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Boiling Water Reactor
In a time of accident like we are seeing at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Stations facts are a very good thing. So let me provide you with some facts, then we can talk about what is known at this point about the accident there.
Daiichi Nuclear Power Station station has 6 nuclear reactors on site that are all of the type known as Boiling Water Reactors. They are an older design that does not have a containment building but rather a containment vessel which holds the reactor core of rods and water that is used to generate steam. They were all built in the 1970′s. Reactor #1 is the one that is in danger at this station.
There is a second Daiichi NPS which has 4 reactors built in the 1980. These are of the same type and units 1,2 and 3 are in the same kind of danger that Unit 1 at Daiichi One is in, though as of now no explosions have been reported. This issue is that any of these plants could have a failure due to the inability to circulate cooled water around the core. If that happens it is called a meltdown.
A nuclear reactor works by fission, splitting the atom, which causes a lot of heat. The water in a reactor is used two ways. First to keep the nuclei which are generated in fission and cause other atoms to fission from escaping. This makes it a more efficient reaction.
The second purpose of the water is to carry away the heat of the ration. Water is great a conducting heat. It keeps the rods cool and the allows for generation of electricity from the steam.
The problem at Daiichi Unit 1 is that the pumps that circulate the water have shut down initially due to a lack of power. Since the reactor is a “single loop” there the water around the core has continued to heat up. Even with the control rods in, the reactor stays very hot for at least a couple of days.
A reactor works by having sets of fuel rods and control rods interspersed. When you remove the control rods (partially or fully) more and more of the nuclei escape from the uranium, they slam into other atoms of uranium and cause an escalating reaction. The water heats up and then turns to steam at the top of the containment vessel and moved to the generator.
Because the water in the core is turning to steam, there is a need to keep a constant watch on the level of water. If the core is exposed, the heat it generates will jump up very fast and become so hot that the rods, control and fuel, will melt. At this point you have the beginning of a meltdown.
The balance between control rods (which are often made of cadmium because it can catch and capture neutrons without fissioning) is a carefully planned thing. If the fuel rods melt and fall to the floor of the vessel they will no longer be inter-spaced correctly to prevent a run away nuclear reaction.
The fuel will all be in one place and there will be water all around it but nothing to prevent the neutrons from shattering other atoms of uranium. The puddle of super hot and reacting fuel will continue to heat up and in short order will burn through the containment vessel and fall to the floor of the reactor building.
Then things can get really bad. All the water in the containment vessel is going to pour out onto this very hot slag. It will flash into super-heated steam and could cause an explosion which could spread the melted fuel even further.
So far that does not seem to be what happened at Daiichi Unit 1. It appears that there was an explosion in the pumping mechanism from the super-heated and super-pressurized steam that the dormant reactor has been building up since the accident.
It is not good news, as you can see from the diagram the water in this type of reactor is highly radioactive from its contact with the core and the fact that there was a limited amount of water in the reactor to start with. Without being able to replenish this as it escapes or is released, you come closer and closer to uncovering the core.
Right now the Japanese officials are talking about flooding the core with seawater. This is a last ditch effort. The reason they have not done it up untill now is that seawater, especially hot seawater, is very corrosive. It will eat away at all the metal fittings in the system. But if they can pump enough in and keep pumping it in, it will prevent a core exposure and meltdown. It means completely scrapping any reactor they do this to, but it is far far better than a full meltdown.
More on this story as it develops
The floor is yours
260 Comments
Thanks.
Any comment on this comment posted on an earlier thread?
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/explosion-at-fukushima-nuke-smoke-billowing-and-walls-collapsed/#comment-2329143
There’s a Heritage moron on MSNBC now talking about “the inherent stoutness of nuclear power”
Not a mention of meltdown. the Japanese “authorities” have everything under control, folks.
Hard to say. It could be, but if it were, there would be a hell of a lot more radiation leakage and I doubt they would be talking about tying to flood the reactor with water.
hi bill,
i appreciate the education. there are lots of errors (from typing too fast?) and, as the subject is unfamiliar to me, they are getting in the way of my understanding what you are trying to say. would you be willing to go back and proofread?
thanks.
Good Synopsis. Hopefully this catasrophe will increase awareness of the inherent dangers of Nucular Power and maybe put the brakes on US permitting plans for any new ones…
Well, think of it this way. Japan had the biggest quake of its history and a gigantic tsunami and so far, as much as we know for sure, they have not had a melt down. That is pretty robust for technology that is 40 years old.
Could it be safer, oh hell yes, but this event has exceeded all the design parameters. It is too early to say what will happen so the Heritage dude is a moron. But that is axiomatic anyway.
This is an old plant. Twitter is saying this plant was due to be decommissioned at the end of March. If so, taking measures to spare the plant for future use is off the table. Pumping seawater might seem less desperate if that rumor is true.
Nonetheless, I remain very worried. I would like to know how much in the way of spent fuel rods is on-site as these also need continuous cooling.
Sure, sorry.
That’s what I get for doing this fast with no coffee. Hopefully it is more clear now.
Responding to a commentator yesterday, I refuted criticism of the claim made by US weather forecasters that tsunami and other weather warning systems could have worldwide implications.
This graph from the Washington Post supports why the Republican-controlled House would be idiots if it were to cut funding for such research and warning systems, because it believes the fantasy that all government is bad – except what they do as part of it – and because it wants a short-term victory, any victory, over a president from a rival party.
There is no question that there has been at least a partial meltdown in at least one reactor. There is no other way to explain the cesium readings. End of story.
It might be a better idea to ask the Heritage moron how much his organization has received from GE, Westinghouse, Excelon, and the rest.
Given that the Obama administration is committed to loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, we can expect the reporting on this in the MSM to be compromised. The company that built our two nuclear reactors in South Texas want to build two more and are trying to persuade Austin and San Antonio to make purchase power agreements in order to enable them. There’s a group of us in Austin opposed to that.
Won’t they have to have an exchange of water, including sea-water, if they’re reduced to that?
And if so, isn’t the water that’s been used, radioactive, and how will they contain that?
No Edit. wants to build.
Another interesting comment from dKos, I think this links directly to the comment:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/955578/40738394#c180?mode=alone;showrate=1#c180
Nice story and good graphic. I would add that the simplified graphic doesn’t make clear that there are two cooling systems that operate in closed circuits rather than a figure eight design.
That is, the reactor usually has a closed circuit cooling loop with its own pumps and power supply. Coolant from that system interacts directly with radioactive material. It picks up heat directly from the controlled reaction and passes it to a second, external cooling system.
The coolant in the external cooling system does not mix with coolant in the first, it exchanges only heat with it. Radioactive materials are confined in the first cooling system.
Coolant in the second system is usually fresh or salt water, taken in and then returned to a natural body of water after its temperature has significantly been lowered via the release of heat directly to the atmosphere – seen externally as steam escaping from large cooling towers.
Each system operates with pumps powered by electricity from the grid or from primary back-up generators. Secondary back-up power is provided by industrial scale batteries, which can operate the pumps for about 8 hours.
After the earthquake, the grid went down. After the tsunami inundated buildings on the sites, the back-up generators were damaged and went down and the batteries came on line. Replacement batteries and generators are being rushed in from overseas and elsewhere in Japan.
All good questions. Yes the sea water will be radioactive. Still it can be contained in storage facilities, at least for a while. The other thing that it will provide is shielding from the radioactivity of the reactor. That is going to make it less dangerous to work around and try to keep a larger disaster from happening.
This nuclear plant was designed and built by General Electric. It amazes me that they did not provide a more protected location structure for the backup diesel generators that failed. Probably trying to save a few bucks. Japan, a nation prone to earthquakes and the linguistic origin of the word tsunami should have thought this one out better. GE probably made the nuke plant near you too.
My understanding is that Daichii is a single loop system, not a double.
The core exploded… the explosion came from hydrogen. They are lying if they say otherwise.
Wow, just wow. I know practically nothing about things like this, but if the Pacific plate normally moves 3 inches a year but on Friday moved 59 feet, I would think things in Japan could still get much worse.
My question too.
It looks more and more like the Mayans had it all figured out.
Well, this plant was designed and built 40 years ago. That was prior to 3 Mile Island so you have to expect less safety in the design.
thanks. i realized i’m pretty much out of time to reread it. i have to don my tiara soon and get into my role wandering the crowds seeking donations for the community street bands that are visiting austin this weekend.
There was likely an major release and they are not letting on.
Do you have evidence of that? All we have been able to confirm is that there was some kind of explosion. That does not mean that the core exploded, but that something did.
Wow. I hadn’t made that connection. Thanks.
One news report spoke of the explosion being a hydrogen-oxygen reaction, as opposed to the steam pressure build-up you hypothesize. Not clear if the report is just hypothesizing as well, or their theory is based on dame data. But if they are right, what does that mechanism imply?
60 mile evacuation zone… and there was no release? hahhaha
corrected
This nuclear plant was designed and built by General Electric. It amazes me that they did not provide a more protected location structure for the backup diesel generators that failed. Probably trying to save a few bucks. Japan, a nation prone to earthquakes and the linguistic origin of the word tsunami, should have had added design protections in place for this type of occurence.
GE probably made the nuke plant near you too.
I meant 60 km
Like Sesame Street used to say back in the day,
“The solution to pollution is dilution.”
Of course, CTW was promptly told they were being idiots, and discontinued that little educational ditty.
They’ll just dump it back into the sea, and let it distribute itself through our oceans.
Hmmm. I’m remaining highly skeptical of ALL the news reports and the twitterati.
The Japanese have a huge mess on their hands with earthquake, tsunami, fires and these nuke plants. With all the attendant activity there’s bound to be bad information, some innocent, some on purpose.
Remember how for awhile there was a second suspect in the Gifford’s shooting?
Anyways between the purposeful misinformation and the people who love to be doom-sayers, end-of-the-world types, there’s a lot of crap to sift through.
