Posted on 03/13/2011 10:35:27 PM PDT by americanophile
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Edano confirms the Fukushima No. 2 reactor cooling functions have stopped, water levels are falling and they are preparing to pour sea water into the No. 2 reactor.
This now added to one and three reactors...they are in a war against time and in the aftermath of a major earthquake..astounding workers at those sites.
This is almost unbelievable.
already done...read post 23 they are using sea water as a last attempt...means another reactor can never be used again once they use sea water...
Amazing feats these workers are attempting...praying to God they can get this under control...doesn’t look good...but the longer they contain the meltdowns the better...terrible situation...may God truly intervene in this.
Found this on the Ticker Forum thread, it’s from Survivalblog. The Ticker Forum Japan Nuke thread is excellent. Note that the article (below is an excerpt) was written and posted by Rawles in September; it is in connection with loss of grid power from an EMP or severe solar storm. But the situation is the same, whatever the loss of power is from. He explains very clearly why there is no need of a core meltdown to have a very bad radiation leak. From everything I have read (and it has been obsessive for 2 days at least), it looks as though this is exactly what is happening at the Fukushima nuke plant.
TF link:
http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=182121&page=16
Survivalblog link:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2010/09/effects_of_an_emp_attack_or_se.html
Effects of an EMP Attack or Severe Solar Storm on Nuclear Power Plants, by B.Z.
You might ask, “well, if the containment structure can contain the melted reactor core, is there a real danger to the public?” The answer is, “yes,” but not from where you think. The reactor core may well be the focus of most people, but the real concern is somewhere else.
What many people don’t know about nuclear power plants is that when spent fuel is off-loaded from the reactor core, the fuel is then placed into what is essentially a large, very deep swimming pool called the “spent fuel pool.” Fuel that has been removed from an operating reactor core is still very hot (both in the sense of temperature and radiation level). In fact, if you were to stand within even 50 feet of a spent fuel assembly with no shielding, you would receive a lethal dose of radiation in just seconds. The water in the spent fuel pool, in addition to cooling the fuel assemblies, acts as a biological shield. In fact, water is an excellent shielding material. You can stand at the top of the spent fuel pool in virtually any nuclear power plant in the US and receive virtually no dose of radiation, so long as the fuel assemblies are covered by about 25 feet of water.
The building that houses the spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants in this country is usually a simple building, with concrete sides and floors but usually with nothing but a thin, corrugated steel roof. This is the root of the problem. Just like the fuel in the reactor, the fuel assemblies in the spent fuel in pool must also be cooled. These pools have their own independent, multiply redundant systems for cooling, separate from the systems that cool the reactor core. However, these pool cooling systems can be cross-tied with the reactor cooling systems in an emergency. The water in the spent fuel pool must be continuously circulated through heat exchangers (again, like your car radiator) to reject heat. Loss of off-site power will also cause a loss of spent fuel cooling. Normally, the temperature in these spent fuel pools is somewhere around 100 to 110 degrees F or so (similar to a typical suburban “hot tub”). When the spent fuel cooling system pumps stop operating, the fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool will immediately begin to heat up. These fuel assemblies will continue to heat the water in the spent fuel pool until it boils. The best case scenario of “time to boil” for these spent fuel pools is perhaps 90 hours. The worst case, such as just after a core offload, would be much shorter, perhaps as little as four hours or even less. At that point, once the fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool become uncovered because the water has boiled off, the effects mirror what would happen in the reactor core. The spent fuel assemblies will heat up until the fuel cladding starts to melt. As bits of the melting fuel fall into what is left of the water in the pool, the process will just accelerate as the heat source is now more concentrated since it has fallen back into the water and the water may flash to steam and this may cause the pressure in the building to increase, and radioactive steam, carrying radioactive particles, will now begin to exit the building through the non-sealed penetrations, portals or doors in the building.
Of course, there are usually multiple sources of water than can be called upon to re-fill the spent fuel pool before the water all boils off. But virtually all of these systems are dependent upon working, electrically operated pumps to move this water. If control systems have failed due to the EMP and there is no power to operate the pumps (either to add additional water or to pump water through the heat exchangers), then the fuel will ultimately become uncovered. Exposing the hot zirconium fuel cladding to air and steam causes an exothermic reaction, and the cladding will actually catch fire at about 1,000 degrees C. Even the NRC concedes that this type of fire cannot be extinguished, and could rage for days (Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 58, No. 1, Jan./Feb. 2002).
