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In 1959 a little known Nuclear Disaster only 30 Miles from Downtown Los Angeles began to unfold at an important Cold War facility located in Simi Valley. Simi Valley is an incorporated city located in a valley of the same name in the southeast corner of Ventura County, California, bordering the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
A 2.800 acres large Nuclear Site was built in the hills of Simi Valley a town of 8000 (back in the 50's. Current population 124,237 in 2010) The complex built there Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is also an complex of industrial research and development facilities.
Watch 8 min Video about the Simi Valley Nuclear Disaster
Several Experimental Nuclear Reactors have been tested at this facility that the Atomic Energy Commission hoped could become commercially viable. One of the reactors at Simi Valley used Sodium instead of Water as a coolant of the Nuclear Reactor Fuel. It was known as the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE). But the experiment went horrible wrong, triggering an technological nightmare putting Nuclear Disasters like 3-Mile Island to shame. What happened at Simi Valley turned out to become the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. With amounts of
radiation leaked to the environment and atomosphere more than 240
times that of the accident at 3-Mile Island. But none was told about this.
5 weeks after the Nuclear Disaster the Atomic Energy Commission released an press release claiming that only 1 Nuclear Fuel Rod had been slightly damaged and NO Radiation had been released into the environment. However that is far, far from the truth.. The Atomic Energy Commission was trying to cover up the fact that 13 Fuel Rods had been damaged and High Levels of Radiation had already been released from the failed experimental nuclear reactor. 1/3 of the Nuclear Fuel had experienced melting, it was one of the worst Nuclear Accidents in the history of the U.S and the Atomic Energy Commission lied about it.
All this would have never been disclosed at all if it was not for Daniel Hirsch's
student Michael Rose. The SSFL facility has had some 24 nuclear accidents
over the years. These accidents go by the name "excursions" to hide the seriousness of the situations from the common public. There have
been several non-nuclear accidents at the site as well. A most recent one
(that are known to the public) occurred in 1994 when one scientist was killed an
another was seriously injured while trying to (illegally)dispose of
chemicals by burning them..
Arnie Gundersen came out with a new video talking about the danger of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and it's Spent Fuel Pool. I am sure that the most of you have already heard that if / when Unit 4 collapses it will bring on the evacuation of Tokyo and probably all of Japan as we know it. The reason why this is so, is that in the Fuel Pool at Unit 4 the combined amount of old and new Fuel Rods stored there are so great that if the rods hit the ground and they will catch fire, they will spew out more Cesium 137 than all the Atomic Bomb test's that have been done in the entire history of mankind. Try and imagine this, only if we were detonate 800 Nuclear Bombs at Fukushima we would achieve the same level of contamination.
Arnie say something very important in the beginning of this video, he talks about that once the rods catch fire they can't be put out anymore. And no amount of water will extinguish the flame, in fact water would make it worse!! And they will continue to burn. This would become an even bigger ongoing contamination of the entire world, but to make matters even worse it would be impossible to stop.
When I see these things happening to Japan and think about their past I can't shake the feeling how all this have changed their culture. After WW2 with the destruction caused by nuclear weapons on the Japanese people, this was the first use of Atomic Bombs and no one had ever seen anything like it. The destruction, the defeat was so great their culture changed. Their way of thinking and looking at the world changed.
Have you ever seen young boys and girls that are from war zones paint? They don't draw happy images, their imagination most of the time goes to something much more darker than other kids.
This can be clearly seen if you watch some Japanese Movies. Godzilla comes to mind, the big creature that comes up from the sea and destroys everything in it's path. It's very different from Hollywood if you start to think about it. But it all works out in the end.. Somehow.. But this time, I'm not so sure..
OK back to the video. For you that can't watch the video below is the transcription for you to read, I included pictures from the video also. And you can also watch this video on the Fairewinds site along with the transcript.
Transcribed - The Truth and the Future -
Maggie Gundersen: Hello Mr. Hirose and hello people of Kansai. I am Maggie Gundersen. I am the President and the founder of Fairewinds Associates and the founding director of Fairewinds Energy Education non-profit.
