'Melt-through' at Fukushima? / Govt report to IAEA suggests situation worse than meltdown

i lvoe how everyone gets all nervous about how bad things are then someone makes a suggestion about fixing those problems that created the situations we have so they dont keep happening again in the future and everyone loses their minds

genius people

i see what youre all saying, lets just keep doing things the way we have been, "the great people of japan" will fix things

"i wish the great people of japan well"!!!!

man what ignorance

It had already been under my suspision that it had done this, it seemed like they were trying not burden us that much and not make us worry about them that much so we would focus on different things, but it was still serious, the meltdowns made me and not very many things make me go but still, they will recover like everyone does from anything, no matter how tough. if you read this it's not relevant to above comments, but my thoughts on the incident

reply to post by TheTruthShallLive


Really? You can't see the analogy? There are two main ways for Fukishima to directly affect you in the US, airborne radioactive particulates and contaminated water. I have already linked to an animation of the weather patterns that will affect both of these in an earlier post. You are advocating NUKING them, which will release many thousands of times more radioactive particulates and contaminate the surrounding oceans to a similar degree.... which will make your own situation worse by far.

Good problem solving, mr. prezident.

here is an interesting article about melting radioactive fuel and what it would take to melt thru a containment vessel...

TextThe production of the heat can not be stopped or slowed. Unfortunately, radioactive dissociation is a nuclear process that is governed solely by the time table of the half lives involved, and can not be manipulated by any human activity

and

TextThe ultimate fact that has to be reckoned with is that in order to remove heat at the rate required (15,000,000 Joules/sec) on a continuing basis, cold material would have to be introduced into the containment, used to absorb heat, and removed hot. Some kind of circulating system would have to be functioning. This involves working equipment inside the containment in which uranium is melting, and is subject to malfunction.

and that does not seem to be functioning at all.....

and this is basic info found on the web..im sitting here thinking..what should a seasoned nuclear physist know about this and what steps could have been taken to stop or help or reduce this ,,,it is like a child broke the cookie jar and thought he could glue it back together before mom came home but wasn't able to and now has to make up some type of story to he his stupidity.....

The reactors can't be entombed until they empty out the spent fuel pools. The SFPs are much more radioactive than the cores are, they have 40 years worth of spend fuel to store on site.

They can't empty the SFPs until the radiation level in the buildings drop enough to be able to work inside them. With the water continually being poured into the containment vessels the fission by products are going into solution and either being emitted into the atmosphere as steam, or mingling with the groundwater.

The radiation levels inside the buildings won't drop for hundreds of thousands of years. The relative humidity of 99.9% highly radioactive steam ensures that every surface inside those buildings is 'hot' and not likely to be conducive to human activity.

The site is built on sandstone which is very brittle, subject to liquefaction, and easily crumbles.

There was substantial damage the the ground beneath as well as the structures around the site.
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Attempting to build anything like the Chernobyl sarcophagus on such weak soil would only lead to the entire structure sinking into the Pacific.

In short, at this point we are all fukushima'ed.

Originally posted by jadedANDcynical
The reactors can't be entombed until they empty out the spent fuel pools. The SFPs are much more radioactive than the cores are, they have 40 years worth of spend fuel to store on site.

They can't empty the SFPs until the radiation level in the buildings drop enough to be able to work inside them. With the water continually being poured into the containment vessels the fission by products are going into solution and either being emitted into the atmosphere as steam, or mingling with the groundwater.

The radiation levels inside the buildings won't drop for hundreds of thousands of years. The relative humidity of 99.9% highly radioactive steam ensures that every surface inside those buildings is 'hot' and not likely to be conducive to human activity.

The site is built on sandstone which is very brittle, subject to liquefaction, and easily crumbles.

There was substantial damage the the ground beneath as well as the structures around the site.


Attempting to build anything like the Chernobyl sarcophagus on such weak soil would only lead to the entire structure sinking into the Pacific.

In short, at this point we are all fukushima'ed.

A sarcophagus isn't an option at the Fukushima plant.

In the case of Chernobyl the sarcophagus was in place to protect the melted down fuel(mixed with sand) from getting wet as well as stopping the graphite moderator from being blown away/into the atmosphere.

In the case of Fukushima, water is the moderator and the worry is from the fuel drying out and overheating causing a reaction. This isn't likely if the technicians keep it wet but - and this is a big BUT - the act of keeping the fuel pellets wet is causing radioactively charged matter to leak into the Pacific ocean and possibly local groundwater.

If the fuel pellets manage to melt through the outer containment shell, then the groundwater will be compromised (I'd be pretty surprised if this hasn't already happened) and then the contamination(contaminants) could end up quite a distance from the plant.

Initially the Pacific ocean could probably disperse the contamination without any problems but I am loath to try and put a time-scale how long this could be done for. Eventually radioactive matter will end up in the food chain.

Wether or not this is a concern for the inhabitants of this planet is another debate altogether. Run a geiger-counter over a piece of granite and watch the counter go berserk....There are a lot of radioactive sources already present in our everyday lives...most of us are just unaware that they are there.