If the core exploded, things would be substantially more exciting. If, indeed, this was hydrogen (likely, but not the only possibility), it was likely mixed with steam that was released from the core to relieve pressure, built up in the surrounding building, then ignited.
The more interesting point, is that a large explosion in that structure would likely have damaged the very systems they are trying to keep running to control the core.
What, they had no earthquakes or tsunamis 40 years ago?
This is the problem with nuclear power plants. We are learning to deal with catastrophic disaster as we go along. Not to mention nuclear waste or gernally increasing radiation levels dues to rutine releases of radioactive matter into the environment. Of course, Bechtel, now building all those nuke plants in China is doing a much better job …right?
Yeah, I’m sure. The shareholders want their profit now, screw the future.
That is very wise Kelly! It is like trying to know what is going on in a airplane crash as it is happening. We should all be skeptical and hope that the worst case stuff out there is wrong.
Exactly. News reports indicate that it was the massive containment vessel, a heavy, dome-topped, cylindrical concrete structure that sits atop the reactor, that blew up.
That’s bad news, as those structures are designed explicitly to contain such pressures and to keep radiation that escapes the reactor vessel from escaping into the atmosphere. It also houses other equipment that must be presumed to have been destroyed or rendered inoperative by the containment vessel’s explosion or the forces that caused it. That severely complicates getting replacement cooling systems up and running. Under the circumstances, at least a partial meltdown seems likely.
That means the reactor vessel is exposed to the atmosphere. If it has been breached, radiation will leak. Flood water used to cool the reaction would be a last resort, but that coolant will come into direct contact with radioactive materials. With the destruction of the containment vessel, its dispersal will be hard to control, which increases the odds of a greater release of radiation.
What, they had no earthquakes or tsunamis 40 years ago?
This is the problem with nuclear power plants. We are learning to deal with catastrophic disaster as we go along. Not to mention nuclear waste or gernally increasing radiation levels dues to rutine releases of radioactive matter into the environment. Of course, Bechtel, now building all those nuke plants in China is doing a much better job …right?
Yeah, I’m sure. The shareholders want their profit now, screw the future.
(I need some coffee!)
Au contraire Bill, We can read some of the videos. If you see the force of the explosion of reactor 1 there is no other read than the core exploded and there was a significant radiation release. I am confident that this is what happened as no other energetics could cause this EXCEPT hydrogen.
Also, (lost the link already), regarding the three people who were irradiated, they were checking the evacuees, out of a sample of 90 they found three. So there could be substantially more that haven’t been checked, or they could have just been really unlucky.
Nothing of this size, 100 times the size of the Kobe quake in 1995 and the quake in San Francisco in 1989, on record.
There are also reports of scuttling the reactor with sea water. That means that they need to cool a runaway core and have no other mechanism to cool it. Those reports are consist with a hydrogen explosion coming from a core breech.
You also confused miles and kilometers. I’ll remain skeptical.
I suppose that, yes, I was being redundant ;^)
I remember that the “voluntary evacuation” around Three Mile Island was due to a concern about a hydrogen bubble forming in the containment building and fears that an explosion could vent nuclear material. That reactor was a pressurized nuclear reactor (pwr) not a bwr
Splendid.
Numbering question: The New York Times article on the explosion talked about Daiichi and then said the Daini plant is in danger, you talk about a Daiichi Unit 1 and Units 2 and 3 being in danger. You are aware that “Daiichi” means “Number 1″ and “Daini” means “Number 2″? Is there an overlap in your numbering?
Our speculation amounts to a hill of beans, but knowing how lamestream media lies it’s perhaps as good and not harmful to add this to the discussion.
It’s looking pretty unstable right now with earthquakes still occurring one up to the magnitude of the Chilean earthquake last year
what is unit 3?
After this, no bank — or insurance company — is going to go anywhere near nuclear power. Both entities have already been avoiding it ever since Three Mile Island; hence Obama’s having to push loan guarantees to try and coax banks to back the reactors (which are expensive as hell, by the way: $3 to $5 billion to build, and similar amounts to decommission) to try and end the de facto moratorium US banks have imposed on lending for new reactor construction.
But now, there’s no way any US bank, even with alleged loan guarantees, will touch it. The USG will have to directly subsidize the things, making them “government plants” — and which will cause the ideologically-honest members of the GOP’s teabagger wing to screech very loudly, at least until David Koch moves to shut them up.
Sentences 1 thru 4 made sense until I got to 5 thru 7 which put the others back in question. Bechtel is not building nuclear plants in China nor do they have shareholders.
Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, dreamed he would have a future life on the coast of Nebraska around this time.
There’s a prophet in Washington state ( can’t remember his name who foretold of the Madrid fault (where they are fracking now, causing 800 earthquakes in the last 6 months) and is the course of the Mississippi River splitting and the Great Lakes dumping into the Gulf.
All sorta of fun predictions for the near future.
OT: First videos coming in from Madison today.
http://qik.com/video/38344013/untitled
(video is sideways)
Farmers surrounding Capitol with tractors. People reporting crowds much bigger already than any other morning. Should be wild.
CNN had reported in the middle of the night (EST) that it was a hydrogen explosion, and then dropped reporting that.
Looking at the video (while not determinative) I note that the first blast shows next-to-no fireball of any kind, and then it’s all steam and debris going everywhere. The first bit of debris, coming off before the wall of steam and debris, is moving very, very fast – indicative of an explosion of a higher-order than only superheated steam getting loose. Next-to-no-fireball seems diagnostic (though also not determinative) of a hydrogen explosion.
IIRC (I lived downwind of TMI in 1979), the big problem there was that, during the partial dewatering (and melting) of the core there, a substantial hydrogen bubble developed atop the core inside the containment vessel. Managing the hydrogen bubble so it wouldn’t blow became the big issue. IIRC, the hydrogen bubbles develop b/c there’s enough energy running around in the water to disassociate the water itself into hydrogen and oxygen, providing a perfect environment for any ignition source to cause an explosion.
From what I’ve seen elsewhere on the web, NHK has dropped the live cam of the explosion and is showing other stuff.
Also, if the authorities are (as CNN eports) handing out iodine tablets
It certainly suggests an exposed core and water superheated to the point that it separates into oxygen and hydrogen. When it cools, the hydrogen and oxygen recombine, releasing enormous energy very quickly. A household analogy is pouring cold water into a too-hot frying pan. It tends to incinerate hands, faces, ceilings and kitchens. Lots of other nasty stuff would be shot into the atmosphere in a reactor disaster.
I haven’t seen confirmation of exactly what, or which building, had he explosion. Connecting building? Outer building structure? Reactor vessel? If you see a link, pass it on. thanks.
The ocean is getting pretty full as it is with Russia and other nations throwing their noocluar waste into it and then there’s the BP and other “spills”. Not to mention all the garbage we throw in there all the time creating those floating islands of trash
there is a picture here, you have to look closely but perhaps you can glean something from it
That suspicion was very efficently killed.
Nothing here to see. Move along children.
Not the point. This is a basic risk assessment. Environmental natural occurrences, such as seismic and volcanic activity, should have been taken into account.
Look at the way they rammed through Diablo Canyon in Cali regardless of citizen concern. The nuclear power industry is about profit, and one disaster is a 100 years is perfectly acceptable risk to them? Tell that to the kids with mutagenic abnormalities born in the next year in the vicinity of
Fukushima.
At least a few of them will go broke over these twin disasters of flooding and nuclear plant failures. Damages from the quake and wave/flooding seems likely to cost more than the $100 billion Kobe quake in 1995. Damage from the second seems likely to top that.
Yes.
Station 1 = Daiichi = 6 units. Unit 1 had the explosion; Unit 2 still at risk. Units 3-6 were not operating at the time.
Station 2 = Daini = 4 units. Units 1, 2, and 3 are at risk.
I agree
As a former radiological emergency planner and policy analyst for the federal government, I imagine the local emergency responders must be tearing their hair out over the lack of reliable, consistent information. The massive destruction of roads and facilities that normally would aid evacuation and, if necessary, decontamination and other procedures, poses a stunning challenge. In my experience, U.S. emergency plans and exercises for radiological scenarios gave little if any consideration to the possibility of a compound disaster. Even then, industry representatives complained that exercises were not realistic.
Yeah, that is why this sucks so much. Old reactor, old building, less fail safes.
Thanks.
If anyone sees authoritative links confirming the exact cause, location of the explosion, that would be helpful. What exploded? And what was the mechanism?
When hydrogen and oxygen combine, isn’t that called combustion?
Walt Patterson of Chatham House
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8391#comments
That was a concern of a nuclear physicist on Maddow last night. that the government was not being upfront and trying to control the news which made him think it was worse than what was being reported.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is VERY concerned. A guy is on CNN now taking about it
Deep, thanks for commenting — from your training, are you familiar with radiation levels and chemical composition so that you can correlate what we know about them to one or more failure scenarios?
GEneral Electric
heY corpse of RONNIE RAYGUN
WE BRING GOOD THINGS TO LIFE!
He says seawater is a “desperate measure”
Looking. I recall reading a number of reports that concluded it was the containment vessel, not some other structure. That seems the most likely candidate, as it sits atop all the hot stuff.
Katrina to the nth degree
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8391#comments
Just joining the thread, so this question may have already been answered.
From the diagram above, it looks like the pumps are inside the concrete shield. Since reports have stated that the pumps caused the explosion, wouldn’t that indicate that the concrete shield was compromised? Or…did a malfunction of the pumps cause an explosion outside of the concrete shield in the machinary housed outside the shield?
oops – should have continued:
Also, if the authorities are (as CNN reports) handing out iodine tablets, that’s a very bad sign. They’re getting ready for a major disaster.
CNN has a nuke guy on now saying (a) injecting seawater is a desperation move and he knows of no contingency plans anywhere that call for injecting seawater, (b) it seems they’ve run out of options, (c) all the signs are consistent with fuel damage and there will be a larger release of radioactivity and (d) there’s an amount of plutonium stored at another reactor on the same site (which has had problems in the past).
