8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

[Ryan McGinnis]

Here's a WAY OUT plan. Wait 'till the wind is most favorable and nuke the whole facility. That's right, nuke it from orbit. With the right sized bomb, buried at the right depth, the off-the-chart fallout will be blown some distance out to sea, settle, and then be swept away from population centers by the prevailing ocean current. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroshio_Current As godawful as that sounds, it might be preferable to 4 smoldering reactors dusting mainland Japan with high level waste for weeks....
(Yikes, am I really typing this???? )

 

[Greg Campbell]

LOL!!! That actually looks a LOT like me.... umpteen decades ago!

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

From Kyodo:

Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plant
TOKYO, March 16, Kyodo

Fukushima No. 1 plant

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

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

-- Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core feared, vapor vented, seawater being pumped in, building damaged Monday by hydrogen explosion, high-level radiation measured nearby on Tuesday, plume of smoke observed Wednesday, damage to containment vessel likely.

-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire Tuesday possibly caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water level not observed, fire observed Wednesday at building housing reactor, no water poured in to cool pool.

-- Reactor No. 5, No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck, temperature slightly rising in spent fuel pool.

 

[Darren Addy]

Has anyone asked what the state of the spent fuel rod pools are in the two containment buildings that blew their tops? Now that I think of it, I don't remember them mentioned until No. 4 fire. No mention of spent fuel pools in the above report for Nos. 1, 2, or 3 also.

If you look at the location of the pools (above) you will see why I am wondering about the condition/integrity of the pools in the buildings where the hydrogen explosions occurred.

Japan has raised the maximum radiation dose allowed for nuclear workers, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts. It described the move as "unavoidable due to the circumstances", AP reports.

I fear that this battle is going to be fought by dead men walking, before all is said and done.

EDIT: Found this blog post:

As if it weren't enough already TEPCO reports that the explosion at No. 3 reactor has compromised the structure around the spent fuel pool, whose cooling has also failed.

Smoke was seen rising briefly above this plant again this morning.

This story also developing but frankly likely to get buried by the apparent core melt in progress at No. 2 reactor.

- source

Another story explains why No. 4 is one with the main problem with the spent fuel rods. ALL of the rods from the reactor are apparently stored there, thanks to a shroud change (maintenance). The others have only about 1/3 of the reactor rods in them at any one time.

The agency said among the three, the situation is the severest at the No. 4 reactor because all the fuel rods are stored in the pool due to the change of the reactor's shroud. At the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, up to one-third of the rods are being kept in the pools. The more fuel rods are kept in a pool, the more radioactive substances could be emitted.

- source

EDIT2 - To bring this back to America:

The exact same design flaw is in place at Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant of the same GE design as the Fukushima reactors. At Fukushima each reactor has between 60 and 83 tons of spent fuel rods stored next to them. Vermont Yankee has a staggering 690 tons of spent fuel rods on site.

This is a must read article: http://www.thenation.com/article/159234/fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-pose-grave-danger

EDIT3 - From the Sorta What I Was Thinking Dept.

More from Russia's nuclear chief. He has just said the situation in Japan is playing out according to a worst-case scenario, Reuters reports.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

The exact same design flaw is in place at Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant of the same GE design as the Fukushima reactors. At Fukushima each reactor has between 60 and 83 tons of spent fuel rods stored next to them. Vermont Yankee has a staggering 690 tons of spent fuel rods on site.

Heh, that's what happens when nobody anywhere wants to accept nuclear waste for storage. You end up storing it on-site in temporary containers. They were, for years, building a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain, but it looks like that won't go through now because, well, Nevada, like most states, isn't too thrilled about becoming the nation's primary nuclear waste dump.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Has anyone asked what the state of the spent fuel rod pools are in the two containment buildings that blew their tops? Now that I think of it, I don't remember them mentioned until No. 4 fire. No mention of spent fuel pools in the above report for Nos. 1, 2, or 3 also.

Yeah

BTW was all of the rods on top of #3 blown into the surrounding area?

