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Fukushima: What Happened and What Needs To Be Done
IndigoDarkwolf writes "The sometimes confused media coverage around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant left me wanting for a good summary. Apparently the BBC felt the same way, and now delivers an overview starting from the earthquake and concluding with the current state of the troubled reactors."
Pity that the nuclear problems seemed to overshadow all the vastly more important and tragic aspects of the quake and tsunami.
The reactors did not blow up. The reactor vessel is located inside of a concrete containment structure, which is inside of another building. The explosions happened in the outermost building due to vented hydrogen.
http://nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/ they have good daily updates. at the bottom of the current days update there is a link to the archives
The Japan Times reports:
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
If the levels they are reporting are correct then every hour (for a few hours) Fukushima was releasing roughly 0.1% of the total release from Chernobyl. If those levels were maintained for a day (which they were not), that would be almost 2% of Chernobyl per day.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
The "building" that blew off is just a light screen around the reactor building itself. It's very light weight panels hung on an equally light frame, designed to screen the reactor building from view. Nothing else. A relatively small explosoin would blow the panels off. They did not "prevent" the second explosion; it was a calculated risk necessitated by a release of steam and hydrogen from the overheated core.
If you've been following the IAEA blog it's serious but not out of control.
This comparison is misleading, even if the raw amounts of radiation are comparable. The radioactive materials released from Fukushima Daiichi when those readings were taken have a half-life of minutes and don't pose a health hazard outside of the really close vicinity. The materials released from Chernobyl were much more dangerous, as they have a half-life of a couple hundred years, and only negligible amounts of those have been released from Fukushima.
Bottom line: this accident is not at all like Chernobyl, even though the "OMG RADIATION SPEWING FROM REACTORS!!!!!!" media likes to think so.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
Slashdot will be swamped with nuclear power industry apologists pretending "Not much and nothing" happened. Dissent will be modded to oblivion.
Reality will continue to disagree.
Then, as per Slashdot's usual and customary behavior, nuclear power haters will chime in with some hyperbolic argument in the opposite direction, citing such illustrious sources as YouTube, Wikipedia and the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, someone will opine that it's George W. Bush's fault (or Dick Cheney, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or the Easter Bunny). Several hundred posts will go back and forth covering exactly the same arguments and counterarguments as the last 200 times these subjects were brought up.
The minuscule but apparently earth shattering differences between Democrats and Republicans will be brought up again. Op Cit.
An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Day 1 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment is fine, no radiation will leak
Day 2 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment is fine, radiation leaks are minor
Day 3 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment breach hardly matters
Day 4 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's minimal danger
...
Day N - pro-nuclear activists claim nobody could have predicted a Tsunami on the Japanese coastline
We all use electricity. And we're using more and more of it as time goes on. Coal releases tons of radiation and kills miners as well as being horribly dirty (there is no such thing as clean coal). We're running out of oil and it pollutes. Wind isn't always blowing or in the right place, sun isn't always shining or in the right place, water isn't always available for dams or in the right place and kills huge aquatic populations, not all of the population lives where tidal generators are a possibility... we're running out of options if we want electricity. Nuclear is great for providing a base generating capability, and there's not a whole lot else right now that's feasible or economical, especially considering the amount of nuclear waste we're planning on storing under a rock in Nevada.
Hell, the Fukushima reactor mostly survived the 4th largest earthquake since 1900. And that's a 40 year old design. We're talking the same year that the Intel 4004 was released. That's a hell of a testament to the design of modern nuclear power plants that are more efficient and even safer.
Yes, shit happens. Fukushima failing is horrible. But it's like being afraid of flying when you're perfectly ok with riding your bike, even though you're much more likely to die.
It's not "nuclear apologists". It's realists who want to maintain our standard of life, and understand what acceptable risks are. Life is all about risk management, and flipping out about the word "nuclear" is very poor risk management.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
It's nice that the Beeb has released this fairly calm and unbiased recap, but less sensationalistic coverage from the start would have been a whole lot nicer.
