Japan [Tag: Fucked]

[Ghambit]

They're currently airdropping water via CH47's over No. 3 and 4.  Lotta steam coming from No. 3, but not sure if that was from before or from the drop.
Either way, that unit is insanely hot right now externally.

edit:  steam is a result of airdrops so yah, damned hot
note: the choppers cant hover because the rads are too high, so these are essentially "bomb runs"

[NHK]

[Tale]

Watching on NHK http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv, that water's being dropped from way too high to do anything at all. Looks like it's a fine mist by the time it reaches the ground.

[Murgos]

Fire

You have to have material to combust to have a fire so that's not necessarily true.  It could just sit there and be hot.

[Margalis]

I find this whole thing a little shocking. You figure as soon as it looked like there might be any problem with any reactor they would be preparing backup plans to the backup plans and have everything in place assuming the worst scenario unfolds. Instead this from the outside looks like a video of a guy trying to catch his hat but constantly kicking it in front of him. At every step it's like "well, let's prepare for scenario X - oops, it's worse than X."

Of course unlike half the people in this thread I am not a nuclear physicist.

[Sand]

"They need to stop pulling out people -- and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the unnamed U.S. official was quoted by ABC as saying.

 

[ghost]

Apparently we do have Radaway. 

[MahrinSkel]

Fire

You have to have material to combust to have a fire so that's not necessarily true.  It could just sit there and be hot.

Metals can burn if they get hot enough.  In fact, they *must* burn if they get hot enough and oxygen is present.  Actually, almost anything will burn in the presence of oxygen and enough heat.  Combustion temperature for Zirconium is around 2000, for plutonium and uranium it's room temperature.

I find this whole thing a little shocking. You figure as soon as it looked like there might be any problem with any reactor they would be preparing backup plans to the backup plans and have everything in place assuming the worst scenario unfolds. Instead this from the outside looks like a video of a guy trying to catch his hat but constantly kicking it in front of him. At every step it's like "well, let's prepare for scenario X - oops, it's worse than X."

Of course unlike half the people in this thread I am not a nuclear physicist.

They had backups, and contingencies for the backups, and plans for dealing with the failures of the contingency plans.  Unfortunately, they burned through the bulk of it when the tsunami took out the diesel backups.

A lot of the mistakes were made 40 years ago, when the reactors were designed.  To the extent that a new error was made, it was keeping them going when we now have much better designs and they've exceeded their original designed lifespan.

Like a lot of engineering disasters, it's not any one thing, but a collection of problems that are each making it more difficult to deal with the others.

--Dave

[Nyght]

Like a lot of engineering disasters, it's not any one thing, but a collection of problems that are each making it more difficult to deal with the others.

--Dave

This is poor contingency engineering then and begs the question if our contingency designs are any better. Good design considers cascading failures. I heard one 'expert' say today that we have 13 plants in the US of the exact same design.

[MahrinSkel]

And away we go: "If they made mistakes 50 years ago, what makes the designers any smarter now?"  Just as it's lost that a Chernobyl-like event is not possible with these designs, it will be lost that a Fukushima-like event is impossible in 3rd generation designs.  And since an honest engineer will have to admit that there is no way to make an absolutely safe nuclear reactor (just as you can't make an absolutely safe oil refinery), to the naysayers (some of whom made up their minds before the debate even started) that ends it.

The point failure that set off the rest of the cascade was the vulnerability of the diesel backup generators to a tsunami larger than had ever been seen at the time the plant was built, as a result of an earthquake the equivalent of which had been seen only once.  Fukushima Daiini, a very similar plant located only a short distance away and operated by the same company, did not have that failure, apparently because by chance the diesel generators were located on higher ground.

Another (in retrospect) critical error was in locating the spent fuel ponds on the top level of the reactor complex itself.  Newer versions of that same design did not make that error.

But it's important to remember that in spite of the fact that the precipitating event having been unprecedented and far outside of the design specifications, the system almost succeeded (and has not drastically failed yet).  If you look at it rationally, without preconceptions or fear-based logic (RADIATION!  OMG!!!), it's easy to see that the steps needed are comparatively minor.  Just moving to replace the older reactor installations with 3rd-generation models would render us much safer.

