Fukushima No. 1 loss of coolant due to earthquake 7

[trottiey]

The most credible source of news continues to be World Nuclear News, although they have a new article for March 12th. I should have been checking there all along:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_earthquake_reactors_1203111.html

The nuclear accident has claimed its first fatality. A different worker has received a dose of 10.6 rem.

They're saying that the outer concrete building does not act as containment. There's another concrete containment structure nested inside it that is still standing. They have a couple of nice diagrams of it.

 

[rmw]

I have been following that site since hotown posted it above second post of this thread. It seems to have the most knowlegeable and objective news unlike the 24 hour channels that seem fixated on the words "explosion" and "meltdown".

byrdJ, Whew..... I never knew who she was, but I was worried that you might be a fan..... LOL

I am afraid that overall this is strike 3 for Nuclear power in the USA. Maybe not elsewhere in the world, but here, sorry, but yes. TMI was strike 1, Chernoyble strike 2, and this is probably the end of Nuclear power as a generally accepted form of power generation for as long as any of us will live to see it. The sierra clubbies must be dancing in the street.

As an engineer, I hate it, but that is reality with our fickle public and their ability to be manipulated by the media.

rmw

 

[electricpete]

From your link:

Nevertheless the amount of radiation detected at the site boundary reached 500 microSieverts per hour - exceeding a regulatory limit and triggering another set of emergency precautions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

1 Sv = 100 rem

If my math is right, the hourly dose at the site boundary would be
500 uS * 1E-6 S / (uS) * 100Rem/S = 0.05 Rem/hr = 50 mRem/hr

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[electricpete]

It sounds like the coolant system and containment are relatively intact, but relief valves being used to keep coolant pressure within limits and venting used to keep containment pressure within limits.

Tepco has said that the pressure within the containment of Fukushima Daiichi 1 reached levels of around 840 kPa, compared to reference levels of 400 kPa.

What is a reference level... similar to a design limit?

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[electricpete]

I am falling off my chair. CNN has nuclear expert "Bill Nye the Science Guy" (yes you heard me right) interpretting events. He explained the significance of Cesium. Something along the lines of "It is an absorber of neutrons... it is used in the control rods to control the reaction" (paraphrased).

Guess he never heard of fission products. Amazing.

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[rmw]

ByrdJ,

Nice link.

I read a lot of Fermi's stuff, but most of it is based on normal procedures and that includes normal emergency procedures.

I tripped a power plant once and put a whole (islanded) city in the black and one take-away I will never forget is how helpless the plant was with no power.

Yes, the DC pumps protected the turbine as it coasted down, and yes, I had a boiler full of steam (every safety on the blasted thing was screaming), and yes, there was air (while it lasted), but there was no cooling water and with no heat sink, I couldn't use the steam to drive anything even if I could have manipulated the valves. The air didn't last long enough for the operators to dash next door and get the stand-by combustion turbine (black start - air) cranked.

The city didn't begin to recover until a portabale trailer mounted trailer mounted compressor owned by the sewer dep't was brought in to provide air to start the standby CT. The situation in Japan is much more complicated than that.

I make the above point to say that once the auxiliary generators are defunct all bets are off and normal emergency procedures are out the door.

Who knows what is really going on in the hell that is their world right now?

rmw

 

[electricpete]

I'm still falling off my chair laughing. CNN went back to their heavyweight scientist Bill Nye again with the same question "What is the significance of the Cesium" and he repeated the same wackiness..

It is truly amazing they can't do better than that.

As a small proof of this circus, I took a picture of my TV (attached). You can see one of the two banners at the bottom reads "Bill Nye: Cesium is used to slow and control nuclear reactions".

By the way it is true that Cesium does absorb some neutrons, but it's not like it's something that is built into the reactor ("used") and certainly not part of the control rods. It is a fission product which appears as a result of nuclear fission. There would be some trace amounts present in the coolant of even a healthy reactor, and if fuel cladding is breached, then much more.

