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Japan: TEPCO aims to achieve 'cold shutdown' for reactors in 6-9 months
Kyodo News ^ | 04/17/11

Posted on 04/17/2011 3:10:52 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

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1 posted on 04/17/2011 3:10:56 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; sushiman; Ronin; AmericanInTokyo; gaijin; struggle; DTogo; GATOR NAVY; Iris7; ...

P!


2 posted on 04/17/2011 3:11:39 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (The way to crush the bourgeois is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Sounds like that means rampant radiation spewing for 3 months.

This is no longer front page, but it rivals Chernobyl that stayed front page.

Wonder what the difference is?


3 posted on 04/17/2011 3:16:19 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain & proud of it: Truly Supporting the Troops means praying for their Victory!)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Cold shutdown? Reactors are quite cold right now.

I think he is referring to a fully normalized situation.


4 posted on 04/17/2011 3:19:34 AM PDT by J Aguilar (Fiat Justitia et ruat coelum)
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To: xzins

“Sounds like that means rampant radiation spewing for 3 months.”

Exaggerate much?


5 posted on 04/17/2011 3:59:19 AM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: driftdiver

They’re the ones who announced this meltdown as a 7 on a scale of 7.

They’re the ones who just said in this article they couldn’t begin to cool it down for another 3 months. (And can’t shut it down for 6-9 months.)

Those are just the facts that are before us.


6 posted on 04/17/2011 4:06:30 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain & proud of it: Truly Supporting the Troops means praying for their Victory!)
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To: xzins
"They’re the ones who just said in this article they couldn’t begin to cool it down for another 3 months."

Seems like they began that process several weeks ago. Sure they increased it to a 7 but its no Chernobyl. Chernobyl released 100x more hard & persistent radiation directly into populated areas. They hid the fact this was happening and screwed everything up through sheer incompetence. But you can ignore the facts while you do your chicken little act.

7 posted on 04/17/2011 4:12:36 AM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: driftdiver

>> Chernobyl released 100x more hard & persistent radiation >> directly into populated areas.

TEPCO claim says that the current estimate of the release is 10% of Chernobyl’s with a potential to be as bad as Chernobyl if it is not contained. So by pure mathematics it already can’t be “100x”.

And based on past history I take anything TEPCO cum grano salis.


8 posted on 04/17/2011 4:29:33 AM PDT by JadeEmperor
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To: driftdiver
What facts are being ignored?

Given that it is at a 7, and that it can't be cooled for 3 months, then what's unfactual about saying it continues to spew for 3 months and that it rivals Chernobyl?

This following is from the Japanese themselves:

Japanese officials have admitted that the nuclear crisis in Fukushima could become worse than Chernobyl.

The admission came after regulators Tuesday upgraded the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to a seven on the International Atomic Energy Agency's accident scale - on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the worst ever.

And from Forbes.com:

TEPCO: Radiation From Fukushima May Be Worse Than Chernobyl

By OSHA GRAY DAVIDSON

Chernobyl radiation hotspots of Cesium-137 in 1996 (Image via Wikipedia)

An official of Fukushima nuclear power plant operator TEPCO concedes that “the amount of (radioactive) leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it.”

The statement followed an announcement yesterday by the Japanese government that it was raising the “significance level” of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (FDI) to a 7 on the International Nuclear Events Scale — a classification previously only assigned to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.


9 posted on 04/17/2011 4:50:59 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain & proud of it: Truly Supporting the Troops means praying for their Victory!)
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To: xzins

The difference is that the containment buildings housing the reactors in Japan have never been breached. Chernobyl did not have a containment building. If it had, the radiation should have been contained.

The press keeps confusing the radiation coming from the spent fuel pools as coming from the reactors. The Japanese screwed the pooch when they esentially housed the spent fuel buildings within structural steel pole buildings. American nukes use hydrogen recombiners and igniters to remove or flare the hydrogen before it builds to excessive levels.

Much of that was added after the hydrogen bubble scare at TMI when the core melted.


10 posted on 04/17/2011 6:45:41 AM PDT by meatloaf
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To: meatloaf

A minor problem.
The stored fuel rods are outside the containment.
Site total ~1600 TONS of fuel, ~ 80 tons in each containment.

A major problem.
Most of the news on this topic is slanted so far to each side it is difficult to make an assessment.

See Item 27 on DWG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant


11 posted on 04/17/2011 7:10:57 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (The best is the enemy of the good!)
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To: meatloaf
The Japanese screwed the pooch when they essentially housed the spent fuel buildings within ...

The Mark I Containment design is widely used in America, e.g. Browns Ferry, Enrico Fermi, Cooper, Hatch, Brunswick, Peach Bottom, Dresden, Duane Arnold, Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim. The design is by General Electric and accepted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If you condemn the practice of having the spent fuel pool in the same building with multiple redundant pump systems and multiple redundant methods of electric power for those systems, then you are uninformed and little qualified to critique the Japanese nuclear engineers who have to make the best out of a bad economic situation. Radiation from GE designed plants is guiltless when it comes to injuring the public, including the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Detecting radiation is not the equivalent of harm.
12 posted on 04/17/2011 7:45:12 AM PDT by sefarkas (Why vote Democrat Lite?)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Cool!


