Japan [Tag: Fucked]

[Arthur_Parker]

There was a potential steam explosion which was averted it was feared that the steam explosion would have spread the radiation (it would have)

Is this it?  I'm trying not to be a dick but just a fire in the fuel pool could spread radioactive material hundreds of miles, there doesn't have to be an explosion as the fuel pools aren't actually contained at the minute.  Is it this point you disagree on or what, I'm really having difficulty understanding how you quoting "release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment & It is not possible to predict the precise magnitude of such release" is helping your point, whatever it is.

[Goumindong]

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

 

No, that guy said, in the documentary that you linked that they feared an explosion. The narrator said nuclear explosion.

edit: so they do have a translator saying that it would be "equivalent to 3-5 megatons". But I am failing to find a way that radioactive material hitting water would cause it go super-critical. It has got to be a mistranslation, or he was talking about the amount of radiation spread, which is much more likely. Since it also says it would have wiped out Minsk, which a 5 megaton blast would not have done.

Is this it?  I'm trying not to be a dick but just a fire in the fuel pool could spread radioactive material hundreds of miles, there doesn't have to be an explosion as the fuel pools aren't actually contained at the minute.  Is it this point you disagree on or what, I'm really having difficulty understanding how you quoting "release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment & It is not possible to predict the precise magnitude of such release" is helping your point, whatever it is.

The damage that the radioactive materials does is important, as is the amount that is spread. The explosion comment was with regards to Chenobyl. They feared a second explosion, a steam explosion, because spreading radiation from a fire is bad, spreading radiation from the core being spat into the atmosphere (and ground water supplies) is worse.

[Arthur_Parker]

Ah, it's only worse than Chernobyl if there's an explosion, yes I guess from a certain point of view that is true.

[Goumindong]

Ah, it's only worse than Chernobyl if there's an explosion, yes I guess from a certain point of view that is true.

Sigh. No, the "explosion" part was in a response to the quote it was directly under. Which was not by you or about spent fuel pool fires, but rather about Chernobyl becoming a nuclear blast.

[Khaldun]

Helicopters are reported as having been abandoned as radiation levels are too high and it doesn't seem to be working anyway. Same for the firetruck.

I think that's a bad sign.

Again, at some point, a certain humility has to creep into the proceedings, not just around here but everywhere. Looking on this very much as an outsider, I think it's clear that a: there is important information which is not available to the public, even the knowledgeable public, about precisely what is going on and b: that technical models which suggested five days ago that much of what is happening is impossible or unlikely are by now demonstrably wrong.

At this point, TEPCO itself has raised the possibility that the spent rods could undergo re-criticality, something that various expert opinion held to be as likely as a magical parade of unicorns and ogres down Broadway.

------

In other news, this story is heartbreaking: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12767755

[Arthur_Parker]

Having a daughter changed me, I can't even read anything bad about kids any more without getting upset.

[Surlyboi]

Holy shit. That's just brutal.

My friend's boyfriend is still missing, while she and her brother are living in a high school gym.

[jakonovski]

No, that guy said, in the documentary that you linked that they feared an explosion. The narrator said nuclear explosion.

edit: so they do have a translator saying that it would be "equivalent to 3-5 megatons". But I am failing to find a way that radioactive material hitting water would cause it go super-critical. It has got to be a mistranslation, or he was talking about the amount of radiation spread, which is much more likely. Since it also says it would have wiped out Minsk, which a 5 megaton blast would not have done.

Translation error is of course always possible.

However it was over a ton of molten nuclear fuel hitting water, certainly enough energy flying around for something to go supercritical should other conditions be favorable to it. I think there's a bit too much hubris in claiming that it can only occur in human devices built for the express purpose.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

That's semantics, nothing else. Yes a nuclear reactor cannot turn into a nuke. The fuel rods are essentially the wrong kind of "payload" because they are made up of the wrong kind of nuclear material, they are packed differently etc.