And in spite of how bad this situation looks, the fact is that the earthquake and tsunami's other damage is far more significant.  More people died from the tsunami directly than can *possibly* die as a result of the damage it triggered in this facility.  More people *will* die later, from cancers and injuries created by chemical leaks from refineries and other installations, than from the worst the reactors and fuel ponds could possibly do.

This is novel, and therefore inherently scarier, and radioactivity has been turned into such a boogeyman than people are even less disposed to be rational.  But we're 5,000+ miles away from it and in absolutely no danger at all in even the most insanely science-fiction "what if" scenario (assuming you're in the US or Europe, although Australians and mainland Asians don't have anything to really fear, either).

--Dave

[Tale]

6.5 quake just hit Vanuatu.

[Ghambit]

24hrs. until the wind shifts prevailing again and starts to blow south, then southwest, etc.
If they dont make headway by then I'd expect some panic to start setting in.

[Sand]

24hrs. until the wind shifts prevailing again and starts to blow south, then southwest, etc.
If they dont make headway by then I'd expect some panic to start setting in.

It already quietly has, reports are groups of people are abandoning Tokyo.

[Tale]

BBC reports there are in fact 180 workers, not 50, continuing to staff the reactors. They're working in shifts.

[Arthur_Parker]

We seem to be in uncharted territory, if they don't fill the storage tank at reactor 4 we are going to find out what really happens.

http://www.propublica.org/article/status-of-spent-nuclear-fuel-in-question-at-crippled-japanese-power-plant

“The potential for a fire from damage or loss of water is so remote that we believe it is misleading,” he said.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11263&page=44

For cases where active cooling (but not the coolant) has been lost, the thermal-hydraulic analyses suggested that operators would have about 100 hours (more than four days) to act before the fuel was uncovered sufficiently through boiling of cooling water in the pool to allow the fuel rods to ignite. This time was characterized as an “underestimate” given the simplifications assumed for the loss-of-pool-coolant scenario.
The overall conclusion of the study was that the risk of a spent fuel pool accident leading to a zirconium cladding fire was low despite the large consequences because the predicted frequency of such accidents was very low. The study also concluded, however, that the consequences of a zirconium cladding fire in a spent fuel pool could be serious and, that once the fuel was uncovered, it might take only a few hours for the most recently discharged spent fuel rods to ignite.

[Tale]

We seem to be in uncharted territory, if they don't fill the storage tank at reactor 4 we are going to find out what really happens.

http://www.propublica.org/article/status-of-spent-nuclear-fuel-in-question-at-crippled-japanese-power-plant

That links to a scientist-to-scientist presentation advising "Location outside containment decouples SFP accidents from reactor accidents" (SFP = spent fuel pool), i.e. if you've got your spent fuel pool in the reactor building, you're asking for double trouble (this is the situation in Japan - and certain US reactors).

[Arthur_Parker]

Sfp's are potentially more dangerous than reactors and I'd expect that after this having 2 reactors within 25 miles of each other is going to concern people, due to radiation problems with one definitely affecting the operation/maintenance of the other.  This plant has 6 reactors (3 full loaded, 2 part loaded), and 7 sfp's, with at least 1 of each having part Plutonium.

At the minute major disaster is based on hoping that fuel rods "might" not catch fire, rods held in a building that's been on fire twice which is next to two other buildings that recently exploded.  

[MahrinSkel]

That #4 won't catch fire is wishful thinking, based on handwaving that says all the appraisals of such an event in theory were excessively pessimistic about the level of heat that would occur, that they assumed a worst case of recently removed rods (where #4's most recent are 4 months old).

It's not a backup plan I would trust, and more to the point a lot of people that I know have the background to assess it say it is bullshit, trying to find an excuse not to order the suicide mission it would take to reliably refill that pool.  What's worse is that it doesn't have to be, that the US could provide a team with full isolation gear from the USN that could perform the mission with only a small risk, but apparently the Japanese (either TEPCO, the Japanese government, or both) do not want to accept the loss of face that would come from admitting the US Military can do something they can't.

--Dave  

[Arthur_Parker]

3 looks completely fucked.

[Tale]

"The possibility of re-criticality is not zero" - TEPCO.

A BBC opinion column says this means a nuclear fission chain reaction could start.

UK Channel 4 opinion on whether material may already have gone critical.

More speculation on this from the US.

