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NHK via Reuters
Smoke rises from the nuclear reactors of Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in an NHK video image from Thursday.
The battle to stabilize Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex just got tougher, due to the radioactive water that is apparently leaking from the reactors. The leak doesn’t change the battle strategy — to get water into the reactor buildings to stabilize "hot" fuel rods — but it does raise more uncertainties about how to get that done.
"The operators are having to do a lot of improvisation to figure out what best to do to keep the amount of radiation being released into the atmosphere to a minimum," nuclear engineering expert Elmer Lewis, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University, told me today.
The uncertainties currently focus on the leak, which exposed three workers wading through the water to so much radioactivity that they had to be hospitalized for radiation burns.
Some reports suggested that the skin radiation exposure amounted to 2,000 to 6,000 millisieverts. Exposure to that much full-body gamma radiation over the course of an hour would be deadly. However, in this case the burns were due to shorter-range beta radiation. The gamma radiation exposure was estimated at 170 to 180 millisieverts.
So where is that water coming from? "The data we're seeing is contradictory," said former nuclear engineer David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety project. It could be coming from the spent fuel rods stored near Fukushima Dai-ichi's Unit 3 reactor, or from the reactor vessel itself. The workers who came in contact with the water were working in the turbine room connected to Unit 3.
NBC News' Robert Bazell quoted outside nuclear engineers as saying that the water contained radioactive iodine-131, which could come only from the rods in the reactor's pressure vessel. That led some experts to say that the vessel was breached, but Lochbaum said that didn't mesh with the pressure readings being taken inside and outside the vessel.
"Either the pressure data we're seeing is inaccurate, or the breach isn't as serious" as some have claimed, Lochbaum told me.
If the water is leaking from the reactor vessel, it should still have been contained within the primary containment chamber that surrounds the vessel. However, there might be some sort of leak in the plumbing between the vessel and the Unit 3 turbine room. That's the scenario favored by Tom Crimmins, president at Executive & Nuclear Consulting. "There's a larger-than-expected leak somewhere in the system that's releasing this radioactive water," he said on MSNBC.
Whatever the cause, the leak is bad news for workers at the nuclear complex, "primarily because it makes working conditions there more difficult or potentially impossible," Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel said on MSNBC.
James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said workers might have to pull back from the turbine rooms — not only at Unit 3, but at Units 1 and 2 as well, where elevated radiation levels have reportedly been detected. "Work in those areas is clearly going to be massively hampered, if not stopped entirely," he said, "but if radiation levels on the site as a whole don't rise, then work across the site can presumably continue."
Unit 3 is of particular concern, because that's the only reactor at the Fukushima site that uses a mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, also known as a mixed-oxide fuel or "MOX." But Lewis said some commentators are making too much of that distinction.
"Whenever you're burning uranium, you're always producing some plutonium," Lewis told me. "It's a matter of degree. The plutonium, like the uranium itself, is a ceramic element, and it's not very volatile at all. So I doubt seriously whether the water in the turbine room contains much if any plutonium. It tends not to be released except at very high temperatures. I think they're seeing fission-product radiation." (That is, radioactivity from elements such as iodine or cesium.)
Virtually all the experts are dismayed that the plant still hasn't been brought under control. "There's still too much energy coming out of that fuel to walk away," von Hippel said. "They still have to keep trying to cool it. The problem is that we're now two weeks after the accident started, and they don't have a handle on the situation yet."
The strategy remains the same as it has been for the past week: Make sure the fuel rods in the reactors as well as in the spent-fuel pools are covered with water and wait for the radioactivity in those rods to cool down.
Because Fukushima lacks electrical power to get water circulating through the reactors and the pools, workers have had to pump seawater into the works — and that could be creating a fresh round of problems, including corrosion in the plumbing and releases of radioactive steam. The prime objective right now is to get the standard water-cooling system working again.
"My own criterion for when I'll breathe easier is when they don't need seawater any more," Lewis said. So that means workers — or perhaps robots — will have to find a way to continue with the job of spraying water on the reactors, hooking up electrical power and regaining control of the nuclear battlefield.
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Just like any other major disaster..they keep true facts quiet..but apologize when it gets really bad and too late to fix!
soooooooooooooo trueeeeeeee
The good news is that they are learning how to handle one of the worst possible scenarios. The bad news is that it's on the job training and brave people are going to die.
It is very probable that some of the folks working on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors will die much sooner than they would have otherwise because of excessive radiation exposure.
According to everything I've heard and read so far, nearly all of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi were caused by the tsunami, not the earthquake. For reasons that even I still don't understand, nuclear engineers around the world simply didn't deem it a high probability that this 'perfect storm' of a natural catastrophe would ever happen to a nuclear power facility. You can bet that nuclear engineers around the world are now scrambling to rethink their backup cooling systems with nuclear power plants that are along coastlines.
It is a huge tragedy. However, the nuclear industry around the world will learn a great amount from this incident, which will lead to much better safety.
Why is the Japanese government continuing to lie about the severity of the radiation leaks? I understand somewhat the tendency to downplay and de-sensationalize, but people's lives and livlihoods are at stake. The reaction of the workers is that of persons that have accepted that they are on a death mission.
