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Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation
SillySnake writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit. 'With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday."
Also of interest: Cryptome is featuring high-res photos of the reactor site, taken by UAV.
For Technophiles at /. its always "maybe" when things are already happening? Are you living in the past or something?
IMHO, a major thing that seems really stupid was the plants venting the radioactive hydrogen gas into the upper building instead of out into the air. The explosions clearly must have jeopardized the control over the process, since workers got hurt. From what I understand, the radioactive gas could have been vented without any ill effects. I suppose the reactor just isn't built to do that though.
Emotions! In your brain!
I mean, the levels of radiation are well past what previous posts and "calm down advocates" have said "well its not this bad" - it is now.
http://www.spiderbomb.com/blog/?p=317
there are people who are going around and saying 'radiation is good for your health'. but more importantly, there ARE people believing them.
Read radical news here
Yeah, now it's bad, because the reactor containment that "couldn't crack" has cracked. It's still not Chernobyl, though. As in, the boiling-water reactor hasn't popped like a popcorn kernel like one poster professing nuclear engineering/control knowledge described it.
Emotions! In your brain!
here:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11040307-e.html
-Today at around 9:30 am, we detected water containing radiation dose overc
1,000 mSv/h in the pit* where supply cables are stored near the intake
channel of Unit 2. Furthermore, there was a crack about 20 cm on the
concrete lateral of the pit, from where the water in the pit was out
flowing.(We already informed.) During the same day, we injected fresh
concrete to the pit, but we could not observe a reduction in the amount
of water spilling from the pit to the sea.
Therefore, we considered that a new method of stopping the water and
determined to use the polymer. Necessary equipment and experts of water
shutoff will be dispatched to the site and after checking the condition,
we're doing continuous work to stop water by injecting polymer(April 3rd).
-Monitoring posts of No. 1 ?No.8 set up near the boundary of power station
area have been restored. We will periodically monitor the data and
announce the results of monitoring.
This crack maybe explains why the levels of I-131 had not dropped at the same rate than in the previous days in the readings of I-131 and Cs-137 published by MEXT in their readings of radiation and contamination of water by prefecture page. In most prefectures they have dropped to levels that are not detectable but in a few the levels of Cs-137 have increased.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
1000 milisieverts that's twenty times as much as the one-year limit for Radiation workers, meaning spending some time there would make it impossible to survive (8 Sv).
Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation
I skimmed TFA and it seems the "may" was introduced by /. editors and not the evil "mainstream media". There is a leak and it is radioactive water that it is leaking. No maybe. Actually they already planned how to fix it , tried to do so and failed at it.
I think it's been handled pretty well. Nobody has been killed by DEADLY ATOMS, and the only radiological injuries have been skin burns to two workers who ignored their dosimeter alarms. The release of radionuclides into the air has been minimal, and the amounts found in food and water have dropped back below minimum levels in all but the immediate locality to the reactor complex (and the levels there are only above the 'constant yearly exposure' maximums). Reactor core and storage pool temperatures are again under control, and coolant water containment in all but two reactors is unbreached. In one of those, the leak of irradiated coolant is within the reactor complex.
The 'crack' mentioned in this case is not in the reactor containment itself as the summary and article imply, but in a water storage pool next to the sea, with the crack being between the pool and the sea.
Not that lessons can't be learnt from this: gravity-feed coolant reservoirs would be a good idea, as well as separate backups for the storage pools and cores, but it's far from "getting steadily worse".
IAEA Incident page
MIT NSE hub
WNN
Your statement shows not only your ignorance on this disaster and Chernobyl, but on nuclear safety itself. 30 people died in the immediate aftermath of what happened at Chernobyl. No one in japan has died from this reactor yet (although there may be some in the future.)
This reactor was hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, followed up by a 30 foot tidal wave. Had this happened to any other major source of power (coal, natural gas, hydroelectric) the death toll would have been in the hundreds... maybe in even the tens of thousands if it had been a hydroelectric damn.
Please, do some reading so you have some idea of what you're comparing this to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects
Chernobyl was a horrific even, orders of magnitude more devastating that what's happening in Japan right now. Just the initial released was equal to a 50 kiloton atomic bomb going off.
That's the price of the whole damage by the earthquake and tsunami in the whole country. Is obvious that you are against nuclear power but lying is not helping your position. Is possible that people can consume far less energy than what they use today, but will need a enormous change in mentality from the "me" to the "we, humanity" that beside a disasters of this magnitude happening around the world, I don't see what else could make us change.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The $300 billion is for the damage the tsunami caused, and the thousands of people killed. Not just for the damage to the generators.