I am here today with Arnie Gundersen, my husband, and Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Associates. We are here today to talk to you about the triple meltdown at Fukushima-Daiichi. We hope to answer all your questions. I wish we could have joined you in person, but I thank you for watching this video and please send us any follow-up questions. We will be happy to answer them. Now let's bring Arnie into this conversation. Arnie, how dangerous is the situation now at Fukushima-Daiichi Unit 4, particularly in Japan with its continuous danger of earthquakes and seismic activity and chance for an additional tsunami.
Arnie Gundersen: Unit 4 has always been my biggest concern. If you watched our website on the very first week of the accident I was saying that if Unit 4 were to catch fire, you would have to evacuate Tokyo. As a matter of fact the book that we wrote talks about that a lot. It is really important and it remains the biggest concern that I have about the Fukushima site. Unit 4 has more fuel in it than any of the other units in the complex, but more importantly it has the most recently used nuclear fuel. And all of that fuel is outside of the containment. So that would make it dangerous enough. Except that also, of course, Unit 4 has had a series of explosions and is weakened structurally. Before it might have withstood a 7.5 earthquake. I believe that the structural damage to Unit 4 is so great that if there is a 7.5 earthquake, it will not withstand it.
Here is what would happen if Unit 4 were to crack and the water were to drain out of the nuclear fuel pool. The fuel is hot enough that it needs to be water-cooled.If air is all there is cooling the fuel, it will burn. It will burn the zircaloy cladding on the fuel, (and) will react with the oxygen to create a fire. And it is a fire that once it starts, cannot be put out by water. Water would make it worse. So the nuclear fuel would have to burn completely before the fire would ever go out.
In the process, all that radiation would go up into the atmosphere and blow all over Japan and all over the world.
There is as much cesium in the fuel pool at Unit 4 as there was in all of the atomic bombs dropped in all of the tests in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, and into the 1970's. All of the above ground testing has less cesium in it than is in the reactor pool at Fukushima 4 right now. So it is a grave situation. I don't believe that the Japanese Government is moving fast enough. If there is no earthquake, the plan to remove the fuel slowly is going to be adequate. But we cannot wait on Mother Nature. We have to quickly move that fuel out of that pool and onto the ground. The key here is quickly. The Japanese Government finally just this month came up with a plan to build a building around the fuel pool building and begin removing the fuel in 2013 or 2014.
I said that that is what they needed to do on the Fairewinds site in an interview with Chris Martenson a year ago. These things have been evident, but TEPCO is not moving fast enough and the Japanese Government is not pushing TEPCO to move fast enough either. I think the top priority of TEPCO and the top priority of the Japanese Government should be to move the fuel out of that pool just as quickly as possible. And in the meantime, they need to strengthen that pool to make sure that it can withstand an earthquake. Remember, that pool is not in a containment. You can look down in a satellite and see the nuclear fuel. The roof is blown off. And that is what makes it dangerous.
In America, we had the Brookhaven National Laboratory do a study to examine what would happen in a fuel pool fire. Brookhaven National Labs determined that there would be 187,000 people who would develop cancer from a fuel pool fire. It is a serious concern and I do not believe that Tokyo Electric and I do not believe that the Japanese Government is taking it seriously enough. For the last year I have been working with Akio Matsumora and finally it appears that the world community is listening to Akio Matsumora's concerns about the pool. We need to tackle this as a concerned world community and encourage the Japanese Government and encourage Tokyo Electric to solve it quickly.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie you mentioned cesium in your earlier discussion. Why is it important? What is the health effect of cesium and are there any other radioactive isotopes that would have been released during the triple meltdown?
Arnie Gundersen:Cesium is one of many radioactive isotopes that are created in a nuclear reactor. It has got a 30 year half life which means that it hangs around for 300 years and biologically it mimics potassium. You might remember that if you have a muscle cramp, you eat a banana and it goes to your muscles and relieves the cramp. Well, cesium also goes to your muscles. It is called a muscle seeker. When it goes to your muscles, it can cause cancer, but it can also cause a variety of other illnesses.
