Japan struggling to 'cool down' nuclear plant, minister says

[Bill Mattocks]

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.nuclear/

Not good.

 

[granfire]

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.nuclear/

Not good.

Yep, one of the reasons why those things are not really all that good...

Keeping my fingers crossed (and everything else for that matter...) I hope I get a chance to see Japan before it starts glowing in the dark.

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

Yep, one of the reasons why those things are not really all that good...

Keeping my fingers crossed (and everything else for that matter...) I hope I get a chance to see Japan before it starts glowing in the dark.

might be too late
word coming out is they have lost control of the pressure in three of their reactors and cannot control the heat.
1 has already started leaking radiation
and a second has radiation levels rising rapidly.
this could turn the entire northeast coast of Japan into Chernobyl if it continues to get worse.
I am not so sure I trust what the Japanese leaders are saying either, I think they may be more concerned with looking good then being safe.

 

[granfire]

Oh my!

 

[Sukerkin]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720489

The chap in the video seems to know what he's talking about - unlike the terrible journalist 'anchoring' the spot. This is what happens when you have 24 Hour news - everything turns into amateur-night sensationalism.

 

[granfire]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720489

The chap in the video seems to know what he's talking about - unlike the terrible journalist 'anchoring' the spot. This is what happens when you have 24 Hour news - everything turns into amateur-night sensationalism.

I know I shouldn't but that last remark made me chuckle!

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news-asia-pacific/?GT1=43001

Some 3,000 people within two miles (three kilometers) of the plant were urged to leave their homes, but the evacuation zone was more than tripled to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) after authorities detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.

funny how they say we have detected radiation leaks, then several hours later now are saying... no problem go about your business....
/shrug

 

[Twin Fist]

this isnt good.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I am reading reports online that say the main reactor building has exploded. I also saw video on CNN that said it was the nuclear reactor building that blew up. The government of Japan is saying that a) there was no explosion and b) even if there was, it was the 'outer building' of the reactor and not the metal container. The government of Japan has announced that radiation is dropping following the explosion, but they are evacuating a 15 mile area around the nuclear power plant.

Lots of contradictory information coming out, but from what I can see, there was an explosion of some sort, and the talking head 'experts' they are interviewing on MSNBC are saying that the core has either already melted down or is about to. They claim that a Chernobyl-style disaster can no longer be averted; it will do whatever it will do, no options.

Not good. Squared.

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

Japan claims it was only the outer containment wall that the explosion destroyed...
you know the outer containment wall....the one that they have been saying all along is the reason this disaster would not be another chernobyl... becuase the outside containment wall holds in all the radiation.... um ok...

ya this is just traditional Japanese bullcrap... they are so worried about their appearance to the world that they will go down into a pit of radioactive waste before they admit any problem with their reactors.

my guess is exactly what I said originally.. they have no control at all on whats going on..
the meltdown will happen, or has already happened in 1 reactor and the only thing able to contain that radioactivity is what they are saying was just destroyed in the explosion..

also sounds like they are saying they need to vent radioactive air from up to 4 more reactors to try to prevent them from blowing out the outerwalls...

I know its not what people want, but we need to distance ourselves from the Japanese problem at this point unless they are being straight up with our government and only giving this handjob story to the rest of the world.

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720489

The chap in the video seems to know what he's talking about - unlike the terrible journalist 'anchoring' the spot. This is what happens when you have 24 Hour news - everything turns into amateur-night sensationalism.

so does my original comment seem like Amateur-night sensationalism now?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

When the Japanese say "there may be cause for concern" you can be assured that Godzilla's already been ashore for a few hours and has finished his appetizers.
A formal request for help has been sent in.
That says the situation is much much more serious than the outside face is indicating.
I would expect should things go where it seems they are, that we could see damage west of the Rockies.

 

[billc]

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/12/stratfor-report-overheated/

A different look at the reactor problem.

STRATFOR report overheated?

Be a little wary about that STRATFOR report. Here’s recent news:

IWAKI, Japan — An explosion at a nuclear power station Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, but a radiation leak was decreasing despite fears of a meltdown from damage caused by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, officials said.
​

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said the explosion destroyed the exterior walls of the building where the reactor is placed, but not the actual metal housing enveloping the reactor.
​

The Fukushima Daiichi reactor is wildly different from the Chernobyl reactor, which was an uncontained, graphite-moderated reactor being run outside normal safety limits:

Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear expert, said a Chornobyl-style meltdown was unlikely.
​

“It’s not a fast reaction like at Chornobyl,” he said. “I think that everything will be contained within the grounds, and there will be no big catastrophe.”
​

In 1986, the Chornobyl nuclear reactor exploded and caught fire, sending a cloud of radiation over much of Europe. That reactor — unlike the Fukushima one — was not housed in a sealed container, so there was no way to contain the radiation once the reactor exploded.
​

The reactor in trouble has already leaked some radiation: Before the explosion, operators had detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1′s control room.
​

“Eight times normal” in this context would be around average background radiation in Colorado. More recent reports put the dose rate at 620 millirem/hour, which is certainly not good, and justifies evacuation but not panic.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

More conflicting reports.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.quake.nuclear.failure/?hpt=T1

Tokyo (CNN) -- A meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors in northern Japan, an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told CNN Sunday.
"There is a possibility, we see the possibility of a meltdown," said Toshihiro Bannai, director of the agency's international affairs office, in a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters in Tokyo. "At this point, we have still not confirmed that there is an actual meltdown, but there is a possibility."