My sense is that the authorities in Japan know this thing is going to blow and they are breaking it softly, rolling it out a little at a time.
There are two power plants, each with multiple reactors. Power plant one (Fukushima Daiichi) has six separate reactors, numbered 1-6. Unit one is the one associated with the explosion. Unit two is also having problems.
Power plant two (Fukushima Daini) also has several units; three are in trouble.
Evacuations have been ordered around both Power Plant One (Daiichi) and Power Plant Two (Daini).
We will likely know the worst by tonight, because the afterheat will have subsided by tonight if there was enough cooling for each unit to make it to tonight. That is, if there are no more explosions before this evening (US time), then we will begin to know the worst case scenario.
The fact that the NYT is still reporting cesium and iodine detection (if true) means there has been some breach of the containment, though perhaps small. Stay tuned.
Good links:
WNN
Argonne data for Fukushima Daiichi
Argonne data for Fukushima Daini
http://www.ucsusa.org/
Video of the dude on the Maddow show
Snapdragon- There are a set of pumps that bring new water to the reactor and take old water away. They don’t show in the diagram. When the electric grid crashed there was no power for any of the pumps, including the emergency ones. We think that the diesel back up pumps were damaged in the tsunami.
There could have been an explosion in the system that removes water from the reactor vessel. It could have even been a hydrogen/oxygen explosion because of the massive heat and pressure in the containment vessel. Changing the pressure in there is inherently dangerous and who knows what kind of damage the earthquake did.
take your KELP puppies,your nails and hair will thank you!
It rather is the point, since risk assessment requires evaluating probable as well as possible system failures. If there’s been no recorded event of anything within two orders of the magnitude of this one, then planning for this scale of event would not necessarily have been prudent. If there’s been no recorded event of the Mississippi overflowing its banks by 100 miles, it would be prudent to limit preventive measures to harm likely to occur within 0-10 miles of its banks.
Sorry about the poor grammar, need to wake up before I start to write for public consumption.
This is from Bechtels (http://www.bechtel.com/positive-reaction.html) website :
“The company also has built nuclear plants outside the United States, including the largest commercial project to date in China—the 1,450 megawatt Qinshan plant. Bechtel’s engineers have shaped nuclear technology from the earliest experimental breeder reactor through advances that include passive light-water reactors, liquid-metal reactors, pressure-suppression containment plants, and new methods of waste vitrification.”
And they don’t have shareholders….why are they a non-profit?
If the tweet from the Director of Communitions for the Prime Minister can be believed, the containment vessel is still intact.
I think I said that. Combustion colloquially is rapid oxidation, combing oxygen with other elements causing fire or explosions. Oxygen will combine with a lot of things, hydrogen included. Hydrogen likes being alone a lot less than oxygen; it combines even faster and potentially more explosively than oxygen.
Thanks (typing sideways).
The Times also had a good graphic, showing the positions of Japan’s principal nuclear power plants. Five were closest to the quake and the shoreline that was hardest hit by the tsunami.
OK, so the pumps shown above–inside the concrete barrier–couldn’t have been deluged by the tsunami and flooded. Looking for link about pumps causing explosion…but that may be old info at this point.
Gah. This is horrible. Thanks pups and knowledgeable others who are helping us comprehend the complexities of nuclear energy production.
Yes, thanks for the comment. Multiple systems failures complicate disaster containment and recovery. Who would have thought? Not a time to be without Richard Feynman.
I am wondering if the partial melt-down in Japan is entirely a Tsunami problem — a one-party state with a long and deep tradition of corruption, moderated only slightly by ex post facto shaming ritual.
There seems to have been some major overhaul underway. Maybe, decommissioning of the oldest reactor — the one now being flooded with highly corrosive sea-watter — had already started.
We have huge problems with old petrochemical reactors here on the Gulf Coast. For financial reasons, they are kept in service well beyond their original service life through a spectrum of budget- or deal-driven managerial improvisation running from repair to replacement in situ by non-union contractors, of course.
This is very dangerous. Ironically, safety upgrades are often the source of very unsafe circumstances and horrible accidents.
I don’t think we are going to get to “Chernoble” Fukashima One. But, we are already well past “Three Mile Island” there now.
Until we have proficient and patriotic regulatory authorities with discretion and accountability, — Admiral Rickover types — before which corporate, financial, and political hustlers must tremble, I do not see how nuclear power can proceed further as corruptly and just uneconomically has it has.
I am a proponent of nuclear power, but sick of its promoters in this state, for sure.
Nuclear power in Texas, certainly, is organized by and for land speculators, paper-hangers, and, now, merchant bankers involved in arms barter. Sadly, there is no place in this “industry” for conscientious or competent engineers. It is mostly organized by lawyers — contingent-fee bond lawyers going in, regulatory arbitrage specialists, in between, and, finally, contingent-fee tort lawyers coming out of one “deal” after another.
There is no planning and there are no standards that the public or even captive investors — hapless pension claimants — can rely on to protect public or private interests. Only the fee-interests are a sure thing.
This is because, no matter the death and destruction, there are no principals in this deal culture, just commissioned agents or brokers. These politicos and promoters indemnify each other and move from one “tragedy” to the next. There is no death penalty for them, no danger at all really.
They are very safety conscious when it comes to themselves. We do not even have Japanese shaming rituals.
Thanks for my first belly laugh of the day! ;^)
BTW photo a BradBlog of before and after explosion. Skeletal structure shown in aftermath.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8391
earlofhuntigdon…I consolidated the thread in it’s proper place:
earlofhuntingdon March 12th, 2011 at 8:54 am «
Nothing of this size, 100 times the size of the Kobe quake in 1995 and the quake in San Francisco in 1989, on record.
Reply
applepie March 12th, 2011 at 9:08 am «
Not the point. This is a basic risk assessment. Environmental natural occurrences, such as seismic and volcanic activity, should have been taken into account.
Look at the way they rammed through Diablo Canyon in Cali regardless of citizen concern. The nuclear power industry is about profit, and one disaster is a 100 years is perfectly acceptable risk to them? Tell that to the kids with mutagenic abnormalities born in the next year in the vicinity of Fukushima.
earlofhuntingdon March 12th, 2011 at 9:22 am «
It rather is the point, since risk assessment requires evaluating probable as well as possible system failures. If there’s been no recorded event of anything within two orders of the magnitude of this one, then planning for this scale of event would not necessarily have been prudent. If there’s been no recorded event of the Mississippi overflowing its banks by 100 miles, it would be prudent to limit preventive measures to harm likely to occur within 0-10 miles of its banks.
Sure, you can write that risk assessment (RA) cannot foresee the future, and that is the problem with risk assessment: if one person out of a 1000 will contract leukemia because of poor design by GE than that is acceptable given the power generated by the nuclear power plant.
Is that acceptable? To you? To me? To whom is it acceptable? When these kind of things become normalized, it is a disaster waiting to happen. The for-profit nature of mega-corporations defeats the positive logic of RA. Instead, RA becomes a cudgel which is used to silence those who would require more foresight in the design of such destructive machinery. Case in point..any nuke plant in the US, or chemical plant or refinery or Gasland experiment…
That is the point.
“Container” would mean the nuclear reactor, where the nuclear materials, rods, etc., are. The power plants “pistons” or hot part, to use a car engine analogy. The “outer structure” would be the containment vessel. In US plants, it’s usually a mid-sized, heavy, concrete cylindrical-shaped building with a domed top.
When viewed by a passerby on a road, it’s narrower and taller than administration buildings, and dwarfed by much larger cooling towers. Those cool coolant before returning it to a lake or ocean.
That means they’re having lots of trouble cooling the reactor. The immediate systems around the reactor have been compromised by the destruction of the containment vessel, which is designed to “contain” radiation that might escape from the reactor. That protection is no longer in place here.
They would be evacuating a far bigger swath if they thought that the containment vessel was breached.
I think there may be multiple uses of the word “container”. It often means the outer or containment vessel surrounding the nuclear reactor. But the announcement from Japan seems to refer to it as the reactor itself. It refers to an “outer structure” that was destroyed, which sounds like the containment vessel.
Wow, thanks! This gives enough information to do back-of-the-envelope calculations.
“The detection of the materials, which are created following atomic fission, led Japan’s nuclear safety agency to admit the reactor had partially melted — the first such case in Japan.”
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/77204.html
So now they are officially admitting a partial meltdown, though the evidence was fairly clear even before the explosion.
From an expert advising the BBC, via bradblog.
Andy, please check your email
Masoninblue’s link to Japanese TV:
Livestream video on the disaster from Japan in English: http://wwitv.com/tv_streams/6810.asx
Saying that explosion did not occur inside the reactor…
Bill–what are we to make of reports of cesium release? It should be embedded in the rods, no? (I suppose a miniscule amount might get into the water from fissions right on the interface.) Even a steam pressure release or hydrogen explosion won’t, as I understand it, release significant fission products. Ought to be mostly the N-16 as I understand.
(I was a particle/nuclear physicist, not engineer, in a previous life; so I am working some of this out from first principles rather than experience!)
And I think it’s clear there’s a lot of confusion between what I would have called the “reactor vessel” and the “containment structure”. According to the NYT, the steel reactor vessel is not believed by officials to be breached. (The “believed by officials” is probably an important caveat.) It’s the concrete containment structure that’s stated to be damaged.
I think it is not at all clear that the explosion was subsequent to a meltdown. That is, I think it’s logically possible that the explosion was previous to (or in addition to) a meltdown.
That’s not at all to say it’s wrong that the explosion was subsequent to a meltdown, it very well might have been–just that I’m not sure that that is known right now.
Another question to Bill–why wouldn’t one also flood the containment vessel with seawater? A lot more thermal mass to dissipate the heat into.
