NRC:
The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan’s most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese officials denied it.
If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there’s nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.
Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors. He said the spent fuel pool of the complex’s Unit 4 reactor has lost water.
From the UCS briefing yesterday:
There were some studies done in the United States of what would happen if the water level in the spent fuel pools were to be drained away for whatever reason, and I recall one study for the plants in Connecticut that said if the water level dropped down to where the top of the fuel was — that’s even higher than it would be for a fire (inaudible) started — the dose rates on the railing of the spent fuel pool, if you were looking down into the pool, would be high enough that you would receive a lethal dose in something like 16 seconds.
So, as Ed suggests, when the plant’s in that configuration, the high dose rates preclude a lot of worker actions or turn them into suicide missions.
The people in that plant are heroes. I hope they can turn this thing around.
Joe Beese
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/03/secretary-chu-obama-still-supports-expanding-nuclear-plants-in-the-us.html
legion
I don’t understand – how does Jaczko know this? If it’s observable enough for him to have this info, how could the Japanese keep it secret?
Sentient Puddle
@Joe Beese: …and we lead off the comments section with anti-Obama! Winner!
Zifnab
It’s sad, because even in the thick of this mess in Japan the plants are still preferable to the Green House Gas factories that are the coal fired electric plants.
srv
We have aircraft based in asia for monitoring radioactive plumes from NK tests.
We aren’t being told anything about what they’re measuring over the Pacific. Perhaps the NRC statement is the first set of leaks.
Martin
@legion: Well, among other things, we’re flying unmanned drones over the area. I doubt we’re sharing that with Japanese media. Plus, Jaczko is likely talking to folks inside the Japanese govt who appear to not be sharing their info completely with the Japanese media.
Dusty
@legion: The NRC has people on the ground in Japan. So he’s presumably getting reports from them directly.
campionrules
The real key to the scope of this nuclear disaster will be how well do the containment buildings hold on the various reactors. It’s unlikely that we are going to get a mushroom cloud – very difficult for nuclear fuel, even plutonium to explode – but if a large enough steam explosion manages to damage the outer containment buildings then we are looking at trouble. If it doesn’t and we still have a meltdown then at worst the plant’s off limits for a couple decades.
srv
@Zifnab: Best thing for the Coal industry since TMI. The combined wattage of the alternative-energy crowd will never figure that out.
Joe Beese
@Sentient Puddle:
1. BJ blogger: “This is awful.” [Their exact words.]
2. Me: “You know, Obama supports this awful thing.”
3. Obot: “That’s not fair!”
Another day in Obotland…
Arclite
Weather patterns are such that any radiation is being pulled out to sea currently. Radiation in Tokyo is normal background right now. This Geiger counter is in Hino City, Tokyo inside a house, so measurements are lower than what would be measured were the instrument outside in the atmosphere. This measurement yesterday was 2-3x higher than background:
http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html
It sounds like they are on the verge of reconnecting an external electrical power source which should allow the restart of primary cooling functionality for all reactors. However, who knows how many of those primary cooling systems were damaged in A. the earthquake, B. the tsunami, or C. the explosions/fires.
As for the storage pool in reactor 4, no one knows for sure, since radiation levels are too high for anyone to go look. But it should be a simple calculation to figure out if you turn off cooling how quickly 738 spent fuel rods would take to boil off x 1000s of liters of water. I assume that this is why the NRC is claiming that the water has boiled off, and I’d tend to believe them given the high radiation levels emanating from an otherwise shut down reactor.
slag
I think what you meant to say was, “This is Rad”.
Can you insert atomic symbols into your post titles?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Joe Beese: Jesus H. Christ, but I seriously want to punch this silly fucker in the balls.
Chyron HR
@Joe Beese:
Rush Limbaugh called and says he likes the cut of your jib.
MobiusKlein
@srv: could also just be the math.
They know the heat input from the rods, the heat output from conduction / convection, and how much water there was.
If the heat was enough to boil off all the water, and no water was added, it’s gone.
David in NY
I am only sorry that Fred Borch, Reginald Jones, Jack Welch, and Jeff Immelt can’t be given the job of working in those nuclear plants now. http://www.ge.com/company/history/past_leaders.html I mean, now that GE has just doubled Immelt’s pay, maybe he could do something worthwhile. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110314-713014.html
Christ, when the shit flies, you never see guys like this doing the clean-up. If anybody deserves 21 million a year, it’s those guys trying to fix the problem here, not the guys who created it.
Comrade Mary
@campionrules: I don’t think the reactors are the major issue now. Sure, they’re dangerous, and the cores need to be cooled right the fuck down, but these open pools with what could be 5 years of “spent” fuel rods are out in the open with NO steel and concrete containment around them. (These “spent” rods don’t have enough fuel for efficent reactions, but they are plenty hot.)
Giant, open flaming pools have the potential for dire effects within range and measurably bad effects downwind.
mistermix
@campionrules: There is no containment for the #4 fuel storage pool. The building has been damaged and anything coming out of there will be vented directly to the atmosphere.
Containment of the suppression chamber (torus) in #2 and #3 has also been breached, and radioactive steam from #3 has been venting into the atmosphere.
freelancer
@Joe Beese:
srv
@legion: If the PU stuff stored in plant #3 is burning, the Japanese are going to be loathe to get too specific.
We know what was in the plume the USS Reagan went through. We’re just not saying. But we are telling them that we know what they know.
john b
@Joe Beese:
this seems to imply that all nuclear power = the specific disaster going on in Japan right now.
The United States produces more nuclear energy than any other country in the world right now. Do we want to continue using 50 year old tech like the plant in Japan that is failing terribly?
I just really don’t see what your point is.
Nied
While I’m willing to bet this was the case earlier when building 4 was on fire, I doubt the pools are empty now, because, well, building 4 isn’t on fire right now. It’s that simple, if those fuel rods get uncovered they’ll go up pretty fast (in a matter of minutes).
Culture of Truth
I don’t want alarm anyone, but it was just announced
that Tokyo’s Disneyworld will be closing temporarily.
Sentient Puddle
@Joe Beese:
I’m going to interrupt you right there because I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t support 9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis striking nuclear power plants.
cyntax
So, about those iodine tablets…
MobiusKlein
@Chyron HR: hey, he edited his trolling after the fact. Sounds like he’s “Mr lookitme, i cans tipe!” today.
Mnemosyne
@Sentient Puddle:
I’ve been wondering how they would manage to make a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami Obama’s fault, but Joe managed to stretch himself and get there. Hopefully he didn’t throw out his back.
geg6
@David in NY:
I couldn’t agree more with your proposition.
Brachiator
@Joe Beese:
What, Obama supports blown up nuclear reactors? Or are you suggesting that every nuclear reactor ever built is going to spontaneously blow up and melt down?
It’s not an Obot thing. It is the lack of logic in your propositions here.
gnomedad
@Joe Beese:
What’s “awful” is that people are risking their lives trying to prevent an even bigger catastrophe. You can grind your axe later, schmuck.
Linda Featheringill
NYTimes front page article on the situation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?hp
They are in such trouble over there. And it really looks like they are not in control.
Those folks that are staying at the plants and fighting the disaster are very brave. And their days are probably numbered. It’s all so sad.
