession that never ends. We are struggling to keep our heads above water. Why do you want to kill the nuclear ace-in-the-hole that we have?

Is your interest in lawsuits?

Do you really want coal-fired power plants because that is what happened at Henderson, Nevada? They went out of nuclear and converted to pressurized water coal-fired at Henderson, Nevada as a result of pressure from the eco-frauds in the 1970s. Or do you want liquified natural-gas under pressure in a 9.0 fault-zone with tsunamis?

It is very easy to fix the problem at Fukushima. Wet cement could be dropped from helicopters to bury the core. The problem of the reactor core could be solved in a few hours of work, but TEPCO is trying to salvage the core and re-use the reactor.

You try to scare the hell out of people here by making an issue of coolant water. When I was at the Univ. of Minnesota, I took a sample of secondary-coolant water from the Monticello nuclear power plant, and the water was so non-radioactive as to be drinkable. We ran the sample into the atomic-spectometre at the Univ. of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and the water was drinkable. It was non-radioactive. I took the grab-sample of secondary coolant water right out of the pipe from the reactor.

Primary coolant is no big issue, and a brief exposure to fuel rods is no big issue. As I posted here, my uncle has a fuel rod, even partially cut-away exposing the black uranium oxide on his desktop. The fuel rod portion is encased in clear lucite plastic and is a paper weight on his desk, a presentation from his company.

I am not a nuclear engineer, but I think I know enough about how reactors work to make a comment here.

My only financial interest in nuclear power is the stock I hold in General Electric and Duke Power Company. But I comment here because I am worried about the economic future of Japan and the rest of the developed world.

[Master Shake]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Why do you want to kill nuclear power? What do you get out of doing so?

You see that the developed world is in a depression i.e, a recession that never ends. We are struggling to keep our heads above water. Why do you want to kill the nuclear ace-in-the-hole that we have?

Is your interest in lawsuits?

Do you really want coal-fired power plants because that is what happened at Henderson, Nevada? They went out of nuclear and converted to pressurized water coal-fired at Henderson, Nevada as a result of pressure from the eco-frauds in the 1970s. Or do you want liquified natural-gas under pressure in a 9.0 fault-zone with tsunamis?

It is very easy to fix the problem at Fukushima. Wet cement could be dropped from helicopters to bury the core. The problem of the reactor core could be solved in a few hours of work, but TEPCO is trying to salvage the core and re-use the reactor.

You try to scare the hell out of people here by making an issue of coolant water. When I was at the Univ. of Minnesota, I took a sample of secondary-coolant water from the Monticello nuclear power plant, and the water was so non-radioactive as to be drinkable. We ran the sample into the atomic-spectometre at the Univ. of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and the water was drinkable. It was non-radioactive. I took the grab-sample of secondary coolant water right out of the pipe from the reactor.

Primary coolant is no big issue, and a brief exposure to fuel rods is no big issue. As I posted here, my uncle has a fuel rod, even partially cut-away exposing the black uranium oxide on his desktop. The fuel rod portion is encased in clear lucite plastic and is a paper weight on his desk, a presentation from his company.

I am not a nuclear engineer, but I think I know enough about how reactors work to make a comment here.

My only financial interest in nuclear power is the stock I hold in General Electric and Duke Power Company. But I comment here because I am worried about the economic future of Japan and the rest of the developed world.

Damn, Steve, you don't give up no matter what. I first thought that the anti-nuke crowd was making more of the problems at Fukushima than was warranted, but as the facts come out, it's clear that this was much more serious than I first thought.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Damn, Steve, you don't give up no matter what. I first thought that the anti-nuke crowd was making more of the problems at Fukushima than was warranted, but as the facts come out, it's clear that this was much more serious than I first thought.

IMHO - the worst part of whats happening in Japan is similar/parallels to what happened in NYC in 2001:
the best hope for a solution to the world-wide energy krunch thats coming is smoldering over in Fukushima,
just as the 'peace dividend' (at least the illusion of one) went down in a mushroom cloud of dust and body parts in new york on that fateful day in september: both are a major tragedy in terms of lost potential for the future.

[DRumsfeld2000]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

You are right in many ways Steve. This is a forty year old reactor in which the owners allegedlly were storing about double the number of fuel rods they were authorised to. The design, especially with the diesel pumps was plain stupid. It was only built to withstand around a 7 earthquake and not a tsunmai

Modern reactors have a full range of highly sophisticated fail safe aspects which makes Fukushima look like a joke. It is not nuclear power which is at fault here, it is how humans abused it at Fukushima. Nuclear power will come back as there is no option to it. Of course you could always have gas fracking with water contamination etc, or deep sea drilling which destroys a coastal region, or coal (too many neagatives to list), green energy which uses more energy that it provides. Good options.