Posting this livestream Japanese link (in English) again. Hard to follow MyFdl comment system sometimes.
http://wwitv.com/tv_streams/6810.asx
CNN reports seawater being pumped in: last ditch effort
eeeeeeeyiyi!
I suspect that this is the worst that will happen on that part of the fault for a while. That 59 feet of displacement represents a lot of pressure released. That displacement, of course, makes other displacements necessary and possible in other parts of the fault, though.
Japan has quakes all the time, in geological terms. As the WaPo article notes, they’ve had a thousand or so in the last two-plus years. There will definitely be more.
The main problem is likely to be strong aftershocks. As we saw in the Christchurch earthquake a few weeks ago, those can do a lot of damage to buildings weakened by the first quake.
According to nuclear physicists, it’s a last ditch desperate effort to prevent meltdown….and it being done NOW.
Go look:
http://www.ucsusa.org/
Video of the guy on the Maddow show
Agree we need more precision on terms and a mental picture with names.
We know there is a (probably steel, cylindrical) reactor vessel that contains the core. The official claim is, the reactor vessel has not been breached and was not damaged by the explosion. Not how they would know that. But never mind for now.
We know there was an outer building — call it the containment building — and it appears the explosion blew off it’s roof and walls, leaving only the outer steel skeleton of that building. The reactor vessel was inside that building.
Is there are third thing, call it the “containment structure,” that surrounds the reactor vessel, but sits inside the outer containment building? And if so, what is its status?
That’s my interpretation of news reports, too, especially about the confusing use of the word “container”. Reports suggest that the reactor containing nuclear fuel and control rods remained intact, but that the surrounding containment vessel was at least partially destroyed, along with its principal cooling system components.
The BBC commentator seems to believe that the reactor was breached, with at least a partial core meltdown. That would account for the release of cesium. Obviously reports are contradictory and incomplete.
Caution and politics seem to argue for understating the extent of damage. The size of the evacuation and the issuing of iodine tablets suggests grave concern about release of nuclear materials.
That caution also extends to apparent underestimates of people killed, from hundreds to 1700, with 10-15,000 injured and over 200,000 homeless and in shelters. Meanwhile, 10-15,000 remain missing, which may mean deaths could exceed 10,000.
The water is full of contaminants. It is also salty. Saltwater, epically hot salt water (as it will become) is even more so. There is danger of damaging other parts of the system. But we are way, way past that now. The issue is to get this thing as cool as possible as soon as possible to avoid a full melt down.
As Kassandra said it is a Hail Mary pass kind of thing. You would never do it if you had any other good or even bad choices.
Andy, don’t know if you saw it upthread, I sent you an email
The term “containment vessel” is . . . the reactor vessel? or some containment structure within which the reactor vessel sits?
I would expect them to try to inject sea water into the last ditch cooling system, that is circulating water through the reactor vessel, to help maintain water levels over the core. But are you asking whether they might also flood a structure holding that vessel?
Ah that was for Professor Foland
A function of a choice to use different, apparently cheaper s/w than that used on the main pages. Funny, I would have thought this section was part of the main one. Anywho, I’m given to understand that an improvement is in the queue.
Violated my own rule! I meant the concreate containment structure. (I’ll keep trying to use the material–steel or concrete–as that’s the most unambiguous way to refer to them.)
And it’s quite clear to me flooding any of it is a Hail Mary. You have only bad options at this point. So while you’re at it, why not also flood the concrete containment?
The confusion comes from multiple uses of the word container. The English version of a Japanese press release used the terms “container” and “outside structure”. News analysts interpret that to mean “reactor”, with fuel and control rods, and “containment vessel”, which surrounds the reactor, containing release of radiation and also housing major cooling system components.
By all accounts, it was the containment vessel and its components that were damaged. Some analysts believe the reactor was also damaged.
With major cooling system components down, pumping coolant will have to be done with back-up systems jury-rigged into place in a damaged building, presumably in a very hot, radioactive environment with less than optimum piping into the areas that need cooling.
Scarecrow, I used to run computer simulations that mapped the projected deposition of each of the radioactive isotopes. Also, I did manual calculations of the expected doses over specified periods of time. But, I don’t currently have access the simulation and mapping software, and key data, such as the plant’s
inventory of radionuclides, are unavailable.
I think the answer would be lack of pumping capacity & electricity and time. To replenish the water circulating through the reactor vessel could be done without much capacity; but the building is massively larger than just that vessel, so flooding it would be a massive undertaking — would they have (1) the capacity to do that and (2) the time within the relevant window to do it? I suspect not.
Got it and replied!
I went to bed last night expecting a report of an explosion by morning. The critical damage to the core was done in the first 30 to 60 minutes after the coolant flow was interrupted. This is similar to what happened at TMI although the cause was different.
The size of the explosion in Japan was huge compared to TMI and this could mean the core has been breached and possibly the containment structure. Either way this disaster is not going to end soon.
The Japanese authorities have at least learned from TMI to begin evacuations and not allow people to be exposed.
The real problem going forward is how do we deprogram people from the worship of Big Science. The only way to excape this trap is to redirect our resources to decentralized local sources of power.
There is no such thing of the reactor itself not having been damaged by an explosion of the building which contains it. The reactor itself has penetrations for piping and wiring and so forth. To think of it as a solid thick wall structure with no “penetrations” is a misconception.
It’s likely that a massive explosion outside the reactor damaged pipes, conduits and so forth leaving the reactor at least partially exposed to material penetrating and escaping.
This is probably where the breeches in the reactor are and depending on how hot it is will determine how much material is “ejected” into the environment. If it is cool enough only gas might escape until the reactor is sealed or buried. But the control rods isolating the uranium must be effective so it can’t generate heat… and go runaway without cooling.
just sayin’
Qinshan was 10-15 years ago. It’s a private company.
Wait, so you think it’s the steel inner vessel, the concrete outer, or both? “Outside structure” to me says the concrete. I have not seen any report unambiguously saying that the steel reactor vessel is breached, and the NYT unambiguously says that it has not been (according to best current official belief.)
I don’t believe there is any third structure of engineering significance.
That sounds like a good guess to me. They are probably in the condition of having to bring in from elsewhere or find just about everything they need to do the work right now. If they can use much less of something the have to bring (or pump) in from elsewhere, that’s likely to be a better solution.
Japanese TV (in English) is saying that the reactor itself has not been damaged by the explosion–IIRC “reactor container”?? At the very least, “reactor container” would indicate that the steel pressure vessel on the drawing above.
Quit fearmongering.
This plant has a uranium pellet core. Hydrogen isn’t evidence of a core explosion, uranium compounds would be evidence of a core explosion. Iodine tablets are being handed out because there was a release of water vapor containing elevated levels of radioactive contaminants — it was water vapor from interior coolants, they announced in advance there would be and how high it would be in radiation. They did it to try to avert the explosion.
Of course they’re preparing for every possible outcome. What would you have them do? You’re changing all the probabilities based on a single premise: That you’re being lied to. You don’t know that.
CNN has a guy that knows of no plan that calls for injecting seawater? Does the guy know of a plan that calls for an 8.9 Richter earthquake and a 30m tsunami before plan execution commencement? I thought not. These people are in adapt, improvise and overcome mode. That doesn’t mean you should go around telling everybody to run for their lives.
Good article, Bill, and you’re right – information is important to have right now.
I have a question for the experts in the crowd. People keep saying that the water is radioactive. Does that mean the water itself is radioactive, or is it just the impurities that are dissolved or precipitated in the water? If it’s the latter, it would seem possible that someday someone could filter out the radioactive stuff. I’m just curious – I don’t see how this has any bearing on the current situation.
“Reactor’s container” is the exact wording.
Japanese TV just had a schematic similar to the one above explaining the system in question. Talking about outside deisel pumps that failed. They are replaying all information every few minutes, so check it out…
Decay products inside the rods continue to produce heat for some time after the control rods are inserted, though that’s strongly reduced if the control rods have all been working the whole time.
Also, let’s follow along your correct point that there are various penetrations. I think you’re right, the highly pressurized steam is likely to have escaped though those penetrations in any significant explosion such as occurred. So now the reactor vessel would be at atmospheric pressure, and all the water inside would be superheated and flashing to steam. Even if the steel vessel withstood the pressure of that (=not likely), that would empty the vessel of nearly all the water in fairly short order. So pretty quickly you’d have hot rods suspended in the air. With control rods (hopefully) working and no moderator, there’d still be no fission but they’d be heating solely from their decay products. That might still be a megawatt.
I don’t like where the next step of the calculation takes you, where you divide that into the likely heat capacity of the rods.
Water can be contain dissolved radioactive compounds or they can be suspended … not dissolved… like muddy water which carries silt and so forth. Water itself can be altered into heavy water when the hydrogen has an extra neutron. There is also heavy oxygen water where the oxygen carries an additional neutron.
Contaminated water can be either or both: radioactive suspensions or solutions.
According to NHK news, more than 50,000 troops, SDF personnel, to be used around Japan to help in rescue efforts.
It’s language is getting more careful and circumspect about the dangers of radiation leakage and the number of people killed, wounded and in emergency shelters. Language about the dead, for example, is limited, in essence, to bodies counted and identified, likely to be a small percentage of those killed.
Molten mass seems to be the logical conclusion. A BBC commentator suggested the principal issue was then whether the reactor floor melted, too, in which case we would seem to have flown into NeverNever Land as far as disaster containment and recovery.
As I understand it, in normal operations the water is slightly radioactive from an isotope of nitrogen that comes from the transmutation of oxygen in the water as the water passes through the high-neutron-density reactor fission region. There is relatively little contamination from fission products themselves.
In completely-FUBARed operation it’s less clear what the radioactive components could be–as you point out, could be practically anything. This is why I’m trying to understand the reports about the cesium.