Culture of Truth
@Sentient Puddle: Then why didn’t he stop it, hmmmm?
Superluminar
Shorter Joe Beese: Logic, how does it fucking work?
geg6
@MobiusKlein:
But thankfully, Chyron HR has put it out there where all of us can see it unedited.
Fucking racist mother fucker.
Twinky P
C’mon. Beese is a bombthrower who takes the opposing side of whatever blog he’s on to watch the hits. He does it all over the ‘nets because it works. Ignore the stupid fuck and be done with it.
Mnemosyne
@Joe Beese:
Really? Obama supports 9.0 earthquakes that cause tsunamis and flood nuclear plants?
I guess you guys really will believe absolutely anything that conforms to your worldview, won’t you? Your ODS is getting to the level where they’re gonna have to start medicating you so you don’t walk down the street screaming about how the sun in your eyes is OBAMA’S FAULT!1!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
After doing my time in the Navy as a Nuke Electrician, where safety is very paramount, I refuse to work for a corporate nuclear power plant or electric company.
Comrade Mary
@geg6: WHOA!!! I think that was an attempt at a “shorter” paraphrase by Chyron HR. I don’t think Joe did or would ever write something like that and I don’t think he edited after the fact.
David in NY
So where is that shill of a troll (named Pig something), who was all sweetness and light about the situation a day or so ago? “Never had a problem with GE’s plants, no breach yet in any of these, regrettable, but nobody could have foreseen ….”
Arrghhhh …
Catsy
Gosh, a Balloon Juice thread derailed by the ODS-inspired, inane bleatings of a regular troll named Joe Beese, a one-trick pony who’d respond to news of an incoming dino-killer asteroid by blaming Obama for the end of the Shuttle program.
Excuse me while I put on my surprise face.
Cat Lady
Picture of the “damaged” reactors (#11). All of the pictures look like they’re from the last 10 minutes of a Michael Bay movie. The last one to leave Japan won’t have a light to turn off.
Dennis SGMM
@Joe Beese:
The whole report, including the costs of environmental damage from burning coal can be found at this link.
I’m confident that someone with your broad knowledge and razor sharp wit can demonstrate how US nuclear power generation caused more deaths than coal in 2010.
Joe Beese
@john b:
Are we technologically superior to the Japanese? Less prone to shoddy construction shortcuts? Protected by more scrupulous regulatory agencies?
Or are you counting on the hope that God would never inflict a severe earthquake on the Greatest Country Ever Conceivable?
TaMara (BHF)
I read somewhere yesterday that the team that went into Chernobyl to assist were all dead in 3 mos. Suicide mission is not an exaggeration.
RalfW
@srv: There’s a network of sensors for enforcing the nuclear test ban. But the data cannot legally be released by the monitoring agency.
Maybe this warning is based on real data.
Or it may be hype. Can’t really tell just yet.
But the history of governments lying to their people during extreme crises (any country, not pointing a finger here) suggests there may be info that is being held back/suppressed in Japan.
Martin
@Joe Beese: Yes, I fondly recall the day when Obama campaigned on destroying the Japanese. Universal healthcare and a 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster were his two big campaign items.
Heh, he showed McCain, didn’t he!
Superluminar
@ Belafon
sorry to nitpick, but “very paramount”?
Zifnab
@john b:
I think his point is that “Obama is just like Bush, he sold us out!”
I’m really not a fan of nuclear power at all. Nuke plants are big affairs that require billions of dollars to build and maintain, don’t turn a profit without large government subsidies, and create – admittedly small, but incredibly dangerous amounts of – toxic waste.
I’d love to see us plow our energy exclusively into building solar and wind plants. But that’s not going to happen, because the green energy community doesn’t have half of Congress by the balls.
So I can forgive Obama for embracing nuclear power as a greener alternative to coal. Joe, apparently, just wants to piss in everyone’s oatmeal and dance off giggling.
Violet
I can’t even comprehend what the workers who are going in are doing. If anyone is a hero, it’s these workers.
cyntax
@TaMara (BHF):
It’s not a good way to go; they’re making a hell of sacrifice.
4tehlulz
This thread is now about Joe Beese and his equating 40 yr old designs to current ones.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@Sentient Puddle: It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate.
Dennis SGMM
I became very concerned when the Japanese authorities abandoned their plans to refill the cooling ponds either with fire hoses or with water dropping helicopters. That suggested to me that it had become too dangerous to even get reasonably close to the things.
aliasofwestgate
@TaMara (BHF):
Yeah, the Fukushima 50 is what i’ve heard noised around as a moniker for those volunteers who stayed to try to regain control. They know the risks, and are doing it anyway. The other 800 workers were evacuated as soon as things went downhill.
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese:
Barack Obama supports earthquakes, tsunamis, and the problems they cause at nuclear plants?
I’m going to need a link for that.
Arclite
@Nied:
The speculation by a Japanese nuclear expert is that since reactor 4 was undergoing maintenance that the initial fire was vinyl seat covers and other flammable equipment used for maintenance, as that kind of stuff catches fire at a few hundred degrees. The zircaloy cladding encasing the spent uranium fuel rods melts at 2200 degrees, so that is what will catch fire next, assuming it hasn’t already. The point is the pools may not have been totally empty during the first fire. Partially empty would have produced enough heat to cause the maintenance items to catch fire.
Comrade Mary
There’s some heartbreaking video of the Chernobyl liquidators on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2.
Omnes Omnibus
@joe from Lowell: Joe Beese said it. You don’t need a link; it must be true.
jheartney
@David in NY:
Yeah, been waiting for Pigs & Spiders and mclaren to show up and tell us how stoopid we all are not to recognize how hunky dory the situation is.
joe from Lowell
@john b:
That’s because you think his point is about nuclear energy.
Joe Beese’s cheap shots at Barack Obama have about as much to do with whatever pretext he uses as Dick Cheney’s desire to invade Iraq had to do with whatever pretext he pushed on any given day.
Joe Beese
@Zifnab:
The loyal Obots have already forgiven him much worse.
Yet somehow, I suspect Obama will not welcome the construction of any of these new, super-duper-safe nuclear power plants in the vicinity of his Kenwood home.
Couldn’t he have expressed his love of the environment by maintaining the ban of offshore oil drilling? Or sending out his fundraising letters on recycled paper?
slag
@Zifnab: 2nded. Although I’d add in geothermal. And the obvious fact that if people would ignore him, he’d go away.
Dennis SGMM
@jheartney:
P&S was fired by his nuclear Galtian masters: his shill-fu was too weak.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
Is it just me, or is it gettting a tad vibrant in here?
Mark S.
@Martin:
It’s about fucking time he started keeping his campaign pledges.
Omnes Omnibus
@jheartney: Wait, mclaren has taken a positive, optimistic view of something? That’s new.
tavella
Well, it’s probably not a suicide mission for the workers *yet*, apparently only one has been exposed to a very high radiation burst (though two more almost certainly died in one of the unit explosions because they were checking the turbine hall at the time.) But they all must know it’s a possibility if things go even more badly, and they’ve already had to raise the accepted limit so that they could keep working. It certainly takes immense courage to keep working in this situation.
