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Reactor Containment & Fuel Storage from UCS; (h/t commenter lobster)
Update: Monday 5:30 pm (EDT): AP reports utility officials say some of the pumps in Unit 2 are damaged and must be replaced. They’re on order.
It’s Monday morning in the US; it’s Monday evening in Japan.
Quick Summary: Over the weekend, hopes of getting the reactors and spent fuel storage pools cooled rose significantly at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station, although on Monday, new smoke rose from Unit 3 (see NYT photo) forcing another evacuation there. They’re not sure whether there was another explosion (none was heard) nor do they know the source/cause of the smoke.
Rising hopes are attributed to getting power connected to some Units, though cooling systems have not yet been restated, and their improving ability to target sea water spray into the spent fuel storage pools and sustain it for several hours. This appears to be lowering temperatures at the critical hot spots.
In the meantime, they’re finding higher radation levels in surrounding communities, creating concerns about milk, local produce and tap water.
Power to the Units. Over the weekend, plant officials were able to complete laying transmission cables to transmit electric power from the grid to Units 1 and 2; they’re now completing connections to Units 3 and 4. There are reports they were able to connect to terminal/hubs providing power to a central control room between Units 1 and 2.
As of 8:30 am Monday (EDT), they have not attempted to turn on the cooling systems at Units 1 and 2. They’re still testing gauges, water temps, and other equipment to determine water levels and temperatures, and thus which pumping/cooling equipment needs to be tested for restarting. So even though they have power, the normal cooling systems are not yet functioning and we don’t yet know what equipment will work.
As we feared, the New York Times reports this morning (EDT) that workers are finding critical equipment, including a ventilation system, that must be repaired before they can restart the cooling systems at Unit 2. Recall that all four units suffered explosions, but Unit 2 suffered minimal exterior wall/roof collapse, whereas Units 1, 3, and 4 were extensively damaged.
After connecting the transmission line on Sunday, engineers found on Monday that they still did not have enough power to fully run the systems that control the temperature and pressure in the building that houses the reactor, officials from the nuclear safety agency said.
Engineers were also trying to repair the ventilation system in the control room that is used to monitor conditions in the No. 1 and No. 2 units. When that work is completed, possibly on Monday, it will allow the power company, also known as Tepco, to begin cleansing the air in the control room so that workers can eventually re-enter and begin using equipment inside to monitor conditions in the two reactor units.
At the same time, they’ve restored back-up generation at Units 5 and 6. With restored cooling functions, those two reactors and their spent fuel storage pools are out of danger, at least for the moment.
Continued spraying of sea water at Units 3 and 4. With the normal cooling functions still unavailable at units 1-4, they’ve continued spraying water from high-pressure fire hoses. They’ve brought in more crews and equipment, including a large crane that pictures show getting a hose above a reactor building and focusing spray down towards the fourth floor spent fuel pools. The ability to do this remotely (thus limited worker exposure next to the reactor) and to continue for several hours at a time has greatly increased their ability to inject water into the reactor buildings.
On Sunday, there was a report they had determined the spent pool fuel at Unit 4 was full. What accounts for this? Recall that last week, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials disagreed with the Japanese by insisting that Unit 4′s spent fuel pool was dry — all the water had either evaporated from the rising heat/boiling (which meant uncovering and damage to fuel and fuel cladding) or had leaked from cracks to the pool walls or floor. [One NHK TV segment interviewed a plant worker who, at the time of the quake, was near one of the pools; he and others were splashed with water as the quake sloshed the storage pool water.] The US claim led to a hypothesis by Union of Concerned Scientists that pool water could also have escaped through a breach in the “gate” that allows transfer of fuel assemblies between the reactor core and the spent fuel pool. [See my previous update].
Now, however, plant officials are claiming the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is full. If true, was it ever damaged or dry? Or is this simply the result of continuing efforts to spray sea water into the pool? Whatever, it’s a good sign that sufficient water is there and temperatures have fallen.
One issue we touched on early last week but haven’t heard much about lately is the corrosive effect of sea water on containment structures and pumping equipment. Remember that the decision to start injecting sea water was interpreted at the time as a decision to give up on any hope of saving the plant for future operation, since the sea water would over time destroy critical equipment. But it was necessary given the need to prevent a wider meltdown and public health hazard.
