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Reactor meltdown possible in Japan.


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Not much news overnight.....

I did find this status summary on kyodo

The following is the known status as of Tuesday evening for each of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, crippled by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

-- Reactor No. 1 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, hydrogen explosion, seawater pumped in.

-- Reactor No. 2 - Cooling failure, seawater pumped in, fuel rods fully exposed temporarily, partial melting of core, damage to containment system.

-- Reactor No. 3 - Cooling failure, partial melting of core, seawater pumped in, hydrogen explosion.

-- Reactor No. 4 - Under maintenance when quake struck, fire caused by hydrogen explosion at pool holding spent fuel rods, pool water levels feared receding.

-- Reactor No. 5 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

-- Reactor No. 6 - Under maintenance when quake struck.

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some good news...the very high radiation levels have fallen significantly from what they were last night.

Edano said readings at the gate at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday (2:30 am. ET) were 596.4 microsieverts per hour -- compared to a high reading of 11,930 microsieverts per hour at 9 a.m (8 p.m. ET Monday).

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/japan.nuclear.reactors/?hpt=T1

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I saw this on kyodo....note it states Saturday.....and control room

I hope the translation is correct.....and that this is not a current issue.

URGENT: Radiation 1,000 times higher than normal detected at nuke plant

TOKYO, March 12, Kyodo

The amount of radiation reached around 1,000 times the normal level Saturday in the control room of the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

The discovery suggests radioactive steam could spread around the facility operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

==Kyodo

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I saw this on kyodo....note it states Saturday.....and control room

I hope the translation is correct.....and that this is not a current issue.

URGENT: Radiation 1,000 times higher than normal detected at nuke plant

TOKYO, March 12, Kyodo

The amount of radiation reached around 1,000 times the normal level Saturday in the control room of the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

The discovery suggests radioactive steam could spread around the facility operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

==Kyodo

It's a bit confusing...from what I calculated...the average plant worker is exposed to about .6 microSV an hour. This is taking an average of hours worked and a figure of 110 mrem a year converted to microSV. A 1000 times sounds worse than that is...about 600 microSV/hr. A chest X-ray is about 10 times that. The numbers we were seeing last night were way higher than 1000 times normal...more like 500,000 times normal.

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It's a bit confusing...from what I calculated...the average plant worker is exposed to about .6 microSV an hour. This is taking an average of hours worked and a figure of 110 mrem a year converted to microSV. A 1000 times sounds worse than that is...about 600 microSV/hr. A chest X-ray is about 10 times that. The numbers we were seeing last night were way higher than 1000 times normal...more like 500,000 times normal.

A banana a day for a whole year will give you about 36 microSV total for some reference.

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NEWS ADVISORY: Radiation too high for TEPCO personnel to stay in Fukushima nuke plant control rooms (20:49)

That says control rooms and not the plant. Hard to know if it's a dated notice that Kyodo picked up on or if it's immediate.

Only fifty personal left at the site and I don't know if they could even leave anyways.

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from reuters "TEPCO says the holes in the wall of the outer building at reactor 4 have left the spent nuclear fuel pool exposed to the outside air"

Well not good but as long as it is not burning anymore is will limit releases into the atmosphere. But as soon as the situation is stable they will have to seal this somehow.

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from reuters "TEPCO says the holes in the wall of the outer building at reactor 4 have left the spent nuclear fuel pool exposed to the outside air"

and the water is boiling and dropping//now the temps are rising(slightly) in #5 and #6

France's nuclear safety authority says it classifies the Fukushima plant accident as level six. The maximum is level seven, used only once for the 1986 Chernobyl accident, Reuters reports.(TMI was a 5)

The threat from a nuclear reactor damaged by Japan's huge earthquake is judged "extremely high," AFP quotes France's foreign minister as saying as Japan met with other Group of Eight powers.

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I believe that Japan will be resorting to the Chernobyl option soon. The Chernobyl option means that they start sealing the reactors in a wet sand concrete mix. of the six reactors at the site, four have been damaged and at least two appear to be leaking radiation. (2, 4).

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1107: Prime Minister Naoto Kan has strongly criticised the Tokyo Electric Power Company for its handling of the Fukushima No 1 nuclear plant, according to Japan's Kyodo news. "The TV reported an explosion. But nothing was said to the premier's office for about an hour," a Kyodo News reporter overheard Mr Kan saying during a meeting with company executives. "What the hell is going on?"