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese:
Assuming you can find Illinois on a map, here is graphical evidence of what a fucking moron you are.
cyntax
@Comrade Mary:
Holy crap. The radiation at Chernobyl was so intense that it caused the electronics of the clean-up robots to degrade to the point that the robots broke-down, some of them going berserk and one went careening off the roof. WTF?!!? I had no idea radiation could do that.
Culture of Truth
NHK now saying police riot trucks are going to spray water on Reactor 4.
Tonal Crow
@Zifnab: How about we go all-out (as in Manhattan Project) for renewables instead? What would it take? The storage issue is difficult, but there’s been real progress on storage via melted salts in underground tanks (see, e.g., Abengoa’s Solana project) and there could be much more if we put real effort into it. And there’s no reason that the salts need to be melted directly through the use of concentrated solar energy; they could equally well be used to draw energy off the grid when it’s abundant (say, when the wind is blowing strong) and then be tapped to put energy back on the grid when it’s needed.
We haven’t tried. It’s time that we did. Or, has America lost her “can do” spirit?
Dennis SGMM
@Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload:
You’re just feeling the secondary emanations of the chronosynchrastic infundibulum that’s being created at Fukushima with Obama’s knowledge and consent. Why else would all those US personnel be there?
Catsy
@Joe Beese:
None of the above: I am simply capable of reading a map, exercising elementary logic, and holding more than one thought in my head at a time–skills you demonstrably lack.
Since that may be a bit too oblique for you to puzzle through, Sparky, let me lay it out for you directly.
The primary reason that we are having this discussion right now is not because of damage from the earthquake, but from the resulting tsunami. Despite not being designed to survive an earthquake of this magnitude, all of the reactors did exactly what they were supposed to the moment the earthquake was detected: they shut down.
Awesome. That’s great. That gets us past the earthquake. But there’s still a lot of heat going on in there, and that needs cooling systems–systems which in that particular reactor design are reliant on outside power that is no longer being produced. Which is why there are backup generators that are supposed to immediately kick in to keep the cooling systems going. Which they did.
So far, no nuclear problem. With me still? Not going too fast for you to parse? I apologize for the necessity of using words of more than one or two syllables.
Right, then. That takes us to where the real problem occurred: the tsunami. For reasons that pass my understanding, in a region known for tsunamis, a region populated by people whose language is the source of the word “tsunami”, the design of this plant did not take into account the possibility that a tsunami might actually occur and flood the basement in which the backup generators were located.
Houston, we have a problem.
Fortunately, this is not an insurmountable problem. It’s not as if the technology necessary to harden the coastal reactors against epic flooding doesn’t exist.
None of which, of course, has anything to do with the many reasons why your first post on this thread demonstrates that you are exactly the ignorant one-note douchebag that pretty much everyone here seems to think you are. That arises from the fact that you’re demonstrably incapable of participating in any thread without your outright derangement towards Obama causing you to crap out something that validates the conclusion at which you’ve already arrived: that Barack Obama is somehow connected to every human ill that has occurred during his lifetime, and more than a few which predate his Kenyan birthday. It has gotten to the point that even on the rare threads where your stopped clock manages to be right, you’re impossible to take seriously because you have nothing else to say. If Obama tomorrow announced a cure for cancer, you’d find a way to bitch about how many oncologists this would put out of work.
And ironically, the fact that you’re incapable of doing anything except desperately tying any given thread into your deranged hatred of Obama is the very thing that undermines the message you’re trying to convey. You’re the troll who cried wolf, and nobody’s buying it.
Joe Beese
@Tonal Crow:
It would take legislative independence from energy company lobbyists.
Let us know how that goes.
MD Rackham
If you’re looking for an investment opportunity, it seems to me the companies that make dry cask storage for spent fuel rods are going to be getting a lot of business. I don’t think the idea of storing spent rods in cooling pools is going to be very popular any more.
My local (7 miles) nuke plant has slowly been converting to dry cask storage (passively cooled) but the total amount of fuel stored and how much is still in pools is kept a secret.
Unfortunately, you have to store the spent rods in water for at least a year before transferring them to casks.
(And why isn’t Obama using the bully pulpit to force the fuel rods in Japan to cool down faster?)
The Moar You Know
@aliasofwestgate: Haven’t seen true heroism in a while. You are with these folks. Those 50 or so people are all walking dead, and are going to expire in a manner so horrific that you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. I hope the utility has the decency to compensate their families well.
Comrade Mary
@cyntax: Apparently so. I am SO not an engineer, but that’s what I’ve heard from some of them. Hell, my bike computer’s electronics can’t even handle a bit of damp without going ka-blooie.
slag
@Tonal Crow:
No. We’re just further embracing our national motto: If it can’t blow shit up, it’s not worth doing.
Dennis SGMM
@slag:
I thought the national motto was “If you build it, we will come – and blow it up.”
aliasofwestgate
@The Moar You Know: I do as well. They’re giving everything to keep the damage contained and if it does go FUBAR to minimize the worst of it.
The least the Diet and the PM could do would be to set up care for them afterwards, and their families.
cyntax
@Comrade Mary:
Yeah, I’m used to thinking about how Electro-Magnetic-Pulses can fry electronics but it’s a new way of thinking about residual radiation for me. Scary(er).
Arclite
@Tonal Crow:
We haven’t lost it, but it’s at a severe disadvantage vs. the established entrenched mega-interests whose lobbyists own congress.
Berial
I don’t know what all the excitement is about Joe. Everything he says to me is REDACTED.
Mark S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Surprisingly, mclaren loves nuclear power like Ricky loves Lucy. It was something to behold the other night.
HyperIon
@Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload wondered:
I’m still pissed at mistermix for his stupid “Speaking of Radiation” post.
Suffern ACE
When a fuel rod is “spent” how does it get to the pool? I assume that someone just doesn’t go over and pick it up with tongs, walk 50 yards, and drop it in water like a stone. I’m a little confused as how they are going to re-fill the pool if they can’t get close to the radiation, but when they need to get close to radiation at other times (like when they need to move a newly “spent” rod), they can.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.: I did not know that. I guess that’s what I get for sleeping. Have mclaren and Cermet been introduced yet?
dmsilev
@joe from Lowell:
If memory serves, he mentioned it during the third Presidential debate. John McCain responded by touting Joe the Plumber.
dms
Southern Beale
Totally OT but when did Little Green Footballs stop being a hard-right reactionary wingnut blog? I just went over there and was frankly quite surprised. I’m quite sure it used to be quite wingnutty, maybe slightly to the left of FreeRepublic but still a very pro-GOP, pro-Bush enclave. We used to call them “Little Green Snotballs” cuz, har har, we’re so fuckin’ clever.
What the hell happened?
SiubhanDuinne
@Arclite:
What might be the short-term and long-term effects on sea life? I’m thinking not only of fish that humans eat, but the entire oceanic food chain, direct and indirect effect on cetaceans, etc. Anybody here have that kind of expertise, or willing to speculate?*
*ETA: Of course I am aware that every single person who reads this blog is more than willing to speculate about anything and everything. I mean about THIS.
HyperIon
@Suffern ACE:
I’m just guessing but i’d assume there are robotic arms that load those suckers into thickly-lined-with-lead boxes.
Your tongs mention reminds me of the opening sequence of the Simpsons.
