Possible reactor meltdown in Japan

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I don't comment here when I am at work, but like greenaccord02 said, they apparently made a mistake measuring the radiation and it is actually 100,000 and not 10 million. I don't think we can believe anything that Tepco says-they can't even do proper radiation measurements. But 100,000 is still higher than they had measured before. The water the three workers walked in was 10,000 times the normal amount of radiation.

In addition the radioactive Iodine in the sea had increased from 1250 to something like 1800 times normal. Exactly what all of this means I don't know but if the radiation levels are increasing then it does not sound good to me.

There is highly radioactive water in apparently four of the six reactos now. A lot of people seem to think that one or more of the cores have been damaged.

I don't know if this will ever get as bad as Chernobyl but I think it is worse than Tepco has lead people to believe. Can the cores still experience meltdowns or are they cool enough now so that is not possible?

We know that radioactive elements have been getting into the ocean. And there has been some release of radiation into the atmosphere. What really worries me is how much radioactive elements are getting into the subsurface water levels. They could spread around a large area.

I still have hope that maybe this situation will not turn out as bad as I think it might. What has happened has happened. I feel sorry for the Japanese. Sure, we fought a war with Japan. My uncle served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific during World War II. But that was a different age. The Japanese are wonderful, very polite, and extremely industrious people. And Japan is a small country.

If like Chernbyl a considerable area of Japan became uninhabitable that would be bad.
 
If I lived in Japan I would be using bottled water also. There is no way I would believe anything this Japanese utility company says based on their track record. Who can blame anybody for playing it safe?

I am hoping things don't get worse but with the increased levels of radiation I am starting to feel that this situation could get very bad. There has to be a reason for the increased radiation levels. Something is very wrong-a core is cracked or whatever.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I don't comment here when I am at work, but like greenaccord02 said, they apparently made a mistake measuring the radiation and it is actually 100,000 and not 10 million. I don't think we can believe anything that Tepco says-they can't even do proper radiation measurements.


Our evening news explained it away that the worker doing the measurement saw the number and scarpered, fearing for his life, failing to take a repeat measurement.

Subsequent monitoring showed that his original reading was wrong.

I can believe and understand both sides of this particular lie...A Radiation Safety Officer seeing that he's dead will run. An organisation telling lies will use that to advantage.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I don't think we can believe anything that Tepco says-they can't even do proper radiation measurements.


In any major disaster, the suffering company is always the evil-doer and the inept company...TMI, Russians (Chernobyl), BP, U.S Government at N.O...pick any disaster.

The fact of the matter is that disasters are so overwhelming that it overwhelms the company/Government. I'd love to see the arm-chair Monday folks in such an event.

And I personally know bc I was involved at TMI. I can speak from experience while others here can't.

Originally Posted By: Shannow


Our evening news explained it away that the worker doing the measurement saw the number and scarpered, fearing for his life, failing to take a repeat measurement.


Yea Shannow...and this kind of thing makes my point. This thing is beyond all experience and imagination.
 
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I am having trouble understanding why after 50 half lives..I-131 is still around.

Also they have found Plutonium in a soil sample.

A decision will need to be made when this farcical attempt to cool down the reactor/spent fuel is replaced by a gigantic effort to entomb the whole thing. We are talking millions of tons of covering..time to get started before the area is inhabitable to the extent that it can't be done.
 
Originally Posted By: Al
I am having trouble understanding why after 50 half lives..I-131 is still around.

Also they have found Plutonium in a soil sample.

A decision will need to be made when this farcical attempt to cool down the reactor/spent fuel is replaced by a gigantic effort to entomb the whole thing. We are talking millions of tons of covering..time to get started before the area is inhabitable to the extent that it can't be done.


That means they have so much I131 to begin with that it is going to take many more 50 half life to clear it off.

Can they entomb it and guarantee that it won't leak? I think it is probably easier to clean up as much as you can before you entomb and then having to open it up and clean it.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
I think it is probably easier to clean up as much as you can before you entomb and then having to open it up and clean it.

Exposure is too high and in another week it will likely be worse.

Will it lead? Yea. But maybe Tokyo can be saved.

"There’s not much good news right now,” said Gennady Pshakin, a former IAEA official based in Obninsk, the site of Russia’s first nuclear power plant. “There’re questions arising on how much fuel will leak out, what isotopes will be carried and how quickly they will settle. It’s becoming less predictable.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-28...vent-leaks.html
 
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Or it means that there are continuous radioactive leaks occurring. I think it was Fri. they said that they had detected 13 neutron beams emitted over the course of the disaster, the next day that number was increased to 15. This could be just from the spent fuel pools as non-borated water has been used to cool the whole mess and I read early on that straight water could act as a modifier while cooling at the same time to actually activate fission reactions in the pools, or could also be damaged, leaking cores that have a least partially melted down.

The detection of plutonium is very disturbing. It is very hard information to find, but I've seen cited that a release of 1mg of plutonium is equivalent to 2kg of Light Enriched Uranium with similar equivalences of MOX to straight Uranium fuel.

