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Experts: Radiation at Fukushima Plant Far Worse Than Thought
Water at surprisingly low levels; damage "worse than expected"
Radiation levels inside Fukushima's reactor 2 have reached fatally high levels, and levels of water are far lower than previously thought, experts say today.
A radiation monitor indicates 131.00 microsieverts per hour near the No.4 and No.3 buildings at the tsunami-crippled Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture February 28, 2012. (REUTERS/Kimimasa Mayama/Pool) The current radiation levels are so high that even robots cannot enter. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) says that new robots and equipment will need to be developed to deal with the lethal levels of radiation.
TEPCO spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto told the Associated Press, "We have to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiation" when locating and removing melted fuel during the decommissioning.
At ten times the lethal dose, the radiation levels are at their highest point yet.
At the current level of 73 sieverts, the data gathering robots can only stand two to three hours of exposure. But, Tsuyoshi Misawa, a reactor physics and engineering professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute, told The Japan Times, "Two or three hours would be too short. At least five or six hours would be necessary." He added that "the shallowness of the water level is a surprise, and the radiation level is awfully high."
* * *
The Japan Times: Reactor 2 radiation too high for access
73 sieverts laid to low water; dose too high even for robots
Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour and any attempt to send robots in will require them to have greater resistance than currently available, experts said Wednesday.
Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month , Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
The experts said the high radiation level is due to the shallow level of coolant water — 60 cm — in the containment vessel, which Tepco said in January was believed to be 4 meters deep. Tepco has only peeked inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. It has few clues as to the status of reactors 1 and 3, which also suffered meltdowns, because there is no access to their insides.
The utility said the radiation level in the reactor 2 containment vessel is too high for robots, endoscopes and other devices to function properly.
* * *
BBC News: Probe finds high radiation in damaged Fukushima reactor
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has said damage to one of the reactors is much worse than previously thought. [...]
On Tuesday workers managed to insert a probe into reactor number two for only the second time and found damage worse than expected.
Radiation was up to 10 times the fatal dose, the highest yet recorded at the plant. The level of water cooling the melted-down nuclear fuel was also far lower than expected.
The other two melted-down reactors, which are yet to be examined closely, could be in an even worse state, our correspondent adds.
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Show AllSec. 2384. Seditious conspiracy
-STATUTE- If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/18C115.txt
Wow - radiation so high that it's killing ROBOTS! - in two to three hours. That can't be good.
And to simply wait it out - well, that could take a few hundred thousand years...
Put it this way: they won't be building new kindergardens in the Fukushima area any time soon.
The Fukushima debacle: who the f*** came up with the bright idea of heating our common bathtub with plutonium??
And finally words of comfort: "The other two melted-down reactors, which are yet to be examined closely, could be in an even worse state". How nice. - Science Fiction is sooo last century.
Quite possibly the radiation levels are adequate to destroy solid state control electronics. That sort of thing is a problem in space in some high radiation regions, like around Jupiter. The electronics has to be specially shielded to survive ...
It is a problem with even well-functioning reactors, for example.
It is just that typically no one is quite this desperate to get at something with such prompt dose output.
Io's sulfur volcanos, met Jovian magnetic fields, that produces an actual dynamo out of it's physical orbit about Jupiter -- something like millions of amperes of current, continuously (over countless milleniums).
I know a little bit of what was done some years back, in the ways the "electronics [are] specially shielded to survive," but that is only a part of the problem, as the hardened transistor electronics' physical p/n junctions are immersed within various bathtubs of isolating intrinsic and sacrificial pathways for extraneous ground currents and ionizing radiation effects (unlocking/discharging stored charge lockups).
At highly extreme current densities, metallic circuitry traces electro-migrate, or evaporate -- so this is far beyond the normal bounds of design.
Lead shielding is not likely to be enough, as there is a heavy penalty on anything and everything's mass, when fuel and instruments are primary concerns -- so designing survivable electronics is mandatory. Having RTGs nearby, is clearly part of the problem of anticipating and sustaining radiation damage.