Radiation issues appear to be far worse than at first suggested.
How do you know that they are not downplaying it and you are not over sensationalizing it?
The Japanese Gov't is not downplaying, the media is over sensationalizing. It's called yellow journalism. I was told by someone in the know that the news is exaggerating the dangers. Of course you never want to take chances w/ radioactive material, the situation can deteriorate quickly, but TEPCO and the Japanese Gov't w/ the help of outside engineers have the situation under control - It's still a problem w/ serious possible contingencies but it's not escalating at this moment.
I don't believe that TEPCO or the government would do something as brash as lying about radiation levels in public, non evacuated areas and facilities. It's too easy for the public to cross check that now, and if concrete evidence is found of a cover-up, then the perpetrators would be found criminally culpable, not to mention crushed under class action litigation.
You are right and BP was leaking 20 gals a day.
Okay right, cuz governments never lie, DUH, loser...You have got to be kidding me with this ignorance? Check all natural or man made disasters, even 9-11... Tell me you are not that blind to the injustices of governments????
Breaking News: (Concerning the 6 Reactors at the Japanese Nuclear Power Plant:) I still do not trust the Japanese Government not even one inch!!! and I am finding it harder and harder and harder to trust the USA MSM AND the US Government as well.
For some reason my comment above was reverted. This is what I had added to the comment above:
Not sure why they reverted my comments. But I had added the above to my statement.
For Moderators only. Please deleat my second post (and this one as well) which states that there was a revert. I think the problem was on my end (not sure what was up but the corrected post is back)
Could workers be more protected using stable-to-use stilts and hiking poles that keep them above water levels?
Sheetrocker stilts may be a good idea for those guys to wear if that continues to be a problem.
The problem with this idea is that then the stilts become irradiated and themselves a source of contamination.
Yeah, but it's a better alternative than getting your feet wet in radioactive water.
According to my nuclear-physicist wife, who is also a licensed (inactive) reactor operator, the simple expedient of wearing full waterproof protection would prevent most of the surficial burns associated with the water they waded in. Based on the information available in the media, she suggests their injuries are unlikely to be life threatening or shortening, though very much like a very severe sunburn. My expectation is that we aren't getting good information through the media since everything seems to be hyped to maximize the the perception of impending doom.
I think there is so much that is unknown right now and speculative. With so many failures simultaneously it is a bit like, on a smaller scale of course, a computer that goes into runaway overheating - it cannot be stabilized until the root problem is identified, and the root problem cannot be identified because it keeps overheating. in this case the cool down could take months given how hot all of these reactors became and new issues are likely in the interim. Just hope that they do not discover the containment vessel is breached...
Why don't these reactors have large huge cooling towers like many American reactors? If so then they could just pump the radioactive water and recycle it through the cooling towers instead of pumping MORE water and contaminating MORE water and making MORE radioactive waste. Seems someone is not using their head very well in designing these things. They could also run huge lines out to sea and back to cool the water. Of course, an accident would be disastrous!
I read that GE decided that the Cooling Towers were not needed. Human Error is a constant issue with Nuclear Power Plants. Its time for Solar, Wind, Hydro, and Please don't tell me that they are more expensive than "NUCULUR" as they call it in Texas!
The scenario from Tom Crimmins struck me: "there might be some sort of leak in the plumbing between the vessel and the Unit 3 turbine room."
Cooling towers make one half of the difference of the US pressure water reactors and the old BWR model. The other difference is that the core water is contained within the cooling tower and is not involved in the turbine loop. If the leak is to be found in the turbine loop, then that is a strong point for switching to the PWR model for a less hazardous work environment, and the event of a containment breach of the BWR turbine loop should be given higher consideration in evaluating workplace safety and emergency protocol.
Of course, that's all speculation until the source of the leak is found.
Whether or not there are cooling towers has nothing to do with whether it's a BWR or PWR - in fact, cooling towers are used on all kinds of power plants, including coal-fired fossil plants. The function of the cooling tower (if the plants use them) or the direct cooling such as used at Fukushima, is determined by the availability of cooling water for the turbine condensers. This water is typically called circulating water, or circ water for short, and it does not contact the radioactive portion of the plant in either a BWR or PWR plant - it is used to cool the turbine condensers and re-condense the exhausted steam back to water (called feedwater) which is pumped back to the nuclear side for use in the cycle.
If there is a large source of suitable cooling water available, like the sea or one of the Great Lakes, or Chesapeake Bay, it's typical that the condensers are cooled with this water, using what's called a "once-through" cooling system - the circ water is pumped in, removes the heat from the turbine exhaust steam in the condenser, and returns to the source, usually about 20 - 30 degrees hotter than it entered. If cooling water is scarce, or the environmental impact (primarily on aquatic life) of the higher temperature discharge would be too high, then cooling towers are used, which recirculate the cooling water used for the condensers, and cool it by evaporative action, similar to "swamp coolers" used in the arid Southwestern states. The large plumes of vapor one sees coming out of the cooling towers (like the iconic pictures of TMI) are water vapor which is evaporated out of the cooling tower in the process of cooling the circ water.
