Possible reactor meltdown in Japan

[dakota99]

Report just in that TEPCO has begun to inject seawater to cool the Fukushima Daiichi no.3 reactor. -Reuters

This is pretty much a last ditch effort now for this one. I believe they were trying to save it by using fresh water but now it's seawater. I guess they ran out of fresh??

 

[Herz]

They could probably utilize more seawater quickly, good thing its near the ocean.

 

[Shannow]

Ohhh yeah, it's a last ditch effort.

Chloride contamination means that nearly everything in the reactor/steam cycle is scrap.

 

[RnR]

BTW~ Should anyone come across a centralized repository of hi-res photos of the quake's impact on both Japan & it's citizens - please pass it along. Merci.

 

[Shannow]

http://www.news.com.au/pictures/gallery-e6frflv9-1226020613950?page=21

 

[RnR]

Thanks Shannow, that helps.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
But if one or more of those reactors experience core meltdowns, the radiation will affect not just Japan, but even the USA and at least the entire northern hemisphere.


Not gonna happen, even in the worst case. At most you may get a couple milirems. Like I said the solids of the fision process are gonna stay where they are (there may be masive local contamination of groundwater/runoff.0 The gasses Zenon, iodine, cesium, Krypton are gone.

Don't worry about it.

Originally Posted By: dakota99
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the reactor is fueled with uranium and plutonium, meaning the consequences of a meltdown are much more severe than at the other reactors. -Reuters
wow.

Fissioning of Uranium produces plutonium in normal power reactors. There are gobs and gobs of Plutonium in all reactors. Friggion scare tactics are coming out.

Originally Posted By: dakota99
Report just in that TEPCO has begun to inject seawater to cool the Fukushima Daiichi no.3 reactor. -Reuters

This is pretty much a last ditch effort now for this one. I believe they were trying to save it by using fresh water but now it's seawater. I guess they ran out of fresh??


They are gonna pretty much turn the containment into a water tank. Their task over the next years will be to cool it and keep it from leaking out. They will probably be trying to filter out the fission products out of the water as time goes on.

They will also need somehow to coat the building from the outside to insure building integrity. They will probably build another wall around it. Between the two walls they will collect leakage and process/store it.

 

[Rick in PA]

Originally Posted By: Al
They are gonna pretty much turn the containment into a water tank. Their task over the next years will be to cool it and keep it from leaking out. They will probably be trying to filter out the fission products out of the water as time goes on.

They will also need somehow to coat the building from the outside to insure building integrity. They will probably build another wall around it. Between the two walls they will collect leakage and process/store it.


That sounds similar to the Chernobyl sarcophagus. I wonder if they will call in the Russians due to their experience with Chernobyl. A curious twist of fate...

 

[demarpaint]

The sad reality is the poor people living near there will never know the truth until they start getting sick and die from it. It reminds me of the lies the workers were told at Ground Zero, during rescue and clean up efforts. I can't help but see [can I mention her name?] telling the workers they sampled the air and it was safe. Granted it was not nuke fallout, it was the lies I'm referring too.

 

[Bluestream]

Originally Posted By: Rick in PA
That sounds similar to the Chernobyl sarcophagus. I wonder if they will call in the Russians due to their experience with Chernobyl. A curious twist of fate...


Yes the ones that are still alive.

UK expert on CNN this morning said not much chance of major meltdown on these reactors at this point, and he felt situation was under control with useing the seawater cooling. Reactors would be of no further use in the future.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: MolaKule


Boric acid can be pumped in to further moderate the core if necessary, depending on the design and support systems.



This was announced.

Quote:
20:43 - TEPCO plans to fill the leaking reactor with sea water to cool it and reduce pressure in the unit, Edano says.

"The nuclear reactor is surrounded by a steel reactor container, which is then surrounded by a concrete building," Edano says. "The concrete building collapsed. We found out that the reactor container inside didn't explode."

"We've confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged. The explosion didn't occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside," he adds.

"At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside (from before and after the explosion), so we'd like everyone to respond calmly."

"We've decided to fill the reactor container with sea water. Trade Minister Kaieda has instructed us to do so. By doing this, we will use boric acid to prevent criticality."

Edano says it will take about five to 10 hours to fill the reactor core with sea water and around 10 days to complete the process. He says due to the falling cooling-water level, hydrogen was generated and leaked into a space between the building and the container. It mixed with oxygen and exploded.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-japan-quake-timeline-idUSTRE72C2DH20110313?pageNumber=2

 

[JHZR2]

Also from the link above...

