Bye Bye Miss Nuclear Pie

[woodchip]

Not to scare any of you west coasters but this doesn't sound good at all:

"We're very close now to the point of no return," Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, said. "It's gotten worse. We're talking about workers coming into the reactor perhaps as a suicide mission and we may have to abandon ship."

[woodchip]

and even more worrisome:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan's most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese officials denied it.

If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there's nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.

Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors. He said the spent fuel pool of the complex's Unit 4 reactor has lost water.

[Spidey]

Yea, I heard that on the News Hour yesterday…

“Reactor 4 holding tank is losing water for some unknown reason”

The “unknown reason” in the scariest part.

...................

I wouldn’t go off of anything Kaku says…that guy is a theoretical nutcake…IMHO. The only thing I know for sure is…they don’t have the situation under control…by a longshot.

[snoopy]

Silly me, I thought that once they had restored power (which I thought they had) and flooded the reactors with sea water, they were out of the woods. It seems that things continue to progress, for the worse.

I (now) don't see anything about containment (or not) on the TEPCO site. Last time I looked, it had this status page where it said containment was maintained in the all reactors...... Like I said on the other thread, I guess time will tell.

[dissent]

Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors. He said the spent fuel pool of the complex's Unit 4 reactor has lost water.

yeah, my understanding is that ALL of the fuel rods for No.4 had been removed from the reactor for maintenance, so they were all in the pool, and perhaps not as depleted as the usual spent fuel that's placed in those pools to cool, so I'm guessing they were generating heat faster than the usual set of spent fuel rods. When coolant flow was lost, problems ensued.

I think having those cooling pools over the top of the reactors is safety dumb for two reasons -
1) in the event of a problem with a reactor, that's just more fuel in the vicinity that you have to deal with, and
2) in the event of a problem with the reactor, they're just going to be in the way while you're trying to fix the reactor problem

oh, and 3) in the event of a problem, it might be harder to add water to the coolant pools if they're way up in the air, as opposed to being at or near ground level. You're too dependent of the normal water cooling system to provide cooling water flow. When the tsunami crapped the power systems, there was no real backup capability (e.g. like a passive cooling system.)

[snoopy]

You're too dependent of the normal water cooling system to provide cooling water flow. When the tsunami crapped the power systems, there was no real backup capability (e.g. like a passive cooling system.)

My first thought, being an engineer, is "how could I design a passive system that could handle all of the secondary cooling needs without external power." My second thought is that probably every engineer that touched the system(s) over the years has had the same thought, and there still isn't a solution in place, which means that it probably isn't technically feasible.

[Tebo]

Less used fuel actually produces less decay heat, as there are less 'hot' fission/decay products (uranium is only very slightly radioactive).
On the other hand it is more likely to go critical if enough fuel rods get close together (which is not supposed to be possible).
If fuel went critical, it would produce additional heat (the power would be limited, by steam bubbles forming at ~212 °F), until either the fuel moved again, enough neutron poison was added (boron) or all the water was gone.

Silly me, I thought that once they had restored power (which I thought they had) and flooded the reactors with sea water, they were out of the woods. It seems that things continue to progress, for the worse.

I (now) don't see anything about containment (or not) on the TEPCO site. Last time I looked, it had this status page where it said containment was maintained in the all reactors...... Like I said on the other thread, I guess time will tell.

You probably looked at the status of the newer Fukushima Daini plant, Fukushima Daiichi is the one in trouble (I think Daiichi and Daini is japanese for 1 and 2).

EDIT:

You're too dependent of the normal water cooling system to provide cooling water flow. When the tsunami crapped the power systems, there was no real backup capability (e.g. like a passive cooling system.)

My first thought, being an engineer, is "how could I design a passive system that could handle all of the secondary cooling needs without external power." My second thought is that probably every engineer that touched the system(s) over the years has had the same thought, and there still isn't a solution in place, which means that it probably isn't technically feasible.

Maybe not fully passive, but ABWR and ESBWR (don't know about other gen III designs) are designed to stay cooled without power for 3 days, at which point they need more water/pumping.


EDIT: Turns out ABWR only requires no human intervention for 3 days, not sure whether it can do without power, probably not. It still has lots of safety improvements over old generation II plants though, but not as much as the III+ designs (like AP1000 or ESBWR).


Spent fuel pools should be able to go for quiet a few days without new water, so it probably was thought that would be enough time to refill after an accident and investing in more cooling was deemed not economical.
It's strange that they ran out of water in a cooling pool, I'd have though it shouldn't take much refilling, unless it started leaking or something went critical.

