Japan [Tag: Fucked]

[Arthur_Parker]

Ok, does it change the fact that shit got much worse than "was possible?" No. Ok. Thanks for the correction.

The containment vessels are still doing what they're supposed to and haven't gotten any worse, '"Than was possible"' or otherwise.  That part hasn't changed.

Murgos the containment vessel lid for a cooling pool is the water, that's been reported as boiling off, there's well over 1500 tons of spent Uranium fuel in the 7 pools at site.

[Ghambit]

Richard Black, BBC reporter:

It appears that for the first time, the containment system around one of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors has been breached.

Officials have referred to a possible crack in the suppression chamber of reactor 2 - a large doughnut-shaped structure below the reactor housing. That would allow steam, containing radioactive substances, to escape continuously.

This is the most likely source of the high radioactivity readings seen near the site. Another possible source is the fire in reactor 4 building - believed to have started when a pool storing old fuel rods dried up.

The readings at the site rose beyond safe limits - 400 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr), when the average person's exposure is 3mSv in a year.

A key question is whether this is just a transient spike, which might be expected if number 2 is the source, or whether the high levels are sustained.

Come on. Is it so hard to say, "Ok, maybe we underestimated what could happen?" This is the kind of thing that yesterday more than a few experts were saying, "Don't worry, can't happen, not possible". Right, I know the fall-back position: no, no, the experts were only refuting the dumbshit China-syndrome radioactive reaction falling into the earth's core or blowing up like a bomb stuff, or refuting the idea that these reactors would burn in the exact same way that Chernobyl did. Read back some, or read the various experts who've been linked to, and you'll see them saying something stronger: that containment would not be breached, that the situation was under control, and that there would be no significant release of radiation. The WSJ guy said, "Oh, stand on top of the chimney of any of these reactors and maybe it'll be like flying on a plane". Does it look like that to you this morning?

Actually, there were quite a few experts that were pretty spot on about the problems, they just got lost in the noise.
Of late, the worry about the spent fuel rods being directly subjected to multiple hydrogen explosions.  No one forecasted the suppression pool problems though, which is troubling.  Granted, people tended to lump it together with "the cooling system."      If Nuke reactor's cooling system breaches (the parts right next to the core), then said coolant will be toxic obviously.

Anyways, anyone ever try to open/close a valve with mud and debris in your hose?      Kinda doesnt work, even if your pumps are magically still functioning.
I'd go ahead and write that entire cooling system off as "dead" once that tsunami wrecked the ponds.  Manually injecting water with firetrucks pumping from "clean spots" or hydrants is about all they can do.
Matter of fact, it'll be interesting to see if there was a procedure in case of a large tsunami to DISABLE the pump system until it'd passed, along with any system reliant on raw water (such as a water cooled diesel generation plant).
Whole thing is likely caked to shit and cant be repaired.

[Arthur_Parker]

French nuclear agency now rates Japan accident at 6

France's ASN nuclear safety authority said on Tuesday the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi plant could now be classed as level six out of an international scale of one to seven.

On Monday, the ASN had rated the ongoing accident at the plant, located 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, as a five or six.

Level seven was used only once, for Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the United States was rated a level five.

"We are now in a situation that is different from yesterday's. It is very clear that we are at a level six, which is an intermediate level between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," ASN President Andre-Claude Lacoste told a news conference in Paris on Tuesday.

"We are clearly in a catastrophe," Lacoste added, citing the deterioration of the containment structure at Daiichi 2 as one of the key elements supporting the ASN's more pessimistic assessment.

I really hope that behind the scenes the Japanese are being offered as much help as possible.

[KallDrexx]

From the Guardian live blog:

The Kyodo news agency has a very useful update on the status, as of Tuesday evening in Japan, of each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant:

Fukushima No. 1

Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.

Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, damage to containment system, potential meltdown feared.

Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby.

Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused possibly by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.

Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

Fukushima No. 2

Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 3 - Cold shutdown.

Reactor No. 4 - Cooling failure, then cold shutdown.

[Arthur_Parker]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/

TEPCO unable to pour water into No. 4 reactor's storage pool for spent fuel

Doesn't say why, below might be related.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/japan-quake-controlroom-idUSTFD00669220110315

Radiation levels at the No. 4 reactor of Japan's earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant had become too high on Tuesday to conduct normal work from its control room, Kyodo news agency said.

