Restoration at nuke plant disrupted, radiation fears spread to Tokyo

Kyodo News Japan ^ | 24 March 2011

[AwesomePossum]

...black smoke was seen rising at the No. 3 reactor building...surface temperatures...have topped the maximum levels...high-level radiation amounting to at least 500 millisieverts per hour was detected...

[BenKenobi]

Yeah, when they withstood the 4th strongest earthquake ever, as a triumph.

[winoneforthegipper]

What that picture does not show is the fore structure that contains the housing for the spent fuel rods. That is the critical element in what is going on at Fukushima.

[chimera]

2. The placement of multiple reactors, not of the best design, a few meters above sea level and close to the shoreline of an ocean, in a country known for earthquakes and tsunamis..............in addition, placing important plant equiptment, outside the reactors, right on the water's edge.............

I believe that these reactors will become a permanent monument to all those who had a hand in placing them there..........

And do you know who that is? This is a good opportunity to get the truth out, and this is something you will not read in the newspapers.

The reason why Japanese have a "dense" build of power stations, such as four units at Fukusima Daini, and six units as Fukushima Daiichi, is that the Japanese utilities tried to site other plants in dispersed locations, some further inland away from the coast. But when these were planned, in the 1970s and 1980s, the utilities were prevented from obtaining permits to purchase other land for dispersed sites. They were prevented by the burgeoning Japanese anti-nuclear movement that arose during that time. So the companies could not obtain the land to build plants at other sites. They had to use land that was already approved for use, and in use, for power generation. Some of that is along coastlines, where the older units, that use once-through cooling, were sited to have access to a large thermal reservoir. If they had not been stopped by intervenors, the companies would have built more plants inland, using cooling towers or reservoirs, as a heat sink. So the anti-nuclear groups bear a large portion of the blame for these plants beings sited where they are. Because the power companies were still required to build capacity to meet the growing electrical demand of an increasingly industrialized and technological society. For a country like Japan, that has essentially no indigenous energy resources, that means nuclear, because while they still have to import uranium, they have to import much less than an equivalent amount of coal, petroleum, or LNG.

So, betcha didn't know that, didja? Betcha that didn't make the papers, did it?

[SteamShovel]

There is a shack built around and above the containment to keep leaves and bird droppings out.

This is part of the irrational panic. Everyone believes they saw containment blow up, which is NOT the case.

[chimera]

If you get enough melting and subsequent reactions going on in these storage areas, couldn't this grow until vaporization begins to occur?

The geometry doesn't favor it. The worst-case geometry is that everything slumps and congeals in a mass with minimal surface area, which would be a sphere. A perfect sphere is unlikely to be formed. But it you use a realistic term for heat source, a perfect sphere isolated in ambient air, the radiative heat loss is such that you don't approach the melting point of uranium oxide, much less vaporization.

If you don't have optimum geometry (non-sphere, or a congealed irregular mass, or puddle), then the surface area is larger and you get greater heat transfer.

You can take further credit for conductive heat transfer since the material is in contact with other things, and also convective heat transfer, which is always operative except in a vacuum. It could be relatively poor, as in a stagnant atmosphere, but it will not be zero. That further reduces the mass temperature.

[AwesomePossum]

I guess it all depends on what the meaning of is withstood is...........

8:}

[Toddsterpatriot]

How about some links to some of those? Since they’re so plentiful and all.

You have to focus on the seriousness of the charge, ignore the lack of proof.

[bvw]

I saw that posted earlier today. Hard to say what that means, the report is some combination of bad translation, bad writing or bad reporting. Nuclear power reactions are glow balls not beams. I suspect they mean something else, but not sure what.

See discussion around: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2693257/posts?page=52#52

[spiderpig]

Fission product yield from MOX (which include some fissionable Plutonium) is virtually indistinguishable from “regular” reactor fuel of ~5% U-235 enrichment.

The fission products that are measured in the environment “get out” based on their physical characteristics - gases and iodine highly mobile, and to a much lesser extent, particulates like Cs or Sr/Y or Pm. The Uranium Oxide or Plutonium oxide in fuel is in ceramic form, and is not mobile – it may turn to rubble as fuel cladding “melts” (proved at TMI-2) but is NOT mobile and is NOT going to be released from the plant systems.

Bottom line, don’t buy into ANY hysteria about MOX. NO sample taken in the environment will detect Uranium or Plutonium. You don’t have to believe “radiation is good” to understand how these materials behave physically.

[glock rocks]

I thought about that when I typed it.

[NRG1973]

My guess is that contamination being found in Tokyo water is from streams and open reservoirs. Ground water contamination would take longer than a week. If the source of contamination in this event is stopped, the current contamination would dilute (and decompose as well) over a similar period of time, would it not?

