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Brandon Lampley
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 17, 2011 - 12:48pm PT
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Thanks rrrADAM. If there has been no water added to the Rx vessels for a few days, what is likely going on in there?
Edited... Cause I realized folks with family in japan visit this thread.
I do really appreciate you coming here to help us understand.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 12:51pm PT
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Thanks rrrADAM. If there has been no water added to the Rx vessels for a few days, what is likely going on in there? What water was there would turn to steam, expand in volume 1600 times, and have to be vented to protect the Rx, and thus go dry, causing extensive fuel damage.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Mar 17, 2011 - 12:54pm PT
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So, where is all this stuff going to be stored? What's the half-life?
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Brandon Lampley
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
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And. Right or wrong, this will put the brakes on all nuke construction, lead to the closure of others, cause more coal and gas plants to be built short term, and hopefully get us serious about large scale investment in renewables and reducing our out of control energy demands. This was all clear 36 hours post tsunami.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
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Thanks rrrADAM. If there has been no water added to the Rx vessels for a few days, what is likely going on in there?
What water was there would turn to steam, expand in volume 1600 times, and have to be vented to protect the Rx, and thus go dry, causing extensive fuel damage.
And what does extensive fuel damage mean for the fuel that is in these pools? Did I understand correctly that these pools are not inside the containment facility? That part has me confused. Are the pools inside the area of the reactor building that has been blow off in one of the explosions? maybe two explosions? I have lost track of some of what has happened.
Thanks for any help understanding.
Edit: DMT is right to point out how messed up the media can get things. Ack.. But it sucks that they use phrases like. the radiation level has gone down, or up. Instead of saying what it is. Surely they know with all the detection equipment we have.
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Mar 17, 2011 - 01:49pm PT
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Brandon Lampley
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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Spent fuel is in pools that are now exposed to the sky, and apparently dry. Zero containment.
Reactor vessels, which are burly themselves, are inside secondary containment structures that are believed to be at the least cracked. Likely multiple reactor vessels have boiled dry, no current way to add water to cool. Fuel currently melting.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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radiation detection is on site
we know where those detectors are
giving the world a second-by-second location of every radioisotope coming from the site will not be possible
there are people working hard to estimate what the nature of the radioactive material is and how the dispersal will occur, given the uncertainties the partial technical information has to be used to make the best response policy, which includes many factors beyond the simple technical issues
with all due respect for rrrADAM one cannot down play the magnitude of this failure. Our ability to cope with the very technical operations of a facility such as a nuclear reactor, where the failure of that facility has huge consequences, depends on our ability to foresee the challenges that will drive the facility to failure. obviously we did not foresee all of these factors in this case, which was beyond worst case scenarios that were used to plan.
this situation, our ability to foresee the potential problems, is not isolated to the Japanese reactor program, but is a factor in all reactor programs, and is a major impediment to the use of nuclear power, as it should be. from a technical standpoint, this accident should throw a very different light on the US program, and many of our practices, e.g. re-certifying old reactors, should be scrutinized carefully. my opinion is that those BWR Generation II reactors are not commercially viable if you include the costs of insuring against failure. it might be hard to justify the continued use of any Gen II reactor.
the scale of the human and economic calamity must be a factor in our decisions to deploy these technologies and finding the appropriate balance with the commercial economic viability, an important societal discussion. whether or not you think the nuclear geeks are blind or that the person on the street has an irrational fear of radiation, the final act of deploying or not deploying nuclear power will ultimately come down to our best guess, as a society, of the likelihood of events like what is being played out in Japan right now. history, which is being made this minute, has provided its verdict loud and clear.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:12pm PT
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And what does extensive fuel damage mean for the fuel that is in these pools? Depends on the damage... If the zircaloy is comprimized, then the fission products can be released. This can be kept to a minimum if the fuel is kept covered.
Did I understand correctly that these pools are not inside the containment facility? That part has me confused. Are the pools inside the area of the reactor building that has been blow off in one of the explosions? maybe two explosions? I have lost track of some of what has happened. Yes, you understand correctly... In this design of BWR, the spent fuel pools are on top of the reactor building (the 'refuel floor'), right next to the reactor cavity. That floor, is not within any containment designed to keep any pressure in (I.e., outside primary and secondary containments). What you see in many of those pictures is the refuel floor, so the spent fuel pools are now exposed to the environment.
The only reason (speculating) I can see that any of these could be allowed to heat up, boiling off the water, and potentially exposing the fuel (I have read that the fuel in the spent fuel pools did not catch fire, that it was an oil fire adjacent to them), is that dose rates were so high at neigboring units to keep people off of the refuel floors to ckeck the levels... Remember, no power, means no remote level indicators.
