Posted on 03/14/2011 1:45:20 PM PDT by americanophile
Yep.
Did you read what the Prime Minister just said when he addressed the nation?
I have a feeling that the 212 F is either a misprint or didn’t stay long at that temp.
A snip of an article I am reading elsewhere and I hope it’s okay to post this:
Explosion rocks third Japanese reactor
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42066534/ns/world_news-asiapacific/
A third explosion in four days rocked the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan early Tuesday, the country’s nuclear safety agency said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from the damaged reactors and warned of more leaks. He said people within 20 kilomoters (12 miles) of the plant should evacuate, Kyodo News reported.
Two sources told NBC News’ Robert Bazell that the blast breached the containment structure and that radiation had leaked out.
The nuclear core of Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan was undamaged, said a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Shigekazu Omukai.
The agency suspects the explosion may have damaged the reactor’s suppression chamber, a water-filled tube at the bottom of the container that surrounds the nuclear core, said another agency spokesman, Shinji Kinjo. He said that chamber is part of the container wall.
I used to be EQ coordinator in a nuke plant (a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor).
Some of the scenarios we had to deal with - volcanoes, plane crashes, hottest day of the year stuff - was nothing compared to a 33 foot tall tsunami.
That isn’t true and I wish people would stop saying that. The rods are still in their sleeves, partially melted but inside of the controlling medium. That is then contained inside a containment vessel which has not been breached. They are talking about putting additional water around this contaiment vessel to help bleed off the remaining heat. This is where the released radiation is coming from the boiling off of the steam to cool the vessel as quickly as possible. The steam creates 2 issues they have so far been controlling very well - 1) The problem with the explosions results due to the steam seperating into it’s components - Hydrogen and Oxygen which when they build up react violently. and 2) the steam then carries radiation off with it due to the impurities in the water, however this radiation is of a lower half life than uranium or plutonium or any of the other things most people think of. It is typically Cesium and Iodine.
This link has some outstanding info from a true physics type dealing with it daily (while I’m a physics major it’s rusty and I tend to have outdated info).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2688870/posts
If they can continue to cool the next few days even partially as best as possible they will be able to limit to the lower steam radiation and not even require the messer cleanup of a contained meltdown.
well - they could look at it as we did absolutely everything we could ourselves and in addition called out for help and still look what happened. Course where politicians are involved - american, japanese, or otherwise they are likely just looking for someone else to point to when the shtf.
There.
Hopefully, Obamao will get some private-sector folks over there to help them.
(Would you want him sending obnoxious government bureaucrats over there to help out?)
I realize it that's what Sky put in the headline and sub but there's nothing in the body to suggest Japan has asked for US help with the reactor problems. There's a Harvard-based guy saying it. Harvard is not in Japan.
It was a breaking news story, and like most breaking news stories didn't include much new info. Subsequent articles have more substance.
Here is the AOL News evening article with 500 photos, and almost 500 comments, and a video.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/14/explosion-heard-at-japan-nuclear-plant/?ncid=webmail
Thank you.
And that's why 15,000+ sq. km. of prime Ukraine, Belorussian and Russian farmland has a population of 500-800.
That said, radiation levels at the Fukushima plant have fallen to 231 micro sieverts (23.1 millirem) as of 2:30 pm March 15th (local time).
That’s excellent news. No radiation deaths, then? Cleanup and salvage are going to be a bear - you don’t throw away that much fuel if there is any reasonable possibility of salvage - plus safer in a reactor anyway.
Do you want to retract your statement based upon the news today?
Two if not three of these reactors are going to have major event status by the end of the week. In addition now one of the storage pools is emitting high levels of radiation. By Monday this will make Chernobyl look like a weenie roast. Here is the simple fact. ALL of the measures they have taken have not succeeded in suppressing the secondary nuclear reactions inside the vessel. These reactors DO NOT HAVE CORE CATCHERS. I have heard that directly from a GE engineer who helped design and install them. Most of the control systems as well as much of the control piping in unit three has been destroyed. Several of the valves are stuck shut and cannot be opened to release steam etc. The unit is now to hot both temperature and radiation for humans to survive installing additional cooling around the primary containment. Yes the Japanese have been lying or at the very least underestimating the severity of the situation.
While seawater does not allow for the reactor to be used again - my point was that they didn’t really care about that once the standard cooling systems went offline - their concerns were to prevent a meltdown at that point. They attempted to use standard backup methods, but could not obtain enough pure water in the devastated area to do so. At that point seawater was their only option as a cooling method and I don’t think they really cared about scraping the long term viability of the plant.
Chernobyl was basically a reactor with a building around it so when the gas built up it was open season for radiation leakage - these reactors have containment vessels beyond the russian versions. While they may not have core catchers they are still designed much better than that mess was.
As to the current situation - I do not believe most of the news reporting, as from day one it has been overhyped through a lack of knowledge - just like 3mile was in the 70s. That leaves me to listen for what I can from those who are in the know and using my own and others knowledge of physics and plant design to determine most likely outcome. Do I think the government/business is telling us everything - hell no when has any govt/biz done that. However, to asssume its a worst case when it could be to limit panic from miscommunication given the medias intent to explode things - I’ll take a middle road.
By the way the Japanese broadcasters aren’t nearly as concerned as the US ones are - maybe because they don’t tend to ratchet things up for viewers as much as we do here.
I still strongly believe that this will not be as bad as Chernobyl.
Thanks. Lots of varying news coming out of Japan which is to be expected.
Understood - not all engineers or scientists hypothesize or design in the same manner. Some people think worst case, some best case - have to clarify which all the time.
My guys are navy nucs, design oilfield rigs for typhoon conditions, and design CT/xray/MRIs for safety considerations. I’ve a physics degree and been in a number of nuc facilities myself, and ran steam power plants as the watch officer. So I’m not just going off the cuff with my estimates either.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think it’s going to be all peace, love, and manna from heaven. But neither do I believe that it is a global catastrophe with multiple meltdowns irradiating the entire globe. It’s bad, I just don’t see it as unovercomeable. If that makes any sense.
Thanks gleeaikin.
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