Nuclear fuel rods fully exposed at Japan reactor - Jiji

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTKB00733720110314?ca=rdt ^

[Lil Flower]

TOKYO, March 14 (Reuters) - Nuclear fuel rods at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear reactor are now fully exposed, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant's operator, Tokyo Eletcric Power Co .

[Mr. Silverback]

Ping!

[little jeremiah]

I’m reading the Ticker Forum thread, someone quoted this from the UK Guardian NewsBlog. I know the Guardian is a leftist rag but the info seems factual. TF thread about Japan nuke plants link:

http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=182121&page=34

Robert Alvarez, a senior policy expert at the institute of Policy Studies, said satellite pictures of the Fukushima plant showed evidence of damage to the spent fuel pool. “There is clear evidence that the fuel cask cranes that haul spent fuels to and from the reactor to the pool both fell. They are gone,” he said. “There appears to be copious amounts of steam pouring out of the area where the pools are located.”

He said there was no evidence of fire but described the situation as “worrisome”.

“What we don’t know is whether or not explosions or the quake or the tsuanmi or a combination of things might have damaged support structures or compromised the pool,” Alvarez said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/14/japan-tsunami-nuclear-alert-live

[AwesomePossum]

You have made some very good points, however, Japanese engineers have been snookered by the continual loss of cooling water in several of the reactors.........

the steam was still exchanging heat from the nuclear pile into the secondary torus water reservoir

I'm thinking that with a 9.1 earthquake and a 10 meter tsunami, it is possible that the torus in several of the reactors did shift. In the designs of these types of reactors, the torus is actually "floating" in the basement of the reactor.........When reactor #1 exploded topside, there were 4 workers in the basement who were injured. I'm thinking that they were monitoring the leaks down there........

Anyway, the main problem at these reactors has been the continual loss of cooling water.......

Something else that very few are talking about is the "spent fuel pool" where decades of spent fuel are housed in something similar to a swimming pool (open on top)............in the reactors in trouble right now in Japan, I believe all of them have the spent fuel pools stationed above the reactor. Once they have a loss of water and are exposed to the air, there is the potential for very serious problems............My hope is that the hydrogen venting explosions that occurred at #1 and #3 did not compromise the pools that hold the still radioactive fuel that could possibly catch fire, etc...........

No Chicken Little here, just using Free Republic as it is meant to be used, for information and discussion.........

:}

[giotto]

we the people are dumber than a box of rocks.

They the people, for the most part, are. Look who they elected to be we the people's President.

[jwalsh07]

I agree - I'm not nuclear at all, but I am electrical (transmission) and there are significant reasons that we give top priority to providing off-site power to nuclear plants even though they have redundant on-site power sources. What we are seeing at Fukushima right now illustrates that need well.

I'd wondered about that myself. They have all kinds of redundancy of generators on site and they all got swamped by the tsunami. Off site, think higher ground, with underground transmission lines would seem to be well worth the additional cost.

[lonevoice]

Wow. Thank you so much for the post and for those graphics. It really does help to put things in perspective.

[meyer]

I'd wondered about that myself. They have all kinds of redundancy of generators on site and they all got swamped by the tsunami. Off site, think higher ground, with underground transmission lines would seem to be well worth the additional cost.

I'm not sure how well underground transmission would have withstood the earthquake. Yes, having the diesels (and their fuel tanks) on higher ground would have helped. I can't help but think that if there were a sufficient power source available a mile or two away, they could have run an emergency overhead line to the plant over a period of 8-16 hours. If I had to guess, I'd say that they were working on something like this already.

There are 3 additional reactors and generators on site that were already in cold shut-down before the earthquake and they'll certainly want to preserve those. They're the newest of the 6 units.

[lonevoice]

Haha! I bet Peter Doocy knew more about nuclear technology than the UN weapons inspector. If it weren’t for FR and some of the actual expertise and invaluable links those people with expertise have provided, I might have gone a bit Chicken Little myself. Thankfully, I’ve been glued to the online commentary since the earthquake was first reported, I’ve stayed totally calm, and I feel much better informed for it.