The Brookhaven study only looks at cancer. It does not look at all the other things that radioactive cesium can do. In young children with rapidly developing muscles, especially their heart muscle, it can create something called Chernobyl Heart which is damage to the heart muscle, which once it is damaged, never ever recovers for the life of the child. So cesium is just one of many isotopes, but it is relatively easy to measure and also biologically causes almost the most damage of any of the other isotopes that are in that reactor.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, you have said that you believe the explosion at Unit 3 was a prompt criticality. What is a prompt criticality and why do you believe that?
Arnie Gundersen: I developed my concern about a prompt criticality because of the nature of the explosion in Unit 3. Unit 1, when it exploded, blew sideways and with relatively low energy. You can measure the rate at which it moves and it moves less than the speed of sound. And that is called a deflagration. It does not do anywhere near as much damage. When I looked at the explosion on Unit 3, however, it was entirely different. You can see it, it is not hard to see. It is called a detonation. The speed at which Unit 3 exploded was faster than the speed of sound. And the important thing is not how Unit 3 exploded. What is the most important thing is that it exploded with a detonation, not a deflagration. The nuclear industry is not paying attention to this now, but it should be, because a nuclear containment can handle the slow moving deflagration, but it cannot handle the fast moving detonation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community are absolutely ignoring the fact that a detonation occurred in Unit 3.
Well how did a detonation occur? That was the question I asked myself. I checked with chemists and atmospheric pressure and hydrogen will not create a detonation. Like on Unit 1 it will only create a deflagration. So I needed to figure out how a detonation could occur. But there are a couple of other clues here. One clue is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission way back in March of last year, wrote a report that is on our website, that talks about nuclear fuel being deposited on the site and nuclear fuel being discovered as far away as two kilometers.
How can nuclear fuel get blown out of a nuclear reactor? The fuel that is inside the reactor is also inside the containment and there is no indication of a massive containment failure and a massive reactor failure that could have thrown the nuclear fuel out. So I had to come up with a reason that the nuclear fuel could have been released in pieces, not little fine atoms, but in pieces which is what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says was discovered.
The only way that could happen is if the explosion occurred in the fuel pool at Unit 3. Now if you look at the video of Unit 3, the very first frames show the explosion occurring on the side of the building and that is the side of the building that has the nuclear fuel pool. It started on the nuclear fuel pool side and then worked it's way up into the massive cloud that you see. So what could have caused that? That is the question. Hydrogen would have been above the nuclear fuel, it would have been a gas above the nuclear fuel and if it had exploded, it would have pushed the nuclear fuel down.
That is not what happened. Remember, we have fuel fragments found off-site. Something had to lift the nuclear fuel up. The only thing I could determine is that it was a criticality in the fuel pool that caused the fuel to lift up. The division I ran built nuclear fuel racks for boiling water reactors exactly like Fukushima. The dense fuel racks that are now in every reactor everywhere are very close to becoming critical anyway. And in the accident situation where there was seismic event and explosions occurring, it is likely that they were very near to becoming critical. And what that means is that they were very near to becoming a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Way back in college 40 years ago, we watched a movie called the Borax Experiment. You can find it on the web today. The explosion at Borax was a prompt moderated criticality. It looks almost exactly like the explosion in Fukushima unit 3. So an image I had from 40 years ago led me to conclude that the same thing happened in Unit 3. That a criticality occurred in the fuel pool and it pushed some of the nuclear fuel up into pellets and the pellets wound up scattered around the site.
Now, the criticality is called prompt moderated criticality. It is not a bomb. A bomb is a prompt fast criticality. This reaction occurs slower than a bomb, but faster than what occurs inside a nuclear reactor. The Borax experiments were designed to test just how violent that reaction could be. I think if you look at Borax and compare it to Fukushima Unit 3, you will see that there are an awful lot of similarities.
Again this is a theory, but it is the only theory that accounts for the explosion occurring on the side where the fuel pool is, and it is the only theory that creates the uplift force that caused the fuel particles to be thrown about the site and discovered as far as 2 kilometers away.
Well there is one more piece of evidence and that is that the roof over the fuel pool has been totally destroyed whereas the roof over the nuclear reactor and the containment, collapsed downward. We talk about that in a video on the site as well and I think that is another important indication that whatever it was that caused the fuel to lift occurred on the fuel pool side of the building, and not in the middle where the nuclear reactor was.