[speculation] Maybe they thought they'd refill later (using what they had on the reactors) and waited until there wasn't enough water left to shield against gamma radiation, at which point they couldn't approach the pool to refill (shielding depends exponentially on the thickness of the shield, so the radiation level can rise quickly when water gets low). [/speculation]

But flying the water up there with helicopters or using water cannons? Don't they have a few redundant pipes to the pool where they could attatch a pump without having to approach the pool?

[Duper]

A History of America's own Nuclear Disasters.

This is rather telling

[woodchip]

Well some good news. Evidently TEPCO has finally got a power line to the reactor site and are in process of hooking it up to one of the reactors cooling pumps. Cross your fingers this all goes smoothly....the Japanese deserve a break about now.

[Lothar]

Further reading: http://plainenglishnuclear.blogspot.com ... -post.html

Money quote: "Quit freaking out about the reactors; freak out about the dead and the wounded. Freak out about the towns wiped off the coastline. Get out there and do what you can: donate money, donate time, let Japan know we support them."

[dissent]

You're too dependent of the normal water cooling system to provide cooling water flow. When the tsunami crapped the power systems, there was no real backup capability (e.g. like a passive cooling system.)

My first thought, being an engineer, is "how could I design a passive system that could handle all of the secondary cooling needs without external power." My second thought is that probably every engineer that touched the system(s) over the years has had the same thought, and there still isn't a solution in place, which means that it probably isn't technically feasible.

I just glanced at this in passing a couple of days ago, and haven't read it all through. It's where I got the concept from.
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.c ... _psrs.html

[dissent]

Further reading: http://plainenglishnuclear.blogspot.com ... -post.html

Money quote: "Quit freaking out about the reactors; freak out about the dead and the wounded. Freak out about the towns wiped off the coastline. Get out there and do what you can: donate money, donate time, let Japan know we support them."

nice find!

[SilverFJ]

I would think the reactors would be a bigger threat than people who are already dead, as they will create more dead, and/or suffering people should more go wrong.

[SilverFJ]

...but then again, talking about nuclear physics is wayyyyyyy out of my league. That's just what I would think.

[Nightshade]

A bit of a tangent, but it bears reading:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... n-progress

I don't quite agree with his assessment of the nuclear threat to the US, but the economic threat is real.

This is more than just a single straw that could break the camel's back. It's an entire haystack.

[dissent]

I'm immediately suspicious of anything from Tyler Durden and Zerohedge; they published a lot of FUD concerning the BP oil spill last year.

Doesn't mean it's wrong; just means I'll be extra cautious and seek additional sources.

[Top Gun]

Yea, I’m sure we are getting good old fashioned truthful reporting on this event…just like we did with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Not to dig-a-lig this back up, but would you care to tell me exactly how the reporting on Three Mile Island wasn't "truthful"?

Also, the fact that people on the West Coast are buying iodine tablets, and even dosimeters, has just about made me lose whatever shreds of faith I had left in humanity. Tell me people can't be that stupid.

[Spidey]

JFTR the “reporting” I am referring to is those cases, was by the government and the industry…not the media.

Just in case you misunderstood.

[dissent]

Also, the fact that people on the West Coast are buying iodine tablets, and even dosimeters, has just about made me lose whatever shreds of faith I had left in humanity. Tell me people can't be that stupid.

aww, c'mon Gunny. Statistical distributions curves, man. There's always gonna be a few.

[woodchip]

Threat assessment now raised to level 5 so on par with 3 mile island.

[snoopy]

Also, the fact that people on the West Coast are buying iodine tablets, and even dosimeters, has just about made me lose whatever shreds of faith I had left in humanity. Tell me people can't be that stupid.

What they really need to be buying is new houses, further away from the San Andreas fault line. I was reading something the other day that earthquakes tend to come in sets, and that quakes on one side of a plate is usually followed by quakes on the other side. (Sorry, don't remember where) San Fran might have a quake coming.

[woodchip]

Further reading: http://plainenglishnuclear.blogspot.com ... -post.html

The problem with this type of idiotic posting is using information from a source that is trying to hide what is really going on. So the blogger posts:

"There were several small, planned releases of slightly radioactive gases. Each of these radioactivity releases to the environment at Fukushima so far has produced about the level of one dental X-ray if you were standing right over the release and breathing in really hard. If you weren’t standing right over the release, the particular kind of radioactivity released would have nearly all gone away before the vented gases reached you on the ground. Even the people on the ship that sailed right into the plume only got a maximum dose about equal to a month of background radiation [6] – that is, the natural radiation you get from living on Earth."

