Powerful Aftershock Complicates Japan’s Nuclear Efforts(fuel rods pieces found outside)

NYT ^ | 04/07/11 | HIROKO TABUCHIand ANDREW POLLACK

[mvpel]

Chernobyl's core exploded and burned for days, spewed burning highly radioactive debris into the wind, and melted and flowed across the floor in a plume of intensely radioactive lava. Fukushima would have to get a hell of a lot worse for it to be half as bad as Chernobyl.

In this picture, you're looking down into the exposed core of the Chernobyl reactor. Its lid was blown off and landed cockeyed and the unbridled raw power of the core was left exposed as it burned.

[east1234]

At Chernobyl there was a mixture of graphite and uranium on fire, uncontained. This is nothing at all like Chernobyl.

[newzjunkey]

Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The pieces may be from rods in the spent-fuel pools that were flung out by hydrogen explosions.

Isn't this old news?

[Revel]

You can always count on the MSM to aid in the cover up. Sometimes something slips out by accident, but a few phone calls from higher up the chain can make it disappear. Pravda could not have been more proud.

[justa-hairyape]

This is nothing at all like Chernobyl.

And Chernobyl is nothing at all like Fukushima. They has been significantly more radiation dumped into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima.

[utherdoul]

better the ocean than the air. If there was an atmospheric boom we’d be in serious trouble. The radiation in the ocean is a serious blow to the fishing industry but the ocean doesn’t change much. Its big and wet and has taken far worse hits.

[Revel]

I think that you are responding to the wrong person.

[Revel]

Here is another quote said to have been deleted from that article.

“It’s killing the measuring equipment,” he said. “They’re blaming it on software — it’s their meters getting cooked.”

[Doe Eyes]

Outside? So then that means there ain't no containment. How much worse can it get?

Did you miss this?

[blueplum]

a little good news for a change:

“Several nuclear power plants briefly switched to diesel generators but were reconnected to the grid by Friday afternoon...

At a plant in Onagawa, some radioactive water splashed out of the pools but did not leave a containment building, Tohoku Electric said. Such splash-out is “not unusual, although it is preferable that it doesn’t happen,” according to Japanese nuclear safety agency official Tomoho Yamada.

“Closer inspection could find more problems,” said agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama, but no radiation was released into the environment at Onagawa.
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/07/japan-earthquake-forces-tsunami-alert/

[justa-hairyape]

Sorry about that.

[Republic_of_Secession.]

But the amount of radiation will cause more deaths & illness in the long term. What happened in Japan will be cumulative. Worse in the sense that it will cause more deaths.

[SteamShovel]

That isn’t containment, its the building around containment.

[justa-hairyape]

It is the containment building for the Spent Fuel Rods storage pool.

[SteamShovel]

My point is reactor containment did not blow up as was suggested.

There is no containment for the spent reactor fuel pools. It may as well be a pole barn.

[justa-hairyape]

Thing they are required by law to have some type of containment around the Spent Fuel Rod Pools. Cannot just put one in a barn.

[SteamShovel]

I have no idea what the laws are in Japan. The building in question was not intended to be containment, it is a weather shield around the containment building.

The spent reactor storage pool was never intended as far as I know for long therm storage before they fuel could be put into dry storage. It is a pool to put fuel into temporarily when doing a refueling outage. Why TEPCO placed spent fuel in there and kept it there while reactors were running is a mystery to me. They have obviously decided to increase this storage area for long term use.

I was not suggesting the use of a pole barn. I said that in jest because the building was being used for a purpose it was not designed to perform.

[mvpel]

"Earthquake triggers oil refinery fire"

This burned for about a week and a half, in the Chiba prefecture as I recall.

Inhaled petroleum with an aromatic content would be expected to partition in the lung. The aromatic portion of the oil is fat-soluble and would pass through the lung wall to be deposited in the adipose tissue. It also is possible some of the non-aromatic portion of inhaled petroleum would pass through the lung wall and be deposited from the blood in the spleen, lymph nodes, liver and kidneys. The aromatic and other petroleum fractions distributed throughout the body would cause systemic toxicity which expresses through many symptoms. A detailed discussion of petroleum toxicology is beyond the scope of this paper. An extensive literature review by the author has found petroleum exposure associated with the following symptoms:
cancer
fatigue
breathlessness
cough
skin rash
headache
diarrhea
weight loss
memory loss
immune suppression
chemical sensitivity

Skin exposure to petroleum has been known for many years to cause skin cancer, rashes, eczema, acne, and dermatitis. The reaction of the skin to petroleum depends upon the composition, boiling range, viscosity and aromatic content of the oil. Aromatic content is a key toxicity parameter for petroleum; the higher the aromatic content, the greater is the toxicity.

Aromatic compounds boiling between 500 and 1000^o F. have been found highly carcinogenic.

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Undoubtedly, health effects from the refinery fire will be blamed on the nuclear reactors. It's traditional.