[Ubvman]

Somewhere out there in the far afterlife, the operators responsible for the Chernobyl disaster are saying, "YOU ARE SO NOT BETTER THAN I WAS!" I remember reading newspapers back then that had "experts" saying this sort of thing could never happen to Western design reactors and facilities (especially the Japanese).

I think the INES rating for this disaster is still officially a 4.

I think I can understand why they are officially keeping at 4 as a higher rating would cause panics (too late imho). It's already a 6 (serious accident) IMHO and if the pools in reactor 4 dry up and the rods catch fire - we will be staring at another Chernobyl level 7 (major) disaster.

[Arthur_Parker]

SDF choppers drop water onto crisis-hit Fukushima nuke plant

Japan's Self-Defense Forces launched Thursday an unprecedented mission of pouring water onto a crisis-hit nuclear reactor from above in an effort to cool down its apparently overheating spent fuel pool that could emit highly contaminated radioactive materials.

While authorities continued to grapple with the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, efforts to bring electricity to the plant accelerated in a bid to restore the lost cooling functions in many of its reactors following Friday's earthquake and tsunami that hit areas centering on northeastern Japan.

Tokyo also sought to allay concerns over problems with the plant as its ally the United States advised its nationals living within an 80-kilometer radius to evacuate as a precaution, while the official evacuation area is a 20-km radius, and embassies are increasingly issuing warnings to their nationals to leave Tokyo or the country.

''The highest priority now is to pour adequate water onto the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, especially in their spent fuel pools,'' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman of the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Two Ground Self-Defense Force choppers dropped seawater in a 7,500-liter bag each four times in the morning on the No. 3 reactor, an operation on which Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said in Tokyo, ''We decided to do this because we thought that today is the time limit.''

Kitazawa said that he believes the water reached the reactor, but plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that the radiation level remained unchanged at the nuclear plant shortly afterward.

The 12-minute helicopter mission is expected to be followed by a police water cannon truck and 11 SDF fire trucks shooting high-pressure streams of water by land.

''The next important thing is to recover the electric supply, and part of the work may start in the afternoon,'' Nishiyama also said.

Electricity will likely be supplied to the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors by using electric power cables outside, a move that may help recover the reactors' cooling system, he said. Tokyo Electric also plans to install a temporary power source in an area at the plant where the radiation level is low.

Concerns are growing that the level of the water filling the spent fuel pool of the No. 4 unit is also becoming low, but Tokyo Electric officials said that the GSDF decided to first spray water on the No. 3 unit, which has vented smoke from Wednesday. The smoke is likely to be steam coming from water boiling in the pool.

But a GSDF chopper found earlier in the day that water is left in the pond at the No. 4 unit, according Tokyo Electric.

The pools of both the No. 3 and No.4 units are situated near the roof of the buildings housing the reactors, but are no longer covered with roofs that would reduce any possible radiation leaks since they were blown off by apparent hydrogen blasts earlier this week.

After the quake, the spent fuel pools at the power station lost their cooling function. It is also no longer possible to monitor the water level and temperature of the pools of the No. 1 to 4 units.

A rise in the water temperature, usually at 40 C, causes water to reduce and expose the spent nuclear fuel rods, which could heat up further and melt, and discharge highly intense radioactive materials in the worst case scenario, experts say.

Also, the U.S. military is poised to operate a Global Hawk unmanned high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, possibly on Thursday, to take images of the inside of the building that houses the No. 4 reactor, according to Japanese government sources.

Among the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the buildings housing the reactors have been destroyed by apparent hydrogen blasts at the No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, and the No. 2 reactor's containment vessel suffered damage in its pressure-suppression chamber at the bottom.

Although the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors that were operating at the time of the quake halted automatically with the jolts, their cores are believed to have partially melted as they lost cooling functions after the quake.

The remaining reactors were under maintenance when the quake occurred. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that his understanding is that there would be ''some time'' until the No. 5 and No. 6 units reach a dangerous situation.

The government has set the evacuation zone covering areas within a 20 kilometer radius of the plant, and urged people within 20 km to 30 km to stay indoors.

But the U.S. Embassy in Japan in an advisory Thursday asked American citizens living within an 80-km radius to evacuate as a precautionary measure, apparently based on a comment by Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that there was no water left in the pool at the No. 4 reactor.

Britain has advised its nationals living in Tokyo and areas to the north to consider leaving, while the Russian Foreign Ministry has announced it will evacuate the families of diplomats working at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, possibly from Friday, and France has instructed Air France to make more flights available to facilitate evacuation of French nationals.

