Posted on 05/15/2012 10:51:30 AM PDT by yank in the UK
Unit 2 we now know completely liquified. We’ve never seen this before in the history of nuclear power. A 100% liquification of a uranium core.
(Excerpt) Read more at enenews.com ...
Once thinned out to a “stream” would it once more lose criticality and solidify again? Of course it still could chemically leach into the ground once there (oxides and such of uranium, plutonium etc.).
Fukashima is bad.
But, closer to home, I’m astounded that only a former employee and none of the current management knew that there was 3.5 pounds of bomb grade uranium laying around in Kodak’s basement.
http://www.newser.com/story/145956/in-kodaks-basement-nuclear-reactor.html
Just moved to Texas myself. Numerous reasons for that move though. Concerning any possible fallout, the Rocky mountains should buy us a little time. IMHO.
If there had been a melt-down that had gone through the bottom of the reactor, it had to go through the bottom of the RPV first, before it could make it out of the bottom of the drywell.
Meaning: There wouldn’t be any temperature reading on the bottom of the RPV, because the sensors would be gone, along with the steel that makes up the RPV.
The corium is still in the RPV - resting on the bottom, same as happened at TMI.
I have always considered Kaku as a simple minded twit.
Point me to these studies, please.
The atmospheric testing of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s of Hydrogen bombs was far more problematic for the US mainland. There are significant health hazards in and around the plant, in that the levels of radiation are elevated. Scientists can only guess as to how many additional cancer deaths will be caused by the reactor. It is not going to melt through the earth, nor will it cause a groundwater explosion. I’d worry more about eating seafood caught in that area of the Pacific until they get a handle on exactly how much radiation has been absorbed into the food chain. It’s a mess, and it’s going to take some work to clean it up, but it’s not the major industrial catastrophe that many would want to paint it as. Just like anywhere, there are scientists that want to “study” how bad it is, and “study” mitigation strategies so it is their interests to pump up the numbers and the hysteria.
Believe it or not, radiation is not as bad as many would have you believe and exposure to levels higher than our EPA says is safe, actually reduces your risk of cancer. Like I said, the biggest issue is to move back from the plant, and not eat the seafood until they know how bad the seafood is.
Here’s a few statistics for you:
1) Tuberculosis patients in Canada had numerous chest xrays, and developed lung and breast cancer than the general population.
2) A 1991 study by Johns Hopkins School of public health, in a study of 700,000 shipyard workers where many were exposed to 10 times the levels of radiation as their peers, due to nuclear reactor decommissioning, were had a 25% lower cancer rate than those not exposed.
3)In 1983 apartment buildings were accidentally constructed with massive amounts of Cesium 60, real nasty stuff. After 16 years, the 10,000 people who lived there, only developed 10 cases of cancer, compared to the normal for 10,000 people of 170 cases of cancer. These people were exposed to 5 times what the US government says is safe.
#1 should read: Tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast and lung cancer than the general population.
Regardless of where the temp sensors are placed on the RPV, if the steel of the RPV became hot enough to melt through at any point on the RPV, you wouldn’t be seeing any temp readings in the sub-100C range. The melting point of steel is 1400C+, the thermal conductivity of steel is pretty good, which means that the sensors up top would have shown a significant upwards departure if the core were melting through the bottom.
This is the sort of stuff that really annoys us engineers. People don’t think about what/how the whole system would be acting if these apocalyptic events came to pass. As a result of this thread, I went back and looked at the temp readings on the various reactors and it looks like they achieved cold shutdown. Do they have problems? Heck yes. They have thousands of tons of contaminated cooling water to dispose of, for starters. The place is still a collection of large-scale wrecks. They still have seismic hazards from an apparent increase in quake activity over the long-term in their area.
But this constant “the world is going to end!” stuff spouted by non-engineers since the beginning.... is just so tedious. Even IF (and I don’t expect it to happen by a long shot) there were a core melt-through event, the planet will be just fine. Consider how much worse events the planet has survived before this. There’s nothing man-made that can compare to something like a super-volcano blowing up - not even if you dug a hole and dumped every nuke weapon into it could you duplicate what will happen when the Yellowstone Caldera blows it’s top.
The Russians blew up a 50 MEGA-ton bomb during the era of above-ground nuke testing. And we’re still here. 50 MT is a big firecracker. Really big. Lots of fallout. We’re still here.
Consider for a moment how the sensor data showed itself during the Columbia space shuttle disaster for an example of what I speak. First they noticed some hydraulic actuator temps going high - abnormally high for that point in the mission. Then they noticed yet more temp sensors go high. Then they noticed other temp sensors go “low, off-scale” - probably as a result of the destruction of the sensors. Then temps in the wheel wells went ape. Then... nothing.
It started as one little punch-through in the leading edge of a wing... but the impending doom was seen in cascade of sensor information. The shuttle didn’t just go from a shuttle to a collection of melted-down bits in the blink of an eye. The telemetry told the tale of the disaster’s progress.
If a melt-through actually were to happen at Fukushima, you’d see similar results in the telemetry. And we’re just not. I don’t understand how anyone could make the claim that we’re going to see an event like that happen and yet we’re not going to see confirmation on more than one sensor....
Read most of them months ago. Will dig out the links for you later and post here. Surprised that you have not yet discovered that you were wrong about non-breach of RPV containment. Most of the rest of the world assumes that all three RPV’s have been breached. You do realize I was not referring to a CV breach in that comment. The RPV was never ever designed to stop a near complete meltdown. And we have confirmation from Tepco of 70-80 % meltdown in #1 and #3. They had admitted a 50-60 % meltdown of #2 until the KooKoo bird (Kaku) squawked. Stopping a near complete meltdown was the job of the CV not the RPV.
Let me state though - They have been dumping tons of water into RPV shells that have almost all their core material melted down. That has been going on for well over a year. We know for a fact that the melted cores had to melt out through the bottom of the RPV. It was not designed to stop that much of a meltdown. By now, they better have the temperature of the empty shells down. The water cooling was a farce from the beginning. Remember when they were dumping water from helicopters to try to cool the SFP. That was all for show. Ridiculously stupid. They are simply cooling spent RPV shells. Big deal. Great accomplishment. Hey lets all have a Cold Shutdown Party :>
bfl. thanks!
I occurred to me that other materials in the vicinity will be melted and become part of the alloy mix.
Eventually, I think that the nuke fuel will be diluted by other materials until the reaction slows and the blob cools/solidifies.
Not saying that this is not a serious disaster.
Last weekend I took my radiation survey meter to the grocery store. It registered a little at the shelves of canned tuna....slightly alarming.
Most of those shown are slump/collapses of underground shots -- but they all vented radioactive material. However, at the north end of the valey is the "Sedan" test crater (the big, bluish "moon crater"( that dumped fallout over several states -- enough to kill livestock quickly...
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(Hey -- this is home turf to you; I'm "preaching to the choir...")
Important.
. . . . Click on original Article, then # 28 , # 35 .
("When knowledgeable physicists are worried, there’s a problem.")
Anyone know?
What is your estimated maximum temperature reached?
About 1/3 of the core at Three Mile Island 'liquefied' during the accident. Even if the entire core liquefied in Japan (probably true with the amount of time they went with no cooling), it ain't liquid today. It's now a rock-solid ball of bad stuff that will have to be chiseled out and disposed of just like the Three Mile Island core was.
The China Syndrome was always just a movie.
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