Workers cannot stay long and are going in and out of the control room as well as monitoring from a different place, Kyodo said.

[Cyrrex]

Arthur - I know you sometimes get shit from people around here, but I just wanted to express that I'm grateful for the trouble you go through in your attempts to provide information.  On this and other issues.

[Ghambit]

Can someone shed some light:
If you lose cooling ability on this particular reactor type (including the suppression system), is it even designed to be able to be cooled actively with fire pumps and such?  Bear in mind the fuel they're using.

[NowhereMan]

Come on. Is it so hard to say, "Ok, maybe we underestimated what could happen?" This is the kind of thing that yesterday more than a few experts were saying, "Don't worry, can't happen, not possible". Right, I know the fall-back position: no, no, the experts were only refuting the dumbshit China-syndrome radioactive reaction falling into the earth's core or blowing up like a bomb stuff, or refuting the idea that these reactors would burn in the exact same way that Chernobyl did. Read back some, or read the various experts who've been linked to, and you'll see them saying something stronger: that containment would not be breached, that the situation was under control, and that there would be no significant release of radiation. The WSJ guy said, "Oh, stand on top of the chimney of any of these reactors and maybe it'll be like flying on a plane". Does it look like that to you this morning?

Not sure where the 400mSv measurement came from (as in physically rather than the source of information) I've heard some people saying the measurement was taken between #3 and#4 reactors and one that sourced it to inside one of the reactor buildings. The reading at the time around the gate was apparently about 12mSv. I think the point experts are making is that the worst case (likely) scenario for this is that containment is broken, shit leaks out and the plant area and the surrounding 20 miles are so are marked off for a number of years while clean up goes on. That would be bad but in terms of scale of disaster it's not going to be much worse than the present oil refineries that are on fire and spewing toxic shit into the air, ground and water tables. In many ways it's better because of the level of response it will receive. I don't want to come off as saying that this isn't a big deal or that it can happily be ignored but it's an industrial accident and, as far as I can tell, one that's not operating on a totally separate scale to other industrial accidents.

I think the problem is that experts say that things aren't as bad as people fear (fearing widespread radiation, northern part of Japan uninhabitable for the next hundred years, etc.) and people hear it as, "There's nothing to worry about, every thing's fine here." It should also be noted what most experts were saying was this wouldn't breach containment as long as they managed to keep cooling them. Clearly keeping coolant pumped in is proving harder than they anticipated and it looks like secondary containment might be breached on one of the reactors. It's still not making it's way into worst case scenario yet. It also pays not to confuse worst case scenario with what the information we have now suggests is going to happen.

Also I'll say thanks to Arthur for posting lots of info. I don't agree with your views on this stuff but you put a lot of time into collecting info and more importantly you manage to stay out of ridiculous pissing matches.

[Murgos]

Murgos the containment vessel lid for a cooling pool is the water, that's been reported as boiling off, there's well over 1500 tons of spent Uranium fuel in the 7 pools at site.

Uh, if you want to change the definition of the reactor containment vessel go ahead.  But don't expect me to discuss it with you.

[Murgos]

The reading at the time around the gate was apparently about 12mSv.

The reading at the gate is down to about .4 mSv (400 uSv).  According to somethings I've seen, (but nothing very credible) the 400 mSv readings were in between reactors 3 and 4 or on the 4th floor of the control building for reactor 4.  These aren't necessarily contradictory, depending on the layout of the plant these could be the same thing described different ways.

[NiX]

Before/After photos part two: roll your mouse over the pic to reveal.

The soccer field is surreal. SOS and what look like body bags.

[ghost]

I find it odd that so many of the emergency messages are in English.  Those pictures are pretty fucked up. 

[Jeff Kelly]

Short answer: no.

Somewhat longer answer:

The primary circuit of a BWR has to be able to handle water and steam at relatively low pressures (70 bar) PWR types have higher internal pressures.

The pumps have to be able to handle both pressurized water and steam and the steam turbine directly handles the steam from the reactor, the secondary circuit is intended to cool/condense the steam from the primary circuit before it gets pumped back into the core vessel. In a PWR reactor water never "boils" because of the high pressure (it's over 300 °C and still in liquid form because of the 300 bar of pressure or more) but in a BWR design it does, hence the name. Steam collects in the top portion of the core vessel that's why the control rods are inserted from the bottom of the reactor.

