Posted on 03/14/2011 12:54:09 AM PDT by SteveH
At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.
Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that to produce hydrogen, temperatures in the reactor core had to be well over 2,000 degrees and as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. He said a substantial amount of fuel had to be exposed at least at some point.
“That’s the significance of the hydrogen — it means there was serious fuel damage and probably melting,” said Gilinsky, who was at the NRC when Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor had a partial meltdown in 1979. “How much? We won’t know for a long time. At TMI we didn’t know for five years, until the vessels were opened. It was a shock.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I would prefer more detailed information from TEPCO, and some comments from GE concerning the design. GE has been closemouthed so far.
This is not a new thing.
Truth matters not.
Helicopter water drops.
The shock was that, even with core melt, China Syndrome turned out to be a hoax.
I have thought of that too. You may be right.
Worst case scenario is happening for some reactors now. They lose the reactor forever in a localized event without major radiation loss. This ain't a Chernobyl type plant.
The mystic Josyp Terelya (Ukrainian), now deceased, explained that in the Bible "wormwood" may mean radiation.
He has written in his books that in the Ukrainian Language, Chernobyl means wormwood
That means that there might be significance to the following passage in the Bible:
Rev 8:10-11 10 The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water-- 11 the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. Book of Revelation or Apocalypse
(NIV)
The next section is about the 4th angel of chastisement...
Ye who has ears let him hear...
I read on another thread that fire engines are pumping in the seawater mixed with boron.
According to Josyp Terelya, who was released at the intervention of President Ronald Reagan, President Mitterand of France, and Pope John Paul II, many people went to this apparition site despite it being forbidden by the government.
There is one story he relates in his book Witness where as he approaches the apparition site, the local militia are chopping down a tree to block the road.
The tree is ready to fall except the wind shifts, and the tree falls on the militia's vehicles.
One of the Militia people, on seeing what happened, and realizing that the apparition is supernatural, takes off his hat and throws it on the ground.
After that, he is seen heading to the apparition like saying to himself: enough with this nonsense -- God must be intervening
At any rate, the apparations began the exact minute of the one year anniversary of the fire at Chernobyl. A little girl was the first to see it...
Google the Arnie Gundersen who is fear-mongering the spent rods aspect in this WaPo screed.
One think Japan does not lack for now is sea water.
Sleep well.
This article is full of crap which is no surprise considering it is the Washpost. For one thing they do not properly describe a melt-down versus some melting which has probably occurred. They are also busy trying to conflate the spent fuel pools with the reactor core to drum up more fear points.
Did you read what I posted from Survivalblog?
If the spent rods are not covered in water, and the water is not being cooled or rather the heat exchange/recirculating stuff isn’t happeneing, which cannot happen with no electricity, it’s very, very bad.
There’s no lack of sources for hysteria.
The WaPo source on the spent-fuel-rod-chernoby scare does it for a living.
MSM points gleefully at the injuries caused by the non-commercial plant at Chernoble, an ancient graphite core design with essentially no containment without acknowledging that the greatest injury caused by Chernoble was being off line. About two immediate deaths were attributed to the meltdown and fifteen to thirty others excess sickness from radiation exposure, but the coal burned to replace the power generated by Chernoble is estimated to cause two hundred additional respiratory deaths each year.
China has plans to build 124 nuclear plants in the next twenty years; they need to to reduce air pollution and further minimize their dependence upon Middle Eastern Oil. There has never been a safer technology measured by real effects. Of course, there has never been a technology easier to sensationalize since so few people realize they are bathed in radiation every day of their lives. Natural background radiation in many, if not most locales, exceeds the radiation emitted by nuclear plants at their boundaries. The brief releases of short half-life radionuclides in steam are harmless, and radioactivity carried in the steam will become insignificant in hours. A person would receive much more exposure sitting next to someone on the bus or plane who had just experienced a thyroid uptake test at a doctor's office or hospital. All the scare stories about being able to measure increased levels in the atmosphere is really reflecting the sensitivity of radiation measuring devices. Sensitive background particle studies are typically performed deep in mines or abandoned tunnels because there is so much that noise prevents the detection of rare particles like neutrinos.
While practice may have changed since I was working around radiologists, unused radioactive iodine suspension was typically washed down the sink, and so dilute after water treatment at sewage facilities as to be irrelevant. Now dentists who don't get their X-Ray machines collimated regularly are a concern. The exposure can be significant. Be sure to use the lead apron a dentist or hygienist should offer.
The left has been at war with nuclear power for over fifty years, since the Sierra Club found that legal fees were more important than truth. Sierra Club changed from being strong nuclear power advocates to strong nuclear power enemies, and have made generous salaries prosecuting civil suits challenging nuclear power development, bankrupting towns and companies. When circumstances with much potential to shut down most Middle East exports are triggered, we will pay the price for not continuing as France did, and China, Japan, India, and Russia are, to develop our nuclear power potential as we are capable of doing.
Japan is a particularly poignant setting for fright-propoganda with the many movies showing the effects upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have provided seventy or so years of data for radiation biologists interested in the long term effects - the genetic mutations caused by high exposure of parents. Contrary to television and movie scenarios, there have been no measurable genetic effects in descendants of exposed Japanese. Long term cancer rates, after the initial increase in leukemia, are slightly lower in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in Tokyo.
The sun and universe provide a constant background which has probably made human beings more healthy, since we evolved with genetic redundancy and genetic repair capabilities. The real danger is buying the Holdren/Obama mantra that we use too much energy. Constraining our markets and productive capacity will destroy our nation, and will do it with little help from the outside (the KGB was very actively supporting antinuclear groups in the U.S. for decades - we don't actually know if Obama is officially "outside help," though we do know he was born of a non-citizen father, and is not a natural born Citizen).
Since they are covered in boric acid, your source is wrong from the get-go. I am not trivializing the exposure of spent fuel rods, but they will not catch on fire according to information I have read.
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