Now we have the truth finally coming out:

"Waste in Reactor 3 is completely exposed to the air and is emitting alarming levels of radiation as it heats up."

"Water levels in the tanks have dropped dramatically in the last few days, possibly because of a leak caused by the earthquake. Waste in Reactor 3 is completely exposed to the air and is emitting alarming levels of radiation as it heats up."

"Unlike the other reactors which use uranium, Reactor 3 uses a mixture of uranium and plutonium. Plutonium, best known as an ingredient in nuclear weapons, is particularly dangerous if released into the environment.
In the worst case scenario, exposed fuel will melt, triggering a chemical explosion that will send radioactive dust hundreds of yards into the air."

"Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards.
People exposed to such doses will suffer radiation sickness and many will die."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... eople.html

"Money quote: "Quit freaking out about the reactors; freak out about the dead and the wounded. Freak out about the towns wiped off the coastline. Get out there and do what you can: donate money, donate time, let Japan know we support them."

There is no longer a reason to freak out about the dead as they are dead. There is very clearly a reason to freak out about the reactors as we could have a lot more dead...both long term and short term. If the worst case scenario happens, then the whole world will have something to "freak out" about. Freak out about supposed experts who see only so far as their pocket calculators allow and steer you in a direction of being unprepared. The really smart people have boarded the first plane out of Japan when they heard about the first explosion. The dumb ones are believing inept people like Money and are still sitting in their homes just beyond the govts. proscribed 12 mile "safety" zone. Does this reassure you:

"Deputy director general of the NISA, Hideohiko Nishiyama, also admitted that they do not know if the reactors are coming under control.
He said: 'With the water-spraying operations, we are fighting a fire we cannot see. That fire is not spreading, but we cannot say yet that it is under control.'"

Tell me Lother, you still want to be with-in 12 miles let alone take a walk around the site? You still want to believe what you are being told early on so you can make a incorrect decision? I'll admit I didn't know all the particulars about the reactors when I posted. One thing I was sure of was my gut instinct telling me, when the explosions started, that being anywhere near there was not a good idea. Any banana's I give to my children will be washed first though...and quite thoroughly.

[Lothar]

this type of idiotic posting is using information from a source that is trying to hide what is really going on

... or, quite possibly, a source that was completely accurate given the situation as it stood. But if it makes you feel better to call people "idiotic" and take various other cheap shots, and assume any contradictory reports are due to a coverup rather than changing conditions, have fun with that.

There is very clearly a reason to freak out about the reactors as we could have a lot more dead

The situation has clearly worsened as various systems have been damaged or failed. It's now at a level where actually being inside the plant is fairly dangerous, but certainly not at a point where there's reason for you to be worried about it from half a world away. So what does your freaking out about it accomplish, exactly?

[Ferno]

and in the papers today, they're talking about it like it's the next Chernobyl.

whee, let's wave some ooga booga around and poke people with it like it's a cattle prod. /facepalm.

[woodchip]

this type of idiotic posting is using information from a source that is trying to hide what is really going on

... or, quite possibly, a source that was completely accurate given the situation as it stood. But if it makes you feel better to call people "idiotic" and take various other cheap shots, and assume any contradictory reports are due to a coverup rather than changing conditions, have fun with that.

The idiocy, again, was assuming the info given out was accurate...at the time. What part of this do you not comprehend:

"He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were. "

Govt. officials and owners of large corporation were forth-coming and honest in their information...when? Ever?

There is very clearly a reason to freak out about the reactors as we could have a lot more dead

The situation has clearly worsened as various systems have been damaged or failed. It's now at a level where actually being inside the plant is fairly dangerous, but certainly not at a point where there's reason for you to be worried about it from half a world away. So what does your freaking out about it accomplish, exactly?

Never said I was worried about it, no more than I was worried about Chernobyl. I said if I was in Japan I'd be flying out. Did you skim that part?

[woodchip]

and in the papers today, they're talking about it like it's the next Chernobyl.

whee, let's wave some ooga booga around and poke people with it like it's a cattle prod. /facepalm.

Whee, reading comprehension is a learned skill:

"Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as happened at Chernobyl"

Nothing there about it "Being" like the next Chernobyl, just that they may have to bury it like they did Chernobyl. So who is distorting what was said?

[Ferno]

so why bring up the name Chernobyl specifically if it's not meant to scare people? why not use other examples?