Yet super-critical only means that the chain reaction is out-of-control (critical meaning that it is in-control) which in a reactor that produced at optimal capacity 1 Gigawatt of thermal energy is essentially in the same ballpark as a nuclear explosion. The only difference between a nuke and a reactor is the time scale in which the energy is released and how much energy the inventory can actually produce

Chernobyl couldn't happen is a meaningless assertion. In Chernobyl a super-critical reactor "blew-up" which wasn't a nuclear explosion but an explosive rupture of the containment due to excessive build-up of steam. This steam was created because a super-critical reactor produced far too much thermal energy in a very short amount of time which explosively vaporized all of the water and destroyed the secondary containment vessel. Since there was no tertiary containment, the explosion distributed all of the inventory of the reactor in a 30 mile radius of the plant.

What type of explosion actually results in highly radioactive material getting distributed over a large area doesn't matter. A 500 kilton nuke wouldn't actually have been as bad as the 500 kiloton equivalent steam expansion at Chernobyl.

Yet the real danger didn't come from the initial explosion but from the resulting fire that was fueled by the remaining nuclear fuel that still was super-critical (which means that the chain reaction still continues) with no control rods being present and all of the graphite that could catch fire.

Most of the radiation was carried away by the plume of the fire or the rising steam, which made it rise up into the stratosphere and the jet stream took care of the rest, that's what actually distributed hundreds of Sievert worth of radiation all over the world.

So anybody who says "this couldn't be a second Chernobyl" operates under two assumptions

1. No nuclear inventory leaves the concrete tertiary containment
2. There is nothing that could catch fire

A large scale fire of the nuclear spent fuel rods would still be as dangerous as Chernobyl even if there wasn't any explosion at all.

BTW. tactical nukes are called tactical because the payload is small enugh so that the resulting fireball doesn't rise as far up as the stratosphere so that nuclear fallout is "limited" to the area around the blast zone and not distributed on a global scale.

[Murgos]

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".

I'm not going to rebut everyone who pooh-poohed what I said because most if them didn't read what I said.  I understand what you are saying and was well aware of it at the time.  What I said was that it COULD just get hot and we weren't guaranteed a fire, which was Dave's assertion.

The zirconium cladding of the rods needs to get to 2200 degrees C to melt.  Much less burn.  It is possible that even fully uncovered they would not get that hot, it depends entirely on their configuration in the pool (i.e the physical proximity of one rod to another) and the fuel state of each individual rod.  The concrete in the pool would have to get hotter than that even to burn.

Anyway, the most recent reports were that a JSDF helicopter crew managed to get a look at the water level in Reactor 4's pond and reported that there was still water present.  So, the danger is real but there is time to act on it.  Which they are attempting to do with several methods.

[Jeff Kelly]

I agree but basically if the material is sufficiently hot it doesn't matter any more if it actually burns or not the efects you have to deal with are the same. At 2200 °C material in the vicinity of the rods spontaneously combusts.

BTW: "A Tepco official has told a press conference in Japan that radiation levels at the site soon after 9.30 am were at 3,750 millisieverts per hour, Ian Sample has just told me. "These are absolutely dangerous levels," Ian said." (guardian.co.uk)

3,750 Millisivert, as in nearly 4 Sievert, as in lethal within weeks of exposure.

[Murgos]

3,750 Millisivert, as in nearly 4 Sievert, as in lethal within weeks of exposure.

I don't have the link right now for the automated update pdf and I have to get to work so it will be a bit before I can find it but I looked at it ~1hr ago and it already had up to 11 am on the 17th on it and there were no such readings.  There was a reading of ~3.6 mSv but the Portal (main gate) reading was 600uSv.

[KallDrexx]

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.

Facebook status update of a friend in Tokyo:

‎"The Italian Embassy in Tokyo carried out a radiation level reading from the Embassy roof on March 16. The radiation levels typically recorded in Rome are three times higher that recorded in Tokyo on Wednesday."

I hope everyone fleeing Tokyo in the panic is not going to Rome!

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't have the link right now for the automated update pdf and I have to get to work so it will be a bit before I can find it but I looked at it ~1hr ago and it already had up to 11 am on the 17th on it and there were no such readings.  There was a reading of ~3.6 mSv but the Portal (main gate) reading was 600uSv.

