Dude really....they (meaning TEPCO) detected Neutron Beams 13 times since the disaster (just now reporting it).
Would you care to explain to FreeperLand how Neutron beams are created?
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
You know, I think that's a very good question! Somehow, uncontained neutron beams out in the wild don't really sound like a good thing, do they?
I've included the following Kyodo News from the following link at the end of my post:
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80539.html
From that report it would seem that neutron beams are evidence that uranium or plutonium may have leaked and are fissioning a bit out in the open. If this is the case, since the uranium or plutonium were all originally contained in zirconium-clad fuel rods located either inside of the reactor pressure vessel itself or in external spent-fuel storage pools, then the fuel could only have leaked if the rods' cladding melted either in a storage pool lacking water or they melted in a compromised reactor pressure vessel that allowed the contents of the melted rods to spill into the environment. (BTW, is it even possible for a glob of melted uranium fuel out in the open to fission? And if so, how much would such a glob have to weigh?)
Quote from Kyoto News from March 23:
"Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.
TEPCO, the operator of the nuclear plant, said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the plant's No. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour and that this is not a dangerous level.
The utility firm said it will measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam, as well.
In the 1999 criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant run by JCO Co. in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, uranium broke apart continually in nuclear fission, causing a massive amount of neutron beams.
In the latest case at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, such a criticality accident has yet to happen.
But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant's nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuels have discharged a small amount of neutron beams through nuclear fission."