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Crews 'Facing 100-Year Battle' at Fukushima
A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.
Fukushima Nuclear Plant -- Handout photo taken by a camera attached to the tip of the arm of a concrete squeeze pump shows inside the broken building housing the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Fukushima Prefecture on March 24, 2011. Steam is seen rising from around a fuel-handling crane (top L, green). The pump's 50-meter arm has been used to pour water into the spent fuel pool of the reactor as part of efforts to get the crippled plant under control. (Photo courtesy of Tokyo Electric Power Co.) The warning came as levels of radioactive iodine flushed into the sea near the plant spiked to a new high and the Wall Street Journal said it had obtained disaster response blueprints which said the plant's operators were woefully unprepared for the scale of the disaster.
Water is still being poured into the damaged reactors to cool melting fuel rods.
But one expert says the radiation leaks will be ongoing and it could take 50 to 100 years before the nuclear fuel rods have completely cooled and been removed.
"As the water leaks out, you keep on pouring water in, so this leak will go on for ever," said Dr John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation.
"There has to be some way of dealing with it. The water is connecting in tunnels and concrete-lined pits at the moment and the question is whether they can pump it back.
"The final thing is that the reactors will have to be closed and the fuel removed, and that is 50 to 100 years away.
"It means that the workers and the site will have to be intensely controlled for a very long period of time."
But Laurence Williams, Professor of Nuclear Safety at England's University of Central Lancashire and the former head nuclear regulator for the UK, is relatively comfortable with the situation.
"I have been monitoring it for the last couple of weeks and [the] three reactors seem to be more or less unchanged from initially when they got into the seawater flowing into them," he said.
"We don't know exactly the state of the fuel in those reactors but looking at the data, the pressures and temperatures look fairly stable over the last couple of weeks.
"My view is that as there hasn't been any sort of major catastrophic release of radioactivity, if they can continue to get the fresh water into the reactors and cool them, the decay heat is now fairly stabilising.
"It will take some time before it disappears but so far, so good. But it will take some time to bring under control."
Both experts agree capping the damaged reactors with concrete is not an option.
Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal says it has obtained disaster-readiness plans which show the facility only had one satellite phone and a single stretcher in case of an accident.
The blueprints also provided no detail about the possibility of using firefighters from Tokyo or national troops - both of which have been part of the response to the Fukushima crisis - to deal with any disaster.
Levels of radioactive iodine-131 in the Pacific off the plant have been recorded at a new high of 4,385 times the legal limit.
In 2002, the plant's operator TEPCO admitted to falsifying safety reports, leading to all of its 17 boiling water reactors being shut down for inspection.
TEPCO has already vowed to dismantle the four reactors at the centre of the world's worst atomic accident in 25 years, but now Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan says the Fukushima plant must be scrapped.
136 Comments so far
Show AllHow different this information is from what is reported on MSM. The nuclear industry in the U.S. certainly has a friend in the media.
Don't worry about the radiation levels. If you Google: 'EPA to raise safe radiation levels', you'll see lots of independent news sites saying that the EPA is seeking to do just that.
I would probably give this UC Berkeley link the most credence, although other articles also quote the same PEER article.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2162
Never forget, the EPA are the same people who said the air was safe to breath at ground zero in the days after 9/11.
No mention of this in the M$M yet, (yes I know you are all shocked!)
What a wonderful world this could be. When something goes wrong, just change the standards to make things right. Of course, they will have to do a good job of keeping the public from seeing the images of children born with their brain outside of the skull, or with giant, inoperable tumors on their back that contain their kidneys, like the children in the photo essay from Minsk, White Russia that someone posted a few days ago here on CD.
http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl
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Professor of Nuclear Safety at England's University of Central Lancashire
Well! If he says it's okay then shut my mouth!
It says he's the former head nuclear regulator for the UK. A grotesquely lying schill.
No doubt he's in line for a 30 minute interview on NPR.
What did he say that seemed wrong to you?
Just that he thinks the situation is stable?
I don't understand.
Apparently that he thinks it non-catastrophic. Stable and catastrophic do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Here is a good indicator of what's on the mind of Congress.
http://politics.nytimes.com/
congress/bills/112/hr1/amendments
This is the fight to cut spending, neo-cons trying to enslave the worker
While sending million of taxpayer dollars to fight wars!