Maybe the guardian reporter or editor erroneusly made a "." into a "," but then the statement of "serious levels" wouldn't make sense.

[UnSub]

Ah, it's only worse than Chernobyl if there's an explosion, yes I guess from a certain point of view that is true.

There's still time for this to be the second worst nuclear disaster in human history. 

[Arthur_Parker]

 

Surviving Disaster - Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

With Adrian Edumondson, was pretty good from what I remember, not sure how accurate it is but I'd have thought being as accurate as possible was part of the point.  Edit, This is the one I watched years ago that gave me the idea the supervisor on duty was covering up the seriousness of what had happened.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775665/

[Arthur_Parker]

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/79010.html

The following is the known status as of Thursday evening of each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, both in Fukushima Prefecture, which were crippled by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.

Fukushima No. 1 plant

-- Reactor No. 1 - Suspended after quake, cooling failure, partial melting of core, vapor vented, building damaged Saturday by hydrogen explosion, seawater being pumped in.

-- Reactor No. 2 - Suspended after quake, cooling failure, seawater being pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, vapor vented, building housing reactor damaged Monday by blast at reactor No. 3, damage to containment vessel on Tuesday, potential meltdown feared.

-- Reactor No. 3 - Suspended after quake, cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater being pumped in, building housing reactor damaged Monday by hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby on Tuesday, plume of smoke observed Wednesday and presumed to have come from spent-fuel storage pool, severe damage to containment vessel unlikely, seawater dumped over pool by helicopter on Thursday, spraying water at it begun from ground.

-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire Tuesday possibly caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, abnormal temperature rise in spent-fuel storage pool, fire observed Wednesday at building housing reactor, pool water level feared receding, renewed nuclear chain reaction feared.

-- Reactors Nos. 5, 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck, temperatures slightly rising in spent-fuel storage pools.

-- Spent-fuel storage pools at all reactors -- Cooling functions lost, water temperature or level unobservable at reactors No. 1 to 4.

[Surlyboi]

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.

Facebook status update of a friend in Tokyo:

‎"The Italian Embassy in Tokyo carried out a radiation level reading from the Embassy roof on March 16. The radiation levels typically recorded in Rome are three times higher that recorded in Tokyo on Wednesday."

I hope everyone fleeing Tokyo in the panic is not going to Rome!

This. Tokyo's radiation level has never been all that high. Even in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shit, I probably get more rads on the average day here in NYC than most denizens of Toku\yo get in a month.

[Merusk]

Well, the US government is apparently one of those panicky groups, since they've authorized evacuations of families and dependents from Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya.  Voluntary basis right now, but quite different from "well if you're nervous just leave on your own."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/ap_on_re_us/us_us_japan

[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.

Facebook status update of a friend in Tokyo:

‎"The Italian Embassy in Tokyo carried out a radiation level reading from the Embassy roof on March 16. The radiation levels typically recorded in Rome are three times higher that recorded in Tokyo on Wednesday."

I hope everyone fleeing Tokyo in the panic is not going to Rome!

This. Tokyo's radiation level has never been all that high. Even in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shit, I probably get more rads on the average day here in NYC than most denizens of Toku\yo get in a month.

On an "average day in NYC" do you have the looming threat of radiated particles and smoke from burning nuclear rods nearby, where the wind could shift and blow that stuff across the city? If not then what's your point?
Because I think we are far past the point of comparing "average days".

[Murgos]

I don't have the link right now for the automated update pdf and I have to get to work so it will be a bit before I can find it but I looked at it ~1hr ago and it already had up to 11 am on the 17th on it and there were no such readings.  There was a reading of ~3.6 mSv but the Portal (main gate) reading was 600uSv.

Maybe the guardian reporter or editor erroneusly made a "." into a "," but then the statement of "serious levels" wouldn't make sense.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/cc/press/betu11_j/images/110317b.pdf

There are also relevant a & c pages to the pdf.  The other pages appear to be logistical information for the other plants.