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from reuters "TEPCO says the holes in the wall of the outer building at reactor 4 have left the spent nuclear fuel pool exposed to the outside air"

Well not good but as long as it is not burning anymore is will limit releases into the atmosphere. But as soon as the situation is stable they will have to seal this somehow.

I could be wrong, but the radiation that was leaking due to the fire was before the explosion that let huge holes in the containment building which have now exposed the nuclear fuel pool. In other words, there isn't the same barrier there was before.

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Just reading up on Three Mile Island and comparing it to the amounts of radiation being released here.

According to the NRC the max. exposure to someone at the site boundary at TMI would have been <100 millirem = 1 millisieverts (100 Rem=1 Sv)

IAEA reported 12 mSv/hr at the main gate a few hours ago before dropping.

If my conversions are correct this would agree with this statement via reuters it appears.

"French nuclear safety chief Andre-Claude Lacoste has referred to the situation at the Fukushima plant as an "obvious catastrophe", Platts is reporting, and described its severity as "between TMI [Three Mile Island] and Chernobyl"."

We are no longer talking about a level 4 event here.

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Clarification on the workers -

Radiation levels at the reactor have become too high for normal work in the control room. Workers cannot stay in the room long and so are going in and out alongside monitoring from a different room.

well thats new....i assume they have radiation suits on too..so they can't even stay in there long even with the suits on

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Just reading up on Three Mile Island and comparing it to the amounts of radiation being released here.

According to the NRC the max. exposure to someone at the site boundary at TMI would have been <100 millirem = 1 millisieverts (100 Rem=1 Sv)

IAEA reported 12 mSv/hr at the main gate a few hours ago before dropping.

If my conversions are correct this would agree with this statement via reuters it appears.

"French nuclear safety chief Andre-Claude Lacoste has referred to the situation at the Fukushima plant as an "obvious catastrophe", Platts is reporting, and described its severity as "between TMI [Three Mile Island] and Chernobyl"."

We are no longer talking about a level 4 event here.

"Obvious catastrophe"? Wow-- definitely don't like the sound of that.

I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again: it's very hard to get a handle on the exact seriousness of the situation. I'm hearing really conflicting things from different news agencies and independent experts, even. Again, I don't think it's anyone's "fault"-- I think it's a natural result of the great complexity of the problem, the enormous sensitivity around communicating developments to the public, and the fact that some of the variables are simply unknown.

The complexity of the problem and the stakes involved make this a really bone-chilling situation.

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BREAKING NEWS: TEPCO unable to pour water into No. 4 reactor's storage pool for spent fuel

this is much more dangerous then what is going on in the other reactors with no containment building

http://en.wikipedia....Spent_fuel_pool

About one-fourth to one-third of the total fuel load of a reactor is removed from the core every 12 to 18 months and replaced with fresh fuel. Spent fuel rods generate intense heat and dangerous radiation that must be contained. Fuel is moved from the reactor and manipulated in the pool generally by automated handling systems, although some manual systems are still in use. The fuel bundles fresh from the core normally are segregated for several months for initial cooling before being sorted in to other parts of the pool to wait for final disposal. Metal racks keep the fuel in safe positions to avoid the possibility of a “criticality”— a nuclear chain reaction occurring.

The maximum temperature of the spent fuel bundles decreases significantly between 2 and 4 years, and less from 4 to 6 years. The fuel pool water is continuously cooled to remove the heat produced by the spent fuel assemblies. Pumps circulate water from the spent fuel pool to heat exchangers, then back to the spent fuel pool. Radiolysis, the dissociation of molecules by radiation, is of particular concern in wet storage, as water may be split by residual radiation and hydrogen gas may accumulate increasing the risk of explosions. For this reason the air in the room of the pools, as well as the water, must permanently be monitored and treated.

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"Obvious catastrophe"? Wow-- definitely don't like the sound of that.

I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again: it's very hard to get a handle on the exact seriousness of the situation. I'm hearing really conflicting things from different news agencies and independent experts, even. Again, I don't think it's anyone's "fault"-- I think it's a natural result of the great complexity of the problem, the enormous sensitivity around communicating developments to the public, and the fact that some of the variables are simply unknown.

The complexity of the problem and the stakes involved make this a really bone-chilling situation.

Yep-I was going to comment on how the news is sometimes conflicting. Heck, even some news headlines conflict with what is inside the respective articles.