Because of the extremes of qualifying such, for actual operation -- going down to tracing essentially every last atom's history, from the mine to launch -- it is unlikely that anything close to that degree of rigor is used on Earth based electronics in robots.
Military satellites and other equipment yes, civilian satellites to a far lessor degree.
Out in space, there's no one to call to replace the failed parts -- so Cassini cost a billions dollars (to build), and is still working relatively well.
Here on Earth, most radiation hardened stuff, is specified at far less severe levels, unless survivability issues are similar (like fighting and winning a nuclear war) to the leverage of multi-billion dollar investments (or risks).
Robots dying at Fukushima are likely of significantly inferior design -- as they can easily be replaced -- while some much more expensive models, may have benefited from the piles of rejected non-space qualified electronics, that while hardened, didn't meet the ultimate grade.
I don't know the details, but I suspect that other things like lubricants, could also be single points of failure, well before metals turn brittle and stress fracture into oblivion.
I doubt that the nukster boosters, want to advertise how their robots die, as that would lead folks to wonder how well flesh and blood, can ever react in any way well, to similar.
Children of the Tsunami
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnRk8W5Yhro
Impressive lying capabilities. No factual info to the contrary will change the assessment that everything is safe.
Translation: There is an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that has been occurring for more than a year at Fukushima Dai-ichi, and it's slowly tunneling it's way to the local water table, where an uncontrollable steam explosion is almost certain to occur, which will scatter radioactive debris across an area we will never be able to clean up or re-inhabit in the remainder of the existence of the human species.
"We have to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiation."
Translation: We have to build even more complex (and expensive) and therefore failure prone devices that won't melt into slag as we try to cover up this utter clusterfuck caused by human arrogance and greed. We'll get back to you once someone is able to invent 'unobtanium'.
In terms of uncontrollable explosions, I simply have no way of knowing or guessing yes or no. Three Mile Island has sat for decades without a further disaster, not that the first disaster wasn't bad enough. However, Fukushima is far more wrecked inside than TMI.
The middle of Japan will be rather habitable by humans someday, just not in the entire 21st century.
I'm glad to have cheered people up from Galen's utterly depressing outlook. OK, maybe the unvarnished truth is at least as depressing as our fears.
Far more indeed. TMI had some bent fuel rods that had partially melted and twisted. It sounds as if Fukushima has melted pools already down on the floor, below a much messier and melted fuel rod area that's scrambled all over the place ...
Your intermittent light-bulb analogy is the best I've seen to describe the confirmed fission that has been verified by fission products like radioactive gases and short-lived radioisotopes falling out hundreds of miles from the plant, and Blue Neutron beams detected by observatories and physics labs at universities in Japan.
As to corium explosions under the reactor, I'm not sure we've ever had a triple meltdown 35 feet from Sea level before. Nuclear Engineers like Arnie Gundersen refuse to speculate without hard data on the "China Syndrome" eternal melt into the earth concern. Since Tepco wouldn't release any meaningful data at all until it was already leaked by whistleblowers, that data has been hard to come by. It was so hard, that Fairewinds Associates, if I understand correctly, finally just went over there themselves and collected their own dirt samples downwind of the plant. The results were shocking to those stupid enough to believe anything that Tepco says. Downtown Tokyo is a contaminated radiation zone by US standards, and 30 million people are getting cooked by it as I type this.
The radiation plumes DID NOT just shit fallout over the ocean as Tepco claimed for a year. Tepco/Gov trashed/Hid 167 SPEEDI simulations showing heavy fallout over Tokyo, according to a angry staff member four floors down from the prime ministers office. They then covered it up by trashing all minutes of cabinet sessions. None survive for the month of March. No government radiation readings for March 2011 exist any more.
30 million people in Tokyo got Nuked, and it's never been reported on any news outlet anywhere in the world. It's the greatest coverup of all time. Watergate was nothing compared to this. Ever since Japanese companies bought out the nuke divisions of Westinghouse and General Electric, there's no way they are going to let this get out. It already destroyed the value of Tepco and the French Firm Areva (sp?)
