Posted on 12/13/2011 1:27:01 PM PST by ransomnote
There are foreign nuclear experts who have said the explosion in Reactor 3 on March 14 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear explosion. But this Japanese engineer and whistleblower at JNES (Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization) Setsuo Fujiwara says there were two explosions at Reactor 3: a hydrogen explosion, and a nuclear explosion at the Spent Fuel Pool.
The following is my best-effort translation of the interview Fujiwara did with the SPA magazine, without detailed technical knowledge of nuclear physics, subject to revision.
From Zakzak (12/13/2011):
"The explosion in Reactor 3 at Fukushima I Nuke Plant on March 14 was nuclear!"
So says Mr. Setsuo Fujiwara, who worked at Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES) until the spring of 2010 as nuclear plant inspector. He is one of those experts who know the nuclear power plant facilities and operations in great details.
"In the Reactor 3 explosion, there was a flicker of fire, then a vertical, black smoke up the reactor building. A hydrogen explosion does not produce such a black smoke. And the mushroom cloud. It resembles a nuclear explosion."
But according to the government and TEPCO, the nuclear reactors are getting more stable, aren't they?
"A more important source of radioactive materials dispersed is the Spent Fuel Pools."
(Excerpt) Read more at ex-skf.blogspot.com ...
There's more at the link.
Any explosion with sufficient power will produce a “mushroom” cloud the shape of the cloud is due to the force rebounding off the earth and shoving debris into the air. I very much doubt there was a “nuclear” explosion that included uncontrolled cascading fission - I do not doubt that there may have been an explosion involving nuclear material as debris due to the proximity of the explosion to that material. There were sufficient sources of flame and fuel for any number of explosions to occur.
A nuclear excursion or criticality accident is possible and has happened several dozen times since 1945; this may be another such accident. Nuclear explosion? I’d like to see what isotopes are present if they are claiming that outcome. As for the “mushroom” cloud, no, that is not evidence of a nuclear yield, at least not with the size observed.
This isn’t making sense to me.
If there WAS a true nuclear explosion, I doubt anything would have been left standing UNLESS it was a very, VERY tiny explosion. It perhaps could have been a “fizzle” explosion, where the chain reaction doesn’t quite go anywhere and “fizzles out”. A small number of the bombs exploded in nuclear testing in the 50’s and 60’s were ‘fizzles’, but they were still pretty powerful explosions.
forgot to post the link to the map I posted in the comments:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/12/professor-hayakawas-fukushima-chernobyl.html
shitsure kedo moshikatara, honYaku desu ka?
Great material, btw...sugeeeh....
:(
jeez...do any of these people over there have any idea what they’re talking about???
I thought Japan had more than one island.
The situation is indeed improving there, since all such supersticious comments are focusing more and more on the power plant.
To achieve a supercritical explosion, it would require a supercritical mass of sufficient enrichment. It is highly unlikely and unprecedented to have a “nuclear explosion” from a nuclear fuel source. I call bullshit. Criticality explosion perhaps, but not a “nuclear explosion” in the common parlance.
Maybe some yellowcake.
So, was there a reactor? I don't think there's a single Japanese record left from that period that discusses the existence of a reactor, and there were certainly few witnesses to the whole program ~ since they all got killed in an "accident" in Manchuria, or a US Air Force bombing run on Japanese facilities there.
But let's say for just a second that there WAS a reactor and the Japanese have been hiding its existence for years through the simple expedient of explaining anomalous radiation readings as coming from radioactive rocks tossed up by volcanos OR material created at Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
Now, thanks to this nuclear power plant problem they can start blaming all of these readings on the power plant ~ which should pretty well cover all the anomalous reports in the North!
Why I bring this possibility up is that the Japanese could very well have built some working bombs and stashed them in their R&D facilities in what is now North Korea ~ if they had a reactor!
Think about it ~ every "test" the NK have done has had UNUSUAL results totally unexpected given Russian, American, British, French, Chinese, Pakistani and Indian experience in the matter.
