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Fukushima Finally Reaches Cold Shutdown
mvdwege writes "The BBC reports that the reactors at Fukushima have reached cold shutdown, meaning they no longer need active cooling to stay at safe temperatures. Plans can now be made to start the cleanup of the site. Unfortunately, TEPCO has also admitted not all problems were out in the open until now; an estimated 45 cubic meters of contaminated water have leaked out of cracks in the foundation of a treatment plant."
The corium is all over the floor under the reactor pressure vessel in Unit 1. It's unknown how much it has melted through. This whole event proves that authorities cannot be trusted during a crisis.
Duh!
Sky did not fall, Japan is not irradiated wasteland, Fallout is still just a game.
Finally the truth? What else are they keeping from us.
Aren't they supposed to be inspected for this sort of thing on a regular basis? How the heck did they pass safety inspections with cracks that weren't properly sealed? I suspect that, although they've reached cold shutdown, the "fallout" from this incident is not yet done.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Or maybe more than just that.
Ever since the meltdown, the whole concept of a REACTOR has been bunk. There IS no reactor, and there hasn't been one since the fuel melted through. There is a lot of material undergoing fission, but it is NOT a reactor (or reactors) anymore. Journalism has been on on the downhill for as long as I can remember. Sigh.
In units of volume, that is 12,000 US Gallons, or 45,000 liters.
Also, about ¾ the volume of a typical 40' shipping container.
What a relief! I wonder when they'll start moving people back into Fukushima Prefecture. I can't wait to sink my teeth into some Fukushima vegetables and I know you feel the same way.
When do you suppose that 12 mile radius exclusion zone will be lifted? This decade or next?
Now that we've decided that the maximum radiation dosage for a Japanese child is the same as an American nuclear worker, it's only a matter of time before they play in the shadow of Fukushima again!
And let's not forget how much better Tokyo is with 30% less electricity.
...an abuse of the definition of shutdown. Reality check: - 3 melt-throughs - melted cores outside pressure chambers - compromised secondary containments - nuclear fuel and fission products escaping into water and air - corium so radioactive it cannot be approached even by robots - precarious leaning of number 4 spent fuel pool - widespread plutonium, caesium etc. beyond evacuation zone - significant contamination in food - yet to come: increased malignancies and birth defects Does this sound contained to you? Seriously...
Or at least the suspicion there may be seepage through cracks in the foundation. It was in the news quite a while ago, I guess they just released some numbers now and that's what the article was referring to? It's not the first "spill" either, one of the pools overflowed and some water was released into the ocean.
Meanwhile, half a million people are homeless, about twenty thousand are dead. And all everybody cares to talk about is that some nuclear reactors weren't safe enough (through neglect of safety updates during the last three decades) to withstand a tsunami. If you criticize TEPCO for neglecting tsunami protection, why don't you criticize the whole Japanese government for neglecting tsunami protection along all of the coast?
Sure, the "reactors" have reached "cold shutdown."
How is this possible, you might ask?
Simple, because the fissile material is _outside_ of the "reactors."
'nuff said.
hope some people can finally take a breather, it's only been... 9 months...
That's like nothing!
Kill yourself.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111216p2a00m0na002000c.html
The 10s of millions of Sangokujin, ethnic Koreans and Taiwanees and South East Asians and Southern Chinese who look like Koreans, who were expatriated from their home countries during Nippon's years of Colonial Conquest from about 1890 through 1945 even though now born in Nippon but who by Federal laws are not Nipponise, i.e. they have the designation of Perminent Foreign Resident, will now be bus loaded back to the Fukushima area to work and absorb the radiation from the various nuclides released in the disaster to re-become the subjects of the Emperior.
They had to redefine "cold shutdown" to get there. Normally, cold shutdown of a reactor means temperature is below boiling and pressure is at 1 atmosphere. It's then possible to take the lid off the reactor and replace fuel rods.
Humans still can't enter the containment, and probably won't be able to do so for decades, if not centuries. So cleanup is going to have to be a robot job. Some kind of machinery is going to have to go in there and take the core apart, transferring each bit into a separate storage container.
Strangely, Japan seems to be behind the US in mobile robots for doing heavy work. They had to send to the US for iRobot units just to look around inside the containment, and for remote-controlled concrete pumping trucks to pour in water.
Can you really take seriously anything these corporations, or GO's have to say on this matter?
In fact, I recently discovered the following dispersion model, which someone had linked to Berkeley’s discussion page. It uses TEPCO emission data to model possible dispersion patterns for Neptunium and Plutonium
http://www.datapoke.org/blog/89/study-modeling-fukushima-npp-p-239-and-np-239-atmospheric-dispersion/
http://datapoke.org/partmom/a=114
If this model is accurate, it is very disturbing. Why haven't we heard about plutonium dispersion from TEPCO or any other governmental organization?
"Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. " -- J. Frank Parnell
Skeptics worry that the readings would be inaccurate if the melted fuel rods punctured their containment vessels and fell to the bottoms of the outer containment tanks. TEPCO has not been able to take direct measurements of the temperatures at the bottoms of the containment vessels, and the site is still too radioactive for the fuel rods' status to be visually confirmed.
("Skeptics cast doubt on Fukushima status, even as Japan declares nuclear reactors 'stable'", Arthur Bright, 16 DEC 2011, The Christian Science Monitor)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
BMOC: Containment has almost nothing to do with cold shutdown.
According to TEPCO, it does:
TEPCO: Definition of "Cold Shutdown Condition": ... Release of radioactive materials from PCV is under control and public radiation exposure by additional release is being significantly held down.
(Roadmap towards Restoration from the Accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 17 Nov 2011, Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, Government-TEPCO Integrated Response Office)
TEPCO *is* changing the standard definition of "cold shutdown" somewhat. Now, they have *added* a containment requirement, so they're not really loosening any standards. Of course, normally "cold shutdown" doesn't include a containment requirement because normally the reactor vessel isn't breached.
zeigerpuppy has a point in that "cold shutdown" normally implies a state of normal control. Cold shutdown typically means the reactor is stopped, doesn't need active cooling, and can be safely opened for maintenance. Fuku is still an active disaster site.
I'm not advocating panic (what's the sense in that?), but fair criticism of TEPCO is, I think, well-deserved.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Shutdown means that the temperature of the cores is in a safe state. However, they still need cooling through the emergency cooling system which was installed after the disaster. When the cooling system fails, it can become critical again. And as the cooling system is not stable enough to sustain earthquakes or another tsunami, they are far away from a safe. At least that is what the news tell us here.
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make install -not war
A cold shutdown is a known and documented stable safe state, exactly defined in the specification of the reactor.
In the case of Fukushima 1 to 3, there is no shutdown whatsoever, because the state, shape and even the location of the cores are all unknown.
calling this a "shutdown" really is a joke. Not a funny one.
So the plant has cooled down a bit but the workers at that plant will be dying off for years to come. They were not paid to glow in the dark and die of cancer.
Considering the source, TEPCO, I'd hold off on the celebration. They've been caught lying several times so far. Hope it's true but lets get a report from a third party.