If the nuking of Tokyo gets reported in the US, the nuclear industry will collapse and there will be a secret internal selloff of Westinghouse and GE stock faster than Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. Of course, our pension funds will collapse, and, as usual, the little guy on the street will get left holding the bag with no retirement.
All my posts are just my opinion only, and I could be wrong about everything. BTW, guys, the Mini-Me poster "tj" in small letters is not me, so please disregard his demented posts intended to spoof my persona at CD.
TJ (the real one)
'Good Post Paul,
'Your intermittent light-bulb analogy is the best I've seen to describe the confirmed fission that has been verified by fission products like radioactive gases and short-lived radioisotopes falling out hundreds of miles from the plant, and Blue Neutron beams detected by observatories and physics labs at universities in Japan.'
Of course fission is still occurring, as is true of every nuclear power plant (NPP) after shut-down. The minor actinides produced during NPP operation fission spontaneously, with long half-lives. Those actinides also produce a neutron flux, which fissions the U-235 fuel. But NONE of that indicates criticality. There's absolutely no reason to attribute high temperatures to a critical sate.
John
LMFAO.
This charlatan: R.Finston, was apparently banned from CD and was the same poster you endlessly praised as a trustworthy expert on all things nuclear. What a joke!
"Every nuclear power plant (NPP) after shut-down", as you put it, doesn't spew this blight on the public, so forget the Normal Shutdown comparison. "Transient Recriticality" are how real scientists (not anonymous jokers on physics blogs) describe the likelihood of what Tepco blamed on "Spontaneous Fission" (see at the end of my post for the 140-fold increase in Krypton-85 that says the pile has gone critical.)
Now you're denying the possibility of something that even Tepco and IAEA admits is possible: That the piles may have gone critical in the past, after the hull breach. The escalating temperatures are just one indicator added to the lethal radiation and deadly gases coming out of those craters which suggest recriticality. Even the steel buildings have now turned into emitters that no one can get near. They can't be approached by any human or robot known.
Wiki says:
I agree with those who say transient recriticalities may have occured at Fukushima. It all depends on the geometry of the escaped fuel/fuel pools. Tepco assumes it spread out perfectly even on the floor, so that cold shutdown is achieved covered in cooling fluid. I assume that that is wishful thinking, and that it's quite possible that the fuel may have assumed a Chernobyl "Elephant's Foot" shape, in spots, were the inside can never be cooled below 5000 degrees Celsius, therefore It's thermally dangerous until the Sun dies. Corrections to my thinking are invited.
All my posts are just my opinions only. I am not in the nuclear industry, so I could be wrong about everything.
TJ
enenews said:
Tepco: Xenon At Fukushima Not Result Of “Critical” Nuclear Reaction, Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2011 at 11:13 pm ET:
“Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) said Thursday the detection of radioactive xenon at its stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant, indicating recent nuclear fission, was not the result of a sustained nuclear chain reaction known as a criticality, as feared, but a case of ‘spontaneous’ fission, Kyodo News reported.” [...]
“The utility known as Tepco has been analyzing the phenomenon” [...]
Xenon at Fukushima Isn’t From Critical Reaction, Tepco Says, Bloomberg, November 3 at 11:14 pm ET:
[...] “The discovery of xenon, announced yesterday, at the plant was caused by “natural” nuclear fission, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the company known as Tepco, said today at a press briefing in Tokyo.” [...]
AS EX-SKF noted, the xenon increase in recent days has been relatively minor.
Rather it is the 140-fold increase in Krypton-85 over the past day that needs to be addressed by Tepco and the Japan gov’t.
h/t Anonymous tip
''Now you're denying the possibility of something that even Tepco and IAEA admits is possible: That the piles may have gone critical in the past, after the hull breach. The escalating temperatures are just one indicator added to the lethal radiation and deadly gases coming out of those craters which suggest recriticality. Even the steel buildings have now turned into emitters that no one can get near. They can't be approached by any human or robot known.'
Increasing temperatures in no way suggest recriticality. Ditto for high levels of radiation and for escaping gaseous radioisotopes. A shut-down reactor normally produces the above, if the cooling-water level is to low.