Well, then, wonderful!!! I'll inform the folks in Chernobyl that they can come home whenever they want to.

[Clay Moore]

A very good question indeed.

As a guy who has burned a lot of welding rod in the last 30+ years, I have seen some amazing things happen after throwing red hot steel into water. Cracking and huge changes in hardness are not uncommon.

By the same token, what are the alternatives?

[La Enchiladita]

And the nearly 10,000 known dead from the tsunami (with twice as many missing) are a footnote to the sensational story of the spread of radiation FEAR (not the spread of actual radiation). *Sigh*

[glock rocks]

Oh, you were talking about Chernobyl. Nevermind.

[blackdog]

I do food grade stainless. I'm amazed when I'm welding a huge cover to a vessel with multiple bends. I'll be running a stitch at one end and the other end ten feet away will spring up like a jumping bean. You can actaully feel the frequency thru the sheet while you're laying on it.

The hardest is gas purge welding for pipes. Getting a food grade weld inside the pipe is very difficult.

Aluminum is tough for me, I have to push the puddle.

[blackdog]

I once had a steel cylinder jug to my airplane engine separate from a crack which originated at the exhaust port and radiated around the jug. I had to shut the engine down and emergency land. About six months later I developed another crack on another cylinder and the shop just welded it up, honed the cylinder walls, and threw it back on. That guy really knew welding. Every time I repair a structural crack in steel without drill stopping it, it migrates back and continues. Some people are artists with joining metals.

[flintsilver7]

Reminds me of the Deepwater Horizon incident, but on a much larger scale. Eleven people died on that rig, yet they are a footnote compared to the mass hysteria created by the media.

[AwesomePossum]

Thanks for your input. I certainly understand the "leftist usually make things worse" argument.....and it is a valid one for sure..........but, to build something(s) that are designed to withstand most all conditions that might arise, and then purposely place said thing(s) in a very precarious, outright dangerous setting, is IMHO inviting trouble.......

I'm just not sure that the "we had to do it because they made us" argument is the best argument for this situation.......that's just my opinion.

Regardless of who is right or wrong about this, after what has happened, I doubt very seriously that they will repeat the same "mistakes" in future construction.

Many times, good things follow bad things..........Maybe in the future, the Japanese people will come to understand that better plants in a more safe location will be to their advantage........

8:}

[Errant]

the radiative heat loss is such that you don't approach the melting point of uranium oxide, much less vaporization.

Sounds reasonable. I would think you also get (maybe) enough contamination from the rods themselves during any melting, to throttle reaction among the pellets. Otherwise, why go to the trouble to build the the rods that way.

I'll keep my fingers crossed and regularly pray just to stay on the safe-side. ;)

I'd appreciate a ping or freepmail if you come to a different conclusion later, or if something unforeseen arises.

Thanks,

[rlmorel]

That is part of the problem, and part of why these types of discussions are so frustrating.

The vast majority of people trying to digest the news have no conception of radiation other than a negative impression. It is easy to verify this by asking people to say the first thing that comes to their mind when they see this:

It is invariably negative.

Compound that by the fact that there are so many technical terms and units used to describe various aspects of radiation and radioactivity, that unless you have had training in them, it is nearly impossible to put this stuff in context.

98% of the the people opining on this could not tell you (without consulting some website) what defines a millicurie or a becquerel, the difference between a rad, a rem and a sievert, a beta particle versus a gamma ray or how time, distance and shielding figure into the whole situation.

To complicate it even more, people don't have any context for radiation levels and danger to man. Throw all this together, multiply it by the factor of millions of people talking back and forth on the Internet, posting an article from one site, referencing another, often with no idea of the validity of the site, only that it came up in a Google search.

Add in the misquote of a radiation level in an article, move the decimal point one or two places either way, refer to an exposure level as millisieverts when it is microsieverts, and stir in a paucity of information from the area, and you have people who are terrified and scared.

I took the time to explain the concept of Potassium Iodide capsules to some folks on a thread, because I happen to know how they work because I gave them to people in the course of medical treatment. In response, I got a heartbreaking Freepmail from a woman in California: "...Thx very much for the posting. Im in nor california with kids and unable to get reliable info. Can u tell me if I should already be down in the basement? As the world turns, once around aren’t we plunging through contaminated atmosphere already? Where are u at? You taking any precautions? Im scared I need to keep kids out of school and board up the windows. Thx much for responding..."

I found this to be heartbreaking. This woman WAS terrified. Needlessly. If she lived in Japan within 50 miles of the reactors, that might be appropriate. But not in California.

A poster on this thread said you can be pro-nuclear and still be terrified of this situation. That is true, but you cannot be intelligent, properly informed and still be terrified of this particular situation.

Concerned? Absolutely. Terrified is an emotional response to this, not an intellectual response.