They have now spent over a week pumping sea water into units 1-4 (and Units 5-6?), both into the cooling systems circulating through the reactors and into the spent fuel storage pools. When does that necessary emergency action become the corrosion that causes the next system breakdown, even if they are able to restore pumps and other cooling mechanisms? And what will they do to prevent this inevitable breakdown?
Increasing concern about area radiation and public health. Dozens of plant workers have now received dangerous levels of radiation, possibly lethal for many of the “Fukushima 50″ who stayed at the plant when others were evacuated. They’ve continued to cycle in new workers, particularly those who can operate the fire trucks and other sea water pumping equipment.
Yesterday, various radiation monitoring systems near Fukushima and another plant were reporting spikes in radiation readings, but it’s unclear what caused this. Another event at Fukushima? Another plant? Rain? Commenter lobster was tracking last night.
Over the weekend, there were reports of officials finding unsafe radiation levels in milk and increased levels in local produce, first spinach and now other foods grown in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures. There is a ban on exporting produce from these areas, and they are continuing to monitor for food contamination. Also, there is warning against drinking tap water in a community about 30 miles away. That signals a spreading public health problem. As of Monday, more than 29,000 people have been evaculated from the area.
The NHK live tv feed (English) has been showing frequent updates on radiation levels at various locations, comparisons with normal exposure levels and recommended precautions.
And it’s been raining in northern Japan. So, for people still there, it’s stay indoors, don’t go out in the rain, avoid contaminated produce and wash everything.
More updates as warranted.
Sources:
NHK World TV
New York Times, New Repairs Delay Work at Crippled Nuclear Plant
New York Times, Status of Each Unit, with timelines
Breakthrough Institute, Situation Report
Union of Concerned Scientists, All Things Nuclear; and Daily Briefings
50 Comments
Scarecrow, thank you for this new thread.
Good morning. Don’t drink the water and don’t eat your spinach or chrysanthemum leaves.
In a earlier press briefing someone did ask where does all the excess water go? The answer seems to suggest that they stay in the facilities unless evaporated, which seems not all that convincing, especially given all the cleaning/filteration and pumping facilities for waste water run on the same good electricity that they don’t have just yet.
Yikes!
Thanks so much scarecrow. It has been impossible to get this information without the kind of research and time you have put into this.
All of the sudden the media have war and killing to promote.
I just heard a report on the NHK tv feed that confirms excess water is flowing back into the ocean, so they’ve begun to test radiation levels there.
Yeah, they’ve got cool pictures of tracer bullets over Tripoli in the night, which apparently attracts more audience than interviewing some poor guy who was exposed to lethal doses of invisible radiation or a bunch of spinach. We need more explosions!
So we will now have the three eyed fish.
Something very unexpected in that quote from the NYT article on the need for repairs. It says that the new power line, which has taken them a week to bring in and hook up, does not carry enough power to run all the critical equipment in the control room at Unit 2. WHAT!
I’m trying to understand how we’re only discovering this now. Surely plant officials and operators would know the electrical load at each plant and building. I assume the site electrical crews would know this precisely. And I can’t think of a practical reason why the line they’ve been laying for a week would not have been sized to be able to carry sufficient power to meet that load. There’s more to this story they haven’t told us yet.
We already have 3-eyed fish. Now they may be dead. But let’s wait until we get more info. We don’t know the radioactive content of this escaping water nor its volume, and it’s being dispersed into a huge body of water.
Other amazing things are like the replacement backup generators required were not standard Japanese commercial/industrial voltage. Hence rush order to GE and request to US Forces. I’m not sure if this is true, but it does sound very plausible.
My intuition has been all squirrelly about that power line from the first I heard about it. No technical knowledge, just a lot of skepticism about the difficulties of doing it. IOW, thought it might be a red herring all along, kinda analogous to hiding or postponing the inevitable about the Gulf oil disaster by use of dispersants.
As to line power to the site, I believe being the electric company they would be fully aware of these requirements. Whether they could arrange for all necessary transformers and such not clear. As to the wire itself, it is fact the very output of the plant that is being used. So unless (like now) the site was created to eat more power than it feeds, the capacity should be ok.