The decison as to whether or not to use once-through cooling or cooling towers is not made by the Nuclear Reactor supplier (GE in this case) - it is a decision made by the plant designer, evaluating the pros and cons of each approach. Once-through cooling is typically cheaper to construct (no expensive cooling tower to build), and was very typical with power plants until the 70's and 80's. This is one reason many plants are located next to large bodies of water. As the environmental effects of returning the heated water to the source were better understood (such as hazards to aquatic life), cooling towers became more popular, as they don't return heated water to the source. Also, inland plants, such as Palo Verde, in the Arizona Desert west of Phoenix, could only be built using cooling towers - there are not large enough bodies of natural water available.
To the poster who suggested that recirculating the radioactive water through cooling towers would lessen the radioactive discharge, I don't think so - the steam evaporating out of the coooling tower would be carrying the same contamination into the environment, but through airborne distribution, and ultimately, radioactive rainfall.
These plants, like all modern nuclear plants, were designed to, and did, survive a design-basis accident, which is an accident postulated from the most severe credible incident which could occur to the plant - typically involving a piping break of the largest pipe into the reactor, perhaps from an earthquake. In this case, unfortunately, both the earthquake and Tsunami exceeded the design basis events for which the plants were designed (although there's no evidence a pipe ruptured - the Tsunami was the last straw, taking out the emergency power needed to run the cooling pumps). For example, a plant would never be designed to withstand an impact from the Moon hitting the Earth - that's not a credible event. I believe they used the most severe earthquake and highest Tsunami ever recorded as the design basis for this plant, and as we know now, this quake and Tsunami both set new records for severity. One can certainly argue now, in hindsight, that they should have used a higher design basis, and I'm sure other running plants will all now have their design basis accident scenarios re-reviewed to ensure there is sufficient margin for "The Big One" which hasn't occurred yet, but could.
Enjoyed your discussion. You certainly spoke with certainty. I suppose certainty is measured in units of success and anything reaching 50 per cent means progress in stopping further increases in damage.
Keep talking!
The pumps were not operational and 2 of the reactor buildings exploded, exposing the idle fuel cores to the open air and damaging the pools they were in, which allowed them to get hot by exposing them to air. Daiichi is also Japan's main spent fuel core storage facility. They have about 100 or so cores in storage there.
It is already a disaster, but I get your point: it would be a worse disaster. I foresee Chernobyl strategy as the end-game here. In these runaways, they will be buried in concrete and abandoned; tragic end.
Actually, recent reports show that the designers did NOT use the best available data. They ignored the fact that previous earthquake/tsunami events were even worse than this one. One previous event sent the tsunami waters 2.5 miles inland, where this one only went 1.5 mi inland. They discarded that data as 'not-credible' in their factoring and there are other factors that they did not address. They pooh-poohed historical data saying that it was not recorded properly and was only anecdotal and probably exaggerated in historical accounts...even though archeological evidence, layers of sand from previous tsunamis in the same area, show that the accounts were most likely highly accurate. The AP actually had a good investigative report on this. I am unable to find it now, but it detailed a lot on how the Japanese designers totally disregarded pertinent info when designing and building this reactor complex.
Why do they lie so blandly?? Uranium (and Plutonium) is a METAL, not a "ceramic". It's true that the U is encased, supposedly, in ceramic, but Uranium does indeed burn and react with other chemicals.
Perhaps they are trying to calm things down, or perhaps they really just don't know a thing...then why are they quoted here??
what are your credentials?
Blow it up your ass University.
Uranium and plutonium are metals. However, in these reactors, they are used as oxides (ie., Uranium dioxide, etc.) Check the article a little closer - they talk about the fuels existing as oxides and provide the term MOX (mixed oxide fuel). And, by definition, metal oxides are ceramics. And oxides don't burn - they are already oxidized. I would not expect these oxides to corrode significantly over short periods of time as exposed to water - even at likely pH extremes. So, it is unlikely that there is much, if any, contamination by these fuels as stated. And these fuels are NOT encased in ceramics, they are inside of zirconium metal tubes. Feel better now? Maybe try not creating a fuss about things you don't understand, huh?
@Doug Korthof:
Actually the professor is correct when you consider the context, which specifically is fuel rods in a nuclear reactor . . .
This definition of "ceramic" from "The American Heritage® Science Dictionary" is helpful:
According to wikipedia, the definitive source of information here in the sound isolation studio, UOX is uranium dioxide, while MOX is an acronym for "Mixed Oxide", hence is a blend of oxides . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_dioxide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel
Lots of FUN . . .
As a bit of follow-up, I think the professor is using "element" in a different way, as well . . .
This is the way it works in chemistry:
[SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element ]
Moreover, I agree that one of the most common colloquial uses of the word "element" refers to a chemical element, but another common colloquial use of the word "element" refers to weather phenomena, although this typically is plural, as in the "elements" . . .
Secondarily, after pondering this for a while, it makes no intuitive to use the term "ceramic element" when referring either (a) to a chemical element or (b) to an aspect of the weather, unless it happens to be raining porcelain tableware . . .
Sixthly and lastly, I am going with the interpretation that the professor was referring specifically to a heating element which is ceramic, hence a "ceramic element", because otherwise it makes no sense . .
WHY does it make no sense otherwise?
Great question!