The fuel pools are SUPER easy to be kept full, if just monitored and maintained, as a single portable pump could easily supply the water needed to keep them full.
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bmacd
Social climber
100% Canadian
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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Where is Tesla when you need him ? Did he unlock technology which would have made nuke plants unnecessary ?
I'm finding it very offensive how some are downplaying this absolutely catastrophic nuclear accident as it unfolds under the disguise of an industry expert kool-aid drinker. Millions of people are at high risk. The plant design was hopelessly inadequate. ALL OTHER PLANTS currently are characterized with the same flaw of uncontained spent rod storage. What an embarrassment it must be to be a part of the nuclear energy industry right now.
One full meltdown is going to domino logisistics for the rest. The long term impact is going to be comparative to 9/11 if not greater than
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:22pm PT
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Thanks Adam, I appreciate you answering my questions.
I have another.. haha.
If the radiation level is too high for workers to check the pools, and they have run dry, then what is the worst case scenario? These are spent fuel rods, so how much contamination could they cause? Could they heat up and melt through the flooring, covering the reactor below, making it even more difficult to work on the reactors below? If they do fully melt, what kind of radiation danger are we facing? We.. meaning Japan or the world.
Thanks again for answering my questions.
And thanks Ed for that sobering analysis.
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Gene
climber
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:23pm PT
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TEPCO is claiming that pouring water on the spent fuel pool has been effective. At 8:40 pm JST time, half an hour after the pouring started, the reading at the gate of the plant was 292 microsieverts/hr. At 11:00 pm, about four hours ago, the reading was 289 microsieverts/hr., a reduction of 1.0%.
Effective?
g
EDIT: The pool involved is the one at Reactor 3.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:24pm PT
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with all due respect for rrrADAM one cannot down play the magnitude of this failure. Our ability to cope with the very technical operations of a facility such as a reactor where the failure of that facility has huge consequences depends on our ability to foresee the challenges that will drive the facility to failure. obviously we did not foresee all of these factors in this case, which was beyond worst case scenarios that were used to plan.
this situation, our ability to foresee the potential problems, is not isolated to the Japanese reactor program, but is a factor in all reactor programs, and is a major impediment to the use of nuclear power, as it should be. from a technical standpoint, this accident should throw a very different light on the US program, and many of our practices, e.g. re-certifying old reactors, should be scrutinized carefully. my opinion is that those BWR Generation II reactors are not commercially viable if you include the costs of insuring against failure. it might be hard to justify the continued use of any Gen II reactor.
Agreed... If I sound like I'm downplaying it, my bad, as that's not my intent... I have said numerous times, "this is a big frick'n deal".
And, as our management says, "our jobs rely on the public's confidence in our ability to operate safety". This is WHY I try to clear up so many misconceptions, as there is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there.
And, as I said, INPO just notified all US nukes of issues that need to be looked at to ensure that operating nukes will meet not only their design basis, but also beyond, up to but not limited to flooding and damage to systems that are beyond the design basis. As per that notification, all items MUST be addressed within 1 week, 2 weeks, and 30 days, depending on item.
We have spent literally billions just at my nuke alone in the 40 years it has been online, upgrading and enhancing safety features, and we still invest that money even today... The latest is a dedicated emergency deisel generator system just for security (E.g., cameras, intruder detection systems, etc...), including its own building, at a cost in the millions of dollars. To the bean counters, it is well worth the money, given that nuclear generation at my company (5 units) accounts for 55% of the profit, so the other 200+ coal, solar, wind, hydro, and gas-fired generation plants equal 45% all together.
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Brandon Lampley
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:31pm PT
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rrrAdam. Are you seeing the up to date imagery of these reactor buildings? It's a mangled disaster zone. Nothing is remotely easy, let alone super easy. It's like pissing on a house fire what they've been trying w helos.
Bless 'em that they are trying.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Gene, it means that the radiation as measured at the gate was not due to the exposed spent fuel. That radiation is largely gamma radiation and is confined in location to the spent fuel. The bigger threat, as rrrADAM and others said above, is if the fuel cladding fails due to the fuel high temperature, then the content of the fuel rods is no longer contained and can be spread by various means, e.g. wind borne dust, convection from heating due to fires, etc.
In this case, "effective" means that the fuel is covered and the time-to-failure is increased, hopefully to the point that the spent fuel retains its mechanical integrity
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 17, 2011 - 02:40pm PT
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when you look at a modern car after a wreck it is certainly is an impressive mess, the consequences of which the persons on board are saved at the expense of the car...
that's good design..
as bad as the reactor buildings look now, if, in the end, the reactor cores are contained with little radioactive contamination to the site, it will be a huge success... the buildings are designed to be sacrificed one "system" at a time to preserve the integrity of the containment of the reactor core and to be able to manage that in the event of a complete fuel failure.
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