The videos after the accident and after the explosion show containment leaks as well. You will see in the weeks afterward, steam coming from the center of the building. And I believe that the containment lid lifted on Unit 3 and never went back down straight, so it has lifted and twisted sideways and radioactive gasses are lifting from that containment lid. But there is not enough evidence to say that that is what caused the explosion that we saw during the accident. The jury is still out and will be for 10 years until we get inside the Fukushima reactor to see what the damage is. But right now, I think my theory accounts for the damage, the speed of the shock wave, and also the fact that the contamination has been found as far away as 2 kilometers.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, let's talk about the Unit 4 spent fuel pool. There have been a lot of questions about that and a lot of concerns right now. Was there a hydrogen explosion at the Unit 4 spent fuel pool and if there was, what is a hydrogen explosion and why would it have occurred there?
Arnie Gundersen: One of the biggest mysteries at Fukushima is how did Fukushima Unit 4 explode? There are a couple of very, very grainy videos that clearly show it did explode. It was a different type of explosion and perhaps a fire and an explosion that went on for a period of days. So exactly how it did explode is one of the big questions about the Fukushima accident.
There are 3 competing theories. Tokyo Electric says that the radioactive gasses over in Unit 3 went through a pipe that connected Unit 4 and entered Unit 4 causing Unit 4 to explode. So Tokyo Electric's position is that the radioactive hydrogen that was created in Unit 3 went through a pipe, entered Unit 4, and there it exploded. There is one piece of evidence that supports that. There is some contamination in some filters in Unit 4 that would indicate that gasses did come from Unit 3.
So that is a possibility, but I do not think it is accurate because I believe that the containment was so damaged on Unit 3, that there was no pressure to push those gasses into Unit 4. I can't understand how the gasses, what the mode of force was to push those gasses into Unit 4. I think the hydrogen explosion came from something in side Unit 4 itself. There are two possibilities there.
One is by Dr. Gen Saji and it is an excellent analysis. He believes that the hydrogen in the water in the pool that was dissolved because of the radiation in the pool over months and months and months, was enough to cause the building to explode. As the water got hot in the fuel pool, it liberated the hydrogen that was in the water and that hydrogen was enough to cause the explosion.
The second possibility, and this is my theory, early on in the accident, there is some video that is up on our site, that shows that the top of the fuel racks were exposed to air. I am not suggesting that the entire fuel pool ran dry. But the top of the nuclear fuel I believe was exposed to air and I think the photos show that. So if the top of the fuel was exposed to air, it is possible that a reaction could have occurred at the top of the fuel that would have created enough hydrogen to blow the building up.
Dr. Saji and I agree that the hydrogen came from the Unit 4 fuel pool. He believes it was dissolved in the water. I believe it came from the fuel. Only time will tell when we get in to analyze the reaction. But there is an important lesson here that the nuclear industry is not taking into account. And that is the fuel pool temperature. The fuel pool is a large pool and it can boil locally. And that is something the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community is not looking at. You can get local boiling in a pool even though the bulk temperature of the pool may be at 80 degrees Celsius. In portions of the pool, it can be boiling. That supports Dr. Saji's comment that as it boiled it would liberate hydrogen, even though the bulk temperature never ever exceeded boiling.
My theory is that I do believe that the entire pool had drained to the point where there was boiling occurring. But the real issue here is that the nuclear industry is not looking at the fact that localized boiling can occur even though the bulk temperature might be less than 100 degrees centigrade.
That is an important distinction moving forward. We have about 23 of these Mark I reactors in the United States and there are another 10 or so around the world. I think that we need to design these pools so that the hydrogen generated by dissociation can be accommodated without exploding the building. No one ever designed for that because no one ever anticipated it happening. But it did happen at Unit 4 and we need to prevent that in the future. Not just on these Mark I reactors but on the 400 reactors that all have fuel pools that are all susceptible to that identical type of failure.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, I want to follow up with a few more questions. In your discussion of Unit 4, you have talked about its hydrogen explosion. Is there any chance of a prompt criticality or a hydrogen explosion now at Unit 4? Would anything cause it to release more fuel or more radioactivity?