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and the water is boiling and dropping//now the temps are rising(slightly) in #5 and #6

France's nuclear safety authority says it classifies the Fukushima plant accident as level six. The maximum is level seven, used only once for the 1986 Chernobyl accident, Reuters reports.(TMI was a 5)

The threat from a nuclear reactor damaged by Japan's huge earthquake is judged "extremely high," AFP quotes France's foreign minister as saying as Japan met with other Group of Eight powers.

Has anyone tripped across how long ago the Dai-Ichi units 4, 5 & 6 were shutdown? From what I recall, those units were in a cold state prior to the quake/tsunami. But I may have confused info with Daini.

At this point I'm not sure if unit 5 & 6 being further away from the other 4 is a good thing or not (with the focus being on 1-4 , 5 and 6 may not be monitored well in the chaos?)

jplv1fuk2s.jpg

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I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again: it's very hard to get a handle on the exact seriousness of the situation. I'm hearing really conflicting things from different news agencies and independent experts, even. Again, I don't think it's anyone's "fault"-- I think it's a natural result of the great complexity of the problem, the enormous sensitivity around communicating developments to the public, and the fact that some of the variables are simply unknown.

The complexity of the problem and the stakes involved make this a really bone-chilling situation.

Agree with your first paragraph in here...I've been very skeptical of anything I see or read unless it's verified by a second news source (ie NHK backing up Kyodo, BBC backing up NHK or Kyodo, etc). In a fast-developing event, details aren't going to be accurate (see Giffords shooting although they are completely different stories...they are still "breaking" events with a lot of information coming out quickly).

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What a mess. Osu thanks for trying to tackle the math. It's confusing I think your numbers make sense.

I'd agree with everything said. This is not yet a chernoybl but then again one reactor went bad there. We have two or three struggling here and also spent fuel. Combined it's a bad situation.

The workers at this plant are true heroes. A lot of them are probably being exposed to some extent and they keep doing their jobs. 50 people to try and control this over 6 reactors...wow.

The water in the spent rod pool is up around 80c, about 20-30c above normal and rising

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What a mess. Osu thanks for trying to tackle the math. It's confusing I think your numbers make sense.

I'd agree with everything said. This is not yet a chernoybl but then again one reactor went bad there. We have two or three struggling here and also spent fuel. Combined it's a bad situation.

The workers at this plant are true heroes. A lot of them are probably being exposed to some extent and they keep doing their jobs. 50 people to try and control this over 6 reactors...wow.

The water in the spent rod pool is up around 80c, about 20-30c above normal and rising

They HAVE to find a way to get water back onto the spent rod pool. No ifs and or buts. If the explosion at #4 means they cannot do that they are in a lot of trouble. Just have to hope they can find a workaround somehow.

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What a mess. Osu thanks for trying to tackle the math. It's confusing I think your numbers make sense.

I'd agree with everything said. This is not yet a chernoybl but then again one reactor went bad there. We have two or three struggling here and also spent fuel. Combined it's a bad situation.

The workers at this plant are true heroes. A lot of them are probably being exposed to some extent and they keep doing their jobs. 50 people to try and control this over 6 reactors...wow.

The water in the spent rod pool is up around 80c, about 20-30c above normal and rising

I was just thinking of that. Risking their lives for the community and country.

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I was just thinking of that. Risking their lives for the community and country.

And world really. Economies are interconnected, if this ever got totally out of control the panic would spread worse than it is now. Markets are hurting.

Three or four explosions and fires alone have made this highly dangerous.

My understanding is the spent rods are encased in boron. Wouldn't that lower the risk some?

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The US Army is taking a larger role in damage control and fire/nuclear suppression.

Yesterday, I was not joking about the suicide workers, in that I felt strongly that these folks would step up to the plate and try to get the job done. It's in there DNA.

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My understanding is the spent rods are encased in boron. Wouldn't that lower the risk some?

then how did they catch fire in the previous fire

How did they catch fire in they are still underwater?I thought they are just boiling now

so many different statements some that are contradicting.

Officials: Spent fuel rods may have burned in blaze at nuclear plant

Tokyo (CNN) -- Spent fuel rods containing radioactive material may have burned in Tuesday's fire at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant -- causing a spike in radiation levels, the plant's owner said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/15/japan.nuclear.reactors/?hpt=T1

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