Posted on 03/17/2011 10:39:24 AM PDT by milwguy
The media as usual is Waaayyy behind the curve. To anyone with a basic understanding of what is going on in Japan, it is obvious containment has been lost at a minimum of three reactors, #1,#3, and #4. The ability to restore electricity and cooling (doubtful due to the damage of the explosions) to the reactors does not change the fact that radiation is leaking from the site in vast quantities.
The Russians in sense had an easier problem to deal with because the reactor blew up, spewing a lot of the fuel asemblies and radioactive stuff hundreds of meters from the plant. The reaction kept going, but it was only at one plant and a lot of the fuel was ejected by the explosion, not 3 or 4 like in Japan......The Russians (and I think the Japanese) only solution was to entomb the destroyed reactor and building that housed it.....Here is how they had to do it................
The designing of the sarcophagus started on May, 20, 1986. Subsequent construction lasted for 206 days, from June to late November of the same year.[2] The first task before construction started was to build a cooling slab under the reactor to prevent the hot nuclear fuel from burning a hole in the base. Coal miners were called up to dig the necessary tunnel below the reactor and by June 24, 1986 four hundred coal miners had built the 168 metre (551 ft) long tunnel.[4] When the building became overly radioactive it became impossible to directly screw down the nuts and bolts or apply any direct welding to the sarcophagus, so this work was done by robots.[1] The seams of the sarcophagus, however, were not properly sealed. The entire construction process consisted of eight stages: clearing and concreting of territory around reactor unit 4, erection of initial ferro-concrete protective walls around the perimeter, construction of separation walls between units 3 and 4, cascade wall construction, covering of the turbine hall, mounting of a high-rise buttress wall, erection of supports and installation of a reactor compartment covering and finally the installation of a ventilation system.
More than 400,000 m3 of concrete and 7,300 tonnes of metal framework were used during the erection of the sarcophagus.[2] The building ultimately enclosed 740,000 m3 of heavily contaminated debris inside,[1] together with contaminated soil.[4] On October 11, 1986 the Soviet Governmental Commission accepted "Conclusion on Reliability and Durability of a Covering Constructions and Radiation Safety of Chernobyl NPP Unit 4 Reactor Compartment".[5] The sarcophagus has over 60 bore holes to allow observation of the interior of the core.[6] In many places the structure was designed to have ventilation shafts to allow some convection inside.[6] Filtration systems have been put in place so that no radioactive material will escape through these holes.[6]
I just asked, because 292 microsieverts an hour is not much at all. You might have your units wrong, you may want to double check.
And then someone comes on and tries to preempt discussion by predicting it.
Your moral superiority is amusing.
You really need to consider decaf.
Reactor 1's primary containment is believed to be intact and the reactor is in a stable condition. Seawater injection into the reactor is continuing.
Reactor 2 is in stable condition with seawater injection continuing. The reactor's primary containment may not have been breached, Tokyo Electric Power Co. and World Association of Nuclear Operators officials said on Thursday.
Reactor 3 is in stable condition with seawater injection continuing. The primary containment is believed to be intact. Pressure in the containment has fluctuated due to venting of the reactor containment structure.
Reactor 4 did not have fuel rods in it during the earthquake and tsunami.
Reactors 5 and 6 were both shut down before the quake occurred.
The real concern left now is the spent fuel cooling pool on unit number 4. The concrete wall of the reactor 4 fuel pool structure has collapsed, the steel liner of the pool remains intact, based on aerial photos of the reactor taken on March 17. The pool still has water providing some cooling for the fuel; however, helicopters dropped water on the reactor four times during the morning (Japan time) on March 17. Water also was sprayed at reactor 4 using high-pressure water cannons.
If you want to compare it to Chernobyl, you ought to learn a bit more about Chernobyl since it was a Graphite moderated reactor that caught fire and release quite a bit of radiation.
Wasn’t there some dire prediction that Tampa and St. Pete would be completely underwater because of something underground that was going to pop and then flood the region...tsunami-like..
I believe you...not the MSM, Nuclear Reg Committee, or any “experts” from any government.
Whre did you plug in your computer?
So it has reduced by an order of magnitude or two? Good.
You really need to get informed about plutonium it’s in EVERY reactor....Japan and the world, are number one less than the Chernobyl incident, on the nucclear scale of 1-7. Seven being Chernobly. Japan’s disaster is rated 6, so far....that’s one number under.
Face reality.
In the meantime you want people to believe there will ‘be no harm’..yeah right.
Decaf? Why you’re the one behaving freaky.
LOL...everything was good until they put that guy in charge who has been posting in another thread about bombing the reactors to keep them from going up...he thought that bombing them would disperse the fuel...:)
Last I heard, I was trying to get the codes to call in some nuclear tipped cruise missiles!
True. And it has been for decades. Your point???
Japan and the world are number one less than the Chernobyl incident
The whole country of Japan and the whole world are major nuclear accident?
“The situation is actually 10 million times worse than this. At least”
It’s actually eleventity point 53 gabillion times worse!!
Where do you guys come up with this baloney?
Soon as some freepers read that, expect name calling, poo pooing and comments of stop panicking.....
Let's see what Kevin Bacon has to say about it.
When in fear,
when in doubt,
run in circles,
scream and shout.
That means about .3 sievert per hour and I think the annual dose is allowed to be 50 sievert for a nuclear worker. Higher than you would like, sure, time to wet our panties, not yet.
So a worker for TEPCO can stay there for less than an hour and then have to leave the site because they say max exposure is 250 microsieverts. The measurement was taken at the WEST entrance. The wind is blowing out to sea, or west to east. Funny they are not reporting readings from the buildings or very close by. Wonder why? Probably because the readings are in the thousands of microsieverts, not the hundreds
I agree the absolute but unlikely worst case is going to cause some local problems, but this absolute world panic many are displaying are ignorant of history.
You have the units wrong. It is 250 millisieverts or 250,000 microsieverts.
Whatever you do, don’t tell them about the massive comet that is speeding directly at the Earth. We’ll never hear the end of it.
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