As far as I know the safety measures for that type of reactor depend on two factors.

1. Is the fuel already exposed/no longer submerged in water
2. Is primary (fuel rod casing) and secondary (reactor pressure vessel) still intact.

basically in case of power loss backup power generators should start up that are usually diesel operated to keep the water flowing, if they are out of order there are backup batteries in place that can keep the pumps going

Newer designs can even function by convection alone (no electrical power necessary)

That's if the primary cicuit is still intact but just without power

The next measure could be to attach portable pumps and condenser units to the circuit if primary ciculation is defective.

Right now we've already burned through three levels of countermeasures, diesel powered-backup generators, battery powered backup generators, fixing a broken primary circuit with portable diesel powered pumps and condensers.

Anything after that is considered to be "highly unlikely"

The core itself will only keep below 1000 °C if it is completely submerged in water, if circulation stopped for too long or the primary circuit leaks then you will lose water. Either through the leaks or through "controlled release of pressure" which is nerdspeak for venting steam from the pressure vessel to ease pressure and prevent the containment from bursting which would be bad. At some point the water level will be so low that the fuel rods will be exposed.

Primary concern should be to restart the primary circuit BEFORE that happens. If not then the fuel rods will rapidly increase in temperature and at some point will start to melt. Now you have a very difficult situation, the rods are now at more than 2000 °C, any water that comes into contact with those parts instantly turns to steam or worse even separates into hydrogen and oxygen. Pressure inside the vessel rapidly increases so you have to vent the pressure more often and the water level decreases even faster.

If water turns into steam or hydrogen and oxygen volume increases by 1400% and the buildup of hydrogen and oxygen could lead to a detonation gas buildup that might explode. (That's what happened to the reactor buildings on the weekend, vented steam and oxyhydrogen built up in the building and at one point led to the explosion).

If you pump water into a core vessel thats already in partial meltdown you run a serious risk of the vessel bursting or blowing up, after all the vessel is only good for up to 90 bar of pressure, also the molten residue of the rods starts to collect at the bottom of the vessel and could eventually burn through the steel containment. Submerged under light water (the moderator) and free from the control rods (that only work if the fuel rods stay where they are) the fission reaction could even restart which would be worse. That's why they add boric acid to the water. The boric acid "poisons" the water and prevents the fission reaction from happening, provided that the boric acid is mixed evenly.

At this point you basically switched from "restart circulation" to "take every measure to keep the core from melting through the steel containment or restarting the fission reaction.

The final measure would be to pump water into the concrete containment the steel pressure vessel is housed in. You basically turn the whole tertiary containment into some sort of giant heat sink. If the vessel is still intact it gets cooled from the outside by being submerged into water. That water turns to steam which evaporates and is vented into the environmen tand you just keep on filling it up as the water level sinks.

If containment is compromised any of those measures could have potentially catastrophic consequences if it comes to a steam or hydrogen explosion. In theory the concrete containment is the final countermeasure that should keep any nuclear material inside even if the steel vessel breaks but at that time you already vent a certain amount of radiation into the environment that gets transported by the steam or is the radioactive steam itself.

That's what they are currently doing. Basically they fill the reactor with water as you would fill up a swimming pool.

Usually you have emergency water supplies that can be used to submerge the whole containment in water and newer designs even design the concrete containment structure to more effectively work as a heatsink.

Now we are already at "impossible to happen"

A standard issue water pump fire depts use couldn't pump water directly into the steel vessel because it cannot deliver enough pressure and it isn't designed to handle steam or pressurized boiling water.

[edit. fixed grammar and spelling]

[SnakeCharmer]

What do you do for a living?

[Jeff Kelly]

being an armchair expert on the internet

[Quinton]

Site by a guy in Tokyo with an off the shelf geiger counter hooked up to a PC: http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html

The measurement is in CPM (counts per minute) which if the autotranslated didn't botch it, 100 CPM here is 1 microsievert/hr.

Readings from Mar 15th:


Readings from December 2010:

[Jeff Kelly]

Seriously though, even though I have a comp sci degree I've 20 years of experience as a voluntary firefighter. I have a whole lot of material on reactor safety measures and emergency response planning here at my home since in case of an emergency we'd probably have to coordinate emergency response measures or help with setting up those countermeasures.