[woodchip]

Dunno Ferno, I guess because Chernobyl was only reactor that had to be buried.

[Tunnelcat]

It's getting in their food now. Sad. Milk gets contaminated very early on and the cows concentrate it in their milk.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/ ... earthquake

Woodchip, we've probably got far more to worry about than a little radiation from Japan. We are sitting on a similar subduction zone fault, just like the one Japan currently sits on. Those types of faults produce the largest megaquakes, 9 or larger. The last megaquake in Cascadia was on 1/26/1700, which, by the way, generated a tsunami that inundated Japan. That's how we know the date, from their records. Going back 10,000 years in the fossil record, there have been around 20 of these 9+ quakes in Cascadia, so if history follows true, we're overdue for another big one. I hope I'm long dead by then. It'll be a disaster area.

[Firewheel]

Of course, Japan imports the vast majority of its food, so food contamination is not really a problem either way.

I don't believe the media hype about the reactors for one second. Most people's ideas about nuclear energy/reactors come from disaster movies and other sci-fi sources. The media naturally capitalizes on this in their continuing efforts to scare people out of their minds.

This is obviously a bad situation and the workers in the direct vicinity of the power plant are in danger, but I'm not at all convinced there will be any long-ranging effects on Tokyo or the environment outside the immediate radius of the nuclear plant. Since I'm getting ready to move to Japan in just a few days, I'm much more concerned about lack of gas and food on the shelves than the radiation boogeyman.

[woodchip]

It's getting in their food now. Sad. Milk gets contaminated very early on and the cows concentrate it in their milk.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/ ... earthquake

Well, contrary to the pundits here who have said there is nothing to fear we now have:

"Concerns about food safety spread Wednesday to Tokyo after officials said tap water showed elevated levels: 210 becquerels per liter of iodine-131 - more than twice the recommended limit of 100 becquerels per liter for infants. The recommended limit for adults is 300 becquerels."

So somehow the impossible has happened despite the design of steel and concrete containment vessels, the environment Japan is becoming ever more radiated. Then we have:

"In a new setback, black smoke billowed from Unit 3, prompting a new evacuation of the complex Wednesday afternoon, Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials said.
"We don't know the reason" for the smoke, Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear Safety Agency said."

Considering it's been 2 weeks now and the officials still don't know what is going on, I wouldn't be surprised if 50 miles around this complex becomes uninhabitable. The silver lining if this happens would be the cost savings from not having to clean up the tsunami mess.

[dissent]

From the same article -

Parents might want to be more cautious if they have a choice. "Nobody wants to drink radioactive water," he said. But "it's not a medical problem but a psychosocial problem: The stress that people get from the radioactivity is more dangerous than the radioactivity itself."

Fortunately, Iodine-131 has a half life of about 8 days. Should dissipate quickly unless it is being continuously released.

[Will Robinson]

As to the point raised in the original topic, my thoughts, even after seeing how bad it can get, are:

Nuclear reactors don't cause a combination of earthquakes and tsunami's. When a populated area is hit by a combination of a major earthquake and tsunami many people will die.

So to make policy against any nuclear reactors based on a possible earthquake/tsunami event makes no more sense than making policy against building ANYTHING because of the same possibility.

But we all know policy is rarely constructed with much logic in it's foundation.

[woodchip]

As to the point raised in the original topic, my thoughts, even after seeing how bad it can get, are:

Nuclear reactors don't cause a combination of earthquakes and tsunami's. When a populated area is hit by a combination of a major earthquake and tsunami many people will die.

So to make policy against any nuclear reactors based on the possible earthquake/tsunami event makes no more sense than making policy against building ANYTHING because of the same possibility.

But we all know policy is rarely constructed with much logic in it's foundation.

The problem with the damaged reactors is they were built in a known earth quake zone and along the ocean. I'm just wondering what the logic was to putting the back-up diesel generators in basements when tsunamis are a possibility. Building a reactor on the San Andreas fault line would not make sense but building in a more seismically stable area like the midwest would.

Will Robinson:
"So to make policy against any nuclear reactors based on the possible earthquake/tsunami event makes no more sense than making policy against building ANYTHING because of the same possibility."

Well the majority of "anything" won't spew radiation out if damaged.

[Krom]

"Build nuclear plants away from earthquake zones and potential tsunamis."

Considering one of the operating requirements is access to tremendous amounts of water, where exactly in Japan would that be?