If the Japanese did devise some sort of atom bomb during WWII and left them in Korea it's really long overdue for them to 'fess up!
i believe there was no characteristic double pulse of light from a nuclear detonation...
NUCLEAR EXPLOSION????
TOTAL B.S. In order to have a ‘Nuclear Explosion’ you have to have a critical mass of 95% or greater enriched uranium. Fuel grade uranium rods are less than 3% enriched.
A nuclear explosion can ONLY occur as a deliberate act under controlled conditions. It is simply not a possible result of a meltdown.
The only thing explosive here is the rhetoric.
“In the Reactor 3 explosion, there was a flicker of fire, then a vertical, black smoke up the reactor building. A hydrogen explosion does not produce such a black smoke.”
In my experience black smoke is caused by incompletely oxidized carbon in the exhaust column (i.e. soot). While yes Hydrogen does not generate black smoke, I can imagine any number of carbon based fuels in the building that could have been ignited by the hydrogen explosion.
How about a low energy nuclear reaction ~ here we have fissile materials in a high pressure pure hydrogen environment ~ there’s certainly the makings of a bit of fusion.
A low energy nuclear reaction, maybe. Such things have occurred in labs, resulting in fatal exposures to workers-—but it was an exothermic ‘reaction’, not an explosion. An explosion would be the result of the ignition of the hydrogen, not the uranium.
So, how many possibilities are there ~
So I read...
Hydrogen burns in a flash, doesn’t itself explode but the heat generation could certainly cause water in the pool to flash to steam causing further reactions if the fuel assemblies are agitated.
Unit 3 was known to be using plutonium (MOX) in its mix for some of its fuel rods. Fuel ponds contain new and used fuel rods, some ‘spent’ waiting to be transferred to long term storage others ‘new’ waiting to be rotated into service inside the reactor. Plutonium is also a byproduct created inside the spent fuel rods to some small degree.
Why don’t they remove the fuel rods to another location? Because they must be kept underwater to be cooled at all time. Continuing residual heat from the used fuel rods in the assemblies is sufficient to cause them to heat up and catch fire and release their poisons in about 15 minutes, if exposed to ambient air. New/unused fuel rods are cold and could almost be handled by hand since they haven’t been exposed to a reaction yet (neutrons activity).
With Russia and the US agreeing to dismantle war heads, there was a sudden over supply of plutonium to either store or use. Selling it to nuclear power plant operators was one way to get rid of it.
The Savannah River Site is constructing a plant for reprocessing plutonium from warheads to sold as MOX nuclear fuel. After Fukushima, no government wants the stuff because it is highly unstable.
Witnesses reported hearing Unit 3’s explosions ten of miles away from it. Whether the long distance telephoto lens used to record the event had a stereo mike pickup is a mute point, there were explosions and sounds to go along with them.
Strontium in the fallout from Unit 3’s explosion indicates nuclear in nature, among the other types of fallout measured.
it’s interesting you post the chrenobyl comparison as I’ve never heard anything related to a ‘nuclear explosion’ there and only of a runaway fire with corresponding ash debris. yet the two maps appear to be comparable - the japanese reduced areas likely due to the more stable design of the reactors and the prevailing winds taking a large amount of the radiation out to sea.
As I mentioned to someone else between the govt/company coverup and the liberal anti-nuc press bias it’s difficult to tell if any information hasn’t been corrupted by the time it gets to print.
No NUCLEAR explosion...
Many things could have caused the explosion...but it wasn’t nuclear in nature.
In essence, you have a large dirty bomb sitting there—any explosion will distribute any adjacent radio nuclides into the atmosphere, which will then ‘fallout’ over the Earths surface depending on where the winds will take them. But it is simply NOT possible for there to be a ‘Nuclear Explosion’.
If they are building a plant to reprocess plutonium, why the HELL aren’t they building a plant (or plants) to reprocess all spent fuel rods from reactor plants? The Navy does it, and has never had an accident doing it for most of a half century now.
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