I've been watching the coverage of this story on a bunch of different sites for the past few weeks, and this is the best I've found - the MIT nuclear science and engineering site. Well written factual articles about the situation, almost entirely devoid of speculation and fearmongering, along with background articles on stuff like how toxic Plutonium is, how radiation doses are measured, etc.
Unfortunately Ivo Vegter is entirely correct: Every mainstream journalist out there should hang their heads in shame in regards to how their profession has covered this incident.
Everything depended on the assumption that the coolant had a backup system.Once that assumption was mooted by the tsunami, the flaws in the rest of the system became known.
Not really. The real assumption that failed was that even if there was a complete loss of power in the plant, power could be reasonably quickly (8 hours) provided from outside the plant. The problems escalated because no supplies were available due to tsunami devastation, not even freshwater. The power grid was so damaged that an extra cable had to be laid to get any external power.
One of which is that once you lose cooling and can't get it restarted, you will inexorably have to vent hydrogen into a closed space full of air. Another is that there is no way to vent it to the outside to reduce the effects of an explosion.
The hydrogen was vented inside the containment on purpose, to allow activation products to decay. It could be vented outside the containment, but this would increase the radiation emissions, which the operators desperately wanted to minimize at that point. Hydrogen explosion was deemed an acceptable risk. It looks like this kind of mindset, "reduce public radiation exposure at all cost", is what caused the situation to escalate.
Another is that if the cooling system is completely bunged, there's no way to throw external coolant on the thing that has any effect.
The design assumption was that once cooling completely fails, the reactor will be drained, sealed and allowed to melt down. But this would necessitate a very costly cleanup which TEPCO wanted to avoid.
And another is that they stored the "spent" fuel rods in bunches in what is basically an open swimming pool, so that any chance it gets to evaporate the water around it will result in a fire.
Storing them elsewhere would necessarily expose the workers to more radiation. The point of the temporary storage near the reactor is to allow the fuel to lose most of its radioactivity before it is moved to a longer-term storage location.
What's criminal here is that these things were known to be bad assumptions long ago, but these reactors were operating as originally installed.
Each of the design considerations had a lot of thought behind it. The real problem is that the nuclear safety regulations are not based on a realistic risk analysis, but on fantasies (e.g. child drinking maximally contaminated water for an entire year, or somebody eating exclusively spinach for an entire year). As a result, the operators focused minimizing public radiation exposure rather than on stabilizing the facility, which was actually counterproductive.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
We need to accept that we are not capable of cutting through the BS and making clear decisions where highly toxic, unstable, and corrosive substances are handled in a complex manner for great profit (hundreds of millions of dollars).
Put another way, we need trusted technologists to tell us if things are safe or not. Apparently these can be bought when there is lots of money to be made.
At best, people don't think clearly. At worst, we are being lied to and as a result people die and whole regions are rendered toxic.
According to the Nuclear Energy Agency the majority of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl was in Xenon-33 with a half-life of 5 days. This was followed by Iodine-131 (half-life 8 days) and Tellurium-132 (half-life 78 hours). The next most active element released (measured in Becquerels) was only 3% of the Xenon released, and it has a half-life of 13 days.
If I read the report from the NEA correctly then ISTM I was comparing apples to apples.
Furthermore, unless one or more of the reactor cores at Fukushima has gone critical again after the shutdown then any direct product of the fission reactions that has a half-life measured in minutes was gone after the first day of the accident, well before the meltdowns and hydrogen explosions and measured releases of significant amounts of radioactivity.
There are certainly very short-lived isotopes that are part of the decay chain of long-lived isotopes. Iodine-131 is a perfect example. The problem is that they will continue to be created for the duration of the longer-lived isotopes.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
There are a couple of issues I have seen in the reporting and comparing the report to the photos.
