Cosmic Rays To Reveal the Melted Nuclear Fuel In Fukushima's Reactors

the_newsbeagle writes: Muons, produced when cosmic rays collide with molecules in the atmosphere, are streaming through your body as you read this. The particles pass through most matter unimpeded, however they can interact with heavy elements like uranium and plutonium. That's why engineers at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant are using muon detectors to look for the melted nuclear fuel inside the plant's three melted-down reactors. By determining where muons are being diverted from their paths, the detectors create images of the blobs of fuel. That's necessary because nobody knows exactly where the radioactive gloop ended up during the meltdowns.

Comments

Re:gloop

[PPH]

Gloop is an element. TFS didn't say exactly which isotopic form of Gl they are looking for.

Muon images of the shadow of the moon

[mbone]

Muon shadowgraphs of the Moon, a signature of the Moon's cosmic ray shadow on the upper atmosphere, are a common way of testing neutrino detectors buried under a km or more of rock. (Muons from the atmosphere tend to be the major source of confusion for such detectors; that's why they frequently do best looking down, as muons can't go through 12,000 km of rock.)

Oh, and archeologists have used muons to look through the Great Pyramid.

We've been using muon detectors for over 40 years

[tlambert]

We've been using muon detectors for over 40 years to detect nuclear-related activities in various countries, including reactor installation, stockpiling, bomb-building, and so on. One of the reasons for the ability to move MX missiles around underground was so that long term muon detector observation by the Soviets could not pinpoint the location of the missiles.

Test it out at Chernobyl

[danbert8]

I wonder if we can get some good images of the elephant feet that are all over that building...

Re:gloop

[necro81]

The industry term for the mixed, melted contents of a reactor core is "corium". It's a mix of fuel rod assemblies ( fuel and fission products, additives, moderators, salts, and cladding), fuel rods (zirconium), and containment vessel (stainless steel), all compounded with reactor water and whatever additives were in it. In a theoretical worst case, you get to add in some concrete from the floor of the reactor building, too.

In short, about half the periodic table.

America's Dark Nuclear History

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever talk turns to Fukushima, I'm always surprised at how little is known of the dark side of America's nuclear history.

Did you know the first meltdown in the U.S. was in Los Angeles? And the reactor had no containment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_FCvbc0cNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPk9kEaSyAY

Did you know about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and it's ten reactors? Four of which had nuclear accidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

And this is only a very small part of the story. Be glad you are not raising a family in Canoga Park.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[ihtoit]

Three words: Port Chicago Fire.

I'm not at all convinced, from reading eyewitness reports, that that wasn't a nuclear pile going supercritical.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[khallow]

Did you know the first meltdown in the U.S. was in Los Angeles?

No, it was the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 in Idaho, a bit over three and a half years earlier.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Sarten-X]

You're not the first to claim such madness. Maybe you'll finally be the first to find hard evidence, or perhaps disprove the small mountain of evidence (like having precisely zero radioactive debris) against your theory.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Sarten-X]

Probably because it was a catastrophe on a military base in the middle of an espionage-heavy war.

The explosion would certainly have been powerful enough to breach containers holding classified information, which would then be scattered with the rest of the debris. To allow civilians in to investigate would also have opened unnecessary risk that enemy spies could find useful information and smuggle it back to their employers.

The radioactive fallout from an actual nuclear disaster is particulate. Even if an attempt were made to bury the debris, there would be enough dust in the air that the whole area would still have detectable radiation levels decades later.

The "unanswered questions" line is an old staple of conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the reality is usually that the questions don't need to be asked, because their answers don't actually disprove the commonly-accepted theory.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Sarten-X]

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were detonated in the air, so they produced very little radioactive fallout, which spread out over a very large area. In contrast, an explosion at ground-level like you're proposing happened at Port Chicago would pull debris from the ground into the fireball, so the resulting fallout dust would have been bigger and heavier, and created a more concentrated contamination in the local area. It would be similar to what was seen during the Chernobyl disaster, where an explosion threw debris into the air.

Chernobyl is still radioactive today, and it's easily detectable even beyond the original blast range due to the spread of the fallout. If a nuclear bomb had detonated at Port Chicago, it would have been at ground level (unless you're suggesting an airstrike) and would have produced a large amount of dust. To have undetectable levels of radioactivity by the time civilians were looking at it (Vogel started his research in 1980), either there was a massive cleanup and decontamination effort that happened with nobody noticing, or the explosion simply wasn't nuclear.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Required Snark]

You can walk to the Port Chicago site; I've been there. It's a nice walk by the Suisin Bay on the Carquinez Straight between Martinez and Pittsburg. There is a national historical monument to the disaster, but it's not at the explosion location.

The speculation that it was an atomic explosion is a paranoid fantasy. Given the technology of the time, a ground level explosion would have produced so much radioactive fallout that it would still be detectable today.

