NRC: No water in spent fuel pool of Japan plant(Chief of Nuclear regulation Committee)

NRC: No water in spent fuel pool of Japan plant(Chief of Nuclear regulation Committee)

finance.yahoo.com

The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan's most troubled nuclear plant. But Japanese officials denied it.

"There is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing.

If Jaczko was correct, this would mean there was nothing to stop the fuel rods from heating and ultimately melting down. The outer shel

(visit the link for the full news article)

I mentioned this in another thread. The risk is NOT a nuclear explosion but a lot of radiation being emitted into the atmosphere.

The problem is with major earthquake, support services that maintain these nuclear reactors have been cutoff. These reactors need large amount of water to cool them down and it seems this system has been cut off due to the catastrophy!

finance.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

So the question is, who is lying? Is TEPCO, a known liar, misleading the public -- or is the US, also a known liar, but one with no motivation for lying at the moment, lying?

I am not a scientist. Therefore I am about to show my ignorance, so correct me if I am wrong.

If the material gets so hot that it melts, does that mean that a superheated mass of molten material will vaporize anything beneath it, pushing the super-heated material upwards as a plume of particles?

I know that the MSM seems slowly shimmying into the admission that this horrible accident appears to be heading towards an epically tragic ending. Eventually, I hope to invoke the question regarding the sovereignty of the corporation.

Once again, the corporation controlled the flow of information; just as with the BP incident, and once again, vital time was lost while they played a "PR" game.

The force of the interests of the Japanese people was not enough to compel them to be forthcoming regarding the elemental aspects of the cascading failures. Just as the force of the interest of the American people was not sufficient.

Are we learning yet?

Corporations should not have the same rights as people; it is unreasonable when the final result is an immortal inhuman machine that doesn't move as a member of any community; but as a predator among them.

The minute it was realized that there was no positive control of the coolant system, they should have immediately begun deploying the kind of special concrete containment they resorted to in Chernobyl. Is there another way this can end? By waiting, they force a human sacrifice to this horror; as if it weren't bad enough.

Sorry, this has me thinking darkly.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
So the question is, who is lying? Is TEPCO, a known liar, misleading the public -- or is the US, also a known liar, but one with no motivation for lying at the moment, lying?

Well I'd say the Japanese are lying..
Why? Because they called off the plan to use a helicopter to drop stuff into the reactor due to high radiation levels..
Where did this HIGH radiation level come from if not from exposed rods ??

Well I am on the side of MIT and the Japanese, this story is bunk, any other sources cause I got these:

www.tepco.co.jp...

mitnse.com...

Originally posted by Maxmars
I am not a scientist. Therefore I am about to show my ignorance, so correct me if I am wrong.

If the material gets so hot that it melts, does that mean that a superheated mass of molten material will vaporize anything beneath it, pushing the super-heated material upwards as a plume of particles?

the wiki article on nucelar meltdown has a pretty readable summary, although I can't vouch for eth accuracy of the science - en.wikipedia.org...

Baicially it seems that all Western reactors have a lower containment system designed to contain teh "corium" should it breach the primary containment vessel.

there is water in the lower plenum, and that will be heated and turned to steam. whether any of that steam is released, or he corim breaks up and is expelled by such a steam release, depends upon damage to the plenum.

my understanding ATM is that there is no known damge to the plenum - the problems are all entirely related to the failure of the cooling systems, and the explosions that have happened have been due to the generation of hydrogen by oxidisation of zircaloy used as cladding for teh fuel rods.

I know that the MSM seems slowly shimmying into the admission that this horrible accident appears to be heading towards an epically tragic ending.

as far as I can see a "tragic ending" is unlikely - at least it seems unlikely there will be any loss of life. The headlines reflect public ignorance and fear.

It is certainly true that if a melted core was opened to atmosphere ther would be a lot of radiation released and that might kil many people.

But it is unlikely that will happen.

What still seems much more likely to happen is that any melt down will be contained in a similar manner to Three Mile Island, and any reactors where that happens will be permanently shut down, covered in concrete, and unable to be demolished for a few thousand yesrs!

The minute it was realized that there was no positive control of the coolant system, they should have immediately begun deploying the kind of special concrete containment they resorted to in Chernobyl. Is there another way this can end?

no that seems a possible end for 1 or more of the reactors, but your proposed "solutino" was never going to happen - there was this tsunami that got in the way you see - people were dying everywhere, EXCEPT actually at the reactor!

By waiting, they force a human sacrifice to this horror; as if it weren't bad enough.

Sorry, this has me thinking darkly.

Yes nucelar accidents often seem to do that - despite the lack of casualties!