[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[little jeremiah]

Can you add me to your pinglist please?

thanks -

[Beowulf9]

Did we not know it already, certain we did.

[ransomnote]

“Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday”

Well, obviously, the country’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters is just ‘fear mongering’. /s

[AmericanInTokyo]

If you are going to break bad news to the People, break it to them in increments. / sarc

[garjog]

[lwoodham]

And if the fuel melts through the bottom of the pressure vessel and continues to melt downward until it hits the water table ... China Syndrome -> all the nuclear material gets blown into the atmosphere ~

[blueplum]

during the first week? were there problems before the earthquake? why all the pretense? have the workers been able to contact their families yet? did they ever get enough lead blankets for everyone? is there still a press blackout on interviews with the workers?

[campaignPete R-CT]

i want an explanation of the physics.

The fuel became liquid because the temp became too high.
It is not possible to cool it sufficiently for the fuel to re-solidify.
The fuel is still be consumed by nuclear reaction, releasing more energy and radiation (contained with the plant).

IF the reactors are encased in concrete a la Chernobyl, how long before all the fuel is consumed?

[Roccus]

In the US we have the “China Syndrome.”

What do they have in Japan, the “Falkland Syndrome?”

[Freddd]

Can this be right?
Because we had many ‘experts’ here on FR tell us how it wasn’t any worse than the sun....people were threatened, locked out of their accounts, insulted, and told they would be shot- for even talking about the facts of the event ....j

Right PaEngineer?

[sefarkas]

Until the plants are in cold-shutdown, and until someone puts a scope inside each reactor vessel, it is pure speculation regarding total melt and pure speculation regarding reactor pressure vessel failure. That includes pure speculation by the managers and the PR team feeding the journalistic frenzy around this story.

Fuel cladding melts at a much lower temperature than the ceramic UO2. The effects being reported can result from fuel pellets scattered about the pipe systems.

At TMI-2, fuel pellets and fuel fragments were found in the emergency core cooling (ECCS) pipe systems that circulated the water coolant. At TMI-2, the pictures taken inside the vessel showed the pellets laying in the lower half of the core region (above the support plate) like rubble. At a BWR, reactor coolant and steam produced by the reactor is in the reactor building, auxiliary building, and turbine building. It should be no surprise that the ceramic fuel pellets are in all three buildings, with only one designed to mitigate the radiation from an accident.