A nuke power plant is a “controlled” nuclear reaction. Heat is generated by a critical mass of uranium. The critical mass is controlled by “separaters” or control rods which are inserted into the “core” of radioactive uranium and keeps the mass sub critical… but at a mass which generates a lot of heat. The heat is then used to make steam and the steam runs turbines and this makes the electricity.
All the mechanical devices which “control” the reactor require electicity… pumps to circulate cooling water and motors to move the control rods and so forth. There is back up electrical generators if the mains go down.
They supposedly inserted the control rods before the tsunami hit, but one it did the entire system when down and there was no control of the reactor. It apparently heated and this released hydrogen in from the cooling water and that sparked and exploded and the structure out side and all the piping and so forth was likely destroyed. What was left was an exposed core or partially exposed core and no means to cool it if the control rods were not able to do their thing. And they are not. The only option is to cool it with infusion of water… which will become contaminated with radiation… and find a mechanism to get the core sub critical and buried… leaving the local area nicely contaminated.
They use “heat exchangers” for multiple reasons. The water which eventually is heated and drives the generators has no contact with the reactor, but with whatever liquid is used to carry the heat from the reactor core. I would imagine that the main liquid for the heat exchanger needs to be renewed occasionally as it gets too radioactive.
As I said, the press release referred to “container”, meaning the reactor vessel, and the “outside structure”, meaning the container vessel surrounding it and housing cooling system components.
This comment from a BBC adviser, via bradblog, suggests that the reactor vessel itself may be compromised:
I’ve been trying not to speculate beyond what’s known, because in an engineered system there are often important things that aren’t obvious to those unfamiliar with the specific design, which I at least am not. But the most straightforward math always ends up with pretty unambiguous conclusions. So I keep hoping there’s something about the design that means you shouldn’t use the most straightfoward math.
“Problem with the powerplant will be resolved.” Backup water system failed. “ECCS” Emergency Core Cooling? Provides emergency cooling water to core. Heat removed from condensed steam passed through turbine. Pumped back into reactor after heat exchanger. Backup pumps failed (as we know).
You’re thinking of a PWR. I believe this one is a BWR where the reactor water directly drives the turbines.
Heh. Way behind the rest of you guys with the technical details. Learning as I go, so dumbing it down for myself.
Melting of the zirconium-alloy fuel cladding + water = most likely source of hydrogen. Also, reports indicate that the explosion happened when water was being introduced to the core (turning on pumps). Together, this implies that melting of fuel assemblies was already occurring when the explosion occurred. The question now seems to me to be whether there is enough afterheat and pressure to generate further explosions in this unit. Also, I’m wondering about the other four units. Probably the fact that there has not been a second explosion yet means that they are being cooled sufficiently — we are near the end of the peak afterheat effect.
There was a third power plant (Onagawa) north of Fukushima and closer to the epicenter that had a reported fire yesterday. I have seen nothing more about that one and am hoping that the lack of reports means that it is safely cooled off.
All of the reactors in the region successfully shut down when the earthquake hit, according to current reports, so the problems that exist are associated with the need for active cooling of the cores (until the decay products that produce most of the afterheat have themselves decayed) and active cooling of the waste storage ponds. I have not read much about the latter, which I also take to be a good sign.
OMG. Thanks for the info. Do you have a livestream link?
The NHK newscast is exceptionally understated, cautious and optimistic. That’s a political choice built on caution and dampening emotional reactions to immediate events. It seems responsible, but incomplete. The reality on the ground is likely to involve more damage and chaos.
I’m starting to “get” that based on your comment above. Looking for BBC link for more accurate information.
wrt to the other four units, they were not operating at the time of the earthquake, so they’re in [safe] cold shutdown.
Seawater injection has begun
The injection of seawater into the building started at 8.20pm and this is planned to be followed by addition of boric acid, which is used to inhibit nuclear reactions. Tepco had to put the operation on hold for a time when another tsunami was predicted, but work recommenced after the all-clear.
TEPCO is the local utility operator. Boron has a high neutron capture cross-section and is used to slow/halt the nuclear chain reaction.
At Daiichi, units 1, 2 and 3 were in operation at the time of the quake. Units 4, 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown.
Unit 2 had cooling problems.
At Daini, there were three additional units with cooling problems.
My concern is with the five units with cooling issues: two at Daiichi and three at Daini. The lack of explosions from Daini is a good sign.
(No edit, so:)
Of course, Unit 1 and Daiichi also had cooling problems (and subsequently suffered an explosion).
Appreciate the informed comment. As I suggested to yellowsnapdragon, official news reports about this sort of potentially dangerous event, amid the deaths of over 1,000 people and likely more than $100 billion in damage are severely restrained.
Important events are likely to be disclosed only slowly, in a controlled manner, so as to manage reactions among the public – those directly involved in the disaster and those concerned about the – and among domestic and international businesses, and domestic and foreign political actors. Some interests will be cooperative and empathetic, some predatory. Consequently, the full facts, the extent of damage and the nature of risks encountered and averted, will take some time to come out.
Although I’ve been an FDL regular since 2005, I don’t post much because typos drive me crazy…
I meant to type “Unit 1 at Daiichi” in the above.
Speaking of disclosure (and by implication, the gradual assessment of liability) I wonder whether the GE stock price on Monday AM will reflect this weekend’s events.
Yes, thanks for correction on unit 3; it was operating and they’re still injecting water for cooling.
or PG&E, EXELON, etc.
Thanks for these comments!
As I reported last night @ 8:40 pm PST,
“A report on the livestream link (http://wwitv.com/tv_streams/6810.asx) said 90 centimeters of nuclear rods were exposed as water boiled away, but the government is claiming they weren’t damaged.”
We also have the report regarding the Cesium release, which Professor Foland mentions upthread at 9:59 am, and the Japanese authorities admitting that they were dealing with meltdown situation, although they claimed that it was contained.
Then came the explosion this morning that sure looks like a hydrogen-driven explosion and the claim by Japanese authorities that only the outer containment building was destroyed, as opposed to the inner steel reactor containment structure. And the cops won’t let reporters get closer than 60 Km to the place.
That’s enough dots for me to tentatively conclude that the reactor core has been breached, radioactivity is in the air, and an uncontrolled meltdown is under way that they are hoping to cool down and stop with seawater. I can only assume that they haven’t succeeded, or we would have heard about it.
I plead guilty to reading between the lines and filling some gaps with educated guesses. I always question authority, so I’m inclined to doubt government claims that they’ve contained the problem and there isn’t anything to worry about.
If it turns out that I’m wrong, GREAT, but I suspect we have another Chernobyl event and there are other reactors in trouble . . .
Good on you for explaining this, Bill Engnor.
Hey Mason…I posted your livestream link above. We were just discussing the extreme caution used by Japanese TV in describing the events.
What’s your definition of “critical mass”?
Some reports last night/early this AM (twitter and from a Japanese man translating Japanese media into English in real time via web feed) mentioned 1.7 meters of fuel rods above water level.
Also, FWIW last night/early this AM there were reports of radioactive iodine at Fukushima Plant No 1. Certainly consistent with plans to distribute potassium iodide.
It was informed speculation, not a description of confirmed events.
I concur that there is likely a significant amount of radiation being released, but there are enough differences from Chernobyl to give one some comfort. In particular, the prevailing winds in the area are presumably out to sea. Also, there is not yet evidence of enough heat being released to drive any dangerous effluents to higher altitudes. I.e., the reactor core is not a horrible mixture of burning graphite and melted fuel assemblies.
My current prediction is that this is worse than TMI but significantly less serious than Chernobyl. People onsite will know whether the final outcome will be much worse than already suspected in a few hours. It will probably be morning in the US before we can start to relax (I hope).
Right now, the lack of further reported explosions from the other four compromised units is the dog that isn’t barking.
Exactly. Human concerns will be about tragedies encountered and avoided. Business and political concerns will include liabilities to be avoided or taken advantage of and competitive opportunities that can be exploited.
Kate Sheppard reports the following update in her piece about the Fukushima explosion in Mother Jones:
” Via the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group representing the nuclear industry in the US, the IAEA is listing the situation at Fukushima Daiichi as a level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. For some perspective on this 7-point scale, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine was rated a 7 and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania was rated a 5.”
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/japans-nuclear-emergency
Need I mention that the IAEA has a significant motivation to downplay the nature and extent of the disaster?
Of more interest might be whether we can agree on how to handicap their score. I recommend -2. That means the corrected score is 6, midway between TMI & Chernobyl. That is, for now. If the core cannot be cooled down with seawater . . .
Thanks. Yeah, I saw that. Actually, mzchief posted that link last night in a comment on Scarecrow’s diary and that’s where I got it.
I was fascinated listening to the warnings issued in different languages, but I get off on weird shit.
That’s been reported elsewhere, too. It seems a tad early to characterize the event, until we know how containable is the problem at the reactor whose containment vessel exploded.
China to Top Global Uranium Consumers.
The Chinese government’s energy policy is expected to push the nation ahead of the US as the world’s top uranium consumer. China plans for more than 60 nuclear reactors to be operational by 2020
http://www.newslook.com/videos/295936-china-to-top-global-uranium-consumers?autoplay=true
Moreover, TMI and Chernobyl were isolated nuclear incidents that did not involve systems failures in power grids, transportation infrastructures, competing high demands on emergency and reconstruction crews, or the funds to pay for them. Here, these events involve all those events, and the funds and political will needed to address them.
If this had happened in the US, it’s hard to imagine, frankly, the current Congress or several state legislatures focusing on the emergency management tasks at hand and raising tax revenues needed to pay for them, and giving up their addictions to petty, partisan infighting and disaster capitalism.
I hope the Japanese legislature, its executive and its businesses, not to mention its people, are more focused on solving their problems in a communal way that does not further set haves against have nots. I’m pretty sure they won’t swarm faux news services with wild-eyed rants about such disasters being God’s punishment for sexual excess or government over spending.
Considering that the biggest problem they had, initially, was the tsunami taking out the backup generators, I’d say that they did pretty well on the design. (The generators need to be some place where they’re out of reach of water … but you only find out some things when the disaster happens.)