STRATFOR says it has in fact happened:

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110312-japanese-government-confirms-meltdown

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”

Read more: Japanese Government Confirms Meltdown | STRATFOR
​

 

[elder999]

As best I can figure out from the mainstream media, the 3 units that were operating at the Fukushima nuclear power complex at the time of the earthquake are not in a safe, stable condition. The units shutdown during the earthquake, and were relying on onsite emergency diesel generators, as the quake also took down the power grid. The emergency diesel generators failed about an hour later due to seawater intrusion caused by the tsunami. Unit 1 experienced a blast that apparently breached the reactor building-cause unkown, but attributed to steam pressure this A.M., by the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S.-it's likely (to me, at this point) that core melting has occurred, and had probably started before the explosion. The plan is to bring in additional generators for all the units, and flood the Unit 1 reactor with seawater-a hail Mary sort of option. The other 2 units that were operating are in somewhat better shape, though there's talk of some sort of excursion or melting at Unit 2. The 3 units that were shutdown are better off, if only by virtue of being at lower temperatures with lower decay heat power. I thought BWRs had a reactor core isolation cooling system (RCIC) with a steam turbine driven pump for a loss of all AC-at least, they do in this country, and both Units 1&2 were designed by GE. Unit 3, the other unit that was online, was designed by Toshiba.

Unit 1 is 41 years old, and was scheduled to be retired this month....here's a screenshot of the reactor building after the explosion....

 

[jks9199]

Since I know we've got a few members with some actual knowledge of reactor design and construction --

I thought most reactors were designed to go into a safe, fully damped mode as a "default" condition if they shut down. In other words -- if they lost power to the control system, I thought that would cause the control rods, etc. to be fully inserted. Though maybe this reactor predates that sort of thing...

Right? Wrong? Completely mixed up and the result of too much tv nuke school?

 

[Sukerkin]

From what I have gathered so far, the reactors protection systems did indeed act to stall the nuclear reaction but the heat still remains in the system and the failure of the backup cooling systems generators prevented that heat being dissipated.

 

[elder999]

At Indian Pt., we hired lots of guys fresh out of the Navy. To accquaint them with the difference in scale between the reactors they'd been dealing with and a commercial reactor, I'd tell them that our reactor made more power when it was shutdown than when their boats ("boats" because they were mostly submariners) did at full power. THen I'd make them do the math to see for themselves. :lol:

It's called residual heat, and it can actually take the better part of a month to make negligible from a freshly shutdown reactor, and never really goes away. The "spent" fuel pool at Indian Pt. 3 holds about 360000 gallons of water. Before they started moving towards dry storage (and I don't know how far along they are with that, so it may still be true) if spent pool cooling were lost it would have taken approx. 24 hours for the water in the pool to begin boiling. That's "spent" fuel's residual heat, some of which had been in there since around 1979. Naturally, RHR-residual heat removal-systems are part of just about any reactor design of size from that time, and part of "safe shutdown" equipment, equipment that's not supposed to fail, has mutliple redundancies, and dedicated emergency diesel generators to power them in the case of a loss of off-site power.

Of course, they apparently didn't consider the possibility of the diesels being incapacitated by a tsunami after the earthquake. There's a technical term for that in engineering, one I'm quite fond of.

Ooops.

Another issue with BWR's is that their control rods are inserted from below the fuel rods-with pressurized-water reactors like those the Navy and most commercial plants use, the rods insert from above, and all that's required for near instantaneous insertion is their release to gravity. It's entirely possible that the quake-well beyond any design basis earthquake that they considered in the 60's-did enough damage that the rods did not fully insert.

I'm also suspicious ofd the claim that thewas due to hydrogen, in part becuse of the modest quantity of hydrogen that should have been present in the reacto's coolant system at that time, and in part because of the appearance of the explosion itself-the Japanese ambassador said on CNN that the explosion was due to a release of vapor, and I believe him-I think this was a steam overpressurization of the building

 

[jks9199]

So -- if I've got this right, we aren't so much worried about a China Syndrome meltdown uncontrolled reaction as simply some hotter than heck stuff that is also radioactive, right? We're looking at potential fires, at steam over-pressure on lines and containment structures, and things like that, then, as well.

In a very loose comparison -- if we were talking about a house fire, we'd be looking at the mop-up stuff, like hot spots, more than the actual real fire, right?

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42084187/ns/world_news-asiapacific?GT1=43001

so its now upgraded to a level 6 which is worse then Three mile island, and only 1 step below chernobyl.

radiation is now at 100 times over normal levels...
not just an xray anymore is it?