Arnie Gundersen: The fuel in the fuel pool at Unit 4 has now been cooled for about a year after the accident and it had been removed a couple of months before that. So the fuel is becoming cooler. It still needs to be water-cooled for another 2 years, but it is much cooler than it was at the beginning of the accident. So the chances of hydrogen generation are much, much lower now than when the accident occurred. So I do not believe that we are going to see an explosion in the pool now, no matter what happens.
My biggest concern is that if the pool loses water, then it is an entirely different story. So if there is a large seismic event that causes the building to topple, or the pool to crack and the water to drain out, there is not enough cooling in the air of that fuel, and it will start to burn. Now the consequences of that are depending on which way the wind is blowing, it could mean the evacuation of Tokyo as a worst case. It could also mean cutting Japan in half so that the northern part is separated from the southern part by a band of contamination. So this is a very serious accident waiting to happen and we just all have to pray that an earthquake does not happen before that fuel is removed.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, compared to the accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, how dangerous are the radioactive releases from the four reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi?
Arnie Gundersen:Three Mile Island was a level 5 accident and Chernobyl and Fukushima are level 7 accidents. That means roughly that Three Mile Island was a 100 times less than the accident at Chernobyl and the accident at Fukushima. People did die as a result of the accident at Three Mile Island. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says no, no one died, on their web page. But the evidence is clear that there was an increase in cancer. I refer you to Dr. Steve Wing's report that is also on our site that talks about it. And in addition some reports coming out of the University of Pittsburgh indicate just now that we are beginning to see leukemia as a result.
So while Three Mile Island was much less than either Chernobyl or Fukushima, people did die as a result of the radiation released. At Fukushima-Daiichi the evidence tells us that at least three times more radiation in the form of noble gasses were released from Units 1, 2 and 3 than from Chernobyl. We have seen radioactive gas clouds, noble gas clouds to the northwest, that are much worse than we ever anticipated to have been released. So we know that the noble gasses were larger than Chernobyl. Now iodine, which is another gas that is released, and also cesium and other gasses, seem to be roughly on the same level as the releases from Chernobyl.
There are 2 issues here. As terrible as it is, it would have been much worse but for 2 things. The first is that most of the time the wind was blowing out to sea. And of course Chernobyl was surrounded by land, so whatever way the plume meandered after Chernobyl, it contaminated the land. So when we compare Fukushima to Chernobyl, the total releases from Fukushima are likely higher than they were at Chernobyl, but because most of it blew out to sea, that is a good thing for the Japanese people.
The second important thing that happened that was lucky, if we can call it luck in such a severe accident, was that it happened on a Friday and not on a weekend. There were a thousand people at the Daini site and at the Daiichi site, because it was a weekday, who could respond to the accident. If it had happened on a weekend, there would have been a small crew of people there and the accidents at both sites would have been much much worse. Now that has an implication worldwide, because on weekends and in the evenings, we have very small crews at these nuclear reactors. And should there be a major accident, there is no way to respond quickly enough with the small crew of people that are working on the shifts, other than the main shift in the middle of the day.
The international community needs to look at that and it is not a matter of well, we can get people there in a half a day. That is too late. The staff on site has to be larger at the beginning of the accident to mitigate the potential for a serious accident. But yet it all boils down to money. The utilities that run these power plants really do not want a large staff because they have to pay for it. But in fact, it was the large staff at Daiichi and the large staff at Daini that likely saved the world. So the important take-away here is that the releases from Fukushima are as serious if not more so than Chernobyl. And that they would have been much worse if the accident had happened on a weekend.
Maggie Gundersen: Arnie, thank you. How significant is the danger of hot particles and why?
Arnie Gundersen: I am really concerned about the hot particles that were released after the Fukushima accident. Now a hot particle is more than just a single atom. An atom of cesium decays once and it is over, it is no longer radioactive. A hot particle though, contains thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms of cesium or other radioactive material and they, of course, decay for many, many years and decades.
So if a hot particle is lodged inside you, either in your lung or in your liver or in your gastrointestinal tract, it can cause a constant bombardment of radiation over a long period of time to a very small localized part of your tissue. And that is exactly the conditions that can cause a cancer.