David in NY
@Southern Beale: I heard Charles Johnson (right name?), who ran it, flipped. Never have gone there recently, so can’t say, and don’t remember the issue that sent him over.
Svensker
Guess nobody knows anything, huh?
Aljazeera’s live blog has been pretty good and the BEEB. The problem apparently is nobody really knows what the hell is really going on and, from there, how they’re going to fix it and/or if they can.
The news that they may have power soon is good, tho.
Why can’t drone planes drop water? If they can drop bombs? Or is water too big and heavy?
freelancer
@Southern Beale:
Charles Johnson got John Cole-ified a couple years back. It’s been quite a sight to see.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: You don’t want a Godzilla reference, do you? If you don’t, I’ve got nothing.
Arclite
@Suffern ACE: I believe that a crane is how it gets to the pool. Look at this image:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/richardcranium/fukashima.jpg
There’s a crane assembly sitting above the left pool. I’m pretty sure it’s used to pull the spent fuel rods out of the containment vessel during the maintenance phase and move them into the storage pool.
Tonal Crow
@Arclite: Then what do we do to change that? It took the specter of Hitler with The Bomb to launch the Manhattan Project. The specter of 3+ degrees warming seems not yet concrete enough to produce similar motivation.
It should be, given that
(1) We’re utterly dependent upon stable rainfall patterns;
(2) The science suggests that 3 degrees warming will significantly upset those patterns;
(3) But there’s significant uncertainty about whether the upset will be merely bad, or devastating, in part because the planet hasn’t been that warm since well before the last ice age;
(4) The difference between glaciers covering most of North America and large glaciers only at the poles is only about 6 degrees C; and
(5) There’s no guarantee we’ll get only 3 degrees, particularly if we keep up bidness as usual.
Time to get our ass in gear, America.
gnomedad
@Tonal Crow:
To be fair, if your only goal is blowing shit up, you can divert a lot of resources to the problem without defeating the purpose. If you need to get more net energy out of something than you put into it, it’s a bit trickier. Still, more research wouldn’t hurt.
slag
@Dennis SGMM: That’s just what we put on our brochures.
Arclite
@SiubhanDuinne:
The only thing I’ve heard so far is that Japan and Taiwan have banned any seafood produced/caught off the coast of northern Honshu.
protected static
@Southern Beale: Pam Geller started palling around with Dutch Nazis, which Charles had a problem with.
Redshift
The thing that has worried me through the whole thing is that it became clear early on the public statements from the power company were always optimistic, and what happened next was always worse than what they said, and often worse than what they would admit to as a range of possibilities.
Yeah, I know they’re going to cover their asses and put the best face on it, and it’s not good to panic people, but you’d think there would be someone in their PR department who would understand that obviously blowing smoke doesn’t do you any good either.
Redshift
@Svensker: Water is way too big and heavy. Drones are pretty small compared to planes and aren’t designed to have cargo capacity, much less a water tank.
Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload
@freelancer:
Holy poopenscoopen, I’d had no idea. The place used to be fringier than my grandma’s afghan.
Reminds me of when I’d first stumbled over here, post-Schiavo. It was like finding yourself in BizarroUpsideDown World.
Just Some Fuckhead
If you folks could just ignore Beese’s ridiculosity, it would make the thread easier to read. I’m able to assess his comments without 50 of ya weighing in.
Anyone know exactly how a nuclear power plant requires an external electrical feed to cool? Isn’t the point of the nuclear plant to create electricity?
Redshift
@cyntax: Yeah, radiation-hardened electronics have been a big thing in mil-spec for decades, as well as in spacecraft. Radiation degrades lots of things, including electronics; higher doses just make it happen faster.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not really, but thanks anyway.
@Arclite:
Hadn’t heard that but it makes sense. Wonder how/when they will know that it’s safe to lift the ban (assuming it ever is again).
Redshift
@Just Some Fuckhead: If it’s operating, it doesn’t require an external feed. If it’s shut down or knocked out by a disaster, obviously it does. They had backup generators, but they were insufficient for a disaster of this magnitude. (I can’t recall if the explanation I remember of why came from a reliable source, so I’ll refrain from commenting on that.)
Linda Featheringill
I just came from The Oil Drum. They are as depressed as we are. Not a good sign.
The consensus there seems to be that all hell hasn’t broken loose yet but there is a definite possibility of some of erupting in Japan.
joe from Lowell
@Svensker:
Yes, the amount of water they need is quite a bit bigger and heavier than the payloads drone planes typically carry.
We don’t, as far as I know, have any drone C-130s.
scav
@Redshift: But, in fairness, I’d say some of the govt statements (as least the ones I saw) clearly said we don’t know if X has happened but we are proceeding as though it had which seemed pretty straight-shot to me. Not that this has anything to do with the upstream info provided by the power company. Granted, my view may be biased by my being in France during Chernobyl and that warning appearing as reports of large unexplained radioactive clouds floating about. Consider it a low bar but I am only a mutant bipedal spider-snake since ’86 so what do I know?
HyperIon
@Svensker wrote:
yes. think of those helicopters that drop water on forest fires.
but i agree that we are info starved here.
if only people would STFU and wait for more reliable news.
but the ‘tubes are perfect for rumor-mongering.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Redshift: It was my understanding the disaster caused a blackout which means the reactors don’t have an external electrical power source for cooling.
Some anti-nuke crusader talking head said electrical power outages on the grid like the one that happened in the Northeast a few years back could do the same thing here in the US.
I’m just trying to understand why the electricity produced by the nuke isn’t available to power the cooling process.
trollhattan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
IIUC the tsunami wiped out the twin diesel generators for each plant that were installed to run the standard electrical pumps in case the plant, itself, goes offline. The backup to the backup is a combo steam generator-battery system that can only run a few hours at best.
But hey, what are the chances of ever needing…?
Redshift
@Arclite: Dunno. After Chernobyl, there were livestock in a whole swath across Europe where the plume blew that were marked as not to be consumed. (A while later, I saw some sheep in England marked with blue paint, and that was the explanation.) However, the area where the land was made off-limits and nothing growing on it used was much smaller.
I presume dispersal is the key. The more dispersed the resulting particles get, the less the danger, so I doubt there will be much effect on the more widespread ocean ecosystem. But how big the affected area will be, I don’t really know.
trollhattan
@Just Some Fuckhead: .
The plants automagically shut down following a quake, and some were off line already. The grid, itself, got f*#ked in the quake, tsunami or both.
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
Also, too, nuclear produces a lot of energy even given its costs. Alternative or supposedly “green” energy, not so much. Japan has practically no gas or petroleum resources, and uses every means available, including nuclear, to produce energy for the country.
I understand the cautions about nuclear energy, but I don’t see that it should automatically be off the table.
And note that even if Japan had acres and acres of wind and solar setup in the same area, it would all have been washed away. The disaster is magnified because of what is happening with the nuclear reactor, but it would be no less of a catastrophe even with green energy production.
David in NY
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It is if the nuke is producing electricity, which it isn’t now because, well, it’s been exploding and stuff. Because they do try to build in redundancy, they had back up generators, but apparently didn’t think to put them in a place where they wouldn’t be knocked out by a tsunami, which they were.
Didn’t I hear somewhere that they’re getting electricity up, though? Even so, would remain to be seen if the cooling system is irremediably damaged.