Haliburton, most likely.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
(yeah, yeah, I'm replying to an Anonymous Coward posting currently rated at -1 Troll)
Let's revisit this question in ten years or so....THAT's when we'll probably see the results of the radiation.
Like smoking, you won't be able to pin a SPECIFIC death on radiation, but you'll see a statistical correlation and perhaps an unusual number of cancers in people in the area... yes, perhaps the cause listed on the death certificate will be "cancer", but there will be a rise in them and that rise is caused by the radiation.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
You have to wonder who actually ordered the gas not to be vented into the atmosphere. If it was the engineers, then shame on them, but I'm willing to bet it was the suits at TEPCO and/or the government. When the disaster first struck TEPCO went out of their way to assuage everyones fears saying they had total control of the situation. Actually venting gas, even if it wasn't incredibly dangerous, would have been admitting failure, even just a little bit. It looks like the suits at TEPCO wanted to save as much face as possible, so they went with the riskier plan even if the worst case scenario was much more dire than if they had released the gas..... or I could just be a conspiracy cook :P
Monstar L
Yeah. We'll just replace them all with coal plants which kill a couple hundred thousand people a year rather than a few every few decades, as nuclear power does.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I don't understand. Can someone translate that into old-fashioned units like luminous watches per hockey game?
Various sources[1,2] indicate a range of 1-100 mrem/hr for a radium watch face, with about 20 mrem/hr looking like a plausible average. 1 mrem == .01 mSv[3], so 1000 mSv is about 5000 watch faces/hr. Apparently a standard ice hockey game is 60 minutes[4], so:
1000 mSv/hr == 5000 radium watch faces/hockey game
[1] http://trusted-forwarder.org/elgin/help/luminous_dials.html
[2] http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/radium2.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League#Game
I was confused by that too. Are we still talking about the reactor pit (which is the sealed containment where the waste is kept in, like a huge jar), or a pit now connected to that one by a crack? I assumed it was a bad translation, and that they meant that "the reactor generates 1000/mSv of radiation inside the pit, and we found a crack in the pit leaking radiation".
Emotions! In your brain!
You're mixing up irradiation and contamination. Contamination means that you carry a radiation source in or on your body (ingested particles, dust on the skin, etc.). Irradiation means radiation is affecting your body, no matter where the source is. Contamination causes irradiation even when you leave the site (until you're decontaminated, if possible). Internal contamination is particularly bad because you can usually not get away from the radiation source anymore. That doesn't mean that "just" being irradiated isn't dangerous.
If you're close to a radiation source, whether you're contaminated or just physically close to a source that is not on or in your body, the radiation penetrates your body and damages the cells. Alpha radiation (helium nuclei) only interacts with the surface and is easily shielded. Beta radiation (electrons and positrons) penetrates a little deeper but can still be shielded. Gamma radiation (electromagnetic waves, beyond x-rays) can not be shielded sufficiently by a radiation suit and penetrates the whole body.
Replying to my comment to note, in the pics link in TFS there's a second page of pics (I almost missed it): http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm
It's not really incompetent engineering IMO. Most of the stuff at the plant was built 30-40 years ago. For its time I imagine the engineering to be very sound.
If you cleared all the regulatory hurdles to building a nuclear power plant and started construction today, you'd be done in 5 years at the fastest. By that time, all of the engineering involved in the plant will, unsurprisingly, be outdated by five years.
I wonder if there's a way to crowdsource conceptual ideas. You start with a basic question like "How do we do this"? and then go from there. If someone asked me what I'd put in such a plant, I'd probably have the radiation-hardened robots placed in strategic locations with Roomba-style chargers.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
A dam used for irrigation and drinking water (much like any hydroelectric dam anywhere in the world) in the hills above Fukushima town failed during the earthquake. The resulting flood killed at least four people and a bunch of others in houses downstream are missing, presumed drowned.
Several dams in the area are known to have sustained damage but many others have not yet been properly inspected.
I cant explain me how you can write such stupid text.
Quite.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't think it was a "perfect storm" of events that took out the plant, rather an inept/corrupt system of implementing nuclear power. I think we have the technical prowess to do nuke power safety, the problem is getting the current corporations and governments to do it properly.
Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.
because I keep hearing exactly 1,000 ... I never hear 1,005 or 1,002 .... I somehow doubt that the measurements are always exactly 1,000 millisieverts
false precision
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
I believe that Chernobyl will be nothing next to this disaster soon.
I don't know about that... one of the big differences here is that the Chernobyl core was actually exposed, and releasing radioactive materials which killed observers over a kilometer away. Look up the "Bridge of Death" in Pripyat.
By comparison, Fukushima is releasing (only) 1000 mSv per hour - this is concerning, and would poison anyone exposed to it, but compared to Chernobyl (estimates there were 350+ Sv per hour - several orders of magnitude higher), not even in the same ballpark. Furthermore, the option still does exist to cover the leaking reactors in a concrete sarcophagus... but things need to get a lot more dire before that happens, because then you have a permanent radioactive structure.
Of course, the fact that the Banana counter at Walmart is actually above the 'allowable' limit might have something to do with it. The limit isn't about safety, it's about placating the ignorant. 1000x LEGAL limit is still what, 100x SAFE limit. There's a BIG difference between them.
What I find most disturbing is the lack of information they are telling us.
Have you seen anything in the news about the reactor in #3 blowing the lid off the primary containment vessel?
The Hydrogen explosions at 1 and 4 were the same shape cloud. It was a gas explosion. Number 3 on the other hand was a tall cylinder explosion with a cap of debris that fell out of the top of the cloud. I have not said anything about it yet as I could not confirm my finding, but today they released the high resolution drone photos. Another item is buildings 1 & 4 blew because of a hydrogen explosion. The hydrogen exploded and the resulting pressure blew the buildings apart. Number 3 on the other hand had a hydrogen explosion after the building ruptured. The big flash of the hydrogen fire lit when the building blew. Listen to the explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ It is different.
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm#20%20March
Reactor 1 and 4 have a more traditional shape for a confined gas explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK0-scxGEak&NR=1
Take a very good look at the photos. Locate the primary containment dome in #4. It is bright yellow just like in the drawings. Note it is NOT in the center of the building. Note the roof truss of #4. The roof blew off, but most of the truss is intact. Now look at the elevation in #4 of the yellow containment dome.
Using that as a reference, now look at #3. Look for anything as high as the dome in #4. In the middle is a rubble pile. Note in the corner of the building in a mirror location to #4 look at the circular hole in the truss. It's where a plume of steam is rising. The fire and charred truss is at the other end of the rubble pile, or over the cooling pond. Where there is supposed to be a yellow dome is a steaming hole. Now look at the roof of the turbine hall next to it. Notice a hole in the roof about the right shape and size for that dome lid to have fallen in?
I'm not sure yet if the core blew off it's lid, but the primary containment did blow the top.
The above is my opinion based on my personal examination of the photos in the link above and the noted difference of the explosion of #3.
Due to the radiation levels, the torris may have ruptured resulting in the top blowing out of the primary containment building. This would explain the relatively low amount of radio active parts blown about the area.
The truth shall set you free!
Because coal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania ) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal ) and natural gas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking ) and dams ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure ) are all 100% safe and contain zero ill effects to anyone, anywhere living within any distance to the source.
I just went with wikipedia because I felt really really lazy. A monkey randomly typing characters into Google search could find something like this without remotely trying. Yes, nuclear power has downsides. EVERY option of generating power has a downside.
Ok, fine, I'll play your little game. Let's shut down and replace every nuke plant with...well...what?
But those deaths were a result of the earthquake, not because of the problems with the nuclear reactors.
I think YOU need to calm down. Nobody is saying that there MIGHT be a radiation leak. There is a leak, and that's confirmed. There's no denying the radiation in the water. The question is, where is it coming from. This cray MAY BE the source of that leak (or it may turn out to be something else, or a combination of several things...they aren't sure yet). If you RTFA:
Nishiyama told reporters on Saturday that the crack "could be one source" of the radiation leaks that have hobbled efforts to quell the damaged reactor.
On Sunday he added: "This(crack in the pit) for the first time clarified the relationship (of the contaminated water) with the sea."
As far as your other comment:
European energy commissioner said 'biggest disaster of the century' over chernobyl, yet, talking heads in mainstream media almost trying to convince people that radiation is good for their health. Despite EPA found 1000 times allowable radiation in groundwater in massachusetts.
LOL...are you expecting me to believe that fukushima is causing massachusetts ground water to be 1000 times allowable levels? Sorry, but that seems INCREDIBLY far fetched...so far fetched, I'm not even sure how to explain it to you. I'll just stick to what the EPA has said: “these detections were expected and the levels detected are far below levels of public-health concern.”