So we have seen in Mr Kaltofen's analysis to the American Public Health Association: he shows what an air filter looked like in a car in Fukushima and what an air filter looked like in a car in Tokyo. Those air filters are no different than our lung, our lung acts as an air filter, and that causes that radiation to get trapped in our lungs or in our livers or elsewhere in our bodies, and will constantly, over decades, cause cellular damage. It is particularly a concern in young children because they have a longer life, and because their cells are rapidly developing. So it is important that we monitor the children at Fukushima and throughout Japan over the next 3 or 4 decades to make sure that they do not develop cancers as a result of the hot particles that were released from Fukushima-Daiichi.
Maggie Gundersen: So Arnie, in closing, what do you want people to remember from your review of the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi?
Arnie Gundersen: About a month before the accident, we were walking and we were talking about an accident and where it might occur. And I said I did not know where it would occur, but I thought it would occur in a boiling water reactor of the Fukushima design, I said a Mark I reactor. And it turned out to be true.
But I think the bigger lesson from Fukushima is that this is a technology that can destroy a nation. After Fukushima I was reading Mikolai Gorbachov's memoirs and he says it was the Chernobyl accident, not Perestroika, that destroyed the Soviet Union. So we had that information for 30 years but yet we really did not realize that it could happen elsewhere. So we know that the accident at Chernobyl was a cause in the factor of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we know that the cost alone from the Fukushima-Daiichi accident will easily go to a half a trillion US dollars over the next 20 years. That is enough to bring Japan to its knees.
Japan is at a tipping point. You have an opportunity here to change the way we use energy. Or Japan can go back and turn on all its nuclear reactors again and continue business as usual and of course risk another accident. So you have a choice, you have the opportunity to change the way you use energy and to change the way you distribute energy. You can create smart grids that share power from the north to the south and from the east to the west, where the frequencies are different. We can distribute our generation, instead of having massive power plants in locations like Fukushima-Daiichi and Fukushima-Danai. We can distribute those power plants throughout Japan, throughout the world, with windmills, with solar power, with conservation and with distributed small sources of generation.
Those are all one way of doing it compared to the other which we are presently using, which is central station power. We needed central station power in the 20th century. Now with computers, we do not need central station power anymore. We can do it another way. And Japan can lead the way if it chooses to. If it leads the way, it will have an export commodity that the rest of the world will want desperately. You have an opportunity here to change your country. And you also have a business opportunity here to sell to the rest of the world a product that we all desperately need.
So the Fukushima-Daiichi accident is the worst industrial accident in history: it is a half a trillion dollars. But it also can be an opportunity for Japan to change the way it does business and to create the economy for the 21st century and beyond with distributed generation and smart grids. I hope you choose that choice. Japan is at a tipping point and it is your choice to make.
I read a comment on enenews talking about the amount of radioactive material stored at the Fukushima nuclear plant and how this compared to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. I have had this in the back of my mind for quite some time but other events taking place have put me off from doing a post about this. Well now is the time.
Lets start with how much radioactive material is stored at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Actually it would be more correct to say how much was stored until the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Because reports show that Plutonium and spent fuel along with other radioactive material have scattered around the plant and the surrounding area.
The spent nuclear fuel:
Reactor Building 1: 50 tons
Reactor Building 2: 81 tons
Reactor Building 3: 88 tons Uranium / Plutonium (UO2/MOX)
Reactor Building 4: 135 tons
Reactor Building 5: 142 tons
Reactor Building 6: 151 tons
Common Spent Fuel Storage Facility located at ground-level: 1,097 tons Uranium / Plutonium (UO2/MOX)
Dry Storage also located at ground-level: 70 tons
The reactor unit cores contain less than 100 tons of nuclear fuel.
Numbers given by Marvin Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management consultant.
Location
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Unit 6
Central Storage
Reactor Fuel Assemblies
400
548
548
0
548
764
0
Spent Fuel Assemblies
292
587
514
1331
946
876
6375
Fuel
UOx
UOx
UO2/MOX
UOx
UOx
UOx
UO2/MOX
New Fuel Assemblies
100
28
52
204
48
64
N/A
Now lets put things in perspective. Little boy the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima had 150 lbs Uranium-235. While the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the Fat Man contained 13.6 lbs Plutonium-239.
Both bombs leveled the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki and brought great destruction to the Japanese.