'Wiki says:
'...
,...
,...
'[edit]Observed effects
' [edit]Blue glow
' Main article: Ionized air glow
' Many criticality accidents have been observed to emit a blue flash of light and to heat the material substantially. This blue flash or "blue glow" is often incorrectly attributed to Cherenkov radiation, most likely due to the very similar color of the light emitted by both of these phenomena. This is merely a coincidence.
' The blue glow of a criticality accident results from the spectral emission of the excited ionized atoms (or excited molecules) of air (mostly oxygen and nitrogen) falling back to unexcited states, which happens to produce an abundance of blue light. This is also the reason electrical sparks in air, including lightning, appear electric blue. It is a coincidence that the color of Cherenkov light and light emitted by ionized air are a very similar blue despite their very different methods of production. It is worth remarking that the smell of ozone was said to be a sign of high ambient radioactivity by Chernobyl liquidators.'
A blue glow and ozone production are indeed indicative of ionized air. It can be caused by high levels of ionizing radiation, or by very high voltages. But in no way does it suggest recriticality.
John
What we are talking about here folks is unexplained excess neutron beams and glow, suggesting inadvertent criticality, not just the normal residual neutron flux present in a normal shutdown. To say that the pile can't go critical even for a moment is dogmatic and underscores why we can't trust people in this industry who think in such unscientific absolutes. Credible Physicists who write papers for IAEA say this type of thinking is dangerous and wrong:
http://japanfocus.org/-Arjun-Makhijani/3509Then his conclutions:
If I understand his position correctly, this certain poster here who I have been responding to, suggests there is Zero chance the piles have gone inadvertently critical since they left the RPV's at Fukushima. His statement "But in no way does it suggest recriticality" is blatantly wrong. At this time there there is no other explanation for these massive readings.TJ
(In other words, nothing else can explain this high CI-38 number except the freaking nuclear "Pile" has cranked up on it's own, going critical and zapping everyone not in a bomb shelter. -TJ)
But I'm sure our resident plutonium promoter and expert Venusian astronomer disagrees in his ongoing quest to prove Murphy's Law wrong. ;)TJ
Thank you for courageously continuing to post the TRUTH, and challenge the purveyors of deceitful propaganda and misinformation, which is ONLY made more OBVIOUS when attempting to lie about non-radiativity issues -- by:
"our resident plutonium promoter and expert Venusian astronomer "
See Mar 31 2012 - 4:55pm
See Mar 31 2012 - 5:11pm
I've heard a rumor, that in "his ongoing quest to prove Murphy's Law wrong. ;)," John has been wearing his left shoe on his right foot, and his right shoe on his left foot -- as a painful reminder that the often repetition of something extraordinarily WRONG, will lead others to believe such, as if it might be true.
It's been said that John, has even convinced himself of this fallacious appearance of truth, although he likely will soon need corrective surgery, to continue to be able to walk at all … … …
The actual person "Murphy" was a NASA Edwards engineer running rocket sled tests, which are understandably extremely expensive to produce. He noticed that two failed accelerometers (one as a redundant backup -- haha) that could be installed backwards (which thereby, don't work at all), seemed too often, to be errantly installed backwards.
Therefore, "if something can go wrong, it will" was born.
-----------
Which is further proven to be the case, with my own retractions about Venusian Astronomy.
Perhaps, Murphy was an optimist ?
Thanks for your praise. Unlike paid Nuke sunshine-pumpers, it's my only compensation.
TJ
Coming from you, that really means a lot. Now if we could just win the respect of billionaires whose longevity is tied to our efforts we might be able to divert currently wasted nuclear subsidy into non-radioactive renewable sectors where it might reduce two extinctional threats. Cancer and many other ailments might become a rare thing instead of the scourge that it is today. Complex dirty sources of power causing global warming might be replaced by simpler solar, wind and geothermal.
That is my wish.
Thanks for you great wit which has greatly lifted my spirits these many years.
TJ
'A certain poster here claimed:
' "A blue glow and ozone production are indeed indicative of ionized air. It can be caused by high levels of ionizing radiation, or by very high voltages. But in no way does it suggest recriticality."