And you think the media is trying to keep people calm? Doesn't seem that way to me. For instance, a few days ago I'm watching the news and they give a teaser for an upcoming story saying that "radiation from fukushima has reached detroit". Then they go to commercial, come back, do another story, then do the fukushima story, which is about 4 minutes long, and then at the very end of the story, they throw in a quick note about "oh yeah, it's about 1/15 of the radiation you get from eating a banana". Seems to me they're more interested in freaking people out for ratings and then just throwing in a calming footnote at the end.
Presumably, we should only see that if radiation levels are significantly higher for most of the population.
Slight increases in radiation doesn't seem to harm us in a way that we can statistically determine. This is easy to show -- most parts of the earth have varying levels of background radiation, due to the type of soil and bedroom, as well as the elevation (Denver receives more radiation than the sea coast, all other things being equal). But we don't detect differences in the cancer rate.
NOTE: This post is mostly recycled from a previous post at the bottom of a thread under the previous Fukushima story. The thread started with a post I made warning that most of the radioactivity leaking from Fukushima was moving downward into the ground and ocean, not upward into the air.
Filling the crack and fixing this leak won't reduce the amount of radioactive material spewing from reactor #2 into the environment. This pit and the concrete with the crack in it were never intended to be part of the containment system. If they succeed, then the HRW (highly radioactive water) will either (a) find another way into the sea, or (b) further contaminant the groundwater, or (c) flood the ground and then do (a) or (b). Depending on the total amount of radioactivity released, it *might* actually be better to pour this HRW into the ocean where it will be diluted down to safe levels.
The term "containment" has a fairly precise technical meaning (BTW: I've got a Ph.D. in nuclear physics but not nuclear engineering). These reactors are basically a bottle in a bottle. The inner bottle is the pressure vessel and it is used to maintain pressure for the creation of steam and electricity. The outer bottle is 10cm or 20cm thick stainless steel. It is called the containment vessel. Its sole purpose in life is to contain all the radioactivity in the event the fuel rods melt down. Normally almost all the radioactivity is contained in the zirconium clad fuel rods. That is why there can be HRW 100,000x higher than the water found in a functioning reactor. Almost all of the radioactivity in a functioning reactor of this type is contained in the fuel rods. When the fuel rods melt down, high levels of radioactive materials contaminate the water making it highly radioactive.
Up until last week, the word "containment" had the simple and obvious meaning of radioactive materials staying inside the massive stainless steel containment vessel. I believe TEPCO forged a new meaning in order to downplay the significance of the HRW that was found in the turbine buildings. I will use the traditional technical definition, not the new one invented by TEPCO.
You see, the idea was that as long as the radioactivity was kept inside the containment vessel then you could safely operate the plant and move around in it. The environment was safe. The control room was safe. The turbine building was safe. Even the reactor building was safe (as long as you stayed out of the containment vessel and storage pool). Everything was safe. One of the difficulties caused by a loss of containment accident is that it becomes difficult and dangerous to work on the plant. That is why they need to pump out the turbine buildings before they work on restoring the cooling. If they hadn't lost containment (in the traditional sense) this would not have been a problem.
The pit, the tunnels, and even the turbine buildings were not designed to contain radioactivity. The buildings were designed, like most buildings, to keep the rain out, etc. For example, right after they had those scary hydrogen explosions that blew apart the reactor buildings, I was assuring people it was not a big deal because those buildings were never designed to contain radioactivity. TEPCO and the government were offering the same assurances.
When I heard about the HRW in the turbine buildings I stopped issuing reassurances and I started to be greatly concerned because it meant they had lost containment. I was hoping against hope that the HRW in the turbine buildings was a fluke and that it hadn't spread elsewhere. When I then then heard the tunnels outside the turbine buildings were flooded with HRW I knew this was a serious accident, much worse than Three-Mile Island. When I heard there were 18,000 tons of HRW outside of containment (that number has now been reduced to 13,000 tons) I knew this was a big fucking deal and I was surprised that the Western press were ignoring these developments even though they had been h
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
It's not the number for Fukushima reactor cleanup.