This is what war looks like! We are made to think we are NOT paying more taxes to fund the wars.
It's what massive greed and pillaging looks like. We're being rapped by our law makers. Or to put it nicely, they're divesting us of our rights - for profiteering.
That list in your link is really ticking me off, good link. We really are being run by the corrupt aren't we...
Prohibits the E.P.A. From Regulating Greenhouse Gases - passed - ah but the list goes on and on.
"We're being rapped by our law makers."
LMAO.
True, they are rapping (and also tap-dancing to their own perverse rhythm) and all the fools are listening. But they are also RAPING us, and no one seems to hear our screams. Then when we call the “authorities” we are bullied as sluts who “deserved” what we got.
John Wayne starred as Red Adair, the famous Oilwell Firefighter...
Red and his team used to blow out raging oilwell fires with explosives...
sounds like the same is possible with radioactive material...an explosion would also explode the material, stopping the current reaction...
the question becomes one of size, and ulitmate danger...tradeoff...
might not smaller, controlled nuclear detonation(s) within these facilities stop the event, and lessen the long-term risk?
again, so Deepwater Horizon...
'no, we can't try that...no, not that, either...no, that's off the table...'
one questions motivations...
all the while, the ocean takes shot after shot in the gut...woe be nigh...
dubet wrote:
"sounds like the same is possible with radioactive material...an explosion would also explode the material, stopping the current reaction..."
All reports that I've seen indicate that the heat being generated is decay heat. That no nuclear reaction is going on. Alpha emitters produce much heat as they disintegrate; a chunk of polonium-210 will glow from incadescence sitting on a table. I don't know of any way to "turn off" radioactivity, except to bombard the isotope with thermal neutrons, in the hope of transmuting the isotope to a safer isotope.
John
So they use a Neutron Bomb?
Frankly, I think the use of nuclear or any bomb is not a good idea. We have no idea what will happen if bombs are used.
It was dubet for the bomb, not John.
I'd say we have a fairly good idea that a bomb would take the radioactive material that is currently concentrated and a steady and geographically small stream of irradiated water flowing into the sea and spread it all over the place through the air.
It is a criminally stupid idea.
Totally different from the proposal to use the heat of a nuclear detonation to fuse the cracked ocean floor in the Deepwater Horizon situation. In that case the propasal might have actually worked and the radioactive fallout would have been relatively confined by the depth of the water. Until the currents spread it,that is, which is why it was never taken seriously.
-matti.
Sop up the stray radiation with boron (boric), use resin like the stuff on subs - they're going to try both. (Boric was being used, but they ran out and had to have more airlifted from Korea. So much for being prepared for a nuclear accident. Ha!)
There still is question whether momentary recriticality has occured - TEPCO substantiates - but not a serious concern (yet).
Look in WiKi at Nuclear Fission.
The process is Neutrons hitting Uranium and emitting heat, different elements and more Neutrons. It is an Exothermic Reaction, Thus Nuclear Reaction, thus Nuclear Reactors.
Nothing has changed in this process post earthquake except this process has lost its coolant water and the rods are melting and emitting clouds of radioactive toxic through its destroyed , from Hydrogen Explosions, superstructure.
It is a more intense, toxic and out of control Nuclear Fission, Exothermic Reaction then pre earthquake.
With the possibilty of complete meltdowns and explosions Globally sending all the radioactive material and plutonium into the Atmosphere.
Glenn,
The process you are describing is the actual fission reaction. The fission reaction ceased within about 2 minutes after the earthquake. The control rods were inserted in all of the operating reactors like they were supposed to in an emergency.
When the uranium atom is fissioned or split, in addition to a couple of neutrons, there there are usually 2 fission fragments given off. These fission fragments are almost all intensely radioactive, giving off beta particles, gamma rays, and a lot of heat. This is the decay heat and it needs to be managed. If there is no way to carry away the decay heat, that is when the risk of a meltdown occurs. This is also why they keep adding water to the reactors and the cooling pools.
When a nuclear reactor is turned off, it is rather like an old fashioned electric stove. When the burner is turned off on an old stove, it stays hot for a long time and that heat needs to be managed for quite a while just like it did when the burner was on. Unfortunately, it is easier to manage the heat by taking a skillet off the stove after you turn off the power than it is to manage the heat when you turn off all the electricity at a nuclear plant.
