Radiation Levels Surge Outside Two Nuclear Plants in Japan
. . . . Good summary at # 132.
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Posted on 03/11/2011 4:36:55 PM PST by socialism_stinX
TOKYO – Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake. Thousands of residents were evacuated as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/11/japan-issues-emergency-nuke-plant-leak/#ixzz1GLApKL9w
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Listening to NHK english feed, they are saying one of the plants reactor rods may have melted, cesium has been detected near one of the plants.. will try to find out which ones is which.
I didnt say ‘in the control room’. I said ‘in the reactor’.......
I would have hoped once the poles were in the holes that at least it would avert meltdown but I understand the fission is still happening.
I am afraid at least one is going to meltdown over there. The poor Japanese and it will not be good for the Pacific Ocean.
Excellent post! Thanks!
Nice story...yes, Christmas has become an unpopular word in our society. Department stores have to be careful how customers are greeted with a safety phrase of Happy Holidays. One has to sort through the boxes of cards to find one that is printed with Merry Christmas and not just Happy Holidays/Seasons Greetings.
The sounds of Christmas have also been revised. Perhaps we just should move to Japan.
..wouldn't normally come to Mrs Clinton's corner; but she was given misinformation and I am sure is not very happy about it. [further back in the initial posts]
Moves proposed by the DPJ in July 2010 that would enable a government-affiliated body to block child pornography sites beginning in April have been hampered by disagreements over screening criteria and how to deal with potential lawsuits by site operators who believe they have been unfairly targeted.
Japan has laws against 'true' sexual acts but not 'imitation' of such acts. It's all tied up in legal definition of "what sex is"--that Clinton so conveniently fell back on.
It is illegal in the US and still runs rampid--sickos are not discouraged by laws. The Internet has become a refuge for sex offenders. Child prostitution is rampid world wide. This issue also raises the problem of the age comparison between nations. In Europe, legal age of consent for sexual contact: 13 in Scandinavia, 16 in the Netherlands and India. Although the age of sexual consent in Japan is 13 years of age, depending on jurisdicion, prefecture law usually overrides federal law, raising the legal age up to 18 just like in the US.
Prince Andrew has even been caught up in the controversy. And who can forget the decades of abuse that went on inside the Catholic Church. Might note: New York v Ferber and the Supreme Court.
This makes much more sense. Most major power plants, regardless of the fuel used, have black-start generators, usually packaged gas turbine units. Knock out the generator, feeders, switchgear or controls and you have a problem.
Pump seawater I heard they are trying this today but it should have been done yesterday.
Can they dump a bunch of graphite control rods into the reactor core and shut it down that way? Or have they already tried that by now? Just wondering.
From what I understand, it shut down immediately. But will take a LONG time to cool the core to below meltdown temps.
No, no, no, and again - no. You're thinking of a different kind of reactor (the Russian Plutonium-producing fast reactors like Chernobyl used graohite as a moderator, not a control of the reaction levels. In any case, the solid graphite could be pumped in since they wouldn't help and couldn't physically fit in this kind of control system.
The reactors are shutdown - that's NOT the problem. The problem is that fission reactors continue to produce a small, but significant amount of extra heat after you shut them. If you turn your car engine off, you can’t put your hand on the engine block immediately -> it's still hot. But you don't need to keep the oil pump running to cool it off, do you?
Now, imagine that you shut your engine off, but still need to pump a little bit of oil for 144 hours through the engine to keep it from breaking the bearings.
If you don't keep pumping this little bit of oil through the engine, the bearings break and it leaks engine oil all over your garage floor (into the containment building) but it won't get in your house, unless the garage gets completely full of oil, right? But the oil won't get into the yard and your neighbor's house unless it leaks all the way up to the window level in your house first.
Well, the engine is not running, so you need a backup oil pump to keep the oil flowing. You could use the house power, but that's out from the earthquake. You could use the car battery, but that is going to run down. You could use your gasoline generator, but that's broken because the garage fell down it. You could borrow your neighbor's gasoline generator, but his fuel tank got contaminated with salt water from the tsunami. You could use a manual pump, but that's too small.
So the Japanese engineers are trying to get that backup oil pump going before their battery runs out so they can prevent the oil from leaking out of the engine bearings. In the meantime, their garage floor is getting messy - and it will be an expensive cleanup!! - but the neighborhood is only threatened if the oil cannot be stopped AND a lot of other things go wrong.
Assuming you can get firetrucks to the scene, get hard suction hose to draft water, keep the intake clear of debris, and keep fuel coming to the truck. Most trucks in the US will draft about 1500 gallons per minute. I have no idea how much they would need.
Fire truck engine pumps are too low a pressure to get any extra water into the core and primary piping. The very high pressure inside the primary system is what takes the high-energy high-pressure pumps that are the primary and secondary backups. But if the tsunami wiped out diesel fuel tanks and diesels starting systems and diesel power and transformer control buildings, then getting those big diesels back on line could be very difficult.
You can't just find 1500 psig “portable” pumps on the shelf ANYWHERE.
Much less ones that are right size and have the right connections and the right motors and get them moved there, lifted off the trucks, (got a handy 20 ton crane that itself has power to load the truck?), hooked
up to the plant piping (got a welder and a cutting machine and the right pipe and fittings that itself has power?)
with the right control and power systems.
You have to do more than just supply water to a de-pressurized tank near the outside of the plant building.
This plant is 1970s tech too. Controls might be newer by upgrade (don't know), but the plant itself is old with repair and mods just like here.
There are times when "high tech" fails when the old purpose built systems work better. So "high tech" isn't always "better". It's more the state of repair that counts. In that regards, the quake didn't help.
As long as this is happening, heat must be removed...somehow. It's just the way it is.
Radiation Levels Surge Outside Two Nuclear Plants in Japan
. . . . Good summary at # 132.
.
Interesting video from Chiba City, landfill on Tokyo Bay, cracks appearing with water coming up, in the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6K6JcAB9T0&feature=player_embedded#at=78
Pres Obama playing a round of golf this afternoon at Joint Base Andrews.
Amazing.
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