Posted on 03/18/2011 4:47:13 AM PDT by hc87
Please post links and comments on Fukushima reactors here.
Summary: Tokyo Electric Power hopes to have power lines connection reactors 1 and 2 by tomorrow morning, 3 and 4 by Sunday. Admiral Robert Williard, head of U.S. Pacific Command, confident that efforts to keep reactor cores covered in water will not be abandoned.
.....And on the level of Chernoybl.
That is false, at least 2 of the reactors were or are melting down. Happily the containment vessels are holding. We know the reactors were or are melting down because of the hydrogen explosions. Hydrogen is produced inside the reactor during a melt down.
Water breaks apart into Oxygen and Hydrogen at aprox 2,000C the same temperature that melts the fuel rods. Notice the word "melt".
I don’t think burial will prove to be a viable option. Too much earthquake risk. Concrete is too brittle.
The INES rated TMI at a 5. IMO it was really a 4. The Japanese plant situation is, as you said, already a 5. It may not be a 6, but more information might make it so.
The reactors are not melting down. The fuel rods have overheated due to loss of coolant but the reactor is still intact and inside the containment.
It depends on the meaning of “melting”.
It’s a vague word and the media love it.
It depends on the meaning of “melting”.
It’s a vague word and the media love it.
Even if the fuel rod assembly melts down and puddles in the bottom of the reactor, the reactor is designed to still contain it.
Hydrogen is being generated and released intentionally as they are venting to keep the pressure down.
Heck, the media used “reactor explodes” headlines for each building explosion.
They are despicable.
I certainly hope they can figure out a way to get water into the cooling pools, that, as you point out is the greatest danger right now. But one explosion could change everything. No more explosions please.
“U.S. nuclear officials suspect Japanese plant has a dire breach”
“U.S. government nuclear experts believe a spent fuel pool at Japan’s crippled Fukushima reactor complex has a breach in the wall or floor,”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-quake-wrapup-20110318,0,2262753.story
A nuclear meltdown is an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency[1] or by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[2] However, it has been defined to mean the accidental melting of the core of a nuclear reactor,[3] and is in common usage a reference to the core's either complete or partial collapse. "Core melt accident" and "partial core melt" are the analogous technical terms
Finally someone explains how the spent fuel pool can be empty. Other accounts were making it sound as if the deep pool just evaporated.
Voice of America artilce:
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the nuclear crisis at the crippled Fukushima plant is “very grave.”
I'll file this away for "claim chowder."
Calls for international assistance should have gone out the minute they realized that they could not get the cooling systems to operate.
I'm offended by your insinuation the Japanese did not reach out for help or were dithering fools like your golfer-in-chief. Earlier there was a question about some BBC reporting that seemed to indicate the first U.S. offers of help had strings requiring the dismantling of reactors in Japan.
“This means that an entire BWR core, consisting of hundreds of fuel rods, each consisting of ceramic, uranium-oxide pellets stacked in a tube, 6 feet long, made of zirconium, has melted into a blob. The blob has not melted through the reactor vessel. Unfortunately, the core was at the end of a burn cycle, meaning that it contained a maximum load of “fission products,” all of which are wildly radioactive. Those products which will dissolve in steam are free to wander out of the vessel, through the steam-relief valves, and into the atmosphere through what used to be the roof over the reactor building. Most of the gaseous effluent will waft over the Pacific ocean and be lost forever. Some of it will rain down on the main island of Japan, which has plenty of other worries right now.
Depending on the wind-speed/direction, the fallout will be dangerous up to about 5 miles from the plant. Evacuating beyond 5 miles is being appropriately cautious. Some of the products, such as I-131, St-90, and Cs-137, are extremely dangerous. Some, like Ar-41 or Xe-131, are not.”
What is telling and rather unprecedented is the fact other world leaders are saying much more dire things about the situation in Japan while Japan is playing the situation down. Now that I find hugely interesting this many days into the disaster. Just like I found the need for Japan to ask the US for help in a news conference instead of picking up a phone wildly interesting.
I would love to know more about what is going on behind the scenes on the international political front.
At this point who can you trust in information dissemination? There have been stories about fuel rods melting in each of the reactors(1-4).
Did the Japanese ask the US for assistance and we laid conditions on that assistance? If so, then that would have been unforgiveable.
I have to believe that the US govt had parts and assets within 2 hours of that plant that could and should have had those generators up and running before any of this got out of hand.
I can only wonder if the truth will ever come out.
I also read that experts from Russia who were involved with Chernobyl offered their assistance, but were refused.
Lots of differing reports.
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