Posted on 05/10/2021 2:58:08 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield.
Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.
Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor.
“There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.” The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat.
Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. “It’s a similar magnitude of hazard.
The specter of self-sustaining fission, or criticality, in the nuclear ruins has long haunted Chernobyl. When part of the Unit Four reactor’s core melted down on 26 April 1986, uranium fuel rods, their zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and sand dumped on the core to try to extinguish the fire melted together into a lava.
It flowed into the reactor hall’s basement rooms and hardened into formations called fuel-containing materials (FCMs), which are laden with about 170 tons of irradiated uranium—95% of the original fuel.
The concrete-and-steel sarcophagus called the Shelter, erected 1 year after the accident to house Unit Four’s remains, allowed rainwater to seep in. Because water slows, or moderates, neutrons and thus enhances their odds of striking and splitting uranium nuclei, heavy rains would sometimes send neutron counts soaring.
After a downpour in June 1990, a “stalker”—a scientist at Chernobyl who risks radiation exposure to venture into the damaged reactor hall—dashed in and sprayed gadolinium nitrate solution, which absorbs neutrons, on an FCM that he and his colleagues feared might go critical. Several years later, the plant installed gadolinium nitrate sprinklers in the Shelter’s roof. But the spray can’t effectively penetrate some basement rooms.
Chernobyl officials presumed any criticality risk would fade when the massive New Safe Confinement (NSC) was slid over the Shelter in November 2016. The €1.5 billion structure was meant to seal off the Shelter so it could be stabilized and eventually dismantled. The NSC also keeps out the rain, and ever since its emplacement, neutron counts in most areas in the Shelter have been stable or are declining.
But they began to edge up in a few spots, nearly doubling over 4 years in room 305/2, which contains tons of FCMs buried under debris. ISPNPP modeling suggests the drying of the fuel is somehow making neutrons ricocheting through it more, rather than less, effective at splitting uranium nuclei. It’s just not clear what the mechanism might be.
As water continues to recede, the fear is that “the fission reaction accelerates exponentially,” Hyatt says, leading to “an uncontrolled release of nuclear energy.”
There’s no chance of a repeat of 1986, when the explosion and fire sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. A runaway fission reaction in an FCM could sputter out after heat from fission boils off the remaining water. Still, Saveliev notes, although any explosive reaction would be contained, it could threaten to bring down unstable parts of the rickety Shelter, filling the NSC with radioactive dust.
Addressing the newly unmasked threat is a daunting challenge. Radiation levels in 305/2 preclude getting close enough to install sensors. And spraying gadolinium nitrate on the nuclear debris there is not an option, as it’s entombed under concrete.
One idea is to develop a robot that can withstand the intense radiation for long enough to drill holes in the FCMs and insert boron cylinders, which would function like control rods and sop up neutrons.
In the meantime, ISPNPP intends to step up monitoring of two other areas where FCMs have the potential to go critical.
FCMs are disintegrating The resurgent fission reactions are not the only challenge facing Chernobyl’s keepers. Besieged by intense radiation and high humidity, the FCMs are disintegrating—spawning even more radioactive dust that complicates plans to dismantle the Shelter. Early on, an FCM formation called the Elephant’s Foot was so hard scientists had to use a Kalashnikov rifle to shear off a chunk for analysis. “Now it more or less has the consistency of sand,” Saveliev says.
Ukraine has long intended to remove the FCMs and store them in a geological repository. By September, with help from European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it aims to have a comprehensive plan for doing so. But with life still flickering within the Shelter, it may be harder than ever to bury the reactor’s restless remains.
Hit it with a burst of anti-matter to cancel out the fusion process.
This won’t go or end well, once again.
Why didn’t they paint a coat of flexseal over that concrete shelter? No water ever get to that stuff. I’ve seen it on TV!
China Syndrome?
They cannot get close enough to install sensors to get accurate readings. That is so boring and scary that there is that much radio activity going on, and it is increasing, they may have buried it, but it has not gone away.
Quick, we need more boron.
As much as I am inclined to favor nuclear power, Chernobyl is a lingering disaster, plus the Japanese are pumping radioactive water into the ocean, both of these disasters are still underway. We have been very lucky in the US, Even though we have been affected by the radiation.
Is "wink out" the scientific term?
It’s only 3.5 roentgen.
bkmk
Nukes are OK, but I’d rather see Nat Gas and low-sulfur Coal, in the mix.
U-238 in the fuel upon neutron capture from fission of U-235 create U-239 which decays by two beta particle emissions to Pu-239. Plutonium 239 produces fewer “delayed” neutrons when it fissions than U-235, so the reactor breeds its own more reactive fuel. This was the limiting factor of core life in the 1970s Naval Nuclear Power plants. The Pu-239 built up and the reactor was no longer controllable on delayed neutrons.
Not good, not terrible.
Speculation shows excitement or emotion. It’s usually set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point or by a comma when the feelings not as strong.
“As much as I am inclined to favor nuclear power, “
I think one of the problems with nuclear power is that nobody wants a small project*. Every project has to cost billions of dollars so that politicians can bring more jobs to their state and give out more contracts. The result is they are huge and when there’s an accident, by definition it’s massive. We have to use tons of concrete and more tons of steel. Yet, you can more a sub next to an island and power a city and the whole rest of the place and the reactor would fit in the average living room.
There are now much safer designs and, if we could build more and smaller reactors, we could even “float” them so they’d be immune to earthquakes.
* The “Nobody wants a small project” syndrome is all over the military. It’s much easier to get a huge boondoggle funded, like, for example, Future Combat Systems, or the Littoral Combat Ship, than it is to get a small footprint, portable anti drone system funded. Yet, the drone concept has much more potential to save lives than the FCS or LCS has a chance of working. (I was on both projects and virtually everyone I talked to knew they would both fail, long before they were over. LCS still exists only because Congress won’t let the Navy mothball the turkeys.)
Hey, does LCS construction employed lots of people. Isn’t that more important than having a ship that can stop a 50 caliber bullet?
Keith Richards and a bucket of FlexSeal should be able to fix that right up! Then they can send in social workers.
Exxon Valdez, Fires Of Kuwait, etc were terrible too, but we continue to use oil.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc were built with now-obvious flaws we won’t repeat.
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