Under normal operation the highly purified water does become radioactive. This is because it is exposed to the radiation of the nuclear fission it helps to moderate.
It is part of what is commonly called “nuclear waste”. In an accident it can be both. Since there is mounting evidence of some kind of partial melting of the core (which is different from a containment breach, though that might have happened too) it would be likely that any sea water pumped in would and then pumped out would contain particles of the melted rods.
Planning to freeze in the dark?
It moved 25 feet in 1906. Things will quiet down; it just takes a while, and the bigger the main shock, the longer it takes. I understand the geologists believe most of the activity around New Madrid is aftershocks from 1811/1812.
There is the point that you can have melting of the rods without a full melt down. They could heat, slump (at the tops say) and still maintain some structural integrity. This could expose the actual fuel (which is pellets inside metal rods) and then contaminate the containment vessel (where the reactor sits inside) and any steam released would have some of these fission byproducts contaminating it.
It kind of the “almost melt down’ scenario. You would not have a pile of slag on the floor of the reactor building, but you would have an increase in radiation. Right now that fits the facts we know.
If this had happened in the US, imagine how lobbyists would spin the opportunities for their pet Congresscritters:
Privatizing emergency services and emergency troop support for disaster management and recovery efforts;
Privatization of power plants and their oversight – paid for by taxpayer subsidies;
Ripping away rather than re-evaluating the effectiveness of power plant regulatory agencies;
Opening the gates for plants powered by all fuels, from coal to nuclear to guinea pigs on wheels, rather than shutting older, less robust plants;
Further cutting taxes further on high-income earners;
Repealing union and prevailing wage laws for the labor used in reconstruction efforts; and
Precluding, prohibiting and demeaning all efforts to investigate the effectiveness of tsunami warnings, emergency relief preparedness and effectiveness, and power plant operations,
All while avoiding at all costs any oversight of the trillion dollars spent on the foregoing.
All the anti-nuclear talk is missing some facts:
(1) subduction zone – the US has two, leaving out the Caribbean area: Alaska and the Cascades.
(2) this plant was built to higher standards than most in the US, because Japan knows what they’re next to – but a 9.0 earthquake is going to damage everything. You can design safety features, but some things will exceed whatever you design for.
(3) there isn’t enough available hydroelectric capacity, and as yet not enough transmission capacity, for solar and wind to cover the gap if we try doing without fossil-fuel plants of any kind. In fact, the best analyses show that we can’t drop any power source for the foreseeable future … unless you like living with cowchip-fired stoves.
China has devoted enormous resources to securing exclusive access to available sources of nuclear fuels, much of it from Africa.
It is.
This conversation has not been a rant against nuclear power. That’s a separate conversation. So is our need to utilize and develop alternative sources of power beyond oil and nuclear fuels, which I agree should include wind, wave, and solar, local and grid-level sources of power. This conversation is about damage to specific nuclear power plants in Japan, in the midst of a large-scale natural disaster, and what may be the consequences for it and others because of it.
I agree, though, that Japan, like Europe, takes nuclear plant safety more seriously, as they do in planning for natural disasters and in providing credible health services to their citizens as of right rather than as a function of private corporate profit-taking.
Scientific American posted the following tweet 46 minutes ago:
sciam Scientific American
RT @NatureNews: A disconnect between statement and actions at Japanese nuclear plant http://goo.gl/fb/0kn45
They’re noticing the same disconnects many of us have commented on in this and other threads here at the lake.
Give it a read.
Given that a large part if not all of Japan is in a high-earthquake-probability zone, is there any part of Japan where nuclear reactors can be considered safe?
Also, was the damage to the nuclear plant due to the earthquake itself or to the associated tsunami?
Much appreciated.
Good points, to place a nuclear facility in an active earthquake zone is poor planning and an invitation to disaster.
The tsunami, from what I have heard, flooded into the housings for the secondary backup diesel generators, causing a complete loss of power (except for short-term battery replacement.)
Nuclear power, at this time, is not a safe answer to the worlds energy demands.
The NY Times is reporting that the containment zone has been flooded with seawater to avert a meltdown. What happens to that water? Is it radioactive? If it is flushed back out into the ocean the problems associated with radioactive contamination will show up in seafood.
Of course, some would say this is an acceptable risk.
That reminds me:
One of the biggest reasons for sending the Seventh Fleet to Japan: The need for fresh water. Water supplies were disrupted by the earthquake and tsunami, and US Navy ships are fitted out with state-of-the-art desalination systems that kick out thousands of tons of water per ship per day.
I’ve been through TMI, as a college student. There’s plenty to worry about here, not the least of which is your misstating what I said.
What I said was this: the video of the explosion made it quite clear for a couple good reasons that a significant possibility was that the explosion was a hydrogen explosion. I further stated that the likely source of hydrogen for a hydrogen explosion was that the core had enough energy – i.e., hest – running around in it for that heat alone to disassociate the hydrogen and oxygen in water into the separate elements. That tendency could possibly be exacerbated by catalysis provided by materials in the containment vessel or in the water systems, depending on what hose materials are.
I never said the core had exploded.
I also accurately reported what the nuclear expert CNN presented said. IF you don;’t like what he said – take it up with him. I happen to agree that flooding a nuclear power plant with seawater is a desperation move, if only because seawater is bad for steel (the material of the containment vessel) at normal temperatures and pressures, and highly corrosive at the elevated temperatures and pressures inside a nuclear plant. Not to mention that in such an emergency no one is going to be testing the chemistry of the seawater (so as to have an idea what the complex environment inside a nuclear reactor will do when hit with 40 or so degree seawater. Cold seawater can -but doesn’t have to – actually exacerbate the problem by screwing with the neutron flux in such a way that it accelerates the reaction).
Most of the post-ers on this site who know me, know I’m a lawyer. But, before I became a lawyer, I earned an engineering degree and was an engineer. I’m not fearmongering when I say I think the Japanese government is breaking it softly and that I think that they think the reactor is going to blow – I suspect it has, in fact, already partly melted down. This looks and sounds exactly like TMI, right down to the media whistling past the elephant in the room and covering for the government and power company.
So, don’t tell me I’m fearmongering: I’ve seen this movie before and kow how it comes out. This is the Japanese-language remake.
I assumed we also sent hospital ships and those capable of carrying cargo and transport vehicles, since road and rail transport are disrupted and emergency medical services will be stretched to the breaking point. I imagine, given our nuclear-powered fleet, that we have also medical personnel and technical specialists acquainted with how to treat patients exposed to radiation and how to get equipment meant to manage it up and running again. Granted, nuclear propulsion systems are different than power generation systems, but in an emergency you send the best you have immediately available, then supplement with more targeted resources as individual needs make themselves clear.
Thanks for all the info, I was surfing for info on this particular plant(that had the explosion) and noticed it was sited a lot for various violations in the past and I hope that is because the Japanese are more strict as you suggest.
CNN Breaking News citing a Japanese Official saying a catastrophic event happening at one of the Fukashima reactors, meltdown may be happening. anyone else catch this, not sure i got the wording correct.
After mentioning that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi 1 more closely resembles Chernobyl than TMI, and the plant has also now lost its emergency cooling system at another reactor, Brad Friedman @ Bradblog reports the following update sourced from Reuters:
Yesterday’s explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor “severely damaged the main building of the plant”, but did not breach “the integrity of the primary containment vessel” which “remains intact, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s confirmation with the Toykyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
The explosion occurred “occurred outside the primary containment vessel, not inside.”
“The government insisted radiation levels were low, saying the blast had not affected the reactor core container.”
While there was “an initial increase in radioactivity around a quake-hit nuclear plant on Saturday … levels ‘have been observed to lessen in recent hours’”.
4 workers were injured by the explosion itself.
140,000 people are currently being evacuated from a 20km radius around both the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini plants.
To help try to “limit damage to the reactor core, TEPCO proposed that sea water mixed with boron be injected into the primary containment vessel. … This measure was approved by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the injection procedure began at 20:20 local Japan time.
While meltdown fears continue, Reuters reports, “experts said Japan should not expect a repeat of Chernobyl.”
… DEVELOPING …
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8391
Yes! I just heard it a few minutes ago. Very grave delivery. Japanese Amb. to US now on screen being interviewed by Blitzer. Scary.
Ambassador is denying the report … ***
I wonder what the twitter machine says …
I checked with the pharmacist at WalMart today and he told me that Potassium Iodide isn’t available in the United States. No one has made any for the past 20 years. I haven’t checked with any other pharmacy or vitamin store. Will do so later or tomorrow and report back.
Ideas?
CNN walking it back now. Riiiiiight.
current AP article says the cooling system at a second reactor has failed.
From stratfor.com
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”
NISA’s statement is significant because it is the government agency that reports to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. NISA works in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. Its role is to provide oversight to the industry and is responsible for signing off construction of new plants, among other things. It has been criticized for approving nuclear plants on geological fault lines and for an alleged conflict of interest in regulating the nuclear sector. It was NISA that issued the order for the opening of the valve to release pressure — and thus allegedly some radiation — from the Fukushima power plant.
Read more: Japanese Government Confirms Meltdown | STRATFOR
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110312-japanese-government-confirms-meltdown?utm_source=redalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110312(6)&utm_content=readmore&elq=dd6def12ff6c43b5adedefab18b032d1
Chicago Sun Times is reporting:
Suntimes Suntimes
by kate_sheppard
UPDATE: Officials say cooling systems failed at second nuclear reactor in Japan plant. #Japan #nuclear http://suntm.es/ePim2C
Twitter machine says (#Fukushima) UN has been notified by NISA that meltdown is in progress.
Thanks, Mason!!!
You can order it on the Internet, but it may take a week or so to be delivered. Some studies showed (don’t have access to them though) that nuclear victims who consumed miso had a better survival rate at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, our previous contributions to the Japanese radiological environment.