Bill
Yes but what happens when the fuel rods melt? Isn't part of what controls the reaction the distance between the rods? Doesn't a melt mean there is less surface area for the water to cool? Do the control rods melt too and, if so, do they still act to prevent criticality?
reset,
You are right. One of the ways that is used to control criticality is to through dimensional control. If you have melting, you obviously have lost control over spacing.
They have been pumping boric acid in with the water. The main reason for doing this is to have the boron there as a nuclear poison if they loose dimensional control. Boron is a very effective nuclear poison. If the water boils off as steam, the boron is left behind.
I don't know if the reactors could, at this stage, get hot enough to melt the control rods. My gut says no but I don't have the numbers. The poison value from the control rods is not lost if they melt but you obviously loose dimensional control over the placing of the poison.
Bill
What exactly are the control rods made out of - kind of hard to figure melting points if you don't know exactly what's involved.
I have questions regarding some opinions I've heard about what might have happened in #4 - such as why didn't the building show more heat damage if it got hot enough for the fuel rods to ignite, as some claim? #3 is a real mess - but the spent fuel pool in #4 doesn't make sense, unless some of the experts are confused about what they are looking at in the snorkel videos. And I can't help but wonder how long you'd have to run that snorkel to get enough water into the pool to make a difference - that is, not have it all boil off as steam - 70 tons sounds like an awful lot of water, even under pressure. What dimensions are we normally looking at when they're filling a spent fuel pool? Rate of fill? Time to fill? Anybody know?
Did you see the video of #3 where a high volume of steam was coming out at fairly high pressure from an interior wall (south side of E-W wall) about midway? There were several small jets, but towards the back (E) there was a large circular jet that splattered when it hit an opposing obstacle - some sort of small wall, seemed to be near the fuel-rod lift. This looked to be where I guessed would be about where the reactor containment wall would be, and it was leaking along the top edge. There was another independent stream of steam coming out on the south exterior wall towards the seaward side, which I assumed to be the spent fuel pool. Whaddayathink guys?
Boron (B-10, right, in an alloy?) itself has a pretty high melting temperature - something like 7000ºF maybe? What about oxide? What happens to the boric at high temps, I wonder? Too much chemistry (and too many years ago) for me.
Anyway, from the looks of the pictures from TMI, the control rods were just as gone as the fuel rods. If they 'floated' on the melted fuel rods, there wouldn't be enough contact with water to slow down the neutrons, would there? And the boron would still sop them up, so it should all be pretty balanced, no, once the decay rate is slowed down? (Figure best to ask now - nobody will talk about this when it's over.)
This is just speculation on my part, but it seems while boron might help when the rods are apart, in a molten pool of fuel it wouldn't do any good unless it was part of the melt. If the water boils away leaving a coating of boron on top of the melt it doesn't seem like it would inhibit the nuclear reactions because it would only catch whatever was going outside the melt.
If the boron was part of the melt then it might act to inhibit the reactions.
So, in what I would assume is a seething molten mass, would boron sink into the melt or form a crust?
AB,
B-10 is the active isotope for neutron absorption but I think they use natural boron in some applications (like boric acid spiking of the water) because of the cost of isotope separation. B-10 occurs in nature with B-11 on a 20%/80% ratio.
I have not been able to find a definitive design document for the control rods for the Mark 1 BWR. One reference talked about an alloy of silver, cadmium and indium; another talked about boron carbide. Either one would be encapsulated in stainless steel.
I don't have a clue as to how these materials would distribute if there were a full core melt. Uranium dioxide, the dominant material in the core is very dense and would tend to segregate towards the bottom. I tend to envision the various structures just slumping into a heap with relatively low melting material flowing into the voids but I am out of my area of expertise.
As far as the spent fuel pools, pool #4 had fuel that had just been removed from the reactor. The reactor was undergoing a periodic inspection. This recently removed fuel is going to be a very intense heat source-much more so than the older fuel in the other pools.
As I understand it, and I have only seen one reference to it, there are two compartments in each of the spent fuel pools. There is a smaller one that is more shallow than the rest of the pool. The wall on this smaller pool in pool #4 is damaged and this part of the pool is not water tight. This shallower area of the pool does contain fuel. This is the source of the very high radiation for pool #4. See:
www . atomicinsights . com/2011/04/fukushima-nuclear-accident-exceptional-summary-by-murray-e-miles . html
I have not seen this information anywhere else but the guy sounds like he knows what he is talking about.