After consulting Professor Alphonse Twittle of the Institute for Absurd Physics and Modern Dance™ here in the sound isolation studio, the fact of the matter is that fuel rods typically are zirconium alloy clad thingys that are packed with some combination of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 thingys, neither of which are chemical elements, toward the goal of creating a ceramic element thingy that apparently is a bit too complex for the Japanese to operate safely . . .
Thirdly, uranium and plutonium are chemical elements, but uranium-235 and plutonium-239 are isotopes . . .
And to conclude, I think this is a matter of highly technical jargon, which can be a bit confusing even to those folks such as myself who made an effort to stay awake in science classes no matter how many times we had to take the same course over and over until we earned a passing grade, which mostly was due to the fact that the periodic table has so many conceptual errors that calling it "goofy" is an understatement, really . . .
Really! :)
According to the physicist-wife again, fuel rods and pellets are designed to be chemically stable (insofar as possible) in their design environment, which is fully covered in coolant (treated water) and maintained at design temperatures. When temperatures rise, the coolant level drops and exposes fuel rods to gaseous atmosphere, the coolant is contaminated (seawater), or combinations of the above, then the fuel assemblies degrade in various ways. Exactly what form the corrosion takes, and the products resulting therefrom depend on a complex mix of factors. The hydrogen which exploded and destroyed the weather enclosures was one of these products. Airborne, radioactive iodine and cesium are others, and there are still more to consider. None of the core components is generally flammable, in contrast to the graphite blocks used as a moderator at Chernobyl. However, high heat and other factors can result in airborne products of the corrosive process.
Physicists make great spouses!
(Looking to my side - "Right, hon?")
Whatever the outcome, there are people who will become critically ill because of the exposure to radiation. No nukes - No radiative waste. Plain and simple.
...and no electricity so you can use your computer to make stupid comments.
My electric comes from rooftop solar, sorry about yours.
I got good news guys!! The media are a bunch of alarmists. You have nothing to worry about!
not at night dug
He probably uses methane from his septic tank at night Burbankdad
He really doesnt use solar,,,the ones that do like to talk about their systems.
You few who joke about this are really sick or your suffering from a bad dose of what they have leaking out of those bloody plants mates.
I said it from day 3 and 4 this was a huge lie and that these plants were unstable, but no one would care to listen.
People said it was nothing, that I was an idiot, stupid, doomsday type of fool.
Well look at the FN mess there in now, am I still making this up?
I don’t think these guys have any credibility then or now they just keep hiding the bloody truth as always.
These plants are old built almost 40 years ago and now there being eroded with salt water.
What the hell did these so called experts think was going to happen once they began doing this?
The structures themselves have been through other quakes during there time online there 40 something years old and are now being hammered with aftershocks from one of the worst quakes in 100 years or more.
The foundation of this plant is sitting on a time bomb with these experts lighting the fuse with all that salt water there pumping into it.
If it was not corrosive enough before, it sure as hell is now not to mention all the small fractures in the structure itself that has happened over time with natural ageing.
They should have never built such a plant in this area in the first place, then to go on telling BS lies about how bad it really was, come on really now.
This is nothing more then a private company trying to save what is left of its radioactive face.
Then there is the government of Japan which looks to me as if it were in some kind of denial of the real problem by the way they did not begin evacuating there people from the very first few days after they realized it was going to get worse.
These people are now being subjected to god knows what, because no one will tell them anything.
This is as bad as the BP oil spill which did nothing but hide the truth of what was really going on under the water, and why it happened.
They all do it meaning these huge to big to fail BS companies at the costs not only to human life, but wild life and just about anything under the bloody sun.
They need to get people away this damn plant, and start dealing with how to cover the bloody thing up, and I don’t mean the lie.
It makes me sick to sit back and have to watch these SOBs lie to there people about something this dangerous.
What are they going to tell them if and only if this thing continues to get even worse?
Its ok just sit in your homes and use duct tape over the bloody widows and wait for the tumors to start growing or coughing up blood and green bile.
This is a huge mess and has been mis-handled and mis-informed to the surrounding people of Japan who live there.
They should be degusted with the way they allowed this private company to try and hide the truth so its stock value would not decline so badly.
It comes down to the money folks as always, money before people’s lives simple.
It is a sad day for the people of Japan that have had to endure a catastrophe then now be faced with this BS because someone wanted to save face, or was it money?
I think it was both IMPO.
Sad story indeed makes me sick to hear these bleeding hearts wine on now long after the fact, knowing all along how bad it really was from the start and did nothing but hide the real truth from its people.
Good night and good luck, you’re going to need it.
Freeman, FABULOUS post and absolutely 150% correct. You are totally right in everything you say! I second and third your post. It is EXCELLENT totally on target!
Freeman, I can see you put a lot of effort in your post, but as has been said before, you get no points for "calling it" as speculation made without hard evidence lends no credibility whether it is proven or disproven.
This is not an indictment of you in particular, but I do feel the need to echo what someone else said some time ago, that "people who claim the plant will go Chernobyl will not be vindicated even if the plant goes Chernobyl" because the claims were wild speculation. It's the same as if a television psychic correctly recalled that the name of an audience member's dead spouse was John. Go figure, it's one of the most common names in the english language. We all know, however, that this is gambling, not prophecy.