Obviously, there are other places in the plant with more severe radioactivity that aren't a part of this monitoring scheme that could be the source of the 5 Sv reading.  However reporting that as a 'general case' would have been misleading and alarmist which isn't something we have seen responsible figures do at all so far.

[Jeff Kelly]

I grew up in a region of Germany where the bedrock was granite. Ambient radiation levels were therefore 10 - 20 times higher than 'normal', yet still well withing the range of being completely harmless.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well as I already suspected: "In our 12.14pm post we reported that a Tepco official said radiation levels at Fukushima Daiichi soon after 9.30 am "were at 3,750 millisieverts per hour".

This was wrong – the radiation level was actually 3,750 microsiverts per hour – equivalent to 3.75 millisieverts per hour, sincere apologies."

[Surlyboi]

On an "average day in NYC" do you have the looming threat of radiated particles and smoke from burning nuclear rods nearby, where the wind could shift and blow that stuff across the city? If not then what's your point?
Because I think we are far past the point of comparing "average days".

No, we're not past average days.

Again, all anyone here is dealing with is speculation, including you.

And to give you a little insight on the weird shit that happens here, a guy got kicked out of Columbia University in the mid-80s for stealing fucking Uranium-238 that had been in the tunnels under the university since the goddamn Manhattan Project. And as Jeff Kelly said, depending on where you live, the ambient radiation is a shitton higher than what's leaking out of the the plant at the moment. So yeah, That's my fucking point.

[Murgos]

You have no idea how much I wanted this image, I'm so glad it finally turned up.  Now if can get 'front gate' (Portal) and 'west gate' located we can have a MUCH better picture of exactly what's happening with only a little delay to within a few hundred meters of the reactor buildings themselves.

[Nyght]

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.

--Dave

So, a day later with more information out, do you still feel comfortable with these statements?

I was incorrect about the number of US plants with the same design. Apparently it is 23, not 16. These plants have their spent fuel storage at the top of the buildings, partially supported by the structure of the secondary containment. These are still in operation and this feature has not been altered.

So, in answer to my own question, apparently current safety standards in the US allow operation with the same design faults that have contributed to this accident. It should be noted that any cooling system power failure that exceeds the battery life of the backup system, eight hours, can potentially cause a similar chain of events.

I have been a supporter of nuclear power all of my adult life. I personally can no longer support the continued operation of these plants. As to the other designs, my trust in the NRC is lower and I will have to review these for myself.

[Ghambit]

Your fancy photo means nothing without a weather report and readings out to sea.
Everyone's obsessed with the gate readings and the wind is blowing 20 fuckin knots from the west currently.  

Wind is EVERYTHING here (at this point).
You could have potentially 24 cores worth of nuclear material burning/steaming into atmosphere and be standing at the gate in livable conditions if you're upwind.

Now if that stuff goes supercritical obviously it's another ballgame.  We're talking strong pulses of omnidirectional gamma at that point yes?
Speaking of which, read/watched some stuff earlier that made some sense.  There's a looming fear that the spent fuel rod racks themselves may be damaged from the hydrogen explosions (causing the bundles to move and touch one another). This changes the probability of supercriticality quite a lot apparently.  Also, dropping tons of water directly on them may be bad for this same reason.  

Jesus, the math involved with this stuff is  

[KallDrexx]

I have been a supporter of nuclear power all of my adult life. I personally can no longer support the continued operation of these plants. As to the other designs, my trust in the NRC is lower and I will have to review these for myself.

Cause you know, the chances of our reactors also getting a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and a giant Tsunamai that disables all backup systems are so high.....

[Murgos]

Your fancy photo means nothing without a weather report and readings out to sea.
Everyone's obsessed with the gate readings and the wind is blowing 20 fuckin knots from the west currently.  

Wind is EVERYTHING here (at this point).

Because Gamma Ray & Neutron radiation has the ability to go several hundred meters in air?  So that spikes in either at the gates would indicate clearly what's happening at the reactors and fuel ponds with simple math?