4 still has water according to a chopper, hope so.

[Goumindong]

I think I can understand why they are officially keeping at 4 as a higher rating would cause panics (too late imho). It's already a 6 (serious accident) IMHO and if the pools in reactor 4 dry up and the rods catch fire - we will be staring at another Chernobyl level 7 (major) disaster.

I don't think you really comprehend the scope of the Chernobyl disaster to be saying that. At Chernobyl, the containment vessel exploded while the reactor was at full bore. There was an active nuclear reaction and fire occurring with zero containment of any kind.

Pretty much no matter how you slice it it won't get that bad. Spent Fuel is nasty, but its not going to be Chernobyl. A re-activiation of the nuclear material inside of the cores would be nasty, but its not going to be a Chernobyl.

[Arthur_Parker]

Pretty much no matter how you slice it it won't get that bad. Spent Fuel is nasty, but its not going to be Chernobyl. A re-activiation of the nuclear material inside of the cores would be nasty, but its not going to be a Chernobyl.

This is a silly argument to have.

The US government unclassified report on what would happen during a single sfp fire says

the fire could spread to the older spent fuel, resulting in long-term contamination consequences that were worse than those from the Chemobyl accident. Citing two reports by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, 1987, 1997), they estimated that between 10 and 100 percent of the cesium-137 could be mobilized in the plume from the burning spent fuel pool, which could cause tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths, loss of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land, and economic losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

God knows what the detailed report said as they felt the need to make it classified.  The only flaws people tried to pick with the report was how likely it was to have no water in the pool and the population density of the surrounding area.  

Nobody really knows and lets pray we don't find out.

[jakonovski]

It's the trap of low expectations. When you say something is better than Chernobyl, it means nothing. Chernobyl was a potential nuclear explosion in the megatons, and it would've been dirtier than similar sized nuclear bombs by an order of magnitude.

[Sheepherder]

You have to have material to combust to have a fire so that's not necessarily true.  It could just sit there and be hot.

Way back when I was a child the local mill had an incident where a wood waste / fuel oil co-generation plant caught fire while still managing to run for a while.  Fire got ridiculously hot, lubricants burnt off the machinery as it was still running, friction removed the outer carbide layer of the steel and whattayaknow: cast and sheet steel does burn.

Also, superheated/burning metals tend to explode when you pour water on them.  Which is why preventative action on those pools would be a good thing.

[Arthur_Parker]

I don't want it to appear that I'm being alarmist about Japan but Chernobyl happened, there's documentaries about it making everyone an "expert".  However before it happened nobody expected it to, the Russian's certainly didn't, just as little was known about radiation exposure to bio-robots and how cesium-137 reacts with the food cycle.

Fukushima hasn't happened, it's ongoing, the radiation levels might not get any worse at all, in which case there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

[Jeff Kelly]

You have to have material to combust to have a fire so that's not necessarily true.  It could just sit there and be hot.

1. Most people talking about fuel rods "burning" actually mean the residual nuclear reaction going on that still produces a lot of heat.

2. Most metals are alloys and at some point those materials burn. For example most aluminium alloys contain magnesium which starts to burn at 1200 °C or the carbon from steel could burst into fire

3. At sufficiently high temperatures metal actually burns since fire is basically an oxidation reaction that proceeds quickly. Take steel wool you scrub your pots with and light it on fire, it will "burn".

[Goumindong]

This is a silly argument to have.

Yes, it is, because you don't read. The reason it could be worse? Because the damage was recorded based on population densities.  Chernobyl had relatively low damage due to the relatively low population densities compared to where nuclear plants are in the States.

No, its not going to be a Chernobyl.

edit: You really didn't read that did you? You fucking linked me to a page of references the committee used. Which it then goes on to say that the report dismissed those estimates as unrealistic. Jesus Fucking Christ Arthur, do some background reading before you blindly link me to shit.

edit: Oh, and if you had bothered to read the first page you would know what the detailed classified report contained and why it contained it.

It's the trap of low expectations. When you say something is better than Chernobyl, it means nothing. Chernobyl was a potential nuclear explosion in the megatons, and it would've been dirtier than similar sized nuclear bombs by an order of magnitude.

