But it is fairly obvious there is no containment anywhere
Posted on 04/02/2011 10:21:48 AM PDT by ex-Texan
A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.
The warning came as levels of radioactive iodine flushed into the sea near the plant spiked to a new high and the Wall Street Journal said it had obtained disaster response blueprints which said the plant's operators were woefully unprepared for the scale of the disaster.
Water is still being poured into the damaged reactors to cool melting fuel rods.
But one expert says the radiation leaks will be ongoing and it could take 50 to 100 years before the nuclear fuel rods have completely cooled and been removed.
"As the water leaks out, you keep on pouring water in, so this leak will go on for ever," said Dr John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation.
"There has to be some way of dealing with it. The water is connecting in tunnels and concrete-lined pits at the moment and the question is whether they can pump it back.
"The final thing is that the reactors will have to be closed and the fuel removed, and that is 50 to 100 years away.
"It means that the workers and the site will have to be intensely controlled for a very long period of time."
But Laurence Williams, Professor of Nuclear Safety at England's University of Central Lancashire and the former head nuclear regulator for the UK, is relatively comfortable with the situation.
"I have been monitoring it for the last couple of weeks and [the] three reactors seem to be more or less unchanged from initially when they got into the seawater flowing into them," he said.
"We don't know exactly the state of the fuel in those reactors but looking at the data, the pressures and temperatures look fairly stable over the last couple of weeks.
"My view is that as there hasn't been any sort of major catastrophic release of radioactivity, if they can continue to get the fresh water into the reactors and cool them, the decay heat is now fairly stabilising.
"It will take some time before it disappears but so far, so good. But it will take some time to bring under control."
Both experts agree capping the damaged reactors with concrete is not an option.
Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal says it has obtained disaster-readiness plans which show the facility only had one satellite phone and a single stretcher in case of an accident.
The blueprints also provided no detail about the possibility of using firefighters from Tokyo or national troops - both of which have been part of the response to the Fukushima crisis - to deal with any disaster.
Levels of radioactive iodine-131 in the Pacific off the plant have been recorded at a new high of 4,385 times the legal limit.
In 2002, the plant's operator TEPCO admitted to falsifying safety reports, leading to all of its 17 boiling water reactors being shut down for inspection.
TEPCO has already vowed to dismantle the four reactors at the centre of the world's worst atomic accident in 25 years, but now Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan says the Fukushima plant must be scrapped.
No. Actually, if you were to pick one spot on the entire planet to store them, right next to a live reactor is the absolute worst spot. So here on Planet Ape, guess what we do ?
The large pumps are needed for their volume and for their long booms. They will first be pumping water. Then if needed, they will be present to switch to concrete, from what I have read. At least that is the cover story. They are also moving a gigantic barge to the facility that can store 18,000 tons of water in a holding sea pen. They have no idea what they will do with all that radioactive water however. My guess is a mysterious leak will eventually be spotted in the barge.
So, tell me why you advocate this kind of conduct.
“The 28-year old plant is just five miles from an earthquake fault. Like Fukushima, it has a long history of management problems and safety violations including faulty diesel generators, falsified fire watch reports, and inoperable emergency batteries.”
Faulty diesel generators. Got any idea of when and why they might need those generators ????? You think it is okay to falsify reports???
And why does Indian Point need over 100 exemptions from safety regulations.
So in your view all Nuke plants that willfully have safety violations and who need more than 100 exemptions just to operate are safe.
Yeah, sure.
Nah, haven’t you heard ..the sea is big. Freepers here think it can leak more than 1000 millisieverts per hour of radioactive material for years and years and years and years (because that is how long it is going to take to keep this thing cool)..and all will be well.
Of course, there are a lot of people in Japan that eat sushi and a lot of Fisherman who depend on the sea for a living.
But hey, mutated radioactive sushi will be good for those living in tokoyo.
“The ratio of the two isotopes in the seawater samples, combined with the discovery of the cracked shaft itself, supports the idea that the radioactivity is coming from the reactor and not the spent fuel pools at the plant, said Gary Was, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan.”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/02/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1
To a someone like you, nothing but running around like a chicken without a head will satisfy. Since I don’t do such things, nearly everything I do will be a disappointment to you.
Let’s talk a bit about instruments and measurements:
The first things I wondered upon watching Greenpeace’s bit of science theater: What is their instrument, make, model, etc? Who calibrated their instrument? When was that calibration done? To what reference? Do they have experience in running a Geiger counter? Do they have it on the correct setting? Are they taking these readings at a consistent height above the object/surface or terrain they’re measuring? Do they call out which nuclides are giving off these readings they’re taking? All unanswered questions I have.
See, I’ve actually worked in a lab where I calibrated electronic instruments. They *can* be wrong, sometimes wildly so. The only way you know you can trust them is to calibrate them to a known reference. In our lab, we had references of electronic standard quantities that were calibrated every year to references and protocols controlled by what used to be called the National Bureau of Standards, now “NIST.” The calibration standard we had in our lab cost 10’s of thousands of dollars, and once set up, was never moved except for being sent out to be calibrated and checked itself.
The instruments that we calibrated with that standard cost only hundreds to low thousands of dollars. It was a rare electronic instrument that was dead-on after a year of use. Many of them would be within tolerances, a significant proportion would not be within tolerances, especially anything portable.
Lest you think that my thoughts are heresy, here’s a little write-up that you might want to read and process:
http://www.fireworld.com/ifw_articles/geiger_0108.php
As for Coulter: She’s another goddamn lawyer with a liberal arts degree: useless on technical topics, just as they all are, regardless of political preference.
“why can’t these Nuke Plant operators just operate their plants in a safe manner - whether it is Japan or the US.”
Because, in the case of the US, the EPA is swayed by politics, not science. And $$$ = exemptions.
Once again the public is not being informed of the seriousness of this nuclear issue.
WOW.
THX.
May God be with all who love Him.
May no plague come nigh our dwellings.
Please give me a hundred japanese for every islamist we are importing.
Par for the course.
I’d feel ignored if they didn’t come out of the woodwork! LOL.
Some folks can’t tolerate even a remote possibility, much less the probability that we are right.
Then who knows what % are global government shills.
I hate those guys. Were they asking you about your 750 RAD claims?
The evil bastards control money, power and governments
NEVERTHELESS,
God is still over all.
He is merely setting them up to be vivid object lessons of the deadly results of choosing anything
or anyone
or any belief system
BUT GOD ALONE.
Darkness is increasing.
GOD WILL RAISE UP A STANDARD AGAINST IT.
GOD HAS NEVER let the enemy have the last word.
God has ALWAYS been more dramatic, more miraculous and more powerful than the enemy.
IN HIS TIME, IN HIS WAYS.
"3/31 (8:00pm): Our first preliminary tap water samples have been analyzed. The only isotope we have detected besides background is I-131, at low significance: 0.024 ± 0.014 Becquerels per liter. This level is much lower than our rain water measurements by a factor of approximately 300, and lower than our milk measurement by a factor of 30. We will be continuing measurements of tap water to confirm this result; the level is so low it is approaching the threshold of detection."
Maybe the source is all of those chemtrails over Portland.
But it is fairly obvious there is no containment anywhere
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