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It is worse than we thought.
This is probably the worst news about Fukushima yet, but it seems to be getting little media play. The short version, Reactor 1 has totally exposed fuel rods, melted fuel pooling at the bottom and holes in the reactor containment vessel. It is exactly similar to Chernobyl, with reactor fuel directly exposed to the environment outside the containment vessel. High radiation in the Reactor 1 is making it very difficult to perform any sort of repair work. Workers who enter into the area will be exposed to the maximum limit doses of radiation in minutes.
Fuel rods in the core of the No. 1 reactor are fully exposed, with the water level 1 meter (3.3 feet) below the base of the fuel assembly, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility known as Tepco, told reporters at a briefing in Tokyo. Melted fuel has dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is still being cooled…
“What this means is this is probably going to be a much more difficult cleanup than they originally planned for,” said Paul Padley, a particle physicist at Rice University in Houston. The government and Tepco “have consistently appeared to be underestimating the severity of the situation.”
The company doesn’t know how long the rods have been exposed, it said in the briefing. It’s likely they’ve been uncovered since the first days of the disaster…
Fuel rods are submerged in water to prevent overheating that would crack the casing and release radiation…
Holes have been found in the base of the pressure vessel, and most of the fuel has likely melted, Kyodo News reported yesterday, citing the utility. It’s possible the fuel has leaked into the containment vessel, which was damaged in the explosion, according to the report.Flooding the chamber was one of the steps Tepco outlined in April to bring the crisis under control.
“The plan needs to be revised,” Matsumoto said. “We can’t deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak.”
Japan seems to be taking a very lackadaisical position with regard to public health. This level of emergency would call for more monitoring and a larger exclusion zone. The EPA in the US has been reported (here is the WaPo) to cut back its air and ground testing due to “low levels” of radiation found. I certainly hope they are ready to increase that once again.
6 Comments
Color me stupid, but I am wondering if they can entomb these things with cement already.
Good post, but scary, recommended.
Now it might be to late if there is a hole in the tank how do we know some of the full rods or pieces of the fuel rods (did this reactor have a hydrogen explosion or was it the other reactor) If an explosion broke the fuel rods into smaller pieces they might have already slipped in the hole.
150 tons of water a day I am quite sure could wash pieces of fuel rods into the ocean, the water table where ever the water is going.
That much water can wash parts of the rods through the hole in the reactor quite far.
Still if we can keep the rods from being exposed to air and water thats good.
Just how hot are the rods there has been some discussion about the rods being to hot to encase in concrete.
Maybe Silicon like the space shuttle has to withstand the heat of coming back to earth’s atmosphere.
On second thought if burying the reactor might be the best of several bad options.
150 tons of hot radioactive water a day I am sure is going to expand any concrete hole in the floor of the reactor. If they keep pouring water the crack will get bigger.
Don’t skip unit 4 cooling pond a five sided massive shell casing open at the top. If there was an explosion from jumbling of the rods during the quake and lose of water at the same time that would have shot radiation high into the atmosphere , no?
Guys at Gee Eeee say it can’t happen because…….There’s still a roof over that cooling pond , right ?
What they need is some better Corp. PR. The US should rush in BP’s or Exxon-Mobils PR team immediately to snuff any negative Press. This won’t solve anything, but it will shut up the peasants and maybe allow Tepco to skimp further on repairs.
Cement (with boron added to the mix to stop the reactions) will, IMO, be the only way this is going to finish for Reactors 1 and 3.
There are problems with currently moving ahead on this option. Firstly, there is no way to get into the area of the plant to set up for the cement pumping operation needed. It is still too radioactive to work in there for more than 30-40 minutes at a time. Secondly, as pointed out in one of the responses already below, the heat of the reactions still going on will cause the cement to harden too fast and fatally weaken it. It will take *months* of water cooling to stop the reaction and get to ambient temperatures. Lastly, while cement will be the end state of at least 2 of the reactors, cement structures themselves have a lifetime shorter than the lifetime of the plutonium. This plus the fact that the nuclear danger that they entomb will still be on a highly tectonically active zone, subject to more earthquakes, tsunamis and degradation will mean a multi-century lasting effort to maintain and protect these sarcophagi.
Our new Pharohs’ tombs.