I'd love to find a link to that interview on youtube. It has not much information value but a whole lot of entertainment video.

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[unclesyd]

There was just snippets from a news conference where the spokesman for Nuclear Agency stated that seawater was being used to cool reactor @3 as well as #1. All I caught about the presence of Cesium was it wasn't at dangerous level.

rmw,
I shutdown anywhere 1 to 5 power boilers several times, with radiation. My deeds were th prelude to Con Edison's loos Big Bertha.

 

[trottiey]

The March 13th article from our favorite source is here:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Venting_at_Fukushima_Daiichi_3_1303111.html

If they follow the same pattern as the last two articles, they'll be updating this every couple of hours.

 

[trottiey]

Best picture of the explosion damage so far:

http://resources1.news.com.au/images/2011/03/13/1226020/537109-fukushima-daiichi.jpg

If you compare to this diagram, it looks like the crane deck is gone, but the concrete is largely still standing:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/uploadedImages/wnn/Images/bwr cutaway.jpg

 

[Power2go]

For those interested there is a Wiki page on this plant which is updated with the latest news on the explosion. Follow this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant

And further, could it be that the SoS Hillary Clinton referred to helping the Japanese out with Borid Acid when she referred some time ago that the US would sent "coolant" to Japan?

 

[unclesyd]

It looks like they are getting ready to admit a partial meltdown in #1 Reactor, this is in the form of,"few few may have been compromised" "a few fuel rod casings may have been damaged" along with quite a bit of dancing around the questions.

#3 is going through the same cycle as #1 and they are mentioning possible H2 explosion as happened in #1.
Lets hope the #3 outer building is frangible like #1. I pickup that the the failure mode of the building was not d design, but a happening.

How effective is Boric Acid compared to Metallic Boron. They used Boron Metal at Chernobyl as the melted core was exposed.

 

[owg]

rmw has suggested that this may be strike 3 for nuclear power. That was my initial thought too, however on further consideration I wonder if this 40 year old design is finally shutdown safely, it might be a sign that safe design is possible even around the ring of fire. That should encourage those of us who live near the middle of the tectonic plates to continue with a nuclear power program.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[electricpete]

I'm sure spin doctors on either side will claim a victory.
[*]Anti-nukes will say it proves nuclear power is dangerous.
[*]Pro-nukes will say look at how superbly the reactors did absorbing the most severe one-two punch imaginable, with only a very modest release of radioactivity... and that release was intentional to reduce pressure to preserve integrity of the containment pressure boundary.

Neither will mean much until the unit is stable and we understand the full extent of any release and we have a full understanding of what happened.

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[alehman]

This gives an idea of the extent of the damage to the plant area. Most of the damage appears to be at the water front structures and not much inland.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou....421638,141.034497&spn=0.005888,0.009495&z=17

Alan
“The engineer's first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.” Unk.

 

[Power2go]

Thanks alehman for the interesting link. I have studied the image of the situation after the tsunami and came to some maybe interesting conclusions. I took a screen shot of the plants 1-4 buildings and compared this to the situation before the tsunami.
I have marked the "after" screen shot and added a picture of the plant in side view and have attached these to this message.

What you can see on the "after" picture is that the water did not go very far on land at the plant as there is a large raised area behind the plant which must be about 10m. I have marked the max waterlevel on the road. Most of the waves will have been disolved by the breakers in front of the plant and the structures in front which are badly damaged as you can see. Notice the parking lot on the top left of the picture which on the "after" is full of cars. I have also included a "before" and "after" screen shot of the village just north of the plant which is heart breaking to see when you think how many people must have died there.

 

[vanmorrison]

A star for Power2go. I apprecicate your before and after visuals and your compassion.

Regards,
Van

 

[electricpete]

Previously there was an explosion at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1

CNN just reported an explosion at no 3. I found a brief mention here:

http://twitter.com/REUTERSFLASH

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[electricpete]

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFTKB00732520110314

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[Zogzog]

They just had another quake and are about to get hit by another Tsunami in a couple minutes. Not good.