Fukushima Meltdown Could Trigger Atomic Explosion

reply to post by Fractured.Facade


The Russians feared it would be large enough to render all of Europe "un-inhabitable". So I dunno, that doesn't sound like a little steam explosion to me.

reply to post by Fiberx


I listened to the interview with the scientist earlier. He stated that it Was being considered. Personally, it sounds insane. But then have you looked at the economy lately? That was due in large part to getting rid of the Glass Steagal act in 1994. This depression wasn't an accident, but now I am getting off the point.

reply to post by Wookiep


An explosion could take place if the melted material hit a significant pool of water.. NOT a nuclear explosion however.

Ever taken a hot pan off the stove and put it straight into a flow of your faucet water? What happens to the water? How about pouring water into a pan that has very hot oil in it? (DON'T do it!).

The water expands rapidly (and in this case the molten rods could cool rapidly and break apart) and expands. Depending on size of reaction you may have a sizzle or you may have a boom.

Also, Hydrogen is released in copious quantities as we have seen with the hydrogen explosions at the reactors.

Still, no nuclear bomb.. Sorry.

You seem hell bent on having a bomb situation, but it just doesn't exist.

What we should be scared of is "other than nuclear" explosions spreading the radioactive materials, dirty water pouring into the ocean and an uncontrollable melt down radiating the surrounding areas for decades to come.

reply to post by Fiberx

What we should be scared of is "other than nuclear" explosions spreading the radioactive materials, dirty water pouring into the ocean and an uncontrollable melt down radiating the surrounding areas for decades to come.

I definately agree with that (at least the explosions spreading radioactive materials etc), and those folks at TEPCO have downplayed this enough to make one hurl a thousand times. I do appreciate your input. I'm definately no nuclear scientist, but if it made Russia worry to the point where literally 500,000 people risked their lives to clean that thing up (200,000+ confrimed dead as a direct result) and dig tunnels etc, why has this situation been downplayed so much?

Chernobyl suffered from a catastrophic containment breach. A massive hydrogen explosion literally tore the reactor apart, very soon after they lost control of the reaction. Chernobyl also did not have the mulrilayer containment that Fukushima has. This is a slow bleed, while the Russians faced aa cataclysmic, virtually instant release of massive levels of radiation. It was throw out of the reactor and reached about 35000 feet in altitude so the spread was more aggressive.

Also i'd say that I have never heard a claim of 500,000 workers being exposed at Chernobyl. Maybe 500?

I'm sure there were 500,000 people in the most dangerous areas around Chernobyl though. Just in the way that hundreds of thousands were evacuated in Japan.

reply to post by Fiberx


Pretty recently, new info about the Chernobyl disaster was put out to the public, that for 20 years had remained hidden from the public. The 500,000 workers was part of that released information. Several documentaries were made, check out the series from the video that I posted on page 1.

Originally posted by Fractured.Facade
There is absolutely zero possibility of an "atomic explosion" here, such a detonation would require uranium, or plutonium cores that are thousands of times more pure than the fuel in these reactors, and then a specially designed highly explosive (implosion) of the fuels to achieve critical mass and thus an "atomic explosion"

The worst that can happen is a complete meltdown, and possible steam ejections that would eject massive amounts of extremely radioactive elements in the form of particulates that could be spread out by winds in lethal concentrations.

A worse threat for now is not from this meltdown scenario, they have that fairly under control with cooling efforts... The severely damaged and leaking spent fuel pools in the tops of the damaged reactor structures are a serious looming threat, if the spent fuel rods are exposed to the air, and heat up and catch fire that could be as bad, or worse than a meltdown in the reactor cores.

Blowing these reactors up with nukes or any explosives is just plain stupid.

Thank you. At least someone knows what they are talking about. It is impossible for a nuclear power plant reactor to go off like a nuclear bomb. Wrong fuel, wrong mix, wrong conditions. It just can not happen. And if anyone does not know it, the blast at the Russian reactor, Chernobyl was a STEAM explosion. The red hot core was flooded with too much water too fast and it flashed to steam and blow the lid off the reactor. And at that high temperature water comes apart and you get hydrogen gas (and oxygen). So what the steam blast did not take out the secondary hydrogen gas explosion did.

The fuel needs to be removed before it melts down, if it melts down they will in fact have a chernobyl catastrophe. as it stands the cores are still submerged and intact, but the fuel must be removed and detonated somewhere at a safer distance away in a controlled environment, or even re-used at a more sophisticated plant.

as it stands right now the world is in trouble and all nuclear power plants need to be shut down and discontinued.

the world has unlimited natural gas and the globalists need to quit being so friggen greedy so the world can get straightened out before we destroy ourselves over hypothetical money

reply to post by Fiberx


you would be wrong 2 times there.

reply to post by Fiberx

Also i'd say that I have never heard a claim of 500,000 workers being exposed at Chernobyl. Maybe 500?