[Shakespear]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

lektrode

lost potential for the future

Sorry, but someone HAS profited from this. The ledger is not one sided.

As to the design. US has dropped the ball in the area of Nuclear Engineering a long time ago. Same ol' crapola designs were turned out because it was cheap to do. New designs and ideas may were being developed but they stayed on the bookshelves.

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down.

Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged.

Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.

"We will have to revise our plans," said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for Tepco. "We cannot deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak".

Tepco has not clarified what other barriers there are to stop radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has been breached.

An initial plan to flood the entire reactor core with water to keep its temperature from rising has now been abandoned because it might exacerbate the leak.

Tepco said on Wednesday that it had sealed a leak of radioactive water from the No.3 reactor after water was reportedly discovered to be flowing into the ocean. A similar leak had discharged radioactive water into the sea in April from the No.2 reactor.

samples of seaweed taken from as far as 40 miles of the Fukushima plant had been found to contain radiation well above legal limits. Of the 22 samples tested, ten were contaminated with five times the legal limit of iodine 131 and 20 times of caesium 137. Seaweed is a huge part of the Japanese diet. Harvesting of this season's seaweed begins on May 20.

Inland from the plant, there has been a huge cull of the livestock left inside the 18-mile mandatory exclusion zone with thousands of cows, horses and pigs being destroyed and some 260,000 chickens from the town of Minamisoma alone. The Environment ministry has announced, however, that it will attempt to rescue the thousands of pets that were left behind when residents were ordered to evacuate.
At least 5,800 dogs were owned by the residents of the zone, although it is unclear how many remain alive, two months after the earthquake struck.

Workers pour concrete into a pit to stop contaminated water leaking from the reactor building

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ima-plant.html

[mooncliff]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this. That is what was thought to have happened from the beginning, no? What is really surprising is that the cores seem to have been completely out of water for the last two months and yet the temperatures are about 100 degrees C. That is unbelievable, and in a good way.

The readings in downtown Tokyo are back to where they usually are, about 1/5 the average for North America.

When people discuss these things, I wish they would give actual readings rather than saying "the limit" or "above normal" because it is nearly impossible to understand what that means.

Contamination in and around the plant is very bad, of course, but elsewhere it is trivial so far.

This is going to be a huge mess that is going to take decades to clean up and pay for.

Our office is going to change from old desktops that use 100 watts to new tiny computers that clip on the back of the monitor and use less than 20 watts, and we are installing desk lamps and turning off overhead lighting. That will reduce about 200 kwh of electricity, and just as important, 200 kwh of nonsense heat that the air conditioning would have to remove per day. Really simple and cheap and cuts energy consumption by more than half with no change in standard or work conditions. All of Tokyo was way overlit to begin with, and tuning off half the lights is fine. There are ways out of this, and they really are not that difficult.

[Shakespear]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

There are ways out of this, and they really are not that difficult.

I am getting a different picture from this story and commentary found here

http://cryptogon.com/?p=22349#comments

Observation in comment #6 is enlightening "tochigi Says:"

[sunskyfan]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

People have been blowing smoke up their own butts since this began. This is an unmitigated disaster that will haunt the world for a very long time. The Engineering paradigm as it is currently realized is critically flawed in that it does not measure risk appropriately. True for most every endeavor but when an iPad dies early is it really a big deal? They are "believers" instead of "knowers" on this and when belief and the natural world clash it usually doesn't end well for the "believer".

[Shakespear]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Yes, "believers" are dangerous and thus a desired "tool".

[sunskyfan]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

Well put.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

An 8.9 earthquake and consequent tsunami are a disaster, not the nuclear power plant at Fukishima. And there is no reason why people should be evacuated because of nuclear power except that their electric power is off. Whatever the other source of power TEPCO could have chosen, it would be off now too. Nothing can survive an 8.9 quake plus a tsunami.

[coolhand]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

People that lived in & survived Chernobyl, which is now a lesser disaster than this, would disagree that the radioactive contamination is not a big deal. I know what the official death & injury toll from Chernobyl was, and I have it 1st hand from people that lived through it that it is significantly worse, by an order of magnitude.

Not that there's any choice to not use nukes in a peak cheap oil world, but to say that the nuclear is not a big deal is not exactly accurate according to those that lived through it...

[bw]

Re: Fukushima: Little by Little . . .

do you want liquified natural-gas under pressure in a 9.0 fault-zone with tsunamis?

You bet. A giant WHOOMP sound, a light show visible twenty miles away for ten minutes, and we're done with it. Sounds like a great deal.