RalfW
A few answers: 1) How do they get spent fuel into the sorage pool? Transferring spent rods is not wildly dangerous because when the pool is full, water absorbs gamma rays quite well. The actual transfer is most likely one rod at a time, via that crane assembly. No Homer/tongs.
2) [edit: redundant] Yes, the Nuke would normally produce the power to run the pumps. But all the local nukes are, of course, FUBARed so can’t generate one watt. The diesel backups failed, and I guess were eventually replaced and wired in. But steady grid power would be better than that – more reliable and it sounds like fuel supplies are their own logistical problem in that region now.
Arclite
@Svensker:
All drones we currently have are too small to carry any meaningful amount of water.
cyntax
@Redshift:
Yeah, with a bit of experience with mil-spec equipment, I’m more used to the spiel about me giving out than I am hearing that the electronics will stop working. But that makes sense, why worry about the PRC-77’s circuit borad when the operator’s internal organs have failed?
HyperIon
From the NYTimes: A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume.
Dennis SGMM
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The only thing that I can think of is that the power generated by the reactor would have to go through a substation to be at the correct voltage/current for the coolant pumps. OTOH, these facilities do have diesel generators, few (If any) of which might be subject to seven-meter-tall tsunamis.
And for those who ask, “What about California?” The faults in CA are of a different type than those in Japan. CA faults are slip faults rather than the tsunami-creating subduction faults. Speaking from personal knowledge (I surf San Onofre) the reactor is sixty to seventy feet above MSL. If a wave is bigger than that then a nuclear incident will be the least of our worries.
Arclite
@Tonal Crow:
You and I know that b/c we trust and believe the science. But those same entrenched interests spend millions of dollars to sew doubt among the population as well as buy politicians. So it’s hard to come to a consensus due to all the astroturfing. Basically, I think that the global warming problem will cause food shortages and economic hardship and we’ll become a third world nation with tons of poor people ruled by a rich oligarchy. I don’t really see any other path happening.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
IANANE, but I believe it is because as soon as the initial earthquake hit the first step they took to react to the disaster was to shut down the reactors which were actively running by inserting control rods to stop the chain reaction, and once you do that within a short period of time those reactors would no longer have enough steam pressure to continue producing a reliable supply of electricity, so they are effectively taken off the grid at that point. In theory the backup generators are supposed to take over at that point. It sounds like there was no plan in place to milk the residual radioactivity and heat of the shut-down reactors for electrical generation if the backup generators were to fail, and thus no plan to put these reactors back on the grid for the purposes of continuing to power the plant.
Montysano
@Svensker:
IIRC, on Rachel Maddow last night the thought was that the ponds themselves are damaged, so that it’s like pouring water into a colander. As far as the reactor housing goes, the breach may be small, i.e. a difficult target to shoot/drop water at.
losingtehplot
sorry, am scrolling through too quick, but the people working in the reactor in Japan?:
“The people in that plant are heroes. I hope they can turn this thing around.”
THEY are the people in your neighborhood, and f*** the Repugs, who’d be out of there by personal jet within minutes of the sirens sounding.
HyperIon
@Brachiator wrote:
Is that after you’ve figured in the costs associated with the waste “cleanup”/”disposal”?
slag
@Brachiator:
This statement makes no sense. Losing your ability to produce energy is one thing. Killing people and irradiating your environment is another. This situation would be much less of a catastrophe without a nuclear reactor involved.
Dennis SGMM
@Redshift:
Heh! Not always. The USMC is still using Cobras rather than switching to Apaches because the Apache’s electronics suite gets toasted when it flies at normal takeoff range through a ship’s radar sweep.
cyntax
@HyperIon:
Well there are other reactor designs aside from breeder reactors that don’t create plutonium and don’t need external cooling (they’re in the 100 MegaWatt range), so those clean-up costs aren’t a fixed feature of nuke power. They’re just part and parcel with the designs we used and sold to the Japanese.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought about the same thing. The farm land is ruined and I wondered if it affected the fishing industry the same way.
patrick II
@Svensker:
They were considering using helicopters to drop water, but there were two problems. First the radiation levels directly above the reactors were two high, and second, reactor 4 where the spent fuel rods are and the water would do the most good, still has a roof.
Robert Sneddon
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The first thing that happens if a large enough earth tremor or quake hits a nuclear power station is that the automatic shut-off systems drop the control rods into the reactor and shut it down. It usually takes about ten seconds for this to happen in the BWR models in the Fukushima plant. No more electricity is generated as the reactor thermal power output drops quite rapidly from 1200MW[1] or so down to less than a hundred MW thermal. The steam generated by the coolant loop can’t drive the turbine-generator set at that point but it continues to circulate through the condensers and back into the reactor to keep cooling the core. When the tsunami whacked the generators and the seawater-fed condensers that stopped the core cooling operation and shit happened.
[1] These types of reactors provide about 450MW of electricity each but they are about 30-35% efficient, requiring 1200MW of heat in the core to generate that electrical power.
cyntax
@Dennis SGMM:
The Army does love them some bells and whistles.
Arclite
@Just Some Fuckhead:
For the very issues we are seeing now, a nuke plant always relies on external electricity for its cooling. Even an offline plant requires cooling, so it has to be an external, reliable feed.
The cascading failure happened this way:
1. The earthquake knocked out the external power feed.
2. The tsunami knocked out all the back up generators, which were located below the flood line.
3. Battery back up kicked in, but went offline after 8 hours, being only a tertiary backup which is supposed to work while new generators are brought in.
4. New generators trucked in couldn’t be connected (I heard the plug didn’t fit, and why they couldn’t hot wire it was never explained).
5. Sea water was pumped directly into the containment vessels to cool them, essentially destroying them but allowing a “feed and bleed” type of cooling to prevent melt down.
6. The hyper heated steam disassociated the hydrogen and oxygen causing an explosion in each reactor where this method was used and possibly causing damage/fire to reactor 4.
7. The inability to maintain sea water levels in the containment vessel resulted in the core exposed (in the vessel) which may have damaged the vessel causing it to crack and leak radiation to the outside world.
8. Reactor 4 spent fuel pools require cooling, and have been heating up, possibly boiling all the water away resulting in massive radiation releases we have been seeing.
That seems to be the situation so far as I understand it.
Right now they are trying to reconnect the primary power feed, although the damage to the cooling systems from the explosions may mean that they are not working even with electric power. Also, why it took six fcking days to run this line is kind of unbelievable.
Svensker
@Just Some Fuckhead:
There IS no electricity being produced by the nukes. The reactors shut down immediately and automatically when the earthquake hit. They have not come back on line and probably can’t, at this point, they are so damaged.
Edited to add: also, too, what everyone else said.
Let’s keep fingers crossed that the repaired power lines get there and that the power can be used by any of the pumps. Having power seems like it would be a big help, in any case. Like maybe the workers could see what they’re doing.
Scamp Dog
@Tonal Crow:
Yes. Any kind of project that leads to common benefit is socialism, so the beltway villagers and their Republican overlords will prevent any such doing.
Pigs & Spiders
I legitimately do not know what to make of the US calling heads and the Japanese calling tails. I really hope Jaczko is incorrect, because if he’s not, it pretty much means the Japanese have been lying since the word “Go”.