I assumed the difficulties would be the radiation in/near the plants, which would compound the problem to connecting power lines to the exact connection points needed, given presumed damage to the main switchyard that normally connects to the grid. What I didn’t expect was they’d get the capacity of the line wrong. This doesn’t seem plausible.
Why it took so long has to do with losing a transmission tower in the earthquake.
I said last week that power was just a shiny object. I still say that. If power was the only issue, we could have had a megawatt of portable generation active in 48 hours.
Otoh, the utility has not impressed me much and the idea that somebody on the plant side gave a wrong number or somebody on the power side grabbed the wrong wire doesn’t seem reaching too far.
Boxturtle (And you’d think they could disconnect some equiptment to get enough power for the pumps)
After reading this
I’m wondering about another long term effect of this disaster: how much of the area’s electricity did these power plants produce? What effect will the loss of that power have, both on the civilian population and their economy? What will they do to replace this source of power?
Not to me. Backup generators come in all flavors, true. But their entire power station was washed away. It’s not like they’re trying to use existing equiptment. So whatever generator they obtained would need to come with a transformer setup to drop the voltage to working levels or with MASSIVE cables to handle the current load if they’re generating at working voltages.
Boxturtle (Not ready to call bullshit, but it seems the more likely answer)
wrt to providing enough capacity for the local area, that’s probably not the issue. The Japanese electrical grid is highly interconnected, so generators from all over Japan collectively serve Japan’s entire demand. It’s a commons.
They lost power from the Fukushima station, and from other plants at least temporarily when they automatically shut down, which led initially to rotating blackouts — these are controlled curtailments of power as they switch off one community or sector after another and rotate them, so that the total demand is within the total operable capacity of the system. Earlier reports said that after they did this once of so, customer conservation efforts reduced demand and so reduced the need for controlled blackouts. Trains ran again. Also remember that a large amount of demand was destroyed by the quake and the tsunami. So the supply went down, but so did the demand.
The loss of one station is not critical; the sustained loss of several would be.
As for the immediate area around Fukushima Daiichi station, its problems are not that that plant is down, since power is supplied from across the entire grid. The problem would be that their local transmission and/or distribution system may be down in various neighborhoods, and restoring that may not be their immediate priority, given all the other destruction.
I just read an article, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/radiation-west-coast_n_837585.html, (sorry no working linky device), that says …
A diplomat who has access to radiation tracking by the U.N.’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization told The Associated Press in Vienna that initial readings show tiny amounts of radiation have reached California. But it’s not dangerous in any way – “about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the organization does not make its findings public.
I wish I had more trust in government types, because I’d be relieved. Still, 5,000 miles does seem like a long way. But, I believe we are all connected, in ways, and that we might feel some negative affects from the whole tragedy. If not dead three eyed fish, a global economic affect.
Siun has a fresh post up: New York Times Throws In with Bahrain’s MOTUs
Hmm.
begun???
Why weren’t they from the start.
If nothing else, they would want to know what isotopes are coming out of the plant.
You know there is truth in the particular and obfuscation of the general in these dosage determinations. In most isotopes radioactivity does not go away for thousands of years. There is no such thing as a purely safe dose to living flora and fauna, just less and less safe. There are no detoxification processes in living matter. Effects are cumulative over time.
As long half life isotopes are poured out, the environment becomes gradually less and less safe. What has been done by the bombs, the testing, the accidents is there. Unlike with CO2 which shares some dynamics with radioactivity as pertains to global environment, the long lag time with chronic exposure and damage makes it more difficult to determine the tipping point with radioactivity. — And you know what we are doing with the math and physics of CO2.
Thanks, TS. I heard someone once say There’s a little bit of Chernobyl in all of us.
There are a myriad of problems confronted when stringing temporary power to a facility. Not only is source important, but so are transformers and cable. I understand, from NHK tv, that a temporary transformer was set. The capacity of the transformer was determined by what was available on short notice and the availability of equipment needed to move it into place. The power cable is also problematic. This is likely a portable, high voltage cable consisting of individual, insulated, armored conductors clustered inside a rubber cable (often called a “balogna cable”). This cable is flexible, but very heavy and unwieldy so the conductor size and ampacity will be limited so that it can actually be wrestled into place. I’m unsure about the NYT’s article, and wouldn’t trust their reporting completely. Whether the cable can actually power all “critical” equipment for reactor 2 and its controls may be a mis-translation or have some element of overhyping. It would be up to the engineering team to determine what is truly critical and to how best to supply power with the equipment that is available. My guess is that the team has determined that they can supply the most important equipment with what they have and the “other stuff” can wait. I can also guess that they believe Unit 2′s equipment is usable or can be made usable, and that is why that unit has priority for receiving emergency power. Since there is no hope of actually doing anything with the unit, other than containing and perhaps mitigating the damage, the control room itself would be superfluous. While having data and control capability would be nice, it isn’t the first priority.