If you add some toasted sesame oil to miso soup it really livens it up.
Easy to imagine how the reports coming about fast moving events at 2 reactors could be getting very confused, huh.
Spanish tweets saying state of emergency at 3 reactors now …
This is a pretty good description of what might be going on.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=182139
… or maybe just reactor 3 … :-(
Potable Aqua tablets? Not potassium iodide, but a form of iodine.
Polar Pure? Iodine crystals, also used for water purification.
Here is the type of reactor he’s talking about at the end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
From Twitter: Kate Sheppard @ Mother Jones is updating the situation at Fukushima Daiichi(http://bit.ly/glHsKl):
UPDATE 4:45 PM: The Japanese newspaper Nikkei is reporting (via STRATFOR) that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has confirmed that Unit 1 of the plant is in meltdown. However, this conflicts with an earlier statement from Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, who says that the reactor was not damaged. At this point it’s not clear exactly what the status is.
UPDATE 5:13 PM: The explosion was reportedly caused by a build up of hydrogen, which is an extremely flammable gas. The explosion appears to have occurred in the larger containment building surrounding the reactor core, though it is still not exactly clear whether the explosion damaged the core itself. I just talked to Tom O’Donnell, a nuclear physicist, who explained that the increasing water temperature inside the reactor likely caused hydrogen to build up in the core. Worried about putting pressure on the core, plant operators would have wanted to vent the hydrogen, which may have then caused the explosion.
Some news organizations are reporting that the reactor may have been breached, noting the presence of iodine and cesium isotopes detected in the area. O’Donnell notes that some level of those isotopes could be present in the water because the cooling system is broken down, causing what are usually two separate loops of water in a boiling water reactor system to intermingle. If the levels are high, though, it could be evidence that the reactor core has, in fact, been breached. Reporting on the levels of those isotopes is fuzzy right now though.
UPDATE 5:22 PM: Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the Fukushima plan, is also posting regular updates.
UPDATE 6:02 PM: The unit in question is a General Electric Mark I reactor design, also called a “pressure suppression” system. It’s a pretty common model; of the 104 reactors in the US, 23 are this type. But there are concerns that design doesn’t necessarily provide the best containment in the event of a meltdown.
If they are unable to cool the core and it does melt through the reactor vessel, this model doesn’t have most robust containment system, says Bergeron. If it did meltdown and the reactor core slumped to the floor, it likely “would result in containment failure in less than a day,” he says.
Critics of nuclear power say that this has been a known issue for decades and these reactors aren’t designed to sustain a meltdown. Greenpeace’s nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio writes:
In 1986 Harold Denton, former director of NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, again acknowledged this vulnerability while speaking to utilities executives at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Denton noted that, according to NRC studies the GE Mark I reactors had “something like a 90% probability of that containment failing.”
UPDATE 6:08 PM: Japan’s nuclear agency is now reporting that the cooling system on Unit 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has also malfunctioned, according to the Associated Press (via the Los Angeles Times).
http://bit.ly/glHsKl
“…this has been a known issue for decades and these reactors aren’t designed to sustain a meltdown.”
wtf!
IIRC, the statement by Yukio Edano was that the reactor was not damaged by the explosion, not that it was undamaged.
I suspect you’re right. Fukushima Daiichi has lost control of reactor 3 (in addition to reactor 1) and that may be where the story is coming from.
Potassium iodine essentially “floods” the thyroid, precluding absorption by it of radioactive versions of iodine. That lowers the radiation build up in tissue, with salutary effects.
See my comment below containing Kate Sheppard’s update @ 6:08 pm referencing the LA Times as her source for reactor 3.
Doses meant to purify a canteen of stream water may be harmful if taken internally. In a different way, an Alka-Seltzer tablet dissolved in a glass of water is harmless; swallow one whole and the massive release of CO2 inside the stomach can be extremely harmful.
Besides, there’s no reason for those outside the affected regions in Japan to take it. But it should be available here for the same reason Japan is preparing to distribute it there.
Right. I wasn’t suggesting taking the tablets or crystals, rather go ahead and add them to water as directed and drink the water. It certainly has an iodide taste.
Brad Friedman tweet 22 minutes ago on Bradblog:
TheBradBlog Brad Friedman
RT @lou_reuters: #Japan nuke agency says # of ppl possibly exposed to radiation from #Fukushima plant cld reach 160 (number’s rising)
Good distinction. Officials and news agencies in Japan are trying to manage public perceptions, limit anxiety and control reactions to these fast moving events. News releases will have multiple uses beyond releasing facts to the public as soon as they come in. Take them with a grain of salt for a while. We wouldn’t do it differently; witness our reports of “progress” in Afghanistan.
Mr. Google tells me that it’s now 9am Sunday in Tokyo. Maybe the pace of information will increase for a few hours.
of course not that that helps now.
1 minute ago on twitter
TheBradBlog Brad Friedman
Sitch now at #Fukushima No.3 reactor feels similar to prob at No.1 b4 explosion last night. Our live blog: http://bit.ly/eZmxSJ #JPQuake
TheBradBlog Brad Friedman
More confirm on #Fukushima No.3 cooling fail. RT @cbn2: RT @cbcnewsbc: New emgncy at nuclear plant at 2nd reactor http://bit.ly/h71bbZ
On Twitter: The Daily Beast is reporting 200,000 people are being evacuated from the Fukushima area.
http://thebea.st/dKrNAX
Here is a better schematic of the actual type of reactor (Daiichi unit 1) that exploded.
The fuel is in the brown, cylindrical vessel in the middle of the cutaway section of the drawing.
You can see that even if the roof and sides are blown off at the top, there is still the chance of containment, as long as the integrity of the fuel container is not dramatically compromised.
Every hour that there is not another explosion is precious because the key problem is to dissipate the afterheat of the decay products. This is supposed to take 12-24 hours from shutdown (assuming normal operation, which does not apply).
Seaweed is also a very good natural source for iodine. Eat seaweed salad!
“Meltdown” is not equivalent to full-scale catastrophe. The reactor at Three Mile Island suffered a meltdown but did not rise to the Chernobyl level of catastrophe.
Meltdown has two meanings, unfortunately. Most often, it means that the fuel assembly (which is made of metal) has begun to melt. This makes further control of the situation much more difficult, as it is harder to perform mechanical interventions (insert control rods, circulate boric acid, etc) to absorb neutrons. Since the movie China Syndrome, one understands that meltdown also refers to a scenario in which the fuel assembly melts, breaches its container, comes into contact with water (e.g., groundwater below the containment) and causes a steam-driven dispersal (typically assumed to explosive) of radioactive material.
The first kind of “meltdown” has happened at Daiichi station Unit 1. The second is not yet happening and may not happen, if the seawater and boric acid injections work well enough to get through the worst of the afterheat.
One thing I do not know for certain is whether there are conditions under which whether melted fuel assemblies of a BWR can again go critical. Here, “critical” refers to the state that existed when the nuclear chain reaction was controlled when the plan was operating normally and which stopped when the earthquake began. If the melted fuel assemblies go critical, the second kind of meltdown is more like what one would expect to happen.
I am looking into this question and will try to get back with an answer.
Okey Dokey, sportsfans.
We’re at 225 comments, counting this one.
I’m gonna take a break and get something to eat. Back in an hour, more or less.
When I took a break last night to sleep, there was an explosion. Hope that doesn’t happen while I’m on break this time.
Ah, so there is, in essense, an inner “containment structure structure surrounding the reactor vessel, and all of that was inside the now destroyed outer structure.
Great find. thanks.
This comment from a source for Kate Sheppard at MoJo seems self-serving:
Yes, there were multiple “system” failures involved here: electric power grid failures; failure of back-up generators and/or batteries owing to inundation with seawater; disrupted road, rail and air transport; demands on emergency services that far outstrip capacity. The convergence of earthquakes and tsunamis for island Japan is, however, among the most predictable problems, as are their multiple effects. Being blithely surprised about them would be similar to being surprised that New Orleans is at risk not only for repetitive high winds and rain, but flooding from high seas and embankment failures, too.
US nuclear plants are sited along coasts, rivers and large lakes for similar reasons that they are built along coastal Japan. It’s not simply because it places them close to population or industrial centers that consume the electricity. It’s because they require ready access to high volumes of fresh or salt water for normal and emergency cooling.
That’s not to say that Ellen Vancko’s comment, cited by Kate Sheppard in MoJO, is completely wrong, but that she overstates. Many of these combined failures are entirely predictable; they certainly are now. Global warming makes extreme weather more likely. Their effects should be taken into account as new plants are sited and plans for managing risks at existing ones are reviewed, tested and improved.
America is in the throes of a Republican-inflamed anti-regulatory fever. All that stands in its way is the cardboard stiffness of the Obama administration. These catastrophes in Japan amply illustrate that those who favor rabid de-regulation, whether in banking, weather forecasting, volcano monitoring, business regulation or disaster preparedness are misguided and massively self-destructive. That makes disaster capitalists wealthier. Hurricane Katrina demonstrates the good it does for everyone else in Mother Nature’s path.
The nuclear reaction takes place inside a steel alloy structure. That structure is nested inside a larger, typically heavy concrete and steel structure that is often cylindrically shaped with a domed top (the better to resist high internal pressures).
The steel reactor vessel is connected via piping and electrical connections to cooling systems and control/monitoring systems. When the cooling systems are subject to explosive forces, that can rupture their fittings, breaching the integrity of the steel reactor vessel. It can also be breached, for example, by being melted by inadequately controlled or cooled nuclear reactions.
I believe I had some liquid for use in a marine tank. If It’s an emergency need I would check at local aquamarine stores.
As you say, that assumes normal cooling system operations that no longer apply here.
The diagram shows an outer building shell, unpressurized, used for supply and maintenance, and which houses critical cooling system components. The pressurized containment vessel appears to be the middle, concrete structure shown in cutaway. Inside it is the steel reactor vessel.