Brachiator
@HyperIon: RE: Also, too, nuclear produces a lot of energy even given its costs.
Yep.
@slag: RE: The disaster is magnified because of what is happening with the nuclear reactor, but it would be no less of a catastrophe even with green energy production.
Really? Thousands dead. Homes and entire neighborhoods lost. Farmland gone. People still traumatized.
You really want to say that it would be “much less of a catastrophe” without the reactor? Really?
David in NY
@Arclite:
I on the other hand, am amazed that — given the earthquake and tsunami, disruption of communications, loss of electricity, etc. — they are doing as much as they are. The situation would make me just want to curl up in a ball and cry …
RalfW
Nature.com has a pretty calm blog up. The most recent post is on dosages, and helpful and (in a way) scary.
In an earlier paragraph, he says that 100 mSv/yr is the accpted threshold for a slight increase of cancer risk.
So good news: if you stay mostly indoors and decontaminate properly, there is very little short-term danger at 25 km. But were I to live that distance from a plant, I would not be at all sanguine about radiation levels 7x the cancer threshold, that damn far from the reactors, if it keeps up for weeks/months.
Some have said here that it will decay and improve quickly. I hope ya’ll optimists are right. I will await the pudding.
Oh, and I live 42 miles from a 1970 vintage GE BWR-3 design rated at 570 MWe that is running (and that has a few potentially flaky GE Hitachi control rods).
David in NY
@Pigs & Spiders:
Well, if you read the periodic bulletins put out by the company, you’d have seen that they weren’t so obviously reliable. I did, and I’m far from stunned.
scav
@slag: No sense? I’d say it’s still odds on that the tsunami swept away more people that the nuke will kill even if there is a complete meltdown. And with those that survived the A) earthquake and B) tsunami may still die of hypthermia if things don’t start getting better. So there is some sense in the statement.
Arclite
@Brachiator:
This is exactly right. So far, the nuclear accident has not contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Why it’s sucking up all the oxygen is that it has the potential to make it much worse.
David in NY
Interesting statement to Senate Committee from the Union of Concerned Scientists, at good blog generally:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/senate-briefing-on-japan-nuclear-crisis.html
Just Some Fuckhead
@RalfW:
I live 50 miles from the nuclear power reactor that has had the worst ever catastrophe in human cost in the US. One of the people killed was my friend’s husband.
Pigs & Spiders
@David in NY: I read what the company has been saying, and I think while a lot of it has been couched in pretty calm terms (not surprising) I never came across anything in them that smelled of bullshit. I’d like to know how Jaczko knows what he claims to know. I’m not saying he’s wrong, it just seems odd that a.) He would know it before anyone in the Japanese media does and b.) that the Japanese would deny if it weren’t in fact wrong. There’s no way you can cover this up.
trollhattan
The IAEA is eyeballing the stored fuel’s rising temps. And doesn’t the lack of new data for #4 just ice the whole cake?
https://www.facebook.com/notes/international-atomic-energy-agency-iaea/japanese-earthquake-update-16-march-2200-utc/202327553130372
geg6
@Pigs & Spiders:
If you’ve paid an ounce of attention to what’s been going on since last Friday, you know better than to believe what’s coming from the Japanese, especially the power company. They’ve been all hearts and unicorns and have been shown to be either complete idiots or utter liars with every announcement they make. I believe our guy, sadly.
Those men in that plant are too brave for words. Not enough kudos in the world for what they are doing.
Arclite
Sounds like the forecast for Fukushima is for snow. So radioactive snow will cover everything. Hopefully most of that will blow out to sea.
Brachiator
@Arclite:
Ah, “potential.” The fantasies and reveries and worst case guesses of people over here about what might conceivably happen are equal to the actual suffering that the people of Japan are enduring. Got it.
Pigs & Spiders
@geg6: Not saying you’re wrong geg, just saying this is an odd and openly public contradiction to make.
@trollhattan: Yeah, those temps are certainly worrisome but I’m not sure we can conclude much from no data today. Actually, the good news about the numbers is that while they are climbing, they climb very slowly, which suggests there actually IS still a lot of water there. And 84 degress, while way too hot, isn’t boiling, which suggests that at least it’s not boiling off water. Though it’s certainly possible the pool is leaking.
trollhattan
@geg6:
Regrettably yes, for our guy to make that statement–which had to have been parsed at the highest levels–in contradiction with the official Japanese statements (loss of face, etc.) likely means the problems are grave indeed. My question: to what end? What are we telling/asking them to do?
What the Russians would do, is stated here,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/japan-nuclear-crisis-escalates
slag
@Brachiator: You’re right. After all, if you’re going to have a bunch of people dead and dying and homes destroyed, why not just throw some nuclear meltdown potential into the mix. It’s not like that would divert any resources from all the other problems currently going on. It’s just compound interest.
And I should add that there’s obviously no reason for the Japanese to be traumatized by the threat of nuclear meltdown either. It’s not like they’ve ever experienced anything like that before.
trollhattan
@Pigs & Spiders:
I think I read somewhere today in the blizzard of information that they’ve lost sensors and it’s affecting their ability to get reliable data. #4 temp might be one one such loss (and I guess is being supplemented to some extent by the drone flyovers).
Mike G
Right-wing astroturfing in action —
“MIT Nuclear Scientist” posts his first ever article on his brand new blog, “Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors”, and within hours it is reposted 30,000 times on such wingnut paragons of truth as Volokh, Freerepublic, BraveNewCLimate, ClimateSanity, abovetopsecret and liberty’s flame.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/bad-oehmen-confirmation-bias-sources-astroturfing/
It turns out the “scientist”‘s field of research is supply chain management.
Tonal Crow
@Pigs & Spiders:
Water evaporates quickly at 84 degrees C under ordinary surrounding temperatures, humidities, and pressures.
Neutron Flux
@Pigs & Spiders: You just can’t stop, can you?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike G:
I was wondering what premade conservative ideology covered nuclear power accidents so I went to the handbook.
1. Tax cuts/vouchers
Nah.. too late for that.
2. Deregulation
Rut ro.
3. Arm everyone.
Bingo! If everyone was walking around with a nuclear power plant, everyone would get real fucking careful.
Maude
@Pigs & Spiders:
And I don’t understand why the head of the NRC made that statement at all.
Comrade Mary
Via Metafilter: the Simple Wikipedia, designed for children and people learning English, actually has a very good summary of the situation, including a regularly updated chart showing damage to the reactors and pools. Worth bookmarking.
Pigs & Spiders
@Tonal Crow: Yes. Not nearly as quickly as it does when it’s boiling, however. Assuming the quake and other damage have not drained the pool, we’re talking about a LOT of water in these pools that would have to evaporate to even get near the tops of these rods.
@Neutron Flux: Stop what? All I’ve done is asked for rationality, and I’ll I’ve gotten in return in invective.
sukabi
Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors.
I would think that rather than rely solely on information coming from TEPCO and Japanese authorities that we’ve utilized some of our military satellites to get a pretty good look at the entire complex.. including closeups of the reactors / buildings and the exposed cooling pools…
HyperIon
@Pigs & Spiders wrote:
Umm, the vapor pressure of water at 84 C is rather large. Bubbles may not be forming but lots of water is evaporating at that temp.