'What we are talking about here folks is unexplained excess neutron beams and glow, suggesting inadvertent criticality, not just the normal residual neutron flux present in a normal shutdown. To say that the pile can't go critical even for a moment is dogmatic and underscores why we can't trust people in this industry who think in such unscientific absolutes. Credible Physicists who write papers for IAEA say this type of thinking is dangerous and wrong:'
Of course reactor fuel can become momentarily critical; I didn't say otherwise. But if criticality did occur, it would likely last a fraction of a second, and increase temperature by perhaps a few millikelvins.
'If I understand his position correctly, this certain poster here who I have been responding to, suggests there is Zero chance the piles have gone inadvertently critical since they left the RPV's at Fukushima. His statement "But in no way does it suggest recriticality" is blatantly wrong. At this time there there is no other explanation for these massive readings.
No, he didn't say that. But which massive readings? If you mean TEPCO's measurements of chlorine-38, the company retracted them. And may I suggest that before you put too faith in the (translated) text in your post, you may want to decipher this?
'5) Please measure other isotopes of interest (such as Te-129, which was retracted by TEPCO on April 20th as well), even if they are below the detection limit'
Measure a quantity that cannot be detected? I don't think so.
John
//* sarcasm off
The spent fuel rod ponds are still loaded with tons of radioactive materials, including tons of plutonium. "Cold shutdown" my ass... The number 2 spent fuel rod pond is sitting on beams up in the air leaning over like the Tower of Pizza, ready to collapse as it is, even an earthquake of magnitude four or five may tip it over.
Normally the outer buildings are designed to contain radiation releasing from entering the atmosphere if an accident occurs within the reactor... The buildings are blown apart, they can contain zip.
There are no guarantees more explosions won't happen and some day possibly blow the entire plant sky high..
Then there is Fukushima number 2 power plant located near the ocean and just a few miles south of Fukushima number one... That plant with four reactors also suffered damage from the original earthquake and is reported to have been put in cold shutdown, whatever that may mean when Tepco officials state it.
So a heavy quake near either or both number one or two Fukushima nuclear plants may make the already disaster seem to be rather minor in comparison and minor it is not.
Millions will likely develop cancer all around the world in the coming years from the Fukushima disaster and of course none of them will have been caused by the Fukushima meltdowns......... But they will be.
So far only one pro nuker shill has shown up here that I see... I imagine they are having a conference and getting their ducks lined up with advice from the big guns with what to to write before posting any of their lying comments.... Johnny come lately... This should be a tough one for him. .
Scientists say plutonium may be the worst of all the fission byproducts that could enter the environment as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. That's why MOX fuel rods that are piled up in spent fuel pools near the Unit 3 reactor, which consist of a mix of plutonium and uranium isotopes, have become the number one concern of workers at the plant.
Plutonium-239, the isotope found in the spent MOX fuel, is much more radioactive than the depleted Uranium-238 in the fuel.
Plutonium emits alpha radiation, a highly ionizing form of radiation, rather than beta or gamma radiation. External exposure to alpha particles isn't much of a health risk, because they have a low penetration depth and are usually stopped by skin. When alpha-emitters get inside cells, on the other hand, they are extremely hazardous. (Just stop breathing and they won't get in). Alpha rays sent out from within cells cause somewhere between 10 and 1,000 times more chromosomal damage than beta or gamma rays.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, plutonium enters the bloodstream via the lungs, then moves throughout the body and into the bones, liver, and other organs. It generally stays in those places for decades, subjecting surrounding organs and tissues to a continual bombardment of alpha radiation and greatly increasing the risk of cancer, especially lung cancer, liver cancer and bone sarcoma.
Growing to inevitable red dwarf size, the Earth will be inside the Sun's sphere, so whatever residents are left, they needn't worry about "burns too low" getting too 'cool'
It is truly weird how little this has been discussed since this all began.
I have been expecting loud calls for reopening the Yucca Mountain plan for awhile, but haven't yet seen this happen.