We even have two entire fire engines that are dedicated to the handling of hazardous materials alone, including hazmat suits for chemical and nuclear emergencies and a whole array of specialized pump equipment to handle that.

At a certain point most of this is course material you have to learn and the physics behind that isn't that hard to understand.

[NiX]

Seriously though, even though I have a comp sci degree I've 20 years of experience as a voluntary firefighter. I have a whole lot of material on reactor safety measures and emergency response planning here at my home since in case of an emergency we'd probably have to coordinate emergency response measures or help with setting up those countermeasures.

We even have two entire fire engines that are dedicated to the handling of hazardous materials alone, including hazmat suits for chemical and nuclear emergencies and a whole array of specialized pump equipment to handle that.

At a certain point most of this is course material you have to learn and the physics behind that isn't that hard to understand.

If you could just put a tl;dr for those of us at work, that would be superb.

[ghost]

Radiation levels fall after containment pool fire is put out.  

Radiation levels soar after containment pool fire is put out.  

WTF?  I believe these are both talking about the same incident.  If true, someone's journalistic credentials should be called into question.


Edit:  Also, don't go outside.   

[UnSub]

being an armchair expert on the internet

i've always wanted to do that does it pay well?

[Arthur_Parker]

Murgos the containment vessel lid for a cooling pool is the water, that's been reported as boiling off, there's well over 1500 tons of spent Uranium fuel in the 7 pools at site.

Uh, if you want to change the definition of the reactor containment vessel go ahead.  But don't expect me to discuss it with you.

It was a snarky comment as you seem so focused on the reactors, I'd honestly be interested to hear your thoughts on the pools.

[Murgos]

Oh, sorry then.

I'm not sure what to think about the pools.  There hasn't been very much credible information relayed to the public about them.  I don't know if that's because it's a non-issue or if it's because they just don't know.

That said, the automated radiation monitors aren't really saying anything interesting other than that after the initial spike radiation levels rapidly reduced to ~0.4 mSv at the main gate.

That's pretty much the only real fact I've seen.  0.4 mSv isn't great but it's a workable condition with standard emergency procedures to minimize effects on personnel.

I've seen stuff that says if the pools aren't damaged there should be weeks worth of water covering them.  But I've also seen stuff about that they can't seem to refill the pools right at the moment.  Why not isn't said, it could be because it's not a priority with weeks worth of water on them or it could be lack of equipment and no immediate threat or it could be something else.

The actual thing that is mostly being lost sight of with the panic reporting is that outside the gates of the plant the 'real' affect of the emergency so far is pretty much not even going to raise an eyebrow on an incident report.  As far as real damage the other ongoing emergent situations (oil fires for example) have injured MANY more people and done far more damage to the environment.

[Sheepherder]

I don't know about US or Japanese fire engines but the standard water pumps used by european firefighting units use pumps that pump water at 700/1400 l/min at 6 - 8 bar pressure (8000 hpa) and have a maximum lift of 7 metres. You cannot increase pressure much over that 8 bar because the pumps aren't designed for more, you only put pumps in serial config to increase lift or to bring pressure back to 8 bar if you need to transport water over longer distances.

The pumps are also only designed to handle water from hydrants or natural sources of water, the intake has a coarse filter that keeps most of the dirt and mud out. Thex can't handle other liquids that are corrosive (we hav especial pumps for that), they can't be operated in environments with potentially explosive mixes of gas or dust (we have special pumps for that). They would be rather inadequate to pump water/steam mixed with boric acid into a hot reactor that is operated at 70 bar (70.000 hpa).

Maybe the on-site fire services have access to specialized pumps (they should be euipped to handle all of the hazardous materials on site) but I don't assume that they use standrad fire hoses (made from hemp or linen) and standard attack equipment

Hale's specs on a fairly standard US pump here.

Nominally the pumps are meant to operate at 1050 kPa, but ratings are provided up to 1750 kPa, and the entire unit is hydrostatically tested to 4200 kPa.  The highest credible estimate for reactor vessel pressure I can find is 1764 kPa, which is 2.1 times the design capacity.