13 posted on 04/17/2011 7:50:16 AM PDT by bvw
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To: xzins

Drop the chicken-little and step away from the slaughtering table of hysteria.


14 posted on 04/17/2011 7:51:39 AM PDT by bvw
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To: JadeEmperor

Other Japanese scientists estimate the release much less than that “10% of Chernobyl”. Saw one that estimated it at less than 1%. By pure unsalted mathematics it could be 1000x less.


15 posted on 04/17/2011 7:54:26 AM PDT by bvw
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To: sefarkas

>>Buzzer<< Wrong. The Containment design is NOT the fuel pit design or location. And it is a problem worldwide that should be addressed, for exactly the type of failure seen at the TEPCO plants.


16 posted on 04/17/2011 7:56:35 AM PDT by bvw
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To: xzins
Wonder what the difference is?

The difference is that there is a great deal of selectivity being applied to the use of the IAEA standards. Everyone focuses on the activity release, which isn't really the operable factor in determining the impact of an event (see below). There are other categories in the INES that rate this much lower. The category for "Effects on People and the Environment", for example. Since there have been no radiation-related fatalities, it does not reach even a Level 4 based on that category.

The reason why total activity release is not the sole determining factor is that cumulative dose is really what determines the effects on people and the environment. At Chornobil, you had collective population doses in the thousands or tens of thousands of person-rem range. At this point, the Fukushima event will probably end up in the tens of person-rem range. Chornobil had higher cumulative exposures because of wider release (a fire-driven source term, which increases airborne releases much more than sporadic events, like hydrogen detonations) and less effective evacuation. A lot of people in the Ukraine did not leave the affected areas when they should have, and so ingested significant quantities of contaminants from the food chain, much more than you have in the present instance.

17 posted on 04/17/2011 8:02:23 AM PDT by chimera
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To: sefarkas

“Detecting radiation is not the equivalent of harm.” I agree! Isn’t Oyster Creek also a Mark 1 design?

I understand the redundant design used in a nuclear power plant. You left out the separation involved in routing cables for reduntant equipment via different cable trays.

The issue that caught the Japanese was the loss of power when the diesel generators lost their fuel supply. The point that the media missed is that the plants survived the earthquake and the tsunami with the exception of the fuel supply for the diesel generators except for that contained in the day tanks.

American nukes added hydrogen igniters after TMI to prevent explosions. The Japanese have their hands full. I’m confident they’re making progress. I’m sure the nuclear industry here will be examining the Japanese situation for lessons learned.

I’m wondering how many American nukes have a similar shelter for the spent fuel pools. The Mark 6 I’m familar with housed the spent fuel pool within a concrete building.


18 posted on 04/17/2011 8:14:51 AM PDT by meatloaf
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To: bvw; sefarkas
It is important to remember that the SFP is not in primary containment for a reason. The purpose of primary containment is to contain the energy and materials likely to be released in the design-basis accident. Typically, for LWRs, this involves sudden loss of coolant (like a double guillotine-break in the primary coolant piping) while the reactor is at power and near the end of a fuel cycle, so the fission product inventory is maximum. The primary containment must withstand the initial energy release from steam flashing and coolant blowdown from depressurization of the primary coolant system, and the release of any core material from large-scale pressure vessel failure.

Obviously, the accident scenarios for the SFP are different. There is no operating core. The fission product inventory is lower. So there is less material available, and less stored energy to drive those materials out into the environment. It all comes down to decay heat management, which as we have seen with Fukushima is exactly the cause of the problems they face.

So I expect here we'll see added emphasis on assuring availability of emergency AC power and systems to supplement the cooling of both reactor cores and the SFP. Fukushima is a classic example of a common-mode failure. One event (earthquake-tsunami) took out multiple redundant systems (offsite power and emergency generators). That is the real lesson to be learned here. I hope cooler heads prevail and we learn the right lesson.

19 posted on 04/17/2011 8:21:25 AM PDT by chimera
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To: bvw
I will pit my Rensselaer Nuclear Engineering degree to anything you have to offer, which cannot be much. The GE Mark I Containment is part of the Reactor Building adjoining the Auxiliary Building and then the Turbine Building. This is a GE design that the NRC has audited and reviewed giving the utilities technical specifications that limit how the plant is to be used and managed. The spent fuel pool is next to the drywell to simplify the process of replacing fuel bundles in the reactor. You have no practical solution to relocate the spent fuel pool at plants around the world. Mark I containments within the reactor building have been in place since the 1960s.
20 posted on 04/17/2011 8:24:36 AM PDT by sefarkas (Why vote Democrat Lite?)
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