Radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant at unimaginable levels

originally posted by: crappiekat

Does something like this eventually burn itself out?

Yea kind of like the sun..

sorry. I'm feeling a bit dark..

It's like 1000s of years? Unless they can spread it out but it's so crazy nothing can even get close.. What happens is the cores are separated by other things that absorb radiation.. But in a meltdown these pool together and it gets really hot and radioactive.. Good thing if you can say that is they are keeping this underwater.

If they fail to continue to keep this underwater we are in big trouble.

as far as containing it, good luck.. I don't see how that would be possible but I'm no engineer.

a reply to: loam

How long until super giant mutant sea creatures start popping up?

All jokes aside, I don't really know the entire magnitude of the radiation but it seems collosal and I can only wonder how it effects the eco system.

The original thread is still there.
The complete history of what happened at Fukushima.


www.abovetopsecret.com...

So the media has kept their mouth shut and everyone has turned a blind eye since 2011, instead of working together to try to prevent it from ever getting this bad. They said three meltdowns. Will the 4th follow? what could possibly be done at this point?

a reply to: roadgravel

Jeez stuff like this scares the crap out of me.

I can't help but think what this will mean for my children and my children's children.

This has got to effecting marine life in the pacific.

a reply to: SecretKnowledge

Surely even in the best radiation suit your still gonna die. 530 sieverts per hour?

Suits don't block ionizing radiation, just keep the source (contamination) off you.

The 500 sievert reading is inside the reactor containment building, not outside. (yet)

Forgive my ignorance, but how exactly does radiation kill a robot? Fry the electronics?

Scarry stuff.

originally posted by: FauxMulder
Forgive my ignorance, but how exactly does radiation kill a robot? Fry the electronics?

Scarry stuff.

exactly.

Environments with high levels of ionizing radiation create special design challenges. A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results which are inaccurate or unintelligible.

source

a reply to: loam

These reading are coming from inside reactor 2.

The new readings come from inside reactor two, where the radiation levels are 530 sieverts per hour, according to Tepco, the Tokyo Electric Power Company. That's highly radioactive— most radiation is measured in thousandths of a sievert, a unit called a millisievert.

foxnews.com - Incredibly high radiation levels discovered at crippled Fukushima plant.

So they went inside and took the reading. This is not the surrounding area outside the reactor.

What a mess! The article continues and they say, "it might take 40 years to deal with" (same source)

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Guess the original thread is gone.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: intrptr

I understand what you are getting at, but can you be honest and present the concentration in a core of uranium or plutonium vs fuel Rods.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

40 years is an understatement I think.

Or are we saying that chernobyl has been fixed?

Looks like they estimate 100 more years to safely clean up..

And that's after they finish another containment building over the old one..

Here

By all but eliminating the risk of additional atmospheric contamination, the arch will remove the lingering threat of even a limited reprise of those nightmarish days 28 years ago,

Engineers have designed the Chernobyl arch to stand for 100 years; they figure that is how long it may take to fully clean the area.

a reply to: Reverbs

After I wrote that, I thought about the sun too.

I followed the Fuku thread back then. But just like almost everyone else, I forgot about it.

If they can't even get a robot to last more than an hour... What the heck are they gonna do.

And I agree with boogie, The whole world should be working on this.

a reply to: crappiekat

Well who knows maybe they can make better robots?

That would be a good development in general for all nuclear power in the future. And even space travel.

Nuclear decay

Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30.17 years. About 95 percent decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium: barium-137m (137mBa, Ba-137m).

The remainder directly populates the ground state of barium-137, which is stable. Ba-137m has a half-life of about 153 seconds, and is responsible for all of the emissions of gamma rays in samples of caesium-137.

a reply to: roadgravel

Cesium has an ok half life to deal with..

Uranium not so much.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

40 years to complete the decommissioning of the entire plant.

Last month an image of what is though to be fuel rods was obtained.
www.theguardian.com...

a reply to: vonclod

Looks like China Syndrome could be happening, ...

Something like.

From an early Tepco release:


And this is from a more recent attempt to image one of the cores with a muon camera, it's not where they tjought it would be; the bottom of the pressure vessel:





a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

So this is much worse than we knew.

No, many of us knew from early on how bad it might get. It's going to be a problem for the foreseeable future. We don't have the technology to clean it up; hasn't even been invented yet.



a reply toGroot

The original thread is still there.

Unfortunately, the original thread is not there.

Seethis thread for details.

Part 2 is still active, however.

a reply to: Reverbs

Maybe they can slather the robot in this stuff...

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Italy’s Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) have developed a nanoceramic material made from an aluminium oxide that has the potential of producing nuclear energy more efficiently and economically.

Researchers say the substance can operate at higher temperatures and stronger radiation fields. In addition to its higher tolerances, they say that the material becomes more resilient when exposed to radiation.

aluminiuminsider.com - Researchers Develop More Efficient Nanoceramic Material of Aluminium Oxide for Nuclear Reactors

Because, yeah, 40 seems really optimistic! In the future, that nanoceramic will be used inside reactors where they can use something other than water to cool the core without causing corrosion. It would be useful for fast neutron reactors too. But first we need to clean up our messes.

originally posted by: vonclod
a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Looks like China Syndrome could be happening, there are pics of underneath the reactor and it appears the core has melted through..so not good. The radiation 530 sieverts will kill you real quick.

I am not saying the situation is not bad?

Do you understand China syndrome?

High radiation does not equal continued nuclear fission which splits the large atom of nuclear fuel. The chain reaction, critical, or being super critical.

It indicates unstable atoms trying to get to a more stable state. Nuclear decay.

Please cite where the mass of nuclear fuel, and spent fuel, is still undergoing nuclear fission at rate rate which generates enough heat to melt through the earths crust.

I would think the very act of nuclear fuel creating a well of liquid soil and rock would dilute the nuclear fuel to the point it would not be able to maintain heat generating nuclear fission. And that is if the reaction didn't consume fissionable fuel first.