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 ...
Apparently you didn’t read the article I quoted from nor the link provided. The article is by someone with this experience below, and if you read his entire article, you would perhaps understand a bit more. Or maybe you are a nuclear engineer with 30 years experience and don’t agree with him?
Link just in case you missed it, and the entire point of the article is that without outside electricity, crap happens, even to spent fuel rods. whatever the cause of loss of power. He’s discussing loss of power due to EMP but the cause of loss of power doesn’t make any difference.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2010/09/effects_of_an_emp_attack_or_se.html
As a nuclear engineer who has worked in the industry for nearly 30 years, I have agreed with this premise – that all of the US commercial reactors are very safe. Under normal circumstances, I still believe this. However, as I have been studying the effects of EMP for the last several years, my concerns have grown.
Please read my comment above and the article linked.
Are you a nuclear engineer with 30 years of experience in the field? The author of the article is.
he entire point of the article is that without outside electricity, crap happens
No the point is without water coolant crap happens.
There's an ocean full of water there at the plant. There using it at some of the reactors now.
This is simply not true. There is a pool in the reactor building that is used for rod storage during refueling but long term storage is done at another location on another part of the campus. Since there was no refueling going on for units 1 or 3 there is no fuel stored in these pools.
Either (1) he is making it up, (2) his source has revealed classified information (a crime) or (3) the information is publically available from reputable sources. It's your responsibility to show #3, not toss around speculation from a survivalist blog.
The KGB vented Siberian air into his cell and tried to freeze him to death. He started sweating as the KGB in Fur coats looked on. He was only in basically pajamas in sub zero temperatures.
Another mystery about this Ukrainian dissident is that, after being allowed to leave the Ukraine, the KGB returned all his painted he made in prison.
This was when he was living in Toronto, Canada.
One painting was a depiction of an H-Bomb blast in the South Pacific by the French. What was unusual about this Hydrogen bomb blast was that some people claimed you could see a man holding out his arms in the Mushroom Cloud.
Terelya (being in solidary confinement under the guard of the KGB) had no way of knowing about the test, but painted Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched in the Mushroom Cloud.
This is documented in the book Witness, which is the autobiography of Josyp Terelya.
Probably safe to say that there is a radioactive cloud headed this way (if winds are West to East).
An exposed core melts. It doesn’t explode. That’s why it’s called a meltdown.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2688397/posts#10
An exposed core melts. It doesn’t explode. That’s why it’s called a meltdown.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2688397/posts#10
No core has "exploded" nor will any. No core has been uncovered or breached. However, venting of the core has released some radiation. Also venting of the core allowed a hydrogen gas buildup in the two buildings which then exploded. The third building might explode too, but should not, although I didn't expect the second building to explode.
Just so you know the crucial fact: the worst case scenario is the core doesn't stay cooled and melts down through the container. The core has probably melted in at least two reactors, maybe three, but has not melted down. It won't melt down as long as it is being injected with water and boron (which then must be vented releasing some radiation).
The difference between melting and melting down is that melting is subcritical, melting down means the fuel is pooled and goes critical.
There’s a difference between responsible and irresponsible reporting.
You are sure of that?
Thanks for posting that link. I see we are at 550C, and the melting point is 2000C. Of course the temperature can already have resulted in some melting in spots. We can’t trivialize the issue, the core could be damaged to a point that makes it produce more heat. However it is very likely that water and boron being injected will keep it subcritical and preclude any further melting. But that also means there will have to be venting.
There is conflicting info here on that (some other freeper posted that there was fuel in spent fuel pool). But it is important to keep in mind that the spent fuel in the pool is trivial to keep cool compared to the core. It doesn’t burn. It is not producing lots of neutrons that would cause other rods to in the pool to heat up. It is simply not going to be an issue.
Good work - bttt
Agree. Unless something causes them to have to evacuate the site, like #3 releasing more contamination than can be worked around or another tsunami. Without humans on site working the problem and power, this could turn into something really bad and involving all six reactors.
I suspect that the cesium detected may have came from the fuel pit at the top of the outer containment building — from the explosions. Why do you say it wouldn’t be an issue? What’s the heat load? When were the reactors last fueled or unloaded? Do you know?
In general the pools sit unsealed in plain water or boric acid. Our small research reactor where I went to school had a couple rods in a pool and we went in once to stare into the pool. There could be many more rods in an operational reactor, but the principles would not be different, they will be much farther from producing critical amounts of neutrons than the freshly processed fuel. But I don’t know how old the spent rods are (older=better) nor the heat load (but it’s not going to boil off in minutes IMO). I suspect that info will come out now that people are proposing the spent fuel scare story.
I recommend that you don’t give such casual and broad advice on the matter then. Especially to say “nothing to cooling it”. You don’t have experience in power nukes, but some of us do.
Feel free to do research and speak to what you do know, but don’t speculate or extrapolate too much.
Reactors are designed to contain a melt down.
IF there was a melt down it would make the clean up many times more complicated, but it would still be contained.
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