I don't think they could begin entombment actions until the cores/pools have cooled below a certain threshold. Nor historically will they want to entomb more than any cores that have cracked containment vessels or cores that have melted.
Just saying that is what they will likely do, not whether or not that is the most responsible course.
 
Originally Posted By: jmac

I don't think they could begin entombment actions until the cores/pools have cooled below a certain threshold. Nor historically will they want to entomb more than any cores that have cracked containment vessels or cores that have melted.

I continue th think they will not be able to supply cooling. Its getting too radioactive on the site. People will not be able to work there much longer.

Sometimes there are no good alternatives. If they can't cool it and don't cover it it will melt/burn/explode in the environment. Entombed; the consequences will be less.
 
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Well, the water is so radioactive in the turbine house that Tepco said they would probably have to give up trying to put power cables through that area. And the radioactivity seems to keep increasing. The radioactive Iodine has a short half-life so it is probably being continously recreated and then somehow making its way to the ocean. And now they have found plutonium in the soil samples.

I think this facility needs to be entombed also. I have been saying that for a while. Before too much stuff gets into the ground water. And Tokyo is only about 150 miles away. We don't need for plutonium to be moving around in the ground water supplies.

I was watching CNN and I was shocked what a woman representing an American nuclear group said on TV. It was like she was in another world. You would have thought this was some minor nuclear incident. She talked about how the International Atomic Energy Commission and Tepco would condcut proper monitoring and she did not see any danger to sea life, etc. I wonder how eager she would be to eat some fish from the ocean right off from where this nuclear facility is located. An area where radioactive Iodine is at 1850 times normal levels and radioactive Cesium which is longer lived has also been found.

I have been worried about what they might find in the soil samples and ground water. Well, they found some plutonium. That plutonium comes from one or more of the cores. One of the cores (in Reactor 3) used MOX fuel, a combination of enriched uranium and plutonium, and plutonium is created in other reactors from neutron bombardment of uranium. One microgram of Plutonium 239 can cause the development of cancer in a human being if inhaled or swallowed.

They need to start entombing this nuclear facility as soon as possible.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
Well, the water is so radioactive in the turbine house that Tepco said they would probably have to give up trying to put power cables through that area. And the radioactivity seems to keep increasing. The radioactive Iodine has a short half-life so it is probably being continously recreated and then somehow making its way to the ocean. And now they have found plutonium in the soil samples.

I think this facility needs to be entombed also. I have been saying that for a while. Before too much stuff gets into the ground water. And Tokyo is only about 150 miles away. We don't need for plutonium to be moving around in the ground water supplies.

I was watching CNN and I was shocked what a woman representing an American nuclear group said on TV. It was like she was in another world. You would have thought this was some minor nuclear incident. She talked about how the International Atomic Energy Commission and Tepco would condcut proper monitoring and she did not see any danger to sea life, etc. I wonder how eager she would be to eat some fish from the ocean right off from where this nuclear facility is located. An area where radioactive Iodine is at 1850 times normal levels and radioactive Cesium which is longer lived has also been found.

I have been worried about what they might find in the soil samples and ground water. Well, they found some plutonium. That plutonium comes from one or more of the cores. One of the cores (in Reactor 3) used MOX fuel, a combination of enriched uranium and plutonium, and plutonium is created in other reactors from neutron bombardment of uranium. One microgram of Plutonium 239 can cause the development of cancer in a human being if inhaled or swallowed.

They need to start entombing this nuclear facility as soon as possible.


I agree. The puppets of the media downplaying this are doing the populous no favors here.
 
I normally watch FOX News but in the case of the Libyan crisis and in the case of the crisis in Japan I really believe that CNN has had better coverage. I think they have done a pretty darn good job.

If you can OVERKILL try to check out what that woman said yourself. I think you will be surprised. I hope these people representing the American nuclear industry are not actually so misinformed. Beyond question this nuclear crisis in Japan is the second worse in history at a commercial nuclear power plant.

When somebody tries to whitewash what is obviously a very serious situation it troubles me quite a bit. We certainly can build coalfired and natural gas fueled power plants instead.
 
Can they entomb while it's still so hot ?

Setting concrete generates significant quantities of heat, which can cause it to crack when it cools.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic

I think this facility needs to be entombed also. I have been saying that for a while. Before too much stuff gets into the ground water.

Entombing it won't stop it from continuing to go into the groundwater. Just for the heck of I figured out that it would take around 3 million tons of fill. That will take at least a year. Then they can cover it with something or they may want to keep the airborne down.

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Can they entomb while it's still so hot ?

Setting concrete generates significant quantities of heat, which can cause it to crack when it cools.

They won't have a choice they will cover it with fill hot I predict. Buy stock in Caterpillar.
 
I would not want to be one of the operators of that Cat equipment no matter what the pay. How about laying down a lot of concrete to help prevent stuff from getting into the soil? I know it would take a sea of concrete. But steel and concrete is used in the containment vessels.

Then a lot of fill and a concrete structure above like what the Russians built. It would probably cost billions to build all of this.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I would not want to be one of the operators of that Cat equipment no matter what the pay. How about laying down a lot of concrete to help prevent stuff from getting into the soil?
Who is gonna go into that area and lay concrete?
 
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