Edit: I see Tonal Crow got there before me.
Pigs & Spiders
@Maude: Well, it could be he’s right and the situation is far worse than the Japanese have ever let on AND the Japanese are willing to deny everything to the better end. Or it could be that he wanted to paint the bleakest picture possible the Senate committee, facts be damned. That wouldn’t be completely unheard of. Or he’s testing the Japanese backchannels for the administration. By making that statement it forces the hand of the Japanese government to make a public statement one way or the other which might give them an idea of how good their backchannel sources are. We won’t know until we know whether there’s still water in that pool or not.
Pigs & Spiders
@HyperIon: Yeah, Hyper, i just looked it up, at 84 celsius it’s about 400 Torr. Still about 1/5th the evaporative rate at boiling. Again, it’s not GOOD. It’s just not as bad as boiling or no water at all, as Jaczko claims. And he may be right.
Maude
@Pigs & Spiders:
That makes sense. Thanks.
Neutron Flux
@Pigs & Spiders: You just continue to rationalize and justify the good news from spotty and incomplete news reports.
I work in the Industry and there is not enough reliable information for me to make an informed opinion wrt to the percent of fuel damage.
Look, spinning for the good news is not helpful. We try very hard to tell the truth and NOT make shit up. The public and the people that comment here smell you out every time.
I do not care what people here think of you. I just do not want them to think that you even have the first fucking clue about what you opine about.
Nellcote
@SiubhanDuinne:
Too soon?
I thought so.
Martin
@Pigs & Spiders:
They’ve gone from 25C to 84C and climbing. They need water and they need it soon and in quantity. It’s going to get worse and worse fast. It’s a feedback loop – the higher the temp, the faster the evaporation and the less water to act as a heat sink – which leads to higher temps, faster evaporation. It simply accelerates the closer to 100C it gets, and it’s pretty damn close now.
And this isn’t like heating a pot on the stove where the heat source is external to the heatsink. The source is inside the heatsink, so as soon as those rods start to get exposed, they’ll simply flash boil the water where it touches since the rod housing itself will superheat.
Brachiator
@slag:
Is there an inevitable, predictable, outcome that would result from a nuclear meltdown? Do you know for sure that a nuclear meltdown will happen, when it will happen, and what the result will be?
One of the most heart wrenching of the recent photos is of a woman holding her dead mother’s hand. Her pain is evident. It is palpable. It is real. I have no idea what the “potential” and “threat” of a nuclear meltdown might mean to her. Neither do you.
Martin
@Pigs & Spiders: But 84C is presumably the average temp of the pool. Stick a 400C piece of iron into a cold pool and you’re going to get boiling on the surface of the iron until it comes down in temp to 100C without that pool getting anywhere near 100C avg temp.
What’s the internal temp of those fuel rods and are any exposed? If any are exposed – at all – and the surface temp of the air exposed section is going to approach the internal temp because air is a shitty heat sink. That’s where you’re going to get boiling – where the water/air/rod surfaces meet. If the pool is large enough, you could easily have boiling taking place long before the average temp of the pool gets up to 100C.
We just don’t know. We don’t know how spent those rods are. We don’t know if any water is going in (we presume not). We don’t know if there’s a leak. We don’t know where that temperature reading is from. But I’d bet anything that 84C is not the maximum temperature in that pool.
slag
@Brachiator: Listen, jackass. You can’t sit there and pretend that nuclear destruction is only for ivory tower elitist Americans to be concerned about. That concern pretty much spans all classes and all peoples. Or, in other words, “This is a big fucking deal”.
Cermet
I see the pigs and spiders is back – the pig and paid troll who still still hasn’t explained why he has so insulted those brave workers dying in Japan since during that time all he said was – everything is perferctly fine and no radiation or core leaks – you think I didn’t follow your posts? You are a low life.
The reason electronics fails at a nuke plant is due to neutrons – most radiation shields, even ones that are many feet thick made of steel and concrete can’t even slow these monsters down – water and other hydrogen based materials do but most electrics can’t afford the weight or volume that these types of materials require. Then you also have terrible gamma rays. Just a lose lose situation.
American reactors can not be made safe from coolant lost – and since they use boron in the coolant, the reactor’s steel is often destroyed by this. Any lost in the main primary system means melt down. Again, a lose lose system that can’t be fixed.
As I agree with others, nuke is a way to go but one should consider the less expensive and incredibly safe Canadian reactor or the CANDU. Has issues (nuclear waste, and produces radioactive gases like all the plants do (ever notice all reactors have smoke stacks? Never thought about it, did you?) but at least a melt down due to coolant failure is not one of them.
No American reactor is even remotely economical and both taxpayers and ratepayers foot this extra bill so stock holders and CEO laugh all the way to the bank!
If American reactors were so safe, they, not US taxpayers would not be footing the lion’s share of all liability – see if any of the paid trolls here want to address these facts – you’ll see them not address them but shiver round them like the snakes they are.
PanAmerican
sukabi
@sukabi: adding to my previous comment that the military satellites could be used to get a pretty good idea of exactly how f’d up each housing facility / exposed containment pool was…
don’t they have the capability of getting license plate #’s and identifiable photos of people’s faces…. and small details like that? If so they could be used to get a pretty damned good idea on the physical state of the complex…
4tehlulz
@PanAmerican: Translated: We’re fucked.
srv
So they’re going to try to use a police water cannon to try to spray water up into the storage pools on #3 and #4.
They’re just winging it here.
PeakVT
One problem with dropping water on the reactors is that doing so may harm the already weakened structures. Sort like this. So the workers need to get pretty close and then hover there, possibly for a couple of minutes.
scav
@slag: But then, be fair, what happened before was a big fucking deal and you seem to be discounting that.
Joel
@Twinky P: In other words, he’s a fuckface.
slag
@scav: Oh really? How? How am I discounting that exactly?
Cermet
@Neutron Flux: As someone who has no direct experience with real, operating nuclear fission reactors, I’d like to hear more of what you have to say about the problems, the possible solutions, possible dangers – esp. about the Pu/U fuel in reactor #3 and worst case for that monster (yes, some guessing but based on what you know about those fuels – is it like the American Fermi breeder? The French? or something new?) Thanks.
srv
@PeakVT: I don’t even think the storage pools exist anymore:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956193/-What-the-Fukushima-20Big-2X-Update-w-photos-%28UPDATED-2X%29
Just a dry pool, structurally compromised, filled with rods and roof debris. I can’t see how a helicopter or police water cannon truck is going to fill anything. This is just “look busy” while the meltdown goes.
burnspbesq
@Sentient Puddle:
That’s fair, but when you design a nuclear power plant to withstand a 7.0 earthquake, you’re betting that there won’t be a bigger than 7.0 earthquake during the time that the plant is in service, and if you lose that bet …
Joe is blaming the wrong person, but there is blame to be assigned here.
Arclite
@srv: yeah, you have to wonder if the number 3 and 4 pools even exist anymore. here’s a view of the 3 and 4 reactors from ground level. They are both pretty pulverized, although 3 moreso:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/3/16/1300276073417/Fukushima-power-plant-007.jpg
Neutron Flux
@Cermet: My experience is with highly enriched U235 in US Navy reactors and low enriched U235 in commercial PWR’s.