First is regarding the build up of Hydrogen. Some hydrogen build up over time is what has been portrayed. The actual is Zirconium is flammable the same as Magnesium and Titanium. All burn in water or steam. If you have ever seen a magnesium engine block hit with a fireman's hose, you get the idea. Powdered Zirconium is considered an explosive. Fine Zirconium wool as used in flashbulbs, but in an oxygen atmosphere. The reaction with water or steam starts at lower temperatures. The reaction is exothermic. The fuel itself adds heat. At temperatures near 800-1,000 C the reaction changes to a fire. This rapid oxidization of the Zirconium is the source of the rapid and LARGE release of Hydrogen. In the presence of burning Zirconium, there is no free Oxygen so in the presence of this ignition source there is no ignition of the Hydrogen in the Hydrogen/steam cloud. After the Zirconium burnt, the air in the room was then able to come in contact with glowing fuel pellets. This resulted in the ignition of the hydrogen.
From a few days ago, there was a report of some fuel rods found up to a mile away and was bulldozed under to shield them. They don't say much about the containment in #3 other than to say it may have been breeched. That is an understatement. Look up and spend a good amount of time watching videos of demolitions of buildings. Note the blast and resulting dust. The flash happens first then the building breaks. Explosions in #1 and #4 are consistent with the shell and a hydrogen explosion inside. The flash is over before the building ruptures. The ejected material is limited in distance and the blast shape is relatively uniform.
Watch the video of #3. There are some striking differences from anything already seen. First as the building ruptures, there is a large flash, much of it is OUTSIDE the building. Ignition may have been triggered by the blast and was due to the blast. Second using Newton's laws, look at the stuff ejected in the blast. This blast is far from uniform from a blast in the top of the building. At the end of the video, note the very large amount of heavy objects falling from the top of the blast dome. Unlike the other blasts, there are large holes from large heavy objects falling on the turbine hall. These are not from the roof of the building. The blasts from #1 and #4 do not have large heavy itmes falling out of it.
Examination of the high resolution UAV photos raises some more concerns. The containment may have been breeched, but most reporters are citing a lack of evidence of this. I'll tell you where to look. Look on the two pipes that run along the turbine buildings. Look between the turbine hall for #4 and the #4 reactor. Remember those pipes are about 10-12 feet in diameter each. Look for onsite vehicles for size references. Note the object sitting on both pipes. It is covered with dust from the #4 unit explosion. Zoom in and take a good look at it. Knowing the width of each of the pipes and the fact it is resting on both of them, guess it's width. Now look at he edge of the item. Care to guess how thick it is? Now note that it has a painted surface. Under the dust layer it is clearly Yellow. Care to guess what it is and where it came from?
While looking at the high resolution photos from the UAW, look next to the reactor 3 building where the pile of plumbing is lying next to the building. All that plumbing is uniform is size. I'm thinking that is scattered fuel rods from the cooling pond. I think the cooling pond is gone and the steam rising form #3 is not from the pond, but form the containment known as the dry well. I can not tell from the photo if the reactor lid is in place. I'm guessing either a hydrogen buildup in the dry-well exploded or the lid to the reactor blew off. This resulted in the outer containment breech shown in the video. This breech then released the contained Hydrogen which then ignited, This is seen as the flash outside the building.
The truth shall set you free!
The waste is the biggest problem?
1. No civilian spent fuel was ever accidentally or on purpose released into the environment, even though transportation of it is common. Soviet military waste was sometimes dumped directly into rivers, but this is really unrelated to nuclear power.
2. The only person that ever died from civilian spent fuel was a guy that got ran over by a train during an anti-nuclear protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_S%C3%A9bastien_Briat
3. If someone used only nuclear electricity (average U.S. electricity consumption) from present reactor technology for their entire life, he would generate about a soda can of waste.
4. Vitrified nuclear waste is completely insoluble in water. It's rather hard to spread it over a large area. Even if it was just dumped into the ocean, there would be no harm to humans - the waste would bury itself in the seabed. We are not using this solution because Greenpeace and other assorted clowns do not understand anything about marine biology or oceanography. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96oct/seabed/seabed.htm
5. Even if the waste does somehow escape into the environment, it is very easy to detect this. Radiation detectors are very cheap and compact compared to the laboratory setups needed to analyze chemical pollution - so cheap and compact that every radiation worker has their own detector that keeps track of their exposure. This fact facilitates cleanup operations.