Then there is the issue of the situation at the loading docks. This was the era of the racially segregated US military, and the majority of the sailors at the installation were African American sailors, with white officers. Most of the people killed were the black sailors. Afterwards, some of the men refused to resume work under such dangerous conditions, and were courts-martial for mutiny and jailed.

Given the reality of a segregated Navy, it is inconceivable that something as important as an atomic weapon would be assigned to the Port Chicago facility. In the real world, the nuclear components of the bombs dropped on Japan were accompanied by scientists and technicians from Los Alamos for assembly on Tinian before the flight missions.

While this training was taking place, the components of the first two atomic bombs were shipped to Tinian by various means. For the uranium bomb code-named "Little Boy", fissile components consisted of a cylindrical target and nine washer-like rings that made up the hollow cylinder projectile. When the bomb detonated, these would be brought together to create a cylindrical core. The uranium-235 projectile and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis, arriving 26 July. The Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7 and L-11. L-1, L-2, L-5 and L-6 were expended in test drops. L-6 was used in the Iwo Jima dress rehearsal on 29 July. This was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was test dropped near Tinian by Enola Gay. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb. On 26 July three C-54s of the 320th Troop Carrier Squadron left Kirtland Army Air Field, each with three of the uranium-235 target rings, and landed at North Field on 28 July.

The components for the bomb code-named the Fat Man arrived by air the same day. The bomb's plutonium core (encased in its insertion capsule) and the beryllium-polonium initiator were transported from Kirtland to Tinian by C-54 in the custody of Project Alberta couriers. Three Fat Man high explosive pre-assemblies designated F31, F32, and F33 were picked up at Kirtland on 28 July by three B-29s, two from the 509th and one from the 216th AAF Base Unit, and transported to North Field, arriving 2 August. The B-29s were Luke the Spook and Laggin' Dragon of the 509th, and 42-65386, a phase 3 Silverplate of the 216th AAF Base Unit. F33 was expended during the final rehearsal on 8 August, and F31 was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. F32 presumably would have been used for a third attack or its rehearsal.

Assembled nuclear bombs were never shipped in a configuration where a nuclear explosion could occur. Claiming otherwise is ridiculous. It's the fantastic logic of a day dreaming 9 year old boy.

So I suggest that you perform an experiment. Get a radiation detector and go to the site. Spend a day looking around. If the weather is nice you will have a wonderful time. And you will find no trace of radiation, or any sign of an explosion at all. Then you can take the radiation detector home and look for the radioactive mind control scorpions that the CIA has planted in your basement.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Sarten-X]

Um, yes.

My point was to illustrate how atmospheric nuclear fallout behaves in a ground burst vs. an air burst, which is quite well understood, thanks to the many tests conducted during the Cold War. Chernobyl was simply a convenient example of ground-based fallout. The Japan bombings are good examples of air-burst fallout, but that's irrelevant to the Port Chicago explosion.

That brings us back to the original point: if the Port Chicago explosion had been a nuclear accident in any way, it would have had detectable fallout decades later, primarily because it would have been a ground burst. Since there's no fallout, there's no evidence of nuclear material in the blast, either as the source or even nearby ordnance.

Similar explosions can be created with very large amounts of conventional explosives, which is exactly what the official story says happened, and the transport records provide evidence as to exactly how much materiel was present at the time of the incident.

Re:America's Dark Nuclear History

[Sarten-X]

the official line maintains that the Salomon Brothers building fell at 4.58pm when in fact it was still standing behind a BBC reporter for an entire 23 minutes after that while she was on the air delivering a live report from the scene.

A quick check shows that the official reports claim it remained standing for an entire 23 minutes after 4:58pm.

I do not believe the official reports when they blatantly lie like that. I want to see the EVIDENCE.

You have the evidence at your disposal. You can do the research to understand the entirety of the situation, and reach a valid conclusion. Instead, you've choose to ignore reality and ask for "evidence" that you refuse to understand.

At least your world will always remain exciting.

You know...

[jamiesan]

You've got to remember that these are just simple sub-atomic particles.

They are unstable. Common clay of the elements.

You know... Muons

Re:gloop

[ihtoit]

nope. Absolutely the worst, most vile, toxic and unpleasant half.

The rest is made up of unicorn farts, smurf cum and angel titty.

Re:'Ended Up'....

[jklovanc]

Not really.

In reality, under a complete loss of coolant scenario, the fast erosion phase of the concrete basement lasts for about an hour and progresses into about one meter depth, then slows to several centimeters per hour, and stops completely when the corium melt cools below the decomposition temperature of concrete (about 1100 C). Complete melt-through can occur in several days, even through several meters of concrete; the corium then penetrates several meters into the underlying soil, spreads around, cools, and solidifies.

Re:gloop

[Mr.CRC]

Fluorine and chlorine are trivial to handle compared to high level radioactive isotopes.

There are few things more unsettling than a substance where a dust sized speck can fry you within a few hours (if inhaled or otherwise ingested) or days (stuck on your exterior).