I can’t help you with the breeder reactors. I mean I get the concept, but I just won’t speculate.
This combination of events was not considered during the design period for these older plants. The Final Safety Analysis Reports were limited to one event at a time with the most probable single active failure and non conservative settings for the instruments that provide inputs to the Reactor Protection System and the Emergency Safeguards Actuation System.
To my knowledge there is no US design that can handle a sustained loss of all ac power. Most plants are analyzed for and eight hour coping time. This is sometimes called the Station Blackout. Essentially, this is the scenario in Japan with the added distractions of physical damage from earthquakes and loss of communications.
The solution is simple and monumentally difficult. Inject water. Difficult because there is no high voltage power supply. Most of the motors for pumps that can inject against this kind of pressure are 480 v at the least and more than likely 4160 v. Most of the non installed piping solutions are fire hoses and the like. Not high pressure enough and not enough capacity.
I am not sure I answered your question, but perhaps this can start the conversation.
Cermet
@Neutron Flux: 1. Thanks; and no, the issue of the fuel is dead if no one here knows because while I know a great deal about breeders, its all 1960/70’s shit and the Japanese always do things their way.
Most people here understand that the quake was way beyond any design limits that most engineers consider but lets be realistic – if you build a hundred reactors it needs to be considered – full loss of coolant. It upsets people to see these desperate measures that uses humans to die for what robots or smart engineer’s should do – then add on asshole trolls who try and justify mistakes – it gets people angry.
Sorry for the rant (and past ones) but I do support fission, just the CANDU system because 1) Melt downs are almost impossible 2) I like my life style 3) AGW is serious and such plants could buy us twenty years (before high grade uranium runs out.)
Neutron Flux
@Cermet: I do not struggle with you advocating for the CANDU design.
Most of the advantage of this design are considered in the AP-1000. But, we are where we are.
A full LOCA can be managed with AC power The useful life of the plant will be over, but there should be very little fuel damage and no release.
No problem with the rant, I have been in this business since the days of TMI. It is emotional. I understand that.
It is not helpful for folks like Pigs and Spiders to spin things, especially without any practical knowledge. It just pisses you off so much you can’t stand it.
Carl Nyberg
I’d like to suggest a thread for Balloon Juice that might be useful to the people in the media.
Let’s have a discussion of questions the media should be asking. I’m concerned the government of Japan and the United States are telling the media less than the full truth. As Atrios noted, it seems like there should be specific radiation levels at specific distances and the like.
I’m further concerned that the journalists have a very weak understanding of the technical and scientific issues involved. I suspect most U.S. journalists are relying on sources in the nuclear power industry or academics recommended by the nuclear power industry.
Questions might include:
1. Can you release data about what radiation levels have been measured at what specific locations at specific times? If this data can’t be released, is it because it’s not being kept? Or is the government concerned that releasing it would lead to panic?
2. What is the status of each reactor? Which ones are leaking radiation currently? Describe the damage or casualty that is causing each leak. What will it take to substantially reduce the leak? Is that technical fix possible at this point? How long will it take?
3. Which reactors remain on fire? Which ones remain as dangers to re-ignite?
4. How many workers have been stricken with radiation poisoning to the point they can no longer work?
5. Which reactors have experienced at least a partial meltdown? Have these meltdowns have been stopped? Is there a risk the meltdown(s) could start again?
6. To what extent is the Government of Japan worried about widespread panic? Is the government withholding relevant information to avoid or forestall panic?
kimp
after the fiasco of katrina, and the chorus of “who could have predicted” and given the secrecy of ALL goverments, to take anything at face value cocerning official aanouncements strike me as fool-hardy.
DBrown
I refuse to accept any more bad news today – like the helicopters dropping tiny amounts of water on runaway reactors that have spun out-of-control, sick to death of the paid trolls for the nuke industry spinning lie after lie, my own useless ranting to people who, in a few months, won’t really even recall the details of what had happened in Japan and what reactors are dangerous and why, so unless something really changes, you are all better off without me asking questions, passing out hot air (some might call information, here) and just being pissed off about this mess; the hero’s are still out there, and new ones are facing death – pilots/aircrews/firemen/ground crews and of course, the nuke operators and their endless line of waiting hero’s to take their turns, too in those valley’s of utter death. I’m sure many others too will be called to keep this somewhat more under control. I can only hope they live to tell their stories and let’s not forget the seven that gave their lives so many thousands (even us) could be safe – again, I hope their sacrifice was not in vain.
liberal
@Cermet:
I don’t know dick about this stuff, but I thought Wikipedia says there’s an additional up-front capital cosdt to CANDU, the heavy water. Went on to say that over the lifespan of the plants that cost is balanced out.
liberal
@Arclite:
Very good summary of the probable sequence of events.
Marc McKenzie
@Zifnab:
Hey Zifnab, good point. Pretty close to something I read recently:
Nuke Plant Director: “Compared to other forms of energy, nuclear power is…”
Reporter: “Oh, come on…that’s the same crap you guys always give us! What about solar? Wind? Geothermal? There’s all kinds of alternatives!”
Nuke Plant Director: “And that’s the same crap you guys always give us! You point the finger at nuclear power, like we’re the evil wizards who keep the world from running on soymilk and sunbeams…meanwhile, the world’s been happy to burn oil for a hundred years and coal for two centuries…nuclear power wasn’t developed overnight, but it’s practical now! Meanwhile, these ‘alternatives’ that you speak of–are they practical? Are they ready to carry the load?”
I found this in, of all places, a Japanese manga (GOLGO 13, to be precise).
Let me be frank–I have my concerns about nuclear power. I wish we lived in a world run by solar and wind and geothermal. But we aren’t there yet. There’s still a lot to be done in terms of these new technologies. And I admit getting caught up and being frightened by the events in Japan until common sense kicked in and I ignored the panic and sensationalist headlines and just stuck to looking at the facts–and going back and reading about nuclear power, both the pros and the cons.
What’s happening in Fukushima is cause for concern, but be honest–we are here, and not there–and we cannot see what’s going on. A lot of the media coverage is doom and gloom, with nary a thought for the fact that the Japanese are dealing with the after effects of both an earthquake and tsunami, a lethal left-right delivered by mother nature. Yes, there is the nuclear plant crisis, but aren’t we now suffering from blind panic and yes, a limited knowledge of nuclear power?
The Chernobyl reactor that exploded was not designed the same way as the Fukushima reactors. It was, to be blunt, a piece of s**t. As for calls not to build any new reactors, well…did it occur to anyone that in the forty years since the Fukushima reactors were built, that any new reactors built today or in the future will have designs and safeguards gleaned from the accident at TMI and the Chernobyl disaster…and yes, this crisis?
I’m not a shill for the nuclear industry (hell, I’m just an artist with a science background), but be honest–the genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago. We cannot put it back. Prometheus already brought fire down from Mt. Olympus. We’ve already used nuclear reactors in space–what do you think powered the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini probes? It sure as hell wasn’t Duracell batteries.
Until we get alternative fuel sources up and running (and practical), we’re stuck with nuclear power. The best we can do is to make it as safe as possible.
It’s fine to be worried about what’s happening in Japan. Just don’t let it become blind panic. And don’t even think of picking up iodine pills.
Just sayin’…