Japan Fukushima nuclear thread

[Globs]

Welshbeef said:

Would the core not drop through the building and into the stone below?
Or seep sideways?

While hot it would continue to sink yes, nothing can really stop it.

ETA: The water seems to be a bit 'leaky' too:

Mainichi said:

TEPCO also said Monday that about 120 tons of water containing radioactive substances leaked from the water circulation system involved in cooling the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors.

Of the leaked water, which is believed to contain radioactive strontium, 80 liters leaked out into the Pacific Ocean. The concentration level is about 140,000 becqueruels per cubic centimeter, the company said.

If we use TEPCOs figure (Which I suspect has been 'lowered') that's 140,000,000 decays per kg, and that water has I assume soaked into the ground somewhere so that area will be contaminated for walking etc. I wonder if the other pollution like this will end up being a bigger issue than the actual corium.

Edited by Globs on Wednesday 28th March 20:54

[Globs]

gowmonster said:

what would actually happen if it did get through the Earth's crust? volcano time?

No, the risk is that it meets water while extremely hot, and causes steam explosions which flings bits of the stuff back out into the atmosphere.

Actually that's the dramatic risk, the more subtle one is of contaminating the water table, which then spreads the pollution - perhaps into drinking water one day.

[Globs]

Apache said:

Merkel is in an impossible position, she has an election looming so has to appear to be listening to the Greens who lead the German distrust of anything nuclear

Mind you - have you met a green in the last decade who didn't spit as soon as you mention the perfectly reasonable practice of burning coal for electricity? Most of them are obsessed by the futile energy sinks they call 'wind turbines'..

[Globs]

hairykrishna said:

qureshia said:

..... Ambassador Murata writes to UN Secretary General: “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor”

I'd say that was in fact a massive exaggeration

I think the issue is that there is far more fuel there than is usually inside a reactor, it's too 'hot' for anyone to get near unless shielded by metres of water, there is no crane available to put up the bits either, and each bit is hundreds of tons of huge, dangerous rod that will be smoking and melting at the time. Effectively you have a multiple meltdown outside of containment.

At least #3 blew it's fuel pool to smithereens around the general area which separated the fuel from becoming a molten mass, but I am puzzled as to what would save #4 being a much bigger disaster than we have seen so far.

So Hairy - how would they deal with an earthquake that smashed #4 pool and let it collapse and all the water escape?

[Globs]

Governments are responding though, they are busy raising the safe radiation levels to protect us.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/03/california-...

I would criticise them for this but TBH, that's the only thing they really have any control over...

[Globs]

Talksteer said:

This is all academic because it is highly unlikely that fuel pool will be compromised.

Oh?
I reckon a decent earthquake would have it down in seconds..



....now where are we likely to have one of those?

[Globs]

Ironically the 'fresh fuel' is the safest bit of the whole bundle - it's the fuel that was most recently taken out that's by far the most dangerous.

IIRC #3 used MOX, and that was blown to pieces, pool and all - some say as a result of a nuclear detonation triggered by a hydrogen explosion. Certainly it was a high impact detonation beyond the normal hydrogen explosion.

But yes - I agree #4 pool is something to be extremely worried about, especially as the people tasked to look after it are barely capable of running a bath, let along a crumbling nuclear facility (that they let melt down) in an earthquake zone.

[Globs]

Apache said:

Mojocvh said:

Low level contamination in the food chain is spreading.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-1823...

That's quite a level headed and undramatic report, which is rather odd for the BBC

I was stunned that there was no link to Global Warming in there, what's happening at the Beeb??

[Globs]

eldar said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-18299...

26 years later.

Almost the half life of Cs137, so there will be about half the amount in a few years than fell on that fateful day/week.

[Globs]

Apache said:

why don't they just build windmill farms? it's saved the western world

They can't afford any more energy sinks

[Globs]

With the radioactive material still escaping from the site, reactor 4 fuel storage sinking nearly 32 inches into the ground and the fish still full of caesium it's easy to think that this failed plant is pretty dangerous to life.

However this week I became aware of another, worse, lingering disaster, this one made by Bliar and his war mongering chums:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-war-crimes-cancer-...
etc.

It seems Bliar has exceeded the effects of even Chernobyl and Fukushima in his deliberate creation of war, in disfiguring far more children than even the worst nuclear accidents the world has seem.

[Globs]

llewop said:

I would suggest they are tilting at the wrong windmills linking it to DU

In hair samples etc researchers have fund DU, slightly enriched U, Hg and Pb. I.e. a cocktail of heavy metals.
I suspect their problems stem from the toxicity of those heavy metals rather than the rather slow radiation.

[Globs]

Just rumbling along as expected still:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/jap...

Probably a couple of decades until that stop most of the big leaks I reckon.

[Globs]

hairykrishna said:

"Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers"

UNSCEAR report. http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/201...

A report not backup up by everyone it seems:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Japan+fukushima+...

The big problem with nuclear is not the health effects of the odd accident, using a rather cold view of deaths and deformaties it's not a problem that influences the majority of the populations affected, although of course it's very hard on those actually affected. As is lung cancer on coal station workers etc.

The issues are twofold:

1) How to safely dispose of the spent fuel assemblies for the next million years. IIRC each assembly gives a decade of power?
2) How to cope with the loss of huge tracts of land rendered uninhabitable by fallout.

Both of those are the main issues at Fukushima too, it's not just the melts and local ground water/sea water issues - although I must confess they are the most interesting.

[Globs]

Hub said:

Can the water only be used once? and then has to be stored indefinitely?

I think there is a scheme to filter it, I think the problem is the leaks, so if they recycle it (use it for cooling again) the contamination builds up.
Or something.

It's all water use for cooling IIRC, still lots of heat being generated there.

[Globs]

carl_w said:

ewis Page on The Register suggests it goes round several times, and makes a good point about β-radiation. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/21/omg_new_cr...

Lewis_Schmuck said:

this is the nuclear industry, there is always a backup

Yeah right. What a fking idiot the author is. FFS.

[Globs]

carl_w said:

Globs said:

Yeah right. What a fking idiot the author is. FFS.

Does your experience of the nuclear industry suggest there are frequently no backups then?

Oh come on. An article about Fukushima telling us there are always backups. Think about EXACTLY what happened at Fukushima.

[Globs]

carl_w said:

The backups failed

Exactly. I think you've got it now.
And no, the article wasn't about Germany, it was about Fukushima.

[Globs]

eldar said:

3 levels of backup failed.

Exactly. Fukushima is a story of failed backups, writing about how there is always a backup in that context is idiotic.
As for the oft chanted 'no one died' because of the fukushima accident, I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves.

As a matter of interest, reactor 1 and 2 were straight melts (IIRC reactor 3 blew up and reactor 4 had it's core pre-spread out in a storage tank), has anyone located the melts of reactors 1 and 2 yet? I.e. does anyone have any idea where they are and what state they are in?

[Globs]

I got massively slated when I called them as melted down in the very early stages, quite a lot of insults were thrown my way.
My point was simple, without cooling, what else were the cores going to do? Play Charades?

Apart from Chernobyl (the melt of which was slightly different due to the sand etc), we haven't had a full melt through (TMI was a melt in vessel, Rocketdyne's melt I'm not sure of) except for these, so it would be interesting to know just how far the melt travels through the earth before it's diluted enough to stop.

It seems a reasonable guess that part of the melt left the buildings some time ago.