I am also curious about 1 and 2 but far more concrete dust left in explosion 3.

 

[Darren Addy]

Good site (apologies if it was linked to earlier): MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub, Japan incident page: http://mitnse.com
While not up-to-the-minute, it seems to be careful not to go beyond information given, yet provides outlook analysis based upon what is known.

Also interestingly, this site now hosts a "modified version" of Josef Oehmen's article formerly found at Morgsatlarge (formerly titled "Why I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors"). They back away from it by stating "Note that the title of the original blog {post} does not reflect the views of the authors of the {MIT} site. . . . The original article was adopted as authors believed it provided a good starting point to provide a summary background on the events at the Fukushima plant." (emphasis mine).

Meanwhile, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger is giving the mainstream media a lot of fuel with statements like that "further catastrophic events" were expected and saying that Japan was facing an "apocalypse". Meanwhile, Mr. Oettinger's spokesperson was doing damage control and trying to soften his words (also stating that he had no inside information that wasn't available to anyone else on the outside).

EDIT: Don't know if anyone saw the TEPCO press conference (where the answer to almost every question was "We apologize but we will try to give you the answer on the 17th {tomorrow}"). However, one thing that was raised was the possiblity of having primary power back to the plant as early as tomorrow. I don't know how that would be possible, but if it is, it would provide some much needed "light at the end of the tunnel" at least as far as restoring cooling to those systems that were still intact (at that time). I hope they aren't just blowing sunshine.

 

[Darren Addy]

A lot of guessing going on in this article, but explaining why No. 4 (though not running at the time of the quake) is a potentially BIG DEAL. Essentially, you have the "non-zero" probability (a least a possibility) of the rods in the spent fuel pool going critical. Fission outside of a containment vessel. Keep in mind that No. 4 's SFP does NOT house spent fuel at this time, but active fuel. It is the full set of rods that were in the reactor, removed for a maintenance procedure at the time of the quake.

Professor Williams raised a scenario that may be unfolding in the cooling pond in building 4. It is just a possibility, because information is scanty; but here it is.

If the fuel rods are dry and hot, there could be damage to the cladding and the release of light radioactive nuclei.

To prevent that, you would want to inject water.

But water on its own is a neutron moderator and would enhance the chances, however small, of criticality.

"You're caught between a rock and a hard place," he observed.

Now, Tepco is also talking about putting boric acid into the cooling pond of number 4 building.

How closely the rods were packed, whether any boron sheets were in place and if so whether they were damaged by one of the two fires in the building; these are among the many unanswered questions.

Recent comments from the NRC Chairman, to Congress, (all via Reuters) give credence to the above scenario for Reactor No. 4:

More comments from the NRC chair, says spent fuel pool at Reactor 4 has no water, radiation levels are "extremely high"

The U.S. NRC chairman tells Congress the NRC would recommend an evacuation area much larger than has taken place around Japan's reactors

More comments from the NRC Chairman, who says high radiation levels at reactor 4 may affect the ability to "take corrective measures"

EDIT3: source

The plant operator described No. 3 -- the only reactor at that uses plutonium in its fuel mix -- as the "priority." Plutonium, once absorbed in the bloodstream, can linger for years in bone marrow or liver and lead to cancer.

The situation at No. 4 reactor, where the fire broke out, was "not so good," the plant operator added, while water was being poured into reactors No. 5 and 6, indicating the entire six-reactor facility was now at risk of overheating.

"Getting water into the pools of the No.3 and No.4 reactors is a high priority," Said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Administration, adding the pool for spent fuel rods at No. 3 was heating up while No.4 remained a concern.

"It could become a serious problem in a few days," he said.

Gee, sure hope it doesn't become a "serious" problem.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

NRC: No Water In Spent Fuel Pool Of Japan Plant

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.

Jaczko said officials believe radiation levels are extremely high, and that could affect workers' ability to stop temperatures from escalating.

Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex, deny water is gone from the pool. Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said the "condition is stable" at Unit 4.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Nice satellite pic.

 

[Darren Addy]

At least someone in the U.S. is being openly critical of the Japanese warnings. Strong language reported by BBC Live:

2035: US officials have concluded that the Japanese warnings have been insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they have understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility, according to the New York Times. Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, earlier said he believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at reactor 4 had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed. "We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures," he told a Congressional committee.

Less than 10 minutes later, Japan appears to respond:

2046: Japan's foreign ministry has asked foreign diplomats and government officials to remain calm and "accurately convey information provided by Japanese authorities concerning the plant", according to NHK television.

A tweet from a Tokyo resident was published on BBC Live stating that some Tokyo residents were heading West.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Here's a link to the New York Times article that the BBC references.

 

[B Ozanne]

Is the general consensus that we are at a Chernobyl level right now?

I understand all the processes used to turn off the fuel rods in an emergency and after they are "spent", but can someone explain (in a few sentences or less) how you turn the fuel rods on at the beginning of the process?

 

[Greg Campbell]

Hard to do in a few sentances. Suffice to say, "Get enough fissile material together in a small enough area and nature will take care of the rest." When the core is configured to support a chain reaction (On average, one fission N manages to hit and split another fissile atom), naturally occuring neutrons arising from U decay will kick off the reaction. So long as the neutron gain, 'Z,' is above 1 (1.00000000000001 or what ever) the total reactivity (N flux, power, heat, the works) will grow by a factor of Z with each generation. (Z ^ generation count.)

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

No, no Chernobyl yet. What's missing from this to make it something like that is an explosive release of the core materials. Chernobyl didn't even melt down -- they used a reactor that used graphite rods instead of water to cool the system. Graphite burns at a certain temp, so you can't ever let that kind of reactor (no longer used, for obvious reasons) get hotter than that or it's game over. The Chernobyl scientists were running an experiment on what would happen if they did this or that and in the process got the graphite hotter than it's burn temp, causing the plant to blow up. So you had raw nuclear fuel (that lethally doses you with radiation within seconds if you were standing next to it) laying here and there thousands of meters from the plant.

Right now, with the exception of the spent fuel pool, all the rods are contained inside vessels. Some of those vessels are apparently compromised, but none of them are at risk of asploding. They have all partially melted down more or less and will probably fully melt down before it's all over, but even then it should be a very localized problem.

Now the spent fuel pools -- those seem like some of the dumbest engineering you could imagine. They sit inside the reactor at the TOP of building. They contain lots of spent fuel rods, all of which are highly radioactive -- same kind of deal, you stand near it for a few seconds when the pool is empty, it's time to sign your will. The buildings that housed these pools EXPLODED. So now all that stands between the fuel rods and the light of the moon is a pool of water.

Reactor #4, so it seems, was down for maintenance, so they put all their live fuel into the #4 spent fuel pool. So in addition to old spent fuel, you have young, hot, completely fissionable fuel sitting in there. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee chairman, all that water has now boiled away. Japan denies this, but really, who are you going to believe at this point?

The upshot to this is that now all that fuel is slowly melting down with NO containment. Any byproducts of this go right up into the air. Workers can't approach it because of the radiation. They can't even fly a helicopter over it to dump water on it because of the radiation.

Worst case scenario at this point, which I've read is unlikely (like almost all the other things that have happened thus far) is that the spent fuel rods go re-critical, i.e., start fissioning again. That would be worse than Chernobyl by a large factor, as this fissioning would probably produce a small explosion (not like a nuclear bomb, more like a conventional bomb) that would propel a crapload of nuclear fuel thousands of meters from the building. That fuel could only be cleaned up by robots or people who are willing to sacrifice their life, a 'la Chernobyl. It would also render the area around the plant uninhabitable for many generations.

They have countermeasures in place that are supposed to prevent re-criticality, such as the geometry of the spent fuel pool itself and the racks that hold the rods, which are heavily laced with boron (which inhibits fissioning).