Posted on 05/17/2011 12:06:27 PM PDT by ransomnote
OKYO—Over the last several days, evidence has emerged indicating that the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was far more dire than previously recognized. The main evidence is extensive—rather than partial—melting of the nuclear fuel in three reactors in the hours after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Despite that bad news, however, today plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. pledged it would still meet the target set 17 April to stabilize the situation by January 2012 so 100,000 residents evacuated from around the plant can return to their homes and the decade-long process of demolishing the reactors can get started.
At first, analysts from Tokyo Electric and the government believed there was only limited damage to the fuel cores. But over the last week, a combination of robotic and human inspections has led to the conclusion that the fuel assemblies in units 1, 2, and 3 were completely exposed to the air for from over 6 hours to over 14 hours and that melting was extensive if not complete. Much of the fuel is now likely at the bottom of the reactor pressure vessels.
Despite extensive melting of the fuel, "we do not believe there is massive damage to the reactor pressure vessel," Sakae Muto, Tokyo Electric's chief nuclear officer told reporters this evening.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Decides that the situation has stabilized and stops radiation monitoring. In other words, we are on our own. Absolutely no help from financially, fiscally and morally bankrupt DC.
The corrupt Japanese Nuclear Industry takes us all for fools. Let me make the math real simple for the nuclear scientific morons. You have a melted core inside an RPV. You are injecting tons of water every hour. The water level is not measurable and radioactive water is appearing all over the lower recesses of the facility. Now we just add, melted core to leaking water, and you come up with the conclusion that there are serious holes in the RPV. In fact it is impossible for an entire core to melt and for the RPV to remain intact in a BWR. That is acknowledged in many studies. So the bottom line is they are injecting water not even knowing where the bulk of the melted core (called corium) actually is located right now. All smoke and mirrors. They just assume the concrete floor of a building that just had its earthquake motion rating exceeded which also experienced massive vertical and horizontal ground displacement, is still 100 % intact. With no cracks.
Your choice of the words "admitted" and "acknowledging" shows a clear bias on your part. From the article:
But over the last week, a combination of robotic and human inspections has led to the conclusion...Do you think the US should be upset that they are getting more and better information, and sharing it? Or are you so enamored of guessing the worst about the accident that you think everybody should be guessing all the time, rather than actually collecting evidence?
BTW, there is little indication that the situation is "much worse". They know more. It requires a different approach. But the fuel was destroyed, and whether it's a molten block in the assembly, or a molten blob on the containment floor, doesn't really change the situation much. It could drive up the costs of storage since they might not be able to remove the reactor material.
Of course, your contention that the U.S. is reacting to the news ("now that") is probably dead wrong. We've monitored the situation since the accident, and there's been nothing to suggest that continued full-scale monitoring was necessary.
How a lack of monitoring leaves you more "on your own" than you already were, I can't say. Monitoring wasn't really helping you.
I'd rather they take some of that money they were wasting on monitoring and use it to help out people being devastated by flooding and fires here in this country -- real problems which are killing and harming real people in this country, unlike the nuclear reactor accident.
It’s water. We actually know how to keep water from leaching into the environment. It may be a hard job, but it is emminently doable. Impermeable membranes, set into, and if necessary below the foundation, then you collect the water, purify it, and recirculate it.
It’s the same job normally done by the reactor vessel. If the vessel isn’t water-tight, make the next barrier water-tight.
Might not even have to do that. If there are simply cracks in the substructure, you just have to provide a lower-resistance path for the water, like through an active pumping system. Collect the water before it reaches the cracks, then throw in sealant, and you might cut off all the leakage, or 99.9% of it.
Still don’t know what has made the vessel leak. Could be melts, but it also could be broken pipes that enter and exist the containment.
Nice thing is that they are able to collect more data now that things are stable, and the data is helping them understand the problem, which will lead to better solutions.
No need to read further. Come back when you actually have a grasp of the situation. It is unprecedented.
At least that confirms that this is hardly new information, as it was known before the explosion.
I like how people can go from ridiculing the credibility of government representatives to treating them as gospel, as it suits them.
Reminds me of how some cold-call stock artists work, by telling half the people to watch for a stock to go up, and the other half to watch for it to go down. Then, whatever happens, they call the relevant half and talk about how "right" they were.
Here's another link from the exact same source as your link, so maybe you'd believe it, or maybe not because it doesn't say what you want:
Layman's guide to the situation....
It explains the current situation in nice, non-hysterical words that convey useful information about the seriousness of the situation.
why do you think the word “unprecedented” means “impossible to deal with”? It just means that we haven’t had this specific situation before.
I deal with unprecedented situations all the time — you’d be surprised how often things happen that either haven’t happened before, or at least not in the context of what you are working.
people solve “unprecedented problems” all the time.
Last year’s BP oil spill was “unprecedented”. They solved it. And frankly, in terms of difficulty, the possibilities for the situation there being “unsolvable” was higher in my opinion than in this case.
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