Since we have Japan and Nuclear in the news these days or is that weeks or months, might want to view this hour movie. Guess it came out in 2006, but sure is timely today.
“Atomic Wounds”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EOeRb-ddqc
Decisions made under duress can overlook critical information.
I’ve seen those mistakes made when fighting a large fire up close.
An uninformed observation about Unit 4. If the storage pool is full, where did the hydrogen to initiate the explosion come from?
And about the gate between the storage pool and the reactor basin. Unless this system is designed differently from the one I have seen, the complete removal of the gate would only take a few feet of water off the top of the storage pool. The gate shouldn’t go all the way to the bottom of the pool, it only plugs a slot at the top and the rods are stored way below the bottom of that slot.
Its been 30 years since I was in a reactor building and my memory is hazy, but I’m 90% sure that was the way the storage pool was built.
I assume the control room is useful/necessary for providing readings on the core, the pool, and various cooling system equipment. And for operating that equipment if it still works.
I agree on the sizing issues for transformers, cables. But the reporting has been “we’ve put down the cable and we’re extending to other units.” If they don’t have enough for even Unit 2, then there must be more going on, or the reporting is in error, or both.
Yeah — the gate theory would account only for the top levels of pool water, but by reducing volumn, it facilitates whatever heating is occurring in the remaining volumn, no?
Yes, no doubt about that. Have you seen any calculations concerning how long it would take the pool to heat up and boil off the remaining volume to expose the rods? Those calculations could go a long way towards determining whether the storage pool is leaking, either via structural failure or piping. Now, there are reports of “smoke” from building 3. I would suspect steam, and that would be consistent with the storage pool having been partially filled with water yesterday and it is heating up today, but without any real information EVERYTHING I say is speculation. Furthermore, with FLIR mounted everywhere, I think that TEPCO has chosen to keep as much information as possible out of the public eye.
There have been reports that the storage pool at Unit 4 is leaking and that the storage pool at Unit 4 is completely dry. I’m not clear on Unit 3.
But reddogs point is valid. The HAVE to know the condition of those pools. They have sensors on the ground, they have sensors in the air, they have sensors in space. If unit 4 is completely dry, there will be easily identifiable radiation to both the space sensors and the airborne sensors. If the rods are burning, there will be specific isotopes easily detected by those sensors. Ditto if a core melts or if containment is breached.
Boxturtle (But we’re not supposed to know that, so you have to kill anyone you tell)
>I assume the control room is useful/necessary for providing >readings on the core, the pool, and various cooling system >equipment. And for operating that equipment if it still works.
Useful, but not necessary. While all SCADA terminates in the control room there will be local stations througout the plant giving the identical readings and local control (even manual control by-passing SCADA completely) of most, and probably all, systems. If those systems can be powered up and if the transducers and control panels are physically functional, and if the terminal equipment hasn’t been destroyed, operation (or in this case, partial operation of some systems) can be resumed. A lot of “ifs”.
If anyone reading doesn’t know, SCADA is an acronym for “Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition”. Basically, real time information is provided from sending units and appears on a monitor in a local and/or remote location. Virtual buttons on the screen allow control of a process. For example, in a simple system, the level in a tank can be read on the screen and a pump started to control that level.
Prof. Foland did some back of envelope calcualtions about a week ago — on one of my earlier Nuke Watch posts. About the time they first started worring about the pools. He had to make lots of assumptions because we were still looking for sources/data.