That's why the gate readings are important.

[Murgos]

Cause you know, the chances of our reactors also getting a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and a giant Tsunamai that disables all backup systems are so high.....

I agree with Nyght in this case.  These style reactors have outlived their usefulness, their hazards are appreciable and they are all in the approaching their designed end of life phase anyway.

Begin phasing them out, don't renew their licenses and get some better stuff going.

[Chimpy]

Cause you know, the chances of our reactors also getting a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and a giant Tsunamai that disables all backup systems are so high.....

I agree with Nyght in this case.  These style reactors have outlived their usefulness, their hazards are appreciable and they are all in the approaching their designed end of life phase anyway.

Begin phasing them out, don't renew their licenses and get some better stuff going.

The big problem is that post-TMI, even getting approval for a new plant is basically impossible due to hysterical fears.

No sane person would disagree that extending the life of these reactors is an ideal solution.

But new nuclear power plants aren't going to be built any time soon (and with this event happening, I doubt we will ever see another nuclear plant constructed in the U.S.).

[Arthur_Parker]

Surviving Disaster - Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

I watched this again and it was very interesting, based on the experiences of Valery Legasov at Chernobyl.

On the second anniversary of the disaster, Legasov committed suicide by hanging himself from the stairwell of his apartment. Reportedly, before his suicide, he recorded himself on audiotape revealing previously undisclosed facts about the catastrophe. According to an analysis of the recording by BBC TV series Surviving Disaster: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, Legasov claims political pressure censored mention of Soviet nuclear secrecy, which forbade even plant operators knowledge of previous accidents and known problems with the design of the reactor, in his report to the IAEA. It was implied that his suicide was at least partly due to his distress at not having spoken out about these factors at Vienna, the suppression of his subsequent attempts to do so, and the damage to his career that these attempts caused. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists also stated that Legasov had become bitterly disillusioned with the failure of the authorities to confront the design flaws.

Legasov's suicide caused shockwaves in the Soviet nuclear industry. In particular, the problem with the design of the control-rods in Chernobyl type RBMK reactors was rapidly admitted to and changed.

On September 20, 1996 Russian President Boris Yeltsin posthumously conferred to Legasov the honorary title of Hero of the Russian Federation for his "courage and heroism" shown in his investigation of the Chernobyl disaster.

[jakonovski]

Cause you know, the chances of our reactors also getting a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and a giant Tsunamai that disables all backup systems are so high.....

Isn't the western seaboard of the US way overdue a big quake, and also houses a number of similar reactors?

[Arthur_Parker]

Somebody in a helicopter with a camera checking the reactor buildings out.

[Ghambit]

Your fancy photo means nothing without a weather report and readings out to sea.
Everyone's obsessed with the gate readings and the wind is blowing 20 fuckin knots from the west currently.  

Wind is EVERYTHING here (at this point).

Because Gamma Ray & Neutron radiation has the ability to go several hundred meters in air?  So that spikes in either at the gates would indicate clearly what's happening at the reactors and fuel ponds with simple math?

That's why the gate readings are important.

I understand the gate readings are important in figuring out what may be happening at the reactors (hence my later statement), but they dont give the full story of conditions.  Right now you have a plant and govt. harping on conditions at the gate, using it to quell fears, bolster repairs, etc.  All the while the wind isnt blowing towards the gate to begin with!    This currently is a near dirty bomb situation, so without downwind measurements any propaganda you get from upwind readings is propaganda.  Feel me?  

Right now the only real effort I see to monitor plumes downwind is the sniffer plane being sent by the U.S. as we speak.  Any other assets that could've monitored downwind were at sea and since moved out of the area well south or on the upwind side of the country.  (reagan group, et. al)  Lemme reiterate, the world's strongest carrier group got the fuck outta dodge and moved upwind.  Is anyone else out there monitoring?

Prior to this latest weather system that moved through the situation was much different than it is now, so last week's onshore winds had less meaning.  Tonight and tomorrow it's forecast from N to ENE at 10 and then calm and variable.