Bill
Droll Troll --------
Why do you consistently minimize the catastrophe?
In your reply to my post you ignored the dynamics of the melting fuel rods and the possibility of melting control rods and the possibilty as one GE engineer guessed of a melting through the stainless steel containment vessel having occurred at one reactor.
With your obvious knowledge you should be able to consider all possible scenarios without consistently ignoring, very probable scenarios.
So as we see from the above posts the efforts to stop the fission may have amounted to nil.
He didn't ignore you. Dense material at the bottom will self-contain because it is not in contact with water, which is needed to slow down the neutrons and sustain reaction. Also, it would not be in contact with air, so can't burn. Boron would still continue to absorb neutrons. Criticality - if ever reached - would be momentary at best. But nobody has seen this kind of event before - even TMI didn't expose the core for very long (comparitively) and everyone is on virgin ground here.
We have no reason to panic - barring an explosion, there should be no more liklihood of further large releases of radioactive material that would drift aloft. The decay heat is less every hour - time is on our side (not necessarily so if they have so much contamination, for the Japanese). Keeping the fuel pools (and cores) cooled makes the situation relatively 'stable' - even if disastrous.
There is little chance of 'the China Syndrome' of melting through primary containment - as far as I know, they are also flooding seawater into secondary containment as well. The worst would have been done when there was no cooling to the reactor. Now the problem is keepig #4 (and other) spent fuel pools cooled.
Glenn,
I try to be as accurate as I can. I will acknowledge that I originally underestimated the severity of this accident.
The probability of an actual melt through is, in my opinion, very low. At TMI-2 the melted core penetrated less than an inch into the bottom of the containment vessel. I believe the core was uncovered more promptly at TMI than in the Fukushima reactors.
I am not very familiar with BWRs but as I understand the Mark 1 design, there are some hatches in the primary coolant loop that could leak if they overheated. This would account for the intensely radioactive water in the basement of reactor #2.
I have not seen anything that would indicate that any of the reactors have returned to criticality after the initial scrams. If one of the reactors were to return to critical after loosing dimensional control, all bets are off on a melt through but I think this is quite unlikely .
Bill
Added later: I just checked the TEPCO site. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 all have an indicated temperature above atmospheric boiling. That would indicate that the pressure vessels are intact.
This morning I told my wife an April fool joke. I said: "The Japanese have decided to use a nuclear weapon to blow up the nuclear facility." But quickly reassured her it was an April fool joke. I never thought anybody would seriously propose such an idea.
Especially since it's the fear of the worlds countries that more particles will get into the atmosphere and contaminate their crops and waters.
We keep getting assured they aren't going to blow to calm those fears. Blowing up the reactors - were it possible - would only serve to make this disaster totally uncontained. Let's not forget that Europe saw thousands of cancer increases from the fall out of Chernobyl and has severe issues with crops being ruined. There are still places today that they can't grow crops in because of the contamination in the soil.
Nowadays, I expect some high ranking industry poobah to make exactly that sort of suggestion.
dubet, interesting you brought up John Wayne in a discussion about radiation. There is strong speculation that the cancer he died of was the result of him being in a movie that was filmed the area of nuclear bomb test.
My sources are still on the job - and extremely worried, especially about the resistance of the Japanese government to evacuation and the refusal to allow outside personal to try to assess the situation at the plant. Guess they don't want anyone to tell the world what an absolutely FUBAR operation they're running there - our people would do the same, you know, if they got caught with their pants down - again.
Congress needs to be talking about energy needs and the direction WE will go; RIGHT NOW!
One thing for sure, I don't want boiling water reactors; PERIOD!
Now is the time to push it. Conversion to the Sun & Wind!
Most of all like in the movie "Affluenza" start a life style that gives you more time to yourself. Eliminate the habits and choices patterns that marketers instilled years ago when you watched cartoons on the tube.
The time you spend with your family is priceless and it's free.
Don't you mean: any nuclear reactors are a bad idea?
I think we agree that radioactive material is too difficult to use safely, too hard to control once out of control.
Leave the uranium in the ground is my personal feeling.