What’s not clear from the distant camera shots, but seems clear from reports, is that it was not just the outer shell that was partially destroyed from the explosion. The pressurized containment vessel itself was damaged. Unknown is how much damage the reactor vessel suffered. Reports of radiation release suggest it has been breached to some extent.
Assuming economic survival and well-being specifically for all persons are basic national aims, I, a verifiable capitalist and believer in competition, which only makes sense with continuous growth for all working hand-in-hand with safety nets, believe that aim depends also on earthquake preparedness simultaneously with economic fairness, efficiency and “rationalization.”
On a purely economic level (the numbers–not the human value,) Japan is actually looking at reconstruction, including building better, not just newer. That will always be limited by available financial resources.
Frankly, I believe, due to influence and corruption, the U.S.
is at risk of following in those footsteps. For a start, the U.S. should
undertake analyzing areas of ill-preparedness for its own disaster
of comparable magnitude. Influence and corruption risks the U.S.
compromising its own responsiveness.
COMING EVACUATION CONFERENCE
http://www.nationalevacuationconference.org/
If, say, the likelihood of a San Andreas-surcded earthquake hitting California over the next 30 years is 94% (a recently oft-quoted figure,) then that’s 3.13.% likelihood annually, not accounting for increased probablity calculated from future points. From now that’s a 31.3% likelihood of occurence withing the next 10 years. If you have a health risk factor, absent assurance of ObamaCare staying on track, you cannot relocate to another state, in most cases, absent taking on health coverage exclusions as to precisely
what you need coverage for.
Columbia, Washington – formerly WNP-2
Diablo Canyon, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
San Onofre, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station
http://sites.google.com/site/evernewecon
Finally, some specifics on the radionuclides released to atmosphere.
“Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency confirmed the presence of caesium-137 and iodine-131 in the vicinity of Daiichi.” (http://bit.ly/eBXHxC)
Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days. Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years. Potassium iodide has limited benefits for adults over age 40, who are less sensitive to I-131 than infants and children.
For those asking questions about the availability of potassium iodide, see here and here for examples (not recommendations). Here’s a brief discussion of the characteristics of potassium iodide and its uses, including its therapeutic use to prevent certain kinds of radiation sickness:
Good catch, thanks.
William J. Broad has a good
background article up at the NYT.
The article on the uses of potassium iodide comments on its use post-Chernobyl, which involved considerable airborne release of nuclear materials, including radioactive iodine, which is highly carcinogenic but has a short half-life. Doses were given to 10.5 million children and 7 million adults in Poland, who lived downwind from the release at Chernobyl.
From the Times article you cite, the two radioactive materials of most concern are iodine and cesium; officials in Japan have acknowledged that cesium has already been detected:
Radioactive iodine’s half-life is 8 days; its effects are intense but limited. Cesium’s however is 30 years; it still poses problems for those living around Chernobyl, which happened in 1986. From the same Times article:
Responding to lobster @ 5.17pm.
According to the sidebars in the latest updates at WNN, there are now seven reactors with cooling problems.
All three units that were online at the time of the earthquake at Fukushima Daiichi are having problems. Unit 1 is in worst shape, and is the one in the news. Units 2 and 3 still do not have access to offsite power and are therefore presumably working only with the ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System) which can run with batteries unless the backup diesel generators have been brought back to service or replaced — and I think we would have heard about that. Unless aftershocks or radiation levels in and around the plant prevent workers from keeping fresh batteries in operation, and assuming there has not been core melt in units 2 and 3, they should likely soon be cool.
There is still no significant discussion of the status of the cooling ponds, which contain the stored nuclear waste at either plant. The ponds also require active cooling or there can be radiation dangers for workers. That would be bad; see above. I have not been able to find any indication anywhere about the power systems that are required for the circulation of water in the cooling ponds. Anyone else find that?
All four units at Fukushima Daini are experiencing cooling problems, but that power station has access to external power and so is presumably in better shape.
Unless there are further explosions or major releases tonight, the worst is likely over. The only scenario that will trouble me tonight (and it is improbable) is related to the circulation of sea water in Unit 1 at Daiichi. Assuming there has been core melt (as discussed above; probably partial) there is a slim chance that the melted core material (known as “corium”) could puddle in a geometry that would be unfavorable. That would not in itself be a concern, but the reintroduction of water in that circumstance, if not sufficiently boronated, could moderate reactions in the corium and restart the chain reaction. That would be bad, because it would extend the emergency by tapping into new sources of energy. This is probably a very unlikely possibility, but it will remain a slim possibility for days.
Solid background info about the ECCS here, about a third of the way down the page.
World Nuclear News has an interesting summary, particularly of the injuries and casualties.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/print.aspx?id=29621
IAEA story on thyroid disorders associated with the Chernobyl accident.
Related report discussing the same.
I have met friends from Europe and Russia who were the appropriate age and were in the “right” places to be affected and who have suffered from thyroid disorders. Although the disorders are real and could have been avoided, they are generally treatable.
The problems associated with Cs-137 are more serious. Overall, there is no reason for anyone in the US to be taking potassium iodide at this time. By tomorrow, I am sure that there will be many (of us) in physics departments in the US with Geiger counters set up to document whether there is any plume in the US over the next few days and weeks. It is unlikely that any such plume will come this far, even if the events in Fukushima deteriorate much further.
Yes — first linked above at 9:18 AM.
I forgot to mention that “The whereabout of two Tepco workers remains unknown.”
Oh, that’s good to hear. I was just looking up wind patterns in the pacific to see where any contaminated plume might drift.
Didn’t realize that. Don’t know if it makes a difference, but this report was updated at 14: 23.44 pm GMT
New story from AP apparently confirms my guess at 11:11 AM (above) about the source of hydrogen.
They’ve been updating every 4-5 hours. I’ve found that site to be one of the most reliable sources of info so far.
The Canadians seem to be first out of the gate for scaring people in North America.
I do not believe this is a significant concern.
Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 are two additional radionuclides that should be closely monitored.
Lord God. Thanks, Bill.
Thanks Bill,
excellect diary!
silly question as an engineer
IF the ground acceleration sensors via software are used to automatically put the plant into “shutdown sequence” (insert rods into core etc), why is the excess heat needing to be removed over the next ~3 days not used to run the turbines which can be used to generate the electricity required to run the pumps to do the cooling?????? Why does the author (and most articles I’ve found) suggest “shutdown sequence” (always) means the energy supply to the turbines is immediately terminated???
Seems pretty silly instead to rely on “backup generators” and batteries (which are obviously not that reliable) to do this (OR using some apparently external energy source to pump seawater through the core to cool it down…which understand renders the reactor unusable) this when the heat that can be the source of catastrophe (rod melting) could instead be used as a source of energy to do the cooling required to avoid catastrophe (rod melting).
Maybe I’m missing something but with all the $ spent on designing these installations and all the “experts” paid to do the system designs (and now talking all over the TV), how is is that nobody apparently has or is even today addressing this fundamental question/option. Obviously, this option
would only be practical if the core-turbine coolant loop integrity remained intact but I’ve not heard anyone yet suggest this has been an issue at any of the plants in/around Sendai.
Intelligent facts seems to be hard to come by but seems IF I were running one of those plants in the last few days and was faced with what I’ve been able to piece together, I would have proposed over-riding the turbine shut down and letting the turbines generate the electricity to run the pumps to
cool the reactor now needing to be cooled as it “shuts down”.
I tend to believe nuclear will inevitably need to play a major role in our efforts to significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels HOWEVER I also realize there are significant safety risks that need to be addressed (short term in fission systems and longer term migrating to fusion systems) in smart ways.
Most of all, since large numbers of people are put at risk by these systems, full and prompt transparency of information (by both private and public sectors) must be mandatory (and has not been happening in Japan nor did it at 3-mile Island nor did it during the BP oil well disaster last summer).
Rather than the media scaring the crap out of everyone by continually using the term “meltdown” for 3 days (and not chasing down “identified authorities” and really grilling them re facts/options/decision making), I’d appreciate it if the author and anyone else with a real grasp of the facts can help us by explaining why the apparently simple solution response described above was not implemented at these installations immediately after they went into “shutdown sequence”.
Thanks,
SteveG
I want to expand on SteveG’s remarks. I strongly agree with them.
There seems to be a huge lack of facts about why and especially HOW
all the systems failed. But I especially want to follow up on SteveG’s
remarks on the backup systems.
I saw one report that there are thirteen (13) backup diesel generators
and 1 backup steam driven pump.
Are each of these diesel generators adequate to provide the electicity needed to pump the coolant water that the reactors need to continue cooling the rods?
How did it really happen that ALL 13 failed! One report said that
they ALL started up, and then one by one they all failed! How?
Conjectures are rampant. But documented facts are is very short supply.
There is also a report (which addresses SteveG’s question) that
there is a backup steam driven pump. Did this fail as well?
The last resort for backup power to the pumps is battery power.
Have these failed as well? If so how are they pumping the sea water?
So many unanswered questions…
Carefully review the videos of the explosions – they look pretty familiar to some historical videos of atomic activity. Even the first explosion shows a bit of a ‘pulse’ or flash before the main explosion. The other reactor explosion does produce the ‘mushroom cloud’. Moreover, it does not make logic that US military miles off the shore is experiencing radiation exposure – and yet they are not concerned at ground level of reactor site. Something to me is not stirring the kool-aid.
“How did it really happen that ALL 13 failed!”
Tsunami
“…there is a backup steam driven pump. Did this fail as well?”
Not a pump, just steam-driven circulation. AFAIK, cannot be used to pump external water.
“The last result for backup power to the pumps is battery power. Have these failed as well? If so how are they pumping the sea water?”
The batteries actuate valves and such. The circulation is driven by the steam produced by the boiling.
Learned later: they are using fire-fighting equipment to pump the sea water. I do not know how that is powered and have found no discussion of that.