[delnisfernan]

Meltdown Threat Rises at Japanese Nuclear Plant - FoxNews.com

This is full of crap.

The issue they are fighting is decay heat. The decay heat dissipates over time, but a long time. It's like charcoal briquettes in your BBQ. You close your BBQ lid to starve the fire of oxygen, but the briquettes are not going to cool down immediately.

They performed a SCRAM at all 3 reactor vessels. All the control rods are pushed FULLY IN for all 3 reactors, so free neutrons are fully moderated. And the Chernobyl explosion thing is impossible since these reactors are in a containment vessel, the RMBK reactor design was a giant reactor with no containment at all, and a crappy sensor design in that reactor didn't allow engineers to see a steam pocket at the bottom of the reactor that contributed to the H2 explosion inside the core.


There is a meltdown going on at Fukushima, but it's probably only a partial meltdown, and certainly not to the severity that it would tear off the bottom of the reactor vessel or the several-feet-thick bathtub floor the reactor rests on. The design should allow it to pool at the bottom of the vessel and hopefully if they are cooling the outer casing with liquid nitrogen they should be able to keep the lava in that container until they come up with a way to dilute the corium. Dumping lead on the corium to alloy it with the uranium is what the Soviets did to arrest the fuel. That should work here.

Radioactive seawater with strontium and cesium is gonna make its way into the ocean, no doubt. But that's less of a price to pay than a full meltdown that regains full criticality and would need to be covered with lead to re-cool it and kill the melt.

Moving the USN away from Fukushima is probably a good idea. The prevailing winds right now are blowing out to sea, so if they proceed with larger pressure releases that's gonna spew more hydrogen gas, along with strontium, cesium particles and krypton gas.

[Uojeyak]

Moregovtmeat is bringing the goods to this thread .. even tho I feel I am reading Japanese w/ all this nuclear engineering jargon (lol)!

Meat .. in laymen terms ... are the Jap's fracked or will it be contained?

[uncoodync]

BBC News - Japan earthquake: Explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant

[uncoodync]

Japan earthquake: Officials say nuclear catastrophe averted - CSMonitor.com

[fount_pirat]

For now....But Nuclear power is still safer then other forms of energy...


But of course some will take this as a "point".

[MrGunjMan_]

For now....But Nuclear power is still safer then other forms of energy...


But of course some will take this as a "point".

I've come around to the opinion that nuclear power IS part of a better, more environmentally sound energy future. That said, builing the plants in a seismically active area is not a good idea. Case in point--Diablo Canyon was built to withstand a magnitude 7.5 `quake, which is ridiculously inadequate. But, just because building nukes in some locations in a bad idea, it doesn't mean all of them are no matter where.

[delnisfernan]

The explosion was a pressurized hydrogen gas explosion. They let out too much superheated steam from the reactor at the same time they were drying to flood the core with seawater mixed with boric acid.

Luckily this didn't cause enough damage to the reactor vessel so for now it seems the fuel is still cooling down and should be safe to go in there in about a week

However the reactor core is now directly exposed to the outside. The slowly video shows the containment buildings roof being blown off.

This is NOT the same incident as Chernobyl.


They already slammed all the control rods into the core. The problem is the core takes a long time to cool down if you can't run enough chilled water through it so it was still creating super pressurized steam.


Chronobyl was a complete core meltdown with a steam explosion inside the reactor vessel itself with a runaway reaction of fuel. That spewed contamination everywhere.

3 Mile Island was also just as serious since half the fuel decomposed and it came very close to breeching the reactor vessel.


If the Fuki reactor is mostly stable with miniml damage it may be possible to wait for criticality to come to a complete halt and the fuel can be removed, the containment building to be repaired and the reactor to be repaired.

[delnisfernan]

Btw the Fuki reactor no 1 was built by GE in 1970. That the reactor vessel has managed to survive all of this trauma and not result in a meltdown is a testament to our engineering and excellent Japanese and foreign engineers. This reactor is also a very simple design which is easy to manage.

TMI was a reactor with a pressure steam component in it that amplified the complexity of the plant and help contribute to the TMI accident.