It would be unfair to attribute this to the current discussion because that would merely be nitpicking a few choice sentences in the comment. I just felt the sudden need to write a volume of words in this space.
kaff
Thank you for taking the time to read the comment, and I appreciate your kind words.
I was not making a prediction.
I was only repeating what I had said from the 3rd or 4th post I ever made about this topic.
I did not claim to be looking into any future wisdom sphere, I only said what I felt was the truth about how they did not tell the people how bad this problem really was from the start.
I only repeated the truth based on the facts that up until now have been correct so far.
They have lied about this severity of this plant, and as I made mention in my comment.
I feel IMPO that this was a cover to hide the truth due to this private company loosing money or face in the eyes of the economic scene.
I also was making a point that some members were being a bit rude with there comments about this serious topic.
The real issue is that I did say this problem was already bad from the 3rd day, but know one was speaking the truth to the people of Japan or the world media.
This was my main point, and second was the cover up from the private company saying this was not as severe as it really was, and I am not talking about just my point of view on it, but this came from many other experts that were also giving there possible outcomes on this situation.
So I don't claim to know the real truth of this nuclear plant first hand, but I do know when I see and hear that there is damage to the containment area, and that there pumping salt water into this old 40 year structure.
I think it is fair to say that the company, and the gov should have seen this coming, and more then likely did but never shared the information with its people at the time.
This is the basis of my comment.
Thank you anyways for your kind reply, and I think we can both agree that this is not like the Russian disaster, but could very well become a slower moving version of that type of devastation to the surrounding area if not soon contained yes?
Cheers and I wish the people of Japan all the luck in the world, because I feel they are going to face hard times ahead with this nuclear problem no matter how small they try to downplay it sorry.
I am no expert nor have I ever claimed to be in any of my posts.
It is JMPO only not fact, fair enough?
cheers mate
You don't need to explain yourself as I have already said that I was going off on a tangent and that my comment was not a rant against your post. I was just reminded of it in passing.
Your response makes me regret that I did not save my comment for a more appropriate situation.
Where I do disagree with your sentiment is that in the aftermath of this event, I believe any cover ups perpetrated by officials in charge of safety (if they so exist) will be made evident by the transparency of this situation in particular (and as much as it pains me to admit it, the sensational media coverage). I know you do not claim as much directly, but the emotional content of your comment suggests that you feel that propaganda resulting in excess casualties will go unpunished.
I hope, fervently, that if a situation presents itself to an official to sacrifice people in the name of preserving profit, the person will choose not to pursue it, not because of some unyielding morality, but because institutions are now in place to ensure that the official will not get away with it.
However, I cannot say for sure whether even this will happen until the dust subsides. You may cite me for my unwarranted optimism.
kaff
Fair enough mate.
I just thought I should explain my comment in more detail to that which I was trying to put forward.
Cheers.
Freemannogod
Where to now?
I think when TEPCO corporation is so desperate they're using fire hoses to cool the cores down, its very very bad. You can't really sensationalize this event.
I'm not an expert on nukes although I have worked in nuclear plants in the past, I thought the idea of using high pressure water hoses to cool the reactors and fuel pools was crazy..... as it would create radioactive steam with a city of over 20 million within 125 miles.....
I am just a high school graduate that worked on cars for 20 years and I gotta tell you I sat there watching the news day after day talking about the drama of getting power to those reactors and I thought to myself how foolish they were being. The destruction looked far too severe to be hooking up power to those things and sure enough after the power was hooked up they said it was too dangerous to turn it on, Duh!!
I have an idea...........how about we smash that computer you're looking at right now and pour buckets of water all over it then how about you hold it in your arms while somebody plugs it in and lets see what happens.
I'm pretty sure they are just stalling for time until the novelty wears off and some movie star or politician does something stupid enough to distract us then they will do what they have to and bury that mess like a cat in a sandbox otherwise it's gunna keep on stinking.
Do you really think they are going assemble a team of workers that are going to make all the neccessary repairs for those things to be safe again?
Joe, they are trying to make it safe enough to bury. If they bury it as it now sits the uranium will probably go critical and uncontrolled nuclear reactions will occur.
Burying them now as the situation stands would create lots of nasty radioactive crap - much much more than there is now, and create the conditions for a massive steam explosion that will launch all that crap out across the landscape.
Imagine that a fuel tanker's engine is on fire - a pretty good fire, but the main fuel tank itself is not yet burning. If the fire department dumped tons of sand on the top the tank from a helicopter the tank will rupture and there will be a huge fireball. If the fire department can put out the fire, first, then it will be safer to bury.
FYI: This type of reactor uses larger quantities of lower-grade fuel. This is why there was hot, recently extracted spent fuel in the storage/cooling pools. So, it is routine practice to deactivate the reactor (stop fission by inserting the control rods), cool it down, remove spent fuel, and install new fuel in the core. The first step in this process, shutting down the reactor, happened automatically when the reactors "scrammed" at the first seismic shaking. The trick now is to keep water circulating to cool them without normal power and with whatever damage occured to the circulating and/or feed equipment. They were able to use pressure dynamics to draw water into the reactor vessels directly from the sea, but this was not available for the cooling/storage pools. Thus, the fire hoses.