[Will Robinson]

..
The problem with the damaged reactors is they were built in a known earth quake zone and along the ocean. I'm just wondering what the logic was to putting the back-up diesel generators in basements when tsunamis are a possibility. Building a reactor on the San Andreas fault line would not make sense but building in a more seismically stable area like the midwest would.

Correct. So building reactors shouldn't be a problem if we take advantage of our vast geography. But will political hacks oppose them and site the Japanese problem as reason for us to not build? Of course they will. Will the media challenge that illogical line of contention? No, they won't because that weak argument will be made by their ideological brethren.

Well the majority of "anything" won't spew radiation out if damaged.

No, but lots of things we build can collapse on the heads of children at lunch hour or it can spew toxic fumes into the nieghborhoods or it can explode and burn a city block down or spread carcinogens into the rivers, etc. etc.
We don't give up day care centers and refineries and chemical plants etc. etc. because an earthquake combined with a tsunami once wrecked Japanese towns and reactors....

[Grendel]

Well, contrary to the pundits here who have said there is nothing to fear we now have:

"Concerns about food safety spread Wednesday to Tokyo after officials said tap water showed elevated levels: 210 becquerels per liter of iodine-131 - more than twice the recommended limit of 100 becquerels per liter for infants. The recommended limit for adults is 300 becquerels."

[..]

Considering it's been 2 weeks now and the officials still don't know what is going on, I wouldn't be surprised if 50 miles around this complex becomes uninhabitable. The silver lining if this happens would be the cost savings from not having to clean up the tsunami mess.

It's all relative.

The potassium-40 in an adult body creates about 3700Bq. The radiation mentioned above is only relevant because it stems from iodine that the body stores in the thyroid, thus concentrating it. It will not kill you. It may elevate the risk of problems in 20 years or so. And yes, its half life is 8 days. Next week this will be very old news.

You want to know about serious nuclear contamination ? Check out the Hanford site, that's something to be concerned about (short overview here.)

[dissent]

This page has some links to interesting stuff about the earthquake/tsunami -

http://www.agu.org/focus_group/NH/resources/Japan/

[woodchip]

Well, for all you believers in good engineering practices, the following ought to be of great comfort:

"Botched Container?

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, 67, working as an engineer at Babcock Hitachi K.K., helped design and supervise the manufacture of a $250 million steel pressure vessel for Tokyo Electric in 1975. Today, that vessel holds the fuel rods in the core of the No. 4 reactor at Fukushima’s Dai-Ichi plant, hit by explosion and fire after the tsunami.

Tanaka says the vessel was damaged in the production process. He says he knows because he orchestrated the cover-up. When he brought his accusations to the government more than a decade later, he was ignored, he says.

The accident occurred when Tanaka and his team were strengthening the steel in the pressure vessel, heating it in a furnace to more than 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that melts metal. Braces that should have been inside the vessel during the blasting were either forgotten or fell over. After it cooled, Tanaka found that its walls had warped.
‘Felt Like a Hero’

The law required the flawed vessel be scrapped, a loss that Tanaka said might have bankrupted the company. Rather than sacrifice years of work and risk the company’s survival, Tanaka used computer modeling to devise a way to reshape the vessel so that no one would know it had been damaged. He did that with Hitachi’s blessings, he said.

“I saved the company billions of yen,” Tanaka said in an interview March 12, the day after the earthquake. Tanaka says he got a 3 million yen bonus ($38,000) from Hitachi and a plaque acknowledging his “extraordinary” effort in 1974. “At the time, I felt like a hero.”

That changed with Chernobyl. Two years after the world’s worst nuclear accident, Tanaka went to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to report the cover-up he’d engineered more than a decade earlier. Hitachi denied his accusation and the government refused to investigate. "


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-1 ... dents.html

So again to those of you trying to minimize this catastrophe...don't. At least until all the facts are in and all the damage is done.

[dissent]

The accident occurred when Tanaka and his team were strengthening the steel in the pressure vessel, heating it in a furnace to more than 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that melts metal. Braces that should have been inside the vessel during the blasting were either forgotten or fell over. After it cooled, Tanaka found that its walls had warped.

A temperature that melts which metal? Here are some metal melting points; steels are melting in the range of about 1400-1500 °C. Sounds like they were annealing the vessel.

These are serious charges, and should be investigated. However, the Bloomberg reporter needs to be fact checked.

So again to those of you trying to minimize this catastrophe...don't. At least until all the facts are in and all the damage is done.

Agreed; we shouldn't try to minimize what's happening. Nor should we try to maximize it beyond what is reliably known. Let's get all the facts on the table first.