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No Fuel In the Fukushima Reactor #1
An anonymous reader writes To nobody's surprise, the Japanese press reports that a new way to look at the inside of one of the Fukushima 1 damaged reactors has shown the fuel is not in place. Engineers have not been able to develop a machine to directly see the exact location of the molten fuel, hampered by extremely high levels of radiation in and around the reactors, but a new scan technique using muons (details on the method in the media are missing) have shown the fuel is not in its place. While Tepco's speculation is that the fuel may be at the bottom of the reactor, it is a safe bet that at least some of it has burned through and has gone on to create an Uruguay syndrom.
It's Japanese for "China Syndrome"
I think they are trying to be clever and play on the term China Syndrome, where the fuel melts all the way through the earth to it's Antipodal point.
But since this is Japan, the author speculates that the antipodal point is somewhere in Uruguay, which it is not (it's kinda close though).
You can check here: Antipodal Map
it s a reference to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome
An attempt to be cute with the concept of the "China syndrome," but since the reactor is in Japan you name somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. This is actually a marginally better form of cute since China and the US are both in the Northern Hemisphere, and Japan and Uruguay are actually separated by the equator as well. Your seemingly self-sustaining molten nuclear fuel melts its way through the earth - then up and out the other side (*eye twitch*).
The problem being it's utter bollocks. Anything that becomes molten will mix into the fuel and dilute it, lowering the reaction rate and moving you further and further away from a self-sustaining reaction.
The real concern is that you melt through the containment vessel (apparently not likely; but then explosions within the containment vessel and seismic activity aren't helping you any), through the earth, and down to the water table so that there is a steam explosion. That potentially scatters the nuclear fuel and fission products out the containment vessel.
Remember, building one at fukushima-Daichi contained a G.E. mark one (BWR) which has holes in the bottom that the control rods would supposedly use. If the fuel is not in the core it would quickly have melted the seals around those holes and oozed into the CV ( 'containment' vessel ). On estimate, it would only take about four hundred pounds of corium ( melted fuel globs) to burn through the CV bottom. This would have taken less than 24 hours from the initial incident. Since the core contained tons of material it is impossibly naive to believe that it is even remotely contained. BUT more importantly, since reactor #1 doesn't have any core material , and it was one of the least spectacular 'explosions' at the plant, How can Tepco get anyone to believe that the really spectacular explosion at three did anything less than blow core materials through the roof like the world's nastiest party popper?
Continental US, that is. Looking at the linked map, looks like Botswana is opposite Hawaii.
It was never a serious name. The famous movie itsself even pointed this out - it said that in practice the fuel will burn down until it hits groundwater, then disperse in a steam explosion.
Yes, the parent post regurgitated in greater length the dialogue from a pop culture source that the grandparent regurgitated in lesser length. Quickly, mods, we need both these posts at +5 Funny, ASAP!
That is in fact actually what it refers to.
In North America, we call it the China Syndrome because China is opposite North America on the surface of the planet.
Uruguay is approximately opposite Japan.