No, it wasn't. Nuclear material cannot suddenly go super-critical. You need explosives packed to condense the material in a specific way timed very precisely to do that. There was a potential steam explosion which was averted it was feared that the steam explosion would have spread the radiation (it would have)

[Arthur_Parker]

I've read the first part several times and still don't understand what you are getting at.  It's a silly conversation because if I say it could be worse than Chernobyl because "tens of thousands of square kilometers of land" might have to be abandoned then you can say but Chernobyl had an explosion that spread material further, so that was worse 

Bad things are still possible.

As to the 2nd part, http://www.wonuc.org/nucwaste/oklo.htm

The "Oklo phenomenon» was discovered in 1972 at Pierrelattes (France) when routine analyses conducted by the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) pointed out an anomalic depletion in U-235, the fissile isotope used in nuclear power plants, in uranium ore from the Oklo mine (Eastern Gabon). After inquiry, the CEA announced the discovery of the first natural nuclear reactor : the anomaly results from fission chain reactions which took place two billion years ago in the Oklo deposit.

See how silly this is?

[jakonovski]

No, it wasn't. Nuclear material cannot suddenly go super-critical. You need explosives packed to condense the material in a specific way timed very precisely to do that. There was a potential steam explosion which was averted it was feared that the steam explosion would have spread the radiation (it would have)

It was considered to be a possibility at the time. Small one to be sure, but not exactly something on which you want to roll the dice.

[Goumindong]

No, it wasn't. Nuclear material cannot suddenly go super-critical. You need explosives packed to condense the material in a specific way timed very precisely to do that. There was a potential steam explosion which was averted it was feared that the steam explosion would have spread the radiation (it would have)

It was considered to be a possibility at the time.

No, it was not.  A steam explosion was considered a possibility. There was a large pool of water below the core and if the core melted through to the pool the rapid expansion of water into steam would have blown apart the (now metalic) core and spread radiation around.

Arthur, see my edits; You clearly didn't read the thing because you took some random dismissed paper as the findings of the report. You failed to read the first god damned page of the report

See how silly this is?

Yes, because you don't even know what you're linking to again. A nuclear reactor is not a nuclear explosion. One is a critical mass. One is a super-critical mass. No, there were not discovered any "naturally occurring atomic bombs" on the surface of the earth.

[Arthur_Parker]

edit: You really didn't read that did you? You fucking linked me to a page of references the committee used. Which it then goes on to say that the report dismissed those estimates as unrealistic. Jesus Fucking Christ Arthur, do some background reading before you blindly link me to shit.

That's like completely awesome, I'd be reduced to copy and pasting from the report that they accepted the findings, considering who did the report that's not really that much of a surprise and quoting the two recommendations that they actually implemented.  But you know that sounds like effort and I actually prefer to believe you, yes it's not likely to go boom and so we don't need to worry.

edit, Not a silly argument at all after all.

[Goumindong]

That's like completely awesome, I'd be reduced to copy and pasting from the report that they accepted the findings, considering who did the report that's not really that much of a surprise and quoting the two recommendations that they actually implemented.  But you know that sounds like effort and I actually prefer to believe you, yes it's not likely to go boom and so we don't need to worry.

edit, Not a silly argument at all after all.

They accepted the findings that terrorists could potentially start a fire they did not accept the findings of the potential consequences of the report in question.

edit: I.E. they said "yes a fire could start" they did not say "yes it could be worse than Chernobyl"

edit: in fact this is what they fucking said

"FINDING 3B: The committee finds that, under some conditions, a terrorist attack that partially or completely drained a spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and the release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment Details are provided in the committee’s classified report.

It is not possible to predict the precise magnitude of such releases because the computer models have not been validated for this application."

Edit: What does this mean "considering who did the report that's not really that much of a surprise"

considering that none of the people who wrote the paper in question or the brookhaven paper referenced were on the committee.

[jakonovski]

No, it was not.  A steam explosion was considered a possibility. There was a large pool of water below the core and if the core melted through to the pool the rapid expansion of water into steam would have blown apart the (now metalic) core and spread radiation around.

This guy said, in the document I linked, that a nuclear explosion was what they feared, should the floor collapse into the pool.

 

[Arthur_Parker]

 

Edit I get myself into some really stupid disagreements and I'm 100% positive a lot of it is my fault, but this is the first occasion where I don't even know what I'm supposed to be arguing about.