Quote:
SUNDAY

00:49 A nuclear accident in Japan on Saturday rates as less serious than both the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Japan's nuclear safety agency said. An official at the agency said it has rated the incident at 4 under the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Three Mile Island was rated 5 while Chernobyl was rated 7 on the 1 to 7 scale, the official said.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

Chloride contamination means that nearly everything in the reactor/steam cycle is scrap.


Even if they hadnt put seawater in, and used 18Mohm DI water or something else that is "good", what were the chances that the plant would be back online anytime soon anyway? With al the stuff that blew up, concrete collapsing, etc., wouldnt they most likely decore/scrap most everything and start again, at best, anyway?

I assume that removing the spent core is a practice that is understood between decommissioning power plants and Navy ships...

 

[dakota99]

Melting down is one thing, yeah it's bad but it's containable. My worry at this point is the structural integrity of the containment buildings themselves. Those reactors were built to withstand a 7.9 earthquake, not an 8.9.

 

[MolaKule]

Quote:
The sad reality is the poor people living near there will never know the truth until they start getting sick and die from it. It reminds me of the lies the workers were told at Ground Zero, during rescue and clean up efforts. I can't help but see [can I mention her name?] telling the workers they sampled the air and it was safe. Granted it was not nuke fallout, it was the lies I'm referring too.


Conspiracy theories aside, the science of Radiation Health Physics was in its infancy during the Manhattan project.

It wasn't until after the war that we learned more about radiactivity damage to cells; see Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977.

We have to keep this in perspective and context. This was not a nuclear weapons attack. This was a nuclear reactor accident due to an earthquake of unforseen magnitude. The energy released by the earthquake was equivalent to 6.7 MegaMegatons of TNT.

For those reactors most affected, those that exprienced overtemps and overpressures, I seriously doubt the reactor core assemblies will ever be useful again.

 

[expat]

A second explosion has hit the plant:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12729138

 

[Cristobal]

It is a terrible mess.

I bet the quake and tsunami have killed from 10,000 to 30,000 people. The news I now get show that the earliest videos did not give anyone a full picture of the destruction.

Japan will take years to recover. I will bet that a huge percentage of the dead were older people who were not able to escape the waves in time.

The damage in Japan may amount to over three trillion U.S. dollars in value. Everything from dead people to thousands of sunken vehicles and ruined farmland---I have not seen the like before.

The nuclear plants will take years to repair and some may need entombment.

 

[greenaccord02]

I think it'll all be straightened out by the end of the year. This isn't Haiti. They have a real government and an economy that needs things to be normal. In a month or less, there will be a solid plan and path for getting everything back on track and in order. They'll throw up a few memorials, get the reactors either scrapped or repaired, and everything will be cool. Unless there is a breach or other major malfunction in one of the reactors, it'll be better from here. If there is a containment problem, however, things might be a little worse - maybe two years to get back on track and some land made unusable for awhile..

 

[Volvo_ST1]

Yeah, sure, if containment is breached and uranium and plutonium escape into the atmosphere it's just a little snag.

 

[Pop_Rivit]

Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
I think it'll all be straightened out by the end of the year. This isn't Haiti. They have a real government and an economy that needs things to be normal. In a month or less, there will be a solid plan and path for getting everything back on track and in order. They'll throw up a few memorials, get the reactors either scrapped or repaired, and everything will be cool. Unless there is a breach or other major malfunction in one of the reactors, it'll be better from here. If there is a containment problem, however, things might be a little worse - maybe two years to get back on track and some land made unusable for awhile..


That may be one of the most short sighted, myopic comments I've ever seen.

Japan is in big trouble. Not only from the quake and resulting nuclear disaster, but the financial recovery alone may take years.

This morning Moody's warned that the damages could bring forward the moment of a potential financial meltdown, which would be the moment when investors lose confidence in Japan's ability to repay its debts.

Another huge financial risk for Japan is in its bond market, because Japan has the largest national debt relative to its economic output of any of the major developed economies together with a large and unsustainable fiscal deficit.

The amount of money that Japan has to raise to recover from the quake/tsunami/nuclear issue and continue to finance the maturing debt and deficit is staggering. It should be clear to even someone with little foresight that the costs will be far beyond a few "tossed up memorials" and capped nuclear reactors.