The pics of the smoke yesterday — see the NYT link near top — show dark smoke, not the white smoke we saw last week that was believed to be mostly steam. The dark smoke lasted about 2 hours. Later, white smoke (likely steam) was seen near Unit 2.
that’s unit 3?!?
hopefully i’m throughly confused by what i think that pic shows… which is that the top two stories are gone and iirc isn’t that where the “spent” fuel pools are supposed to be?
hoping someone with a clue (which does not include me) can explain what is shown in the nyt pic.
selise — possible mistake? the NYT pic from earlier Monday (JST) shows three units. From left to right:
Unit 2 with external building mostly intact,
Then Unit 3 with building mostly destoyed, and dark smoke rising;
and Unit 4 with building partially destroyed.
White smoke or steam is also seen in that pic rising from the top of Unit 4.
However, on NHK tv feed, I’ve also heard twice of steam later rising from Unit 2; and the announcer said there was a short spike of radiation there that forced evacuation of workers dealing with the electrical connections.
Update, Mon. afternoon (EDT): AP reports utility finds some of Unit 2 pumps damaged and must be replaced:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110321/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake
thanks scarecrow. some interesting info (and informed speculation) re unit three, the designs and the hydrogen releases:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2011/03/march-21-fukushima-update.html
links in the original.
Eventually I was able to find NUREG-1150, which suggests that one to two weeks is how long an uncooled fuel pond takes to boil off to the point where it’s uncovering the rods.
I do not understand how connecting a cable to the plants is going to turn out to be anything beneficial.Would any of us -as it relates to an electrical “entity” plug in something that has been through a 9.0 earthquake, a 30 foot wall of water, blown up, burned, inundated with water from 58 feet above the ground, nuked, and bathed in salt water.
Would any of us have expectation that said item will work as it did prior to the abovementioned. I think the notion is ludicrous and they should quit messing around with this pipe dream -no?
It hit me like coming up to a 18 wheeler which had run out of gas, careened out of control and off a cliff landing on its back.
Then I visualize someone approaching the wreck with a can of gas!
Well, the point of getting external power is to make it easier to keep the fuel from overheating and causing even more radiation. So even though the reactors have gone through all that, they still need to solve that problem, and keep it solved for a long time, so it’s worth the attempt, because all the other water spraying attempts have been at best only partially effective.
Dont you think this is gonna go on and on tho they are going to end up rebuilding 98% of all of them! No?
No, I think Units 1-4 are effectively destroyed and can’t be rebuilt. They’ll probably be entombed there. And it’s not clear that radiation levels will settle down enough to allow continued operation of Units 5 and 6. Yes, they will have to rebuild replacement plants, but not there and perhaps not even nukes.
I think they just need to move on to sand and cement! Ordering parts and stuff just seems so silly.It is like a car once you put in one part you discover the next needs to be replaced etc etc. My fear is this (pluggin stuff in /ordering parts et etc!) makes them feel as if they are “doing something” wherein their goal is not gonna be met.Maybe they should start to do the planning for the sand cement aircraft volunteers etc etc.
Lots of stuff I read tho said that is not even an option. What do you think scarecrow? Is emtombing them a true valid project?
I think they should just power up unit 5 so they have all the electricity they need.
I think the sand and cement solution requires boron as well. The pace at which they can bury it is also be a serious issue. Chernobyl had a fraction of the nuclear material. AFAIK, Chernobyl had no plutonium which is a lot, lot more lethal.
I think the concern is that if they don’t cool it down sufficiently, before they start burying it, it will re-ignite. This stuff burns so hot, it could simply turn the concrete and sand into fuel.
AFAIK, the nuclear scientists are in uncharted territory at this point.
You haven’t been paying attention. Unit 5 was shut down for maintenance. That means there are no good fuel rods in the reactor. There are only “spent” rods in the spent fuel pool. You cannot just turn this thing on.
In order to power it up, as you say, they would have to bring good fuel rods from wherever they are (no idea!) and have electricity (!) to operate that giant heavy crane (the orange thing in the diagram) to lift them off the truck and into the reactor core, and then go through the very long and exhaustive process of starting the reactor up. This presumes that they also have the electricity (1) to be able to completely check out every single piece of equipment, sensor, pump, pipe, connection, o-ring, seal, gasket, fitting, concrete containment structure, in short every single square inch of that facility before they even attempt to do this since it has been through a 9.0 earthquake and a 40 foot tsunami.
I certainly don’t want them to just start it up before they do that – do you really?