It seems that there are no specifics regarding the condition and prognosis of the reactors. This is a learn as you go situation. If I lived within close proximity, I would get out of there. The government having nothing absolute to go on, having limited resources for those already in shelters and not wanting to needlessly insight a panic, of which there is no guarantee either way...the government is doing the best they can. Could you or I do better? Probably not. I just pray for the best possible outcome for everyone.
Jim-883724
I agree with some of what you said, but they knew this was happening from the 3rd day and still they continued to lie about the real facts of the matter to the world press, and there people.
It was all about $$$$$$$$ and saving face trust me they all do it with these private companies.
As I said before, Freeman you hit the nail on the proverbial head. It is ALWAYS about the money and people are second if that more like third after as you said saving face. Glad you said it all!
I believe if a company was smart enough to engineer propaganda to successfully save capital in the event of an exceptional disaster, then it would also be smart enough to realize that such a coverup would be painfully evident once the public is out of crisis mode. This is a a paradox, which leads me to believe that both the company and the government are scrabbling around and more unprepared than they should be. If that is the case, I'd be inclined to forgive them to an extent, given how the rest of the world has responded to lesser natural disasters.
Of course, this punditry is unnecessary as the incident will be thoroughly explored after the dust settles.
I can agree to that comment, or point of view.
It would be very shameful if not more damaging to this company or Gov if the truth were in fact a huge lie from the start.
But then again they still try if they can we have seen this many times in the past.
A valid point well made lets hope for there sake and the people this is not the case here.
Thank you.
cheers.
Two problems here.
Companies choose to use this high risk technology that puts innocent people at risk for their profits and it is unlikey the company or executives will be held accountable for all of this expense and damage. The lack of accountability encourages people to make bad decisions. Perhaps the Power Company Executives should have to live in the neighborhood beside the power plants. When you compare white colar and blue colar crime and correlate this unfortunate incident to its street equivalent, the Executives that decided to build this plant could turn out to be mass murderers.
Also, people don't trust our governments nor the press, which is rarely objective, accurate or factual. Wikileaks has recently demonstrated what a bunch of two faced, back stabbing liars government officials can be. Why does honesty is the best policy not apply to politics?
Crimmins, president at Executive & Nuclear Consulting. "There's a larger-than-expected leak somewhere in the system that's releasing this radioactive water," he said on MSNBC.
No sh**. Even I could have said that! You could find someone who could give a better explanation than that. That's like saying the balloon is dropping because there's a hole in it somewhere. Ya don't say? - On the whole, I think a lot of these so-called experts are finding out that they aren't so expert after all. I don't think that people treat nuclear energy with the necessary kid-gloves that they need to.
Voting Republican is the answer to all the worlds troubles!
ET - phone home! Time to get some outside assistance because we dkwtf we are doing when it comes to out of control nuclear piles.
How is the radiation getting into the water supply at Tokyo?
Radioactive rainwater?
The ignorance displayed in the comments here is truly phenomenal. All the knowledge these 'nucelar' engineers posses and Japan is still having problems? They just need to read up on this article and they'd be back up at power in no time. Just pathetic people. Go back to the trailer parks you came from.
If physical intervention can prevent or arrest the situation then the powers at be need to enlist those willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Chernobyl was an example of sending those in for what needed to be done. Here is a situation where the bed was made and someone needs to lie in it. Pay the families of those who have already sacrificed their lives and those who are willing to carryon the fight to get it done. Standing by to wait and see what happens next is just deer in the headlights mentality.
Why this crying need to "be kept informed" on the part of so many people. What timely things are YOU going to do with the information????
After all it is not a baseball game that is going on! Handling a difficult emergency situation is not conducive to "spectator sport" type news/TV reporting. Of course we are all interested in knowing what is going on! But when a loved one is in surgery, we do not expect the surgeon to keep us closely informed.......we must wait..... and leave the surgeon to spend all his time working on saving our loved one.
Have you ever played the game where people sit in a circle and the first person whispers something to the person next to him....and so it is repeated to each adjacent person until the last person repeats it out loud ...and then we all laugh at how it was so changed. This same chain of communication happens during an emergency. So, cool your jets and stop knocking the guys who are a position that most people never have been. I for one have been.
Biogez,
Good comments. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be working in the dark, with damaged equipment, and uncertainty as to which sensors are giving true data. I expect much of what is going on is by touch and feel, and very slowly so as to detect and defeat unwanted results.
Uranium and Plutonium are metals, that's why they are classed amongst the 'heavy metals' whoever wrote that they are ceramics needs to repeat 7th grade
BTW, "6000 milliSieverts" is 6 Sieverts; one Sievert is the amount of radiation you would get from one gram of encased radium held one centimeter from your body for one hour -- that's a lot.
By using "units confusion" they hide the facts; and by other subterfuges (for example, saying "it's like one XRAY", but Xray is instantaneous and exposure is a function of time) they confuse the public. There is NO SUCH THING as zero radiation, we get it all the time from continuous background radiation; but there is NO such thing as "safe" levels of radiation, either.