China is messing with thorium reactors which are in development. No doubt these produce waste that lasts forever too. But, I believe they are much less likely to pollute air and water, than boiling reactors.
I'd compromise a deal to eliminate ALL boiling reactors and supplement that loss with a Thorium Reactor until we convert to Sun & Wind. I reality, we can't just eliminate fossil fuels just like that and not starve most of the people on the planet.
I personally believe NOW, we should eliminate ALL nukes; leave it in the ground!
And by the way, some company is drilling and exploring for uranium in NE North Dakota. I can just imagine a time when that part of North Dakota gets ripped up like West Virginia, and for that matter, like North Dakota's own coal fields in the Beulah area.
I still don't think any reactors are a good or necessary solution. As you said, the sun is free.
Indeed, this is the problem. No one can control the sun.
The Battle of Chernobyl is remarkably IDENTICAL to what is happening in Japan.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/
That this disaster has not stopped nuclear power in it's tracks in the USA & elsewhere is testament to that industry's financial and propaganda prowess (which, unfortunately, is a lot more adept than the actual operations part). If Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima is not enough to consign nukes to the dustbin of history, then I truly shudder for future generations.
Please don't leave out our own little mess right here in the Pacific Northwest, the Hanford Nuclear site that is costing us around 2 billion a year, and won't be cleaned up until 2054 at the earliest!
Yeah, they buried Trojan there - got it out of our neighborhood anyway. And Hanford is leaching through to the Columbia River - haven't heard anything lately, so maybe it's already there...
Don't forget the Plutonium fire at the Rocky Flats Plutonum Pit Factory near Denver.
Isn't it cute how they turn these places into 'Wildlife Reserves' - they did the same in Russia as at Rocky Flats. Now they have radioactive game (does it cook itself?). Ha!
Sorry to say, it has reached the point where we absolutely CANNOT trust anything our governemnt tells us. First it was the huge oil spill and now the nuclear disaster.
At age 67, I'm glad I had the years I did. It doesn't look like there are many years left for this planet and my heart breaks for the children who are just now being born into this world!
Our Congress members (half of whom are already millionaires) are workingf for the corporations who pay them handsomely to vote their wishes! The average person doesn't have a chance these days!
Professor Laurence Wiliams says "so far, so good". That is 100 times more delusional than " Heck of a job, Brownie."
See a drunk tap dancing in a mine field. He hasn't blown up yet. "So far, so good."
Having read some of the posts in the past few weeks...... Not to mention 'expert' information.. It is interesting that there is such a difference of - not even opinion - but facts - when it comes to all things radioactive and nuclear.
It seems to me that anyone who has gone to university and studied this subject did not/does not, get unbiased information. Any institution that offers nuclear engineering, etc., in an advanced degree program, (along with research), is getting their funding from the industry or military (which are morphed, of course). And this is where everyone's information originates, as far as i am concerned. There are obviously some basic 'scientific' facts regarding uranium. But it is my own belief that when people talk as though they are really on top of things, they don't realize the source of their 'information' - knowledgeable as it often sounds. Why else is there so much argument over the 'facts'?
We aren't arguing over the distance between the earth and the sun are we? Or if H2O describes the water molecule.......
When I went to university, I never felt like I was getting a biased education. Things may have changed in recent years, but my memory of it was of being introduced to a lot of new information on a variety of subject in lectures. The things that excited my interest led me to go to the library and read up on items, on my own volition. I feel that I am largely self-taught.
Any professional librarian knows that a good library collection has a wide, comprehensive variety of publications on any topic. Not only that, but interlibrary loan allows users to order in information from other libraries including the Library of Congress which has copies of most everything. To suggest that a university education promotes a political point of view seems like quite a reach to me. I know some neocons might like to suggest such things, though.
You've outed me, Bodryn!!! Although i am not certain i even understand the connection.
I didn't say anything about getting an education. I am speaking about one particular area. My brother is a nuclear engineer. Not that it matters, but i have been 'exposed' to my share of 'objective facts' on the subject.
The process of education is by cirriculum, meaning certain things are excluded over other less relevant things. That is why a MBA is not a socialworker, It is a rather linear approach to information. To think there is no agenda to curriculum iis foolish. People are prepared to sit in cubicals and preform tasks for corporations, they are taught to be a part of the team not the decision maker. People are taught agribusiness not agriculture and here again no decision making required.