Borates has been used as firefighting foam and retardant for a long time, though it's more or less phased out now.  Finding/diluting an appropriate mixture and inserting it into the foam eductor would not be an issue.

[Jeff Kelly]

They are getting more and more desperate, right now radiation levels on site are too high for the remaining personnel to stay. Japanese nuclear safety recommended strongly that the last 50 people leave the site immediately. So they now consider delivering the coolant by helicopter and even asked the US navy for help.

So now we are basically at 'throw stuff into the containment from helicopters' - a familiar sight for those who were alive in '86.

[Khaldun]

Throw water into the containment from helicopters? How do you do that if the containment is, well, contained? A hose from the helicopter? Or would cooling the outer skin of the containment help just by dumping a ton of water on it?

How does a scenario that desperate sounding reconcile with "oh, the radiation at the gate isn't that high"?

[Arrrgh]

Taking anonymous internet dickheadishness a bit too far.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/14/warning-do-not-trust-death-reports-on-google-person-finder/

[Murgos]

They are getting more and more desperate, right now radiation levels on site are too high for the remaining personnel to stay. Japanese nuclear safety recommended strongly that the last 50 people leave the site immediately. So they now consider delivering the coolant by helicopter and even asked the US navy for help.

So now we are basically at 'throw stuff into the containment from helicopters' - a familiar sight for those who were alive in '86.

Where is this information coming from?

[Sir T]

Throw water into the containment from helicopters? How do you do that if the containment is, well, contained? A hose from the helicopter? Or would cooling the outer skin of the containment help just by dumping a ton of water on it?

How does a scenario that desperate sounding reconcile with "oh, the radiation at the gate isn't that high"?

Not really that informed opinion warning:

I imagine its down to the type of radiation. Alpha and Beta radiation are pretty short ranged, the longer ranged is Gamma.

[Comstar]

If they are reduced to using helicopters, surly it's going to get too hot, containment would be breached, and you end up with a SCP event/entry.

[Lantyssa]

being an armchair expert on the internet

i've always wanted to do that does it pay well?

You can tell people it does.

[Lucida]

They are getting more and more desperate, right now radiation levels on site are too high for the remaining personnel to stay. Japanese nuclear safety recommended strongly that the last 50 people leave the site immediately. So they now consider delivering the coolant by helicopter and even asked the US navy for help.

So now we are basically at 'throw stuff into the containment from helicopters' - a familiar sight for those who were alive in '86.

Where is this information coming from?

#
1456: Tepco says it may start pouring water from a helicopter over Fukushima Daiichi's reactor four in the next few days, to cool the spent-fuel pool.

That's from bbc's live feed. I don't know if they are just considering it a backup plan. There might be a better, more informative link at Tepco?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

[Murgos]

Throw water into the containment from helicopters? How do you do that if the containment is, well, contained? A hose from the helicopter? Or would cooling the outer skin of the containment help just by dumping a ton of water on it?

How does a scenario that desperate sounding reconcile with "oh, the radiation at the gate isn't that high"?

Neutron/Gamma radiation has a range of a few hundred meters in air.  Alpha/Beta is measured in inches.

If it were that high you would see the spike at the gates.  I asked Jeff Kelly where he got the information from because the last reports I saw from the IAEA & JISA said that NISA was planning to immediately pump water into the pools and that radiation levels were decreasing ~ 6 hours ago.

But I heard the helicopter thing last night before I went to bed, so I don't really trust that without some pretty serious attribution.

[Ghambit]

These Nuke safety guys have to be making beaucoup bucks.  I'd imagine all of 'em have their seed frozen or are too old to procreate anyways.  Helluva job.

[Jeff Kelly]

Where is this information coming from?

German news portal Spiegel.de just reported it apparently though it concerns the pools the spent rods are kept in only. Also they already said they won't do it "because such attempts might damage the pool"

[Khaldun]

Murgos, I'm totally not snarking here--I just want to be sure I'm reading the radiation monitor figures you linked to correctly. There's a big spike in between 8am and noon March 15th, right? With a couple of other intermittent smaller spikes on the 13th and 14th for much shorter time intervals. But after the radiation levels at the gate fall over the rest of the day on the 15th, they've stayed higher even at the lowest point than almost any other time since the tsunami hit. So regardless of the consequences outside the plant itself, this is evidence that something has changed inside, correct?