Now that the hydrogen problem is gone thanks to the explosion, cooling the reactor vessel should be a lot easier although I know the public is freaked out by the sight of an explosion.


An H2 explosion is a lot better than huge volumes of Krpton gas and fuel getting outside in an area where transportation gas been completely severed from the outside world.

[iuopyra]

CTV Winnipeg- Quake shifted island, sped up Earth's rotation - CTV News

Early data from Japan suggests the earthquake moved the island about 2.4 metres, according to Kenneth Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency compared information from a GPS station that had moved by more than two metres with satellite images from Japan.

[cabonuserollyo]

If the Fuki reactor is mostly stable with miniml damage it may be possible to wait for criticality to come to a complete halt and the fuel can be removed, the containment building to be repaired and the reactor to be repaired.

I heard on BBC that once the area was flooded with sea water, it's a loss. Something to do with the salt water going into areas it was not designe for.

[delnisfernan]

Well it looks like the Japanese gov't is lying. Now there is talk of a meltdown at Unit 1. The new pictures show the entire top 1/2 of the reactor building was blown clean off. They should have already verified by now whether the reactor vessel is intact. The gov't would have rushed that information out if they new it was intact.

If they're still trying to cool the reactor at this point it's clear that they don't have every control rod fully jammed down. Even for a 1,000MW light water reactor it would have cooled off by now. They must have some sort of containment problem or they're trying to ascertain what the real state of the core is.

Post explosion there's probably gonna be some loss of information with instruments damaged n

[Acciblyfluila]

The spokesman I just watched on NHK World seemed evasive and like he wanted to run. I bet the guy behind
him had a pistol.

[Michmant]

You would think the Japanese would shy away from nuclear power.

[fount_pirat]

Well it looks like the Japanese gov't is lying.

Well that is the Japanese goverment or ya, they rather save face then fest up.

You would think the Japanese would shy away from nuclear power.

You'd think, but they have 53 nuclear power plants that provide 34.5% of Japan's electricity.

Nuclear power in Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[RaicickKida]

meltdown

Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News - msnbc.com

[fount_pirat]

Partial meltdown:

"We are assuming that a meltdown has occurred" at a nuclear power reactor, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary says. - This Just In - CNN.com Blogs


A meltdown may have occurred at at least one nuclear power reactor in Japan, the country's chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said Sunday.

He also said that authorities are concerned over the possibility of another meltdown at a second reactor.

"We do believe that there is a possibility that meltdown has occurred. It is inside the reactor. We can't see. However, we are assuming that a meltdown has occurred," he said of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility. "And with reactor No. 3, we are also assuming that the possibility of a meltdown as we carry out measures."

Edano's comments confirm an earlier report from an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, who said, "we see the possibility of a meltdown."

A meltdown is a catastrophic failure of the reactor core, with a potential for widespread radiation release. However, Toshihiro Bannai, director of the agency's international affairs office, expressed confidence that efforts to control the crisis would be successful.

[MrGunjMan_]

You would think the Japanese would shy away from nuclear power.

It's not so much the Nukes, but the giant monsters they have to worry about.

[MrGunjMan_]

Partial meltdown:

"We are assuming that a meltdown has occurred" at a nuclear power reactor, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary says. - This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

And another on the way. BBC News - Japan quake: Problems for second nuclear reactor

[RaicickKida]

And another on the way. BBC News - Japan quake: Problems for second nuclear reactor

I have friends in Japan and they said they are being told it's a meltdown over the radio. Latest Dead is 3000.

[Jerwittdergut]

The media is being highly and sickeningly irresponsible in reporting this. I hope to high heaven nothing has gone wrong; noone has any facts apart from that there was a hydrogen bubble blowout. I'm not saying its a good thing, but thousands of people are known to have died by everyday WATER and EARTH, and the ******* giddy reporters trying to goad scientists in saying the word "meltdown" and going into hysterics over pretty photos showing smoke billowing off a still intact but most likely damaged core which, by the way, hasn't gotten to the point where it has melted through to the containment vessel. It sure is a good thing that there is nothing else is actually going on to report in Japan, giving "journalists" free time to cook up doomsday scenarios.