The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy

source

reply to post by anumohi


Just yesterday Japan raised the level to 7.

enenews.com...

That now puts it on the the scale of Chernobyl (the highest level). Yet today TEPCO says the crisis is "stabalizing"

www.reuters.com...

Well, which is it?

Recent UN Report

I read this as suggesting that several hundred thousand took part in the recovery. I'm sure there are many many Japanese moving to and from the site, taking readings in surrounding areas, and dealing with contaminated debris, but it looks to me that there were only a few hundred people that were actually going into the reactor to do the "emergency work". These are the guys that are the equivalent of the "Fukushima 50", which is probably actually a couple of hundred as well.

Originally posted by Wookiep
reply to post by anumohi

 

Just yesterday Japan raised the level to 7.

enenews.com...

That now puts it on the the scale of Chernobyl (the highest level). Yet today TEPCO says the crisis is "stabalizing"

www.reuters.com...

Well, which is it?

edit on 12-4-2011 by Wookiep because: (no reason given)

its not a chernobyl by any measure , but its still very unhealthy for us and #ashima, all in all its just very sad

I have a question which is going to sound really stupid to people who understand this stuff, but it's something I've been wondering about so here it is:

Why can't they just take the spent rods and the other material and move it to another place where it can be cooled?

I'm sure this would expose a great number of people to radiation but it seems they are already being exposed anyway?

reply to post by Wookiep


The raising of the level to 7 now is redundant... It was raised because on March 15-16 the radioactive releases were much higher than they had expected, so this raise is based on that... The situation is stabilizing because radioactive emissions are steadily declining since that peak in March, they are keeping the reactors cool, and efforts are gaining ground to contain the situation and beginning cleanup operations... Which will take YEARS to accomplish, along with plans to remove spent fuel rods from the reactor spent fuel pools and eventually removal of the partially melted fuel rods in the damaged reactors, then the demolition of the site can begin and take years more.

In short, the peak of this crisis reached level 7 on March 15-16, and either they (TEPCO Japanese Gvt.) didn't know it was that bad until now, or they lied about it... Either way, it isn't yet as bad as Chernobyl was, and seems to be stabilizing as rad levels are dropping consistently.

If you were wishing for the worst to happen, you will likely be very disappointed now... In this case the worst already happened nearly a month ago.

reply to post by anumohi

its not a chernobyl by any measure

I guess I don't know how you could say that. Raising it to 7 quite literally *is* the same level as Chernobyl. In my opinion it's worse. Why? Well we have 6 reactors involved instead of 1 and we have a whole pool (which isn't a pool anymore by most accounts) of spent fuel rods exposed.

reply to post by Fractured.Facade

If you were wishing for the worst to happen, you will likely be very disappointed now... In this case the worst already happened nearly a month ago.

Yeah um excuse me? If I WISH for the worst to happen?? Is that how you're going to react to the fact that TEPCO has obviously downplayed this from the start? You've seen the reality, in the now 685 page main thread on this and have tried to downplay it from every angle, yet you're gonna sit there and really go there? Pfft, you know what sir, think whatever you want, I'm not even going to feed this nonsense.

reply to post by Daughter2


Because the radiation levels experienced in the process would kill the workers trying to "package it up" before they could do it.. Not to mention the rods are at least hundreds of degrees F, potentially several thousands of degrees F, so HOW do you package and transport them? How do you prevent critical mass during transport?

There are really a ton of reasons that cooling in place is the only realistic option. It isn't a good option, you are right. They have very few options to choose from though.

My question that follows a similar thought to yours is -

Why have they not brought more sophisticated cooling TO the rods?

One of the problems was that they couldn't size up the issues properly to begin with. They couldn't make advanced plans because they lacked access to the needed information.

Japan builds amazing robotics that can dance and look human and other fun things, but they never developed any radiation hardened robotics to service their nuclear plants... This turned out to be a critical mistake that wasn't dealt with until the US brought in it's specialized robots to assist the workers..

Even the US robots aren't going to fill the bill entirely however, because they are designed to to operate in specific plants or even specific tunnels at specific plants!

how is concrete suppose to help? from what i understand a bomb can easily destroy a concrete structure, right?

Assuming this stuff did reach the water table does anyone know(or could guess at) the power of the resulting explosion?