[meyer]

Japanese engineers have been snookered by the continual loss of cooling water in several of the reactors.........

Judging from the increased pressure within the containment structures, I would say that most, if not all, the loss of cooling liquid was due to evaporation (in essence, the formation of steam). The lack of circulation and cooling has prevented the removal of heat and the continual flow of cooler water over the core, so with the water stagnant, water near the core would heat up to boiling and turn to steam. As it "boiled off", the pressure increased and the liquid level dropped.

[CedarDave]

Grrrr. Cavuto has some expert (with an agenda) who is stirring the pot by saying “there is no safe level of radiation” and goes on to talk about the half-life and dangers of plutonium. Maybe true, but you don’t start off your interview by saying that. (e.g. He didn’t say when you walk outside you get radiation, when you fly in a plane you get more, you live at 5,000 feet elevation you get more than you do at sea level, etc. etc.)

[meyer]

Thanks for that informative link.

I think I’ve learned more about nuclear power in 2 days on FR than some college students learn in a semester. Or maybe not...

Wish I had read that before my previous post.

[Mr. Silverback]

Awesome post!

[dragnet2]

Come on....There is no danger....One could stand next to these fuel rods for 2 hours and only get a slight rash like sunburn....

[bobsunshine]

Here is a site that will help explain what has happened at the Japan's Nuclear sites.

TEPCO reactor by reactor status report at Fukushima

< http://bravenewclimate.com/

According to the site: "In short, the nuclear reactor situation at Fukushima units #1 and #3 has stabilised with full containment intact (see below), and all other plants in the affected area are in cold shutdown".

[bobsunshine]

Here is a site that will help explain what has happened at the Japan's Nuclear sites.

TEPCO reactor by reactor status report at Fukushima

< http://bravenewclimate.com/

According to the site(as of Sunday): "In short, the nuclear reactor situation at Fukushima units #1 and #3 has stabilised with full containment intact (see below), and all other plants in the affected area are in cold shutdown".

[AwesomePossum]

Thanks for the reply..........after I posted I realized that I left out one thought, and this is it: Were the torus to shift, if it were possible, during a 9.1 quake and a 30' tsunami, would that shifting be able to assist in the damage of piping and/or pumps that deliver water to the reactor, or, damage valves that keep water from exiting the reactor?

The reason I ask, is that the Japanese working with the reactors (at great personal sacrifice, I might add) have repeatedly stated that they are constantly pumping seawater to the reactors, and yet there is still a constant loss of water (you may answer me like some of my teachers years and years ago, "What did I just say?" in this case meaning that water goes in and because of the tremendous heat, much is converted to steam, thus the need for more and more water)..........which brings me to another question: Is the seawater being pumped into the metal vessel or to the outside of the metal vessel, or, to both areas?

:}

[Mr. Silverback]

See post 112. A badly designed reactor that went into full meltdown and killed 50 people didn’t even melt a steel pipe the slag passed through, much less the floor beneath. The reactors in this incident are Western-designed and have containment vessels designed to contain a full worst-case meltdown.

It’s Alar on apples. It’s the Summer of the Shark. Media hype.

[meyer]

The water is being pumped in, but the level is still dropping. Maybe. I’m suspicious of any media source because I think that they’re screwing up the chronological order of things at this point. Just this morning, I read that cooling has failed on Nukushima Unit 2. Cooling failed as soon as the tsunami took out the diesel generators right after the earthquake, so that news was old news.

I recall (and memory’s the first thing to go) reading yesterday evening (from TEPCO’s web site) that the unit 1 containment structure was being pumped full of sea water and was almost full!

I’m just a little skeptical of any sources right now, maybe excluding TEPCO’s press releases which are pretty short and to-the-point (though perhaps incomplete).