The bottom-line is that if the spent fuel cooling pumps cannot be operated or the system cannot be cross-tied with the reactor shutdown cooling system, then the fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool will melt, catch fire, and radioactive fission products will be released into the atmosphere and much of the countryside downwind of the nuclear power plant will be contaminated for many years.
Crap. I saw the #3 hydrogen explosion.
Was not aware #2 was in trouble till this thread. Damn.
Back to praying.
Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.
Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that to produce hydrogen, temperatures in the reactor core had to be well over 2,000 degrees and as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He said a substantial amount of fuel had to be exposed at least at some point.
“That’s the significance of the hydrogen — it means there was serious fuel damage and probably melting,” said Gilinsky, who was at the NRC when Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor had a partial meltdown in 1979. “How much? We won’t know for a long time. At TMI we didn’t know for five years, until the vessels were opened. It was a shock.”
Rather that than huge contamination of that entire area. They can at least rebuild a power plant, but not if they lose the reactors.
What an awesome sight!
You are dumb ass if you think everything is okay. Don’t tell me you are THAT stupid to believe the government hook, line and sinker.
Following the explosion, the authorities expanded from 10 kilometers to 20 km the radius of the evacuation area for residents living in the vicinity of the Fukushima plants. Why would they do this if everything was safe???
The government said Saturday that three people had their clothes contaminated with radioactive substances while fleeing from the No. 1 nuclear plant. I thought there was no leak? After all the government told me so. Duh DUH DUH duh!!!
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said Sunday that 15 people were found to have been contaminated at a hospital located within 10 km from the No. 1 reactor. Edano said there was a possibility that nine people who fled on a bus had been exposed to radioactivity.
So take that tin foil and shove it up your a$$ prick!
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/77230.html
Such a bad situation....defies my understanding the stamina of these people working there, knowing that it could blow and they are in harms way every second that comes.
Well I have seen on the nhk feed today they were saying unit 1 had a partial melt of the fuel rods because they thought about 2 meters of the fuel rods was above water in the pressure vessel.
Same thing then must have happened in the #3 unit then. The hydrogen explosions and the temps involved seem to confirm that this scenario happened.
That said, a partial fuel melt is not the same thing as a meltdown. They are still pumping water into the units, seawater, in order to prevent things from going into a full meltdown scenario. By I sure hope they have good lead suits in the control areas.
Gee I thought you said everything was safe and that I’m acting crazy even though it was reported that radiation levels was 1000 times higher than normal. Now look at this quote and I linked it for you at the bottom.
” The Pentagon was expected to announce that the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which is sailing in the Pacific, passed through a radioactive cloud from stricken nuclear reactors in Japan, causing crew members on deck to receive a month’s worth of radiation in about an hour, government officials said Sunday.
The officials added that American helicopters flying missions about 60 miles north of the damaged reactors became coated with particulate radiation that had to be washed off. …”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14plume.html?_r=2
There was no indication that any of the military personnel had experienced ill effects from the exposure. (Everyone is exposed to a small amount of natural background radiation.)Blogs were churning with alarm. But officials insisted that unless the quake-damaged nuclear plants deteriorated into full meltdown, any radiation that reached the United States would be too weak to do any harm.
“At this point, we have not picked up anything” in detectors midway between Japan and Hawaii, Ms. Thunborg said in an interview on Sunday. “We’re talking a couple of days — nothing before Tuesday — in terms of picking something up.”
On Sunday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected no “harmful levels of radioactivity” to move on the winds to Hawaii, Alaska or the West Coast from the reactors in Japan, “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.”
The plume issue has arisen before. In 1986, radiation spewing from the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine was spread around the globe on winds and reached the West Coast in 10 days. It was judged more of a curiosity than a threat.
I just can’t imagine what you’re going through, Bikkuri. I’ve been through earthquakes and I’ve been through hurricanes but never both at the same time and ongoing afterwards. Stay courageous, my FRiend.
You've conflated two issues. The core is being flooded with seawater, but the core is within the container. The spent fuel pool is a red herring, there may or may not be any spent fuel in the pool. It is outside (above) the reactor core. It may be exposed to the air but NBD (I've looked into a spent fuel pool). The important part of that story is that spent fuel pool stay properly cooled. There is a scare story posted above saying it is not, but that is highly unlikely (it is trivial to keep a spent fuel pool cool, especially to the very nontrivial task of keeping the core cool)
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