I can understand the uneasy feelings, but let's have some perspective. This isn't even as bad as the hazardous chemical waste we already have to deal with (e.g. from semiconductor production, mining and metallurgy), which unlike nuclear waste will remain toxic forever.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
I humbly submit the radical notion that instead of a need to produce more electricity, people could learn to use less.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Radiation released by coal, of course, is harmless and does not elevate cancer risks, right? Has only a short half life, does it? Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):
Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 2,039,709 tons
Currently hooked on AMP
"Technically "meltdown" simply means failure of the primary cooling system"
You are 100% wrong.
"A nuclear meltdown is an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency[1] or by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[2] However, it has been defined to mean the accidental melting of the core of a nuclear reactor,[3] and is in common usage a reference to the core's either complete or partial collapse. "Core melt accident" and "partial core melt"[4] are the analogous technical terms."
And although nuclear reactors might be safe while they're operating, they still produce a lot of radioactive waste. This is waste that has to be stored for over 10,000 years. No one on this planet has done anything that could possibly qualify them to design a vessel to store radioactive waste for a period of 10,000 years. Our knowledge of everything from how materials degrade to geological events that could happen simply is not accurate out to 10,000 years. Sure, I guess we could try to maintain the storage site for 10,000 years, but consider that no civilization on this planet has lasted even half that long. (China comes close at 4000 years).
Generating large amounts of nuclear waste is simply reckless given the problems it can cause and how qualified we are to deal with it.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
citing such illustrious sources as YouTube, Wikipedia and the Daily Mail.
AFP
Kyodo earlier reported that preliminary figures from the country's Nuclear Safety Commission revealed the battered plant had released 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material per hour for several hours.
That calculation prompted Japan to consider upgrading the accident to the highest level -- something that has only been given to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster -- Kyodo said, citing unnamed government sources.
According to the International Nuclear Events Scale, level seven incidents are ones with a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
BBC News
"Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) may face as much as 2 trillion yen ($23.6bn; £14.5bn) in compensation claims, according to JP Morgan.
The company has been grappling to contain the radiation leak crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
On Tuesday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the severity of the nuclear crisis at the plant to level 7.
Washington Post
Japanese authorities planned Tuesday to raise their rating of the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis to the highest level on an international scale, equal to that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, according to the Kyodo news agency.
Officials reclassified the ongoing emergency from level 5, an “accident with off-site risk,” to level 7, a “major accident.”
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I agree with most of your first three paragraphs, but the second two dealing with the UAV photos I have to rebut.
Note the object sitting on both pipes. ... guess it's width. Now look at he edge of the item. Care to guess how thick it is? ... Under the dust layer it is clearly Yellow. Care to guess what it is and where it came from?
You're implying that it's part of the containment vessel. Let's look at a specific picture for comparison: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/pict10.jpg
My origin is at the upper left. The object you're describing is at X:20%, Y60%. Note the thickness of the cut off pipe at X:70%, Y:30%. This is thin walled stuff. In other photos you can see the twin pipes are at the same level as that raised section, and similarly supported. The containment vessel is very thick and heavy. If that was the dome or another section of the containment flung from #3, it would have destroyed or at least damaged the pipe. My analysis: It's just a chunk of wall, similar to the chunks laying in front of #4.
... look next to the reactor 3 building where the pile of plumbing is lying next to the building. All that plumbing is uniform is size. I'm thinking that is scattered fuel rods from the cooling pond.
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/pict6.jpg - Are you referring to the stuff to the lower-left of the steam, and similar-sized stuff strewn across the top of the turbine hall? I think it's too big to be fuel rods, and too small and mangled to be fuel assemblies. It looks like structural steel from the building.
Lastly, if the stuff flung up in the explosion was fuel rods or containment chunks, we'd be seeing much higher radiation levels in the vicinity of the #3 building. Instead the high levels are centered around #2, where there *was* an explosion inside containment that caused a breach.