The Japanese government and TEPCO have demonstrated their propensity for lying about the severity of the situation and the events that have transpired.

Given this fact, it would be reasonable to conclude they will probably not convey the truth in future statements and reports.

I would say the odds are high that the reality of the situation is much worse than this report to the IAEA suggest.

They say ...
"nuclear fuel in three reactors at Fukushima has possibly melted through the pressure vessels and accumulated in outer containment vessels."

I would wager, and rather safely, that "possibly melted through" means it has melted through. It may have even breached the containment vessel.

Perhaps in another three months we will learn the truth.

SH

Originally posted by jadedANDcynical
The reactors can't be entombed until they empty out the spent fuel pools. The SFPs are much more radioactive than the cores are, they have 40 years worth of spend fuel to store on site.

The spent fuel stored in the reactor buildings were buried after the explosions blew them all over the complex.

New York Times ...

from the bottom of the article ... "a western nuclear executive" "who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business connections in Japan." ...

Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The pieces may be from rods in the spent-fuel pools that were flung out by hydrogen explosions.

also ...

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant

"... according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

Look at the diagram where the spent fuel pool is stored ....

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Reactor building is blown apart ...



Resulting damage ...

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For comparison ....

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The top 2/3rds of the reactor building is gone. Clearly the spent fuel pools were severely damaged or competely destroyed.

When will TEPCO admit the spent fuel rod pools are gone?

SH

Originally posted by Rigel Kent

Was Japan enriching uranium for Iran?

Very very doubtful, to the point of no definitely not, much more likely if those kind of shenanigans were going on that it was for themselves as a defence against China in case their US bulwark failed for some reason, economic or real politic.

Originally posted by TheTruthShallLive
reply to post by Iamonlyhuman

 

we didnt fix anything, we bent over and let bp rape us and then get rich and have a party about how well their safety record is

not how i wouldve handled things, i was fairly clear, if you didnt understand it, what can i say

critical reading skills are something to look into

So are critical thinking skills and nuclear winter. Grammar and punctuation wouldn't hurt either.

reply to post by whatisanameanyway


i remember watching "china syndrom" now i understand why the lead character was so scared.

I haven't even seen any reports in the media about the situation and the effects...Goes to show what's more important, out of sight out of mind....It's really a shame and this is catastrophic for our home planet. I wish people would realize this instead of worrying about who wins the grammy's or who Weiner sent a picture of his weiner to.

The way, i read, to stop this incident is to detonate an actual nuclear weapon in each containment vessel, to basically vaporize the self sustaining reaction. Talk about fighting fire with fire.

What can we do about the increased radiation?? This is what we do.
Health hints: Drink lots of good water and liquids (to dilute radiation).
Vitamin D3, Vitamin C and Boron capsules fight the radiation and improve immune system. Our immune system fights cancer caused by radiation.
On a spiritual level, we have turned our lives over the Father and Son (Yahweh and Yahshua). We believe that we are sealed in Their Names, Revelation 14:1. Those who are will survive all of these cataclysms to see Yahshua come! Yes, He is coming SOON and no New World Order can stop Him! HalleluYah!

When reactor fuel melts the reactor containment vessels it is diluted to the point it no longer can produce the heat required to melt material.

US built reactor vessels have 8 inches of steel in the internal containment vessel before you hit external steel containment vessels of steel and concrete. .

The newest reactors will have 12+ inches of steel made in japan with equipment from the old US GE plant.
www.bloomberg.com...

Oh the china syndrome is imposable as the molten reactor fuel would dilute long before it got anywhere deep.

Originally posted by ANNED
When reactor fuel melts the reactor containment vessels it is diluted to the point it no longer can produce the heat required to melt material.

The NRC claims that containment cannot or will not ever be able to leak, so where are you getting your information about corium and breaches from ?

"Dilluted" is much worse than concentrated especially if is a homogenous mass of uranium in terms of radiation as re-criticality become much more likely due to water neutrons moderation ( slow neutrons ) , whereas a solid mass creates thermal shielding reducing neutron bombardment from slow neutrons : hence "dilution" ( I am not even sure what you mean by that term when it relates to radioactive materials in either solution or solid form) will increase heat levels unitl the materials are spread very far apart which is not likely to happen ( you know that whole brownian motion thing and gravity ) in a puddle under a hole in something .

...and given the TONS of nuclear material in the average reactor even a small fraction of it "in the basement so to speak " would be at over 2000F after burning through the metal , how many materials do you know that are going to be safe being exposed to even "diffuse" portion of that thermal potential?

reply to post by whatisanameanyway


I've been on this topic for quite a while and as a result I have accumulated quite a bit of data, much of which has only been skimmed over.

That being the case, I had missed this little nugget that has been residing on my hard drive since May 7th. It's a big (10MB) pdf from Caltech.

Here is but one page:


If you look closely, you will see that it is dated 04/09/2011, which is nearly 2 months earlier than the news article linked. There's a LOT of neat stuff in this doc, and I will be sharing some of the more salient bits in the big thread in the next few days if anyone is interested in further discussions of it.

Source .pdf *******This is the direct link to the full 10MB file******