Solar rooftop power provides enough energy for us to drive two Electric cars (plug-in Toyota RAV4-EV) for more than 1000 miles each per month -- and EXPORT excess energy to the grid. And our system only covers about 20% of our roof, and are 10-year-old low-efficiency panels.
The downside of solar or wind is maybe getting bonked on the head -- the downside risk of nuclear is A FIERY LAKE OF BURNING BRIMSTONE THAT'S DEADLY FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS.
WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?? I mean if it weren't for the bribes and political pressure??
A fiery lake of burning brimstone? I'll watch for that on the next spy plane.
I do believe there is such a thing as a "safe" dose of radiation. A "safe" dose of X, where X is any toxin, is where the risk of the dose is negligible when compared with the variance of risk of normal environmental factors. For instance, at one point in your life, you will get into a car accident. If only using one hand to steer the car predisposes you to a rate of 0 - 1 car accidents per lifetime, I'd say that the risk is negligible and that using one hand to steer a car is "safe." (Of course, I have manufactured the assumptions of this example to demonstrate a logical outcome, so do not assume the truth of the conclusions as the assumptions are unsubstantiated).
For a more topical example, you get a dose of radiation whenever you get a suntan. It is possible to reduce the amount of cancer events by mandating conservative clothing at beaches. However, the public considers this an acceptable background risk.
6 sieverts is a lot of radiation - that's 600 rem, 30x greater than the average yearly dose. I'm sure the radiation inside the reactor is much higher. There is also an astronomically high source of radiation near us covering a huge field millions of miles wide that can literally disintegrate matter into its component particles in an instant: it's called the sun.
For people who fall into 6Sv water, it's bad news. For the rest of us, we need to know the type of the radiation, the distance we are from it, the shielding in place and the geography in that distance, and a bunch of other factors that have been set aside all this while by a single number meaningless to everyone except the workers inside the plant. Oh, and the time of exposure. Like you said, the measurement is meaningless and needlessly vexing without these additional pieces of information.
If I were to use "units confusion" to hide facts, I'd rather go with the bigger number than the smaller one. I doubt that a person who is unable to convert 6000 mSv into 6Sv would even know what a sievert is.
As for solar, good for you for getting proactive with your energy management.
Yes, you're right, it's 1000 millisieverts to the sievert. I kept with millisieverts just to avoid confusion between the two measures, and not to try to cover up anything. Figured it was better to talk about 6,000 and 180 millisieverts instead of 6 sieverts and 0.18 sievert (which might seem to minimize the exposure, as Kaff states above).
I agree about keeping the units consistent! :)
I am learning a lot about a virtual festival of units, and while some of it makes a bit of sense, most of it is highly confusing . . .
I like using milliSieverts (mSv), but this might be due its being one of the units in the International System of Units (SI), as well as being the first unit I encountered . . .
However, there also are Grays, rems, rads, Curies, and a lot of other units, including the Becquerel, which apparently refers to something releasing one neutron a second . . .
Another important aspect for some or perhaps all the units is the exposure time, which is yet another factor . . .
But at higher levels, any exposure time is fatal, so it all depends . . .
Mostly, I am going with Sieverts and Becquerels, and I am comfortable with all the prefixes, although at present I am not entirely certain how to put Becquerels into a practical perspective . . .
I found an easy way to put Sieverts into perspective, which is in terms of bananas, where 30 Sieverts maps approximately to the radiation in 300 million Nicaraguan bananas, which is all the bananas growing in Nicaragua every six months . . .
If a person consumed 300 million Nicaraguan bananas in one bite, it would be fatal, for sure . . .
There might be an analogy, metaphor, or simile involving soccer balls and the Spice Girls that will help put Becquerels into a practical perspective, but I need to ponder this for a while when I am in sillier mood, really . . .
Really! :)
Fabulous!! :-)
I think of acceptable radiation level exposure from one year received in one hour like this...think about all the alcohol you consume in a year. No big deal for most of us. Now imagine drinking all of that within one hour. YIKES!
As a bit of follow-up, I revisited the definition of Becquerel, and it is the decay of one nucleus per second rather than one neutron per second, which I need to ponder for a while . . .
According to wikipedia, this is one way to put a Becquerel (Bq) into perspective:
1 Ci = 37 GBq
In other words, 1 Curie (Ci) is equivalent to 37 billion Becquerels . . .
And 1 Curie is equal to the radioactivity of 1 gram of radium-226 . . .
[SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel#Relationship_to_the_curie ]
There are two ways to put radium into perspective:
AND
[SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium ]
Going by the 0.1 microgram level, which is one-tenth of one-millionth of a gram, radium looks to be very gnarly, for sure . . .
For sure!
And this makes it possible to do a bit of arithmetic, since we know the mapping of Curies to Becquerels . . .
One-tenth of one-millionth is 1 ten-millionth, so if we divide 37 billion by 10 million, this provides the number of Becquerels that are equivalent to the radioactivity of 0.1 micrograms of radium, which is 3,700 Becquerels . . .
In an Utopian world, there should be a way to map Becquerels to Nicaraguan bananas, and a quick bit of web searching on the phrase "becquerels, bananas" is very productive, since it leads to an excellent bit of information provided in an article written by David Ball and published in the "Journal of Chemical Education", which is titled, "How Radioactive Is Your Banana?", really . . .