The Three Mile Island cleanup "took 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million" and was completed in the early 1990s. Here we're talking about a worse accident (not much debate anymore), with 3 operating reactors with damaged fuel, one of which may have a containment breach (reactor #2), and 4 spent fuel pools in various states of damage, and (unlike Three Mile Island) significant amounts of radiological material spread around the region, into the sea, and apparently also into groundwater. Plus there is a lot of damaged reactor building (non-containment-related) to clear away and dispose of before even getting to the difficult stuff, whereas in Three Mile Island the reactor building was fine.
It's a total wild-assed and non-expert guess, but I think a factor of 4 for the multiple damaged reactors, spent fuel pools, and buildings, and a factor of 10 for either cleanup of or losses in the surrounding region (which were insignificant in the case of Three Mile Island) would be conservative. If people can't safely come back to their homes and businesses, can't fish the waters or farm the land around there anymore, it will be very expensive. Make a reactor cleanup an even billion for inflation since the 1990s for Three Mile Island and do the math. So, yes, 300 billion is an exaggeration. We're probably "only" talking about tens of billions, maybe "only" 10 billion via the economy of scale from dealing with 4 reactors at the same site as they learn how to do it. But it's definitely billions.
The 300 billion is the number being bandied about in news reports as an estimate for the total tsunami reconstruction costs.
I think this is more among the lines of "Guantanamo was not as bad as a Soviet gulag".
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I don't know about that. The Japanese are already very focused on the "we" over the "me"; they are quite efficient and frugal. The average Japanese makes personal sacrifices that would be unthinkable for Americans: living in tiny homes, relying exclusively on public transportation (or bikes), rigorous classification of garbage... Yet the actual reduction in energy usage is not that large. Not to mention that lifestyle choices are determined by both infrastructure and societal factors, both of which take decades to change. It's not like Americans can "buckle up" and their energy problems will be solved, or even significantly improved, tomorrow.
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm
includes lots of ground and non-aerial photos.
I am sure, I was counted among "victims" of Chernobyl disaster, too. If you are reading this in US, I am probably healthier than you are.
If you're anything like the Ukrainians I've met, you likely have larger breasts.
It's clearly a problem, but it's not like the radiation travels through the water and up into the air.
Look, I'm pro-nuke too but you're just making us all look bad at this point.
1) This is a catastrophic failure of the first order, and claiming that it's not that bad because the reactor didn't go "BLOOEY!" makes people think that could be a possibility. It's not reassuring.
2) Attempting to put a best-case spin on every aspect of the situation is entirely unhelpful. Nobody prepares for the best, they prepare (or should) for the worst. This isn't something people should be calm about, this is something people should be rational about. There's a difference.
3) Your grade school science teacher is shedding a single tear.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
From NHK:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/03_11.html
Tokyo Electric Power Company has said two employees who had gone missing since the March 11th disaster were found dead at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The bodies of Kazuhiko Kokubo and Yoshiki Terashima, both in their 20s, were found in the basement of the turbine building for the Number 4 reactor on Wednesday.
They had been carrying out a regular check-up at the plant.
The chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said in a statement that the company is extremely sorry about losing two young employees who had tried to maintain the plant's safety in the midst of disaster.
Sunday, April 03, 2011 13:02 +0900 (JST)
Rest in peace.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The sad thing is that they have done it properly, you can only see Fukushima Daini and Onagawa NPS that survived without mayor problems the earthquake and tsunami. Hell, you can even point to Fukushima Daiichi units 5 and 6 as a proof that those installations were secure. The big question will be why units1 to 4 weren't upgraded to the safety levels of the other reactors.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The government needs to get their power company out of the picture and work on real solutions
They would, but magic wands capable of dispelling multi-Sievert-level ionising radiation are highly restricted after the unfortunate international incidents which led to the 1948 Treaty of Avalon and the 1949 Geneva Conventions on Thaumaturgical and Faerie Invocations.
I'm sure no head of state wants to see a repeat of those dark post-war years when entire European cities were instantaneously converted to chocolate pie, rose petals, or in one particularly gruesome case, a gigantic olive martini.
A few thousand deaths by radiation are a small price to pay for a safe, non-magical future.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You can't compare #3 with #4 because #4 was shut down for refueling. During refueling, the containment cap is lifted off and laid down off to the side, probably in the corner. For example (this is not the same facitlity), here's a pic of the containment head being lifted off http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/headlift.jpg
And here's another pic that shows refueling underway. http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/rflg-fl2.jpg
Notice the dome sitting on the floor in the back, out of the way. That is probably analogous to what the pictures of Fukushima Daiichi #4 building are showing. You can't assume the containment head position would be the same in the other reactor buildings.