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed081p1440
Really!
Apparently, the radioactivity of one Nicaraguan banana is approximately 18.4 Becquerels based on the potassium-40 content of a banana and the radioactivity of potassium-40, really . . .
Really!
Why don't they bury in sand and cement already?
A reactor creates radioactive chemicals inside it. Even after the reactor is shut down, which happened automatically in Japan seconds after the quake, the radioactive chemicals continue to give off heat while they decay into non-radioactive chemicals. Lots of heat; possibly enough to burn right through cement. They are removing this heat with water now. Eventually most of the radioactive chemicals will decay and the reactor won't be giving off as much heat, or they will build some complicated way to remove the heat, but right now they are dealing with the heat and the emergency, trying to get a handle on it.
they cant afford it
My own personal opinion is the fuel rods are too hot to bury in a dry condition and I am also aware that doing the Chernobyl disaster the fuel rods became overheated and exploded contaminating the surrounding area.
James, at Chernobyl the fuel rods overheated and melted, causing the graphite moderator to catch fire, and flashing large amounts of water into steam, resulting in large quantities of radioactive steam and smoke to leave the reactor site. The situation at Fukushima is very different. There is no graphite to burn, and the vast majority of radioctive water/steam is contained within a multi-layered structure built specifically for that purpose. The leaks we are seeing are either planned, metered releases required to manage the system, or very small leaks relative to the overall system.
This whole deal is real bad and what your not hearing is who is in charge. Worse yet, who is still alive after the tsunami. With 18,000 lives lost, maybe the experts are not around. Where are all of the nuclear workers coming from?
I think the Japanese government
is not handling the situation in a very transparent way, If the water is now
contaminated it means the radiation is getting to the water level already or
the water plant is contaminated. This is very dangerous to children. I read
that the wealthy people in Japan are sending their children away to schools in
other countries.
They better start
thinking about the future generation of Japan and start thinking about a
voluntary evacuation of children to other countries until the parents could get
out of Japan or the situation stabilizes for the return of the children.
Something massive like
this is going to take time and I am afraid that the children are already
getting some type of exposure that may be dangerous if it continues. Very
difficult situation for parents and their government is not helping by
downplaying the situation.
Is that some strange form of Haiku-like poetry?
In more traditional structure, how's this?:
9.0 Earthquake
Massive tsunami flood
Nuclear meltdown.
The ignorance displayed in the comments here is truly phenomenal. All the knowledge these 'nucelar' engineers posses and Japan is still having problems? They just need to read up on this article and they'd be back up at power in no time. Just pathetic people. Go back to the trailer parks you came from.
That is amazing!, that a Professor of nuclear engineering would state that plutonium & uranium are ceramics AND are not volitle. What on earth could be the reason? They are 2 of the most dense metals on the planet, and unbelievably volatile.
I believe we will see the evacuation of Japan within the next 120 days.
The pools contain tens of thousands of TONS of spent, highly radioactive nuclear fuel. There are 7 pools and 3 have been breached. Saltwater leaves salt which is like mud or thick sludge and will further complicate cooling.
There is not enough freshwater in all of japan, too cool even one pool if it totally catches on fire.
Oh my my!
Are you willing to volunteer?
wow! though love
They should have dumped the sand and concrete on that thing 2 weeks ago - they've messed around too long already - seal it up permanently - fix the problem quickly.
A reactor creates radioactive chemicals inside it. Even after the reactor is shut down, which happened automatically in Japan seconds after the quake, the radioactive chemicals continue to give off heat while they decay into non-radioactive chemicals. Lots of heat; possibly enough to burn right through cement. They are removing this heat with water now. Eventually most of the radioactive chemicals will decay and the reactor won't be giving off as much heat, or they will do something complicated to disperse the heat, but right now they are dealing with the heat and the emergency, trying to get a handle on it.
LOL to EVENTUALLY. the "chemicals" (radioactive isotopes actually) have a HALF LIFE of ten THOUSAND years. So this is what that means to those of us that are NOT nuclear engineers or power plant operators (can you say Homer)...... Presume there is 44352 pounds (see Size of Nuclear Fuel Assemblies on nei.org/howitworks/nuclearpowerplantfuel/ ). In 10k years there will still be 22k pounds, roughly 11 tons. That is presuming they don't flush it into the ocean in the near future.
OH BTW a reactor starts as RADIOACTIVE materials and simply decays into other isotopes that are more dangerous because the body absorbs them like their non radioactive counter parts... or worse INSTEAD of them... Strontium 90 is absorbed instead of calcium in the bones. Iodine 131 instead of normal iodine.
To compare the long term exposure to X-ray/dental exam is not accurate... X-ray is like a single shot into a crowd with a high power rifle... you may take out one or two people but in the whole the crowd survives. The long term exposure is like a machine gun... eventually you will kill enough people (cells) that the crowd (body) no longer functions. Just ask the guys who stepped in the water this week if there is a danger.
btw our nuclear plant in thr U.S. are currently storing 4 times the nuclear waste they were designed for, no place to take it and it won't go away.... just waiting for the inevitable