However Soviet Union's most powerful 50 megaton Tsar bomba the biggest nuclear bomb ever made weighed 27,000 kilograms (60,000 lb).
The explosion of the Tsar Bomba put out the equivalent of 1,400 times the combined power of the two nuclear explosives used in World War II the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Little Boy (13–18 kilotons) and Fat Man (21 kilotons). Tsar bomba alone had 10 times the combined power of all the explosives used in WWII. And one quarter of the estimated yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
But still the 27 tons of radioactive material in the Tsar Bomba is nothing compared to the amount at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s hard to try and imagine but I hope these numbers will give you a little more understanding of the situation.
This is a disturbing text (only Japanese) from wa-dan
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"Science journalist Takashi Hirose said In March, fuel rods started meltdown in the reactor. They became hot as 4000℃, which is hot enough to make most of the radioactive material evaporated. Especially plutonium and strontium were evaporated, spread around as gas. We were afraid of melt through, but we mustn’t forget it’s still HIGHLY radioactive. Now Tepco is checking reactor 2 and 3,but both of them will turn to be full of hydrogen. Now Tokyo is facing fateful crisis."
*********
This is really insane. I mean we have got reports of a yellow powder coming down with the rain after the typhoon Roke hit Japan.
This "yellow stuff" is now thought to be Plutonium. This is all over Japan and Tokyo!. And now Takashi Hirose say that it's more than likely that the Plutonium in the MOX reactors have more than likely evaporated and is now going everywhere..
Some of you I know would say.. Well Plutonium is heavy stuff so probably would not spread much.. Well did I mention GAS!! It turned into GAS. Yes it is true it is heavy, but think about this. If you cant see it, how heavy would you think that it is. If it's invisable it's light enough and it will go with the wind and Jetstream... HELLO PLUTONIUM!
I would stay out of the rain. And this goes for anyone, anywhere in the world. When it rains the Plutonium comes down.
This is the translation from Google Translate (so it's not that accurate)
Takashi Hirose, "fear of radioactivity and contaminated food in the metropolitan area"Regardless prevent nuclear catastrophe?
Delivery issue of Shukan Asahi, September 23, 2011
Into the rice harvest season finally has become a serious problem of radioactive contamination of staple foods.
Radioactive contamination is already north of Miyagi, Fukushima, Tochigi Prefecture to the south, Gunma, Yamanashi, Nagano, Ibaraki, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Shizuoka and extended to, or regulations that prohibit the importation of agricultural products from these 12 prefectures and regions in Europe including the EU 43 countries. The German Radiation Protection Association, infants, children and adolescents more than 4 becquerels per kilogram for adults have been proposed, including not to drink at least 8 becquerels of cesium 137 in Japan, 500 per kilogram of the country concernedsky-high standards set by sister named Becquerel, Becquerel 499 or less everything as safe, because I have been very dangerous food distribution, this remains a lot of things happen.
Many people so far, the defense has been measured for radioactivity in a counter height, these numbers are air dose. It is out of radioactive material such as iodine and cesium, which is a measurement of gamma rays to reach the distance.However, please wait. Food contamination problems, but the body caused by exposure.
Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, the temperature at which the substance is a gas (boiling) of technetium and 4265 ℃, which is detected that the boiling point 4639 ℃ molybdenum.
Meltdown temperature of the fuel in nuclear reactors in Fukushima in March, therefore, far more than 2000 ℃, had been considered from 4000 ℃ to 3000 ℃. Boiling point, 184 ℃ and iodine, 671 ℃ cesium, strontium since 1382 ℃, radioactive materials are dangerous, but far beyond the temperature was almost entirely vaporized. Even the plutonium, the boiling point is lower than 1400 ℃ 3228 ℃ than molybdenum. If so, of course, strontium and plutonium are particularly significant influence on internal exposure, and was released to the mass gasification, I believe.
And beta radiation emitted by these strontium, alpha rays emitted by plutonium, the Geiger counter can not detect any. The parts of Japan, the most important metric for learning about the contamination of food and soil, than the dose space, therefore, be released from nuclear Fukushima radioactive material how much, where it is in a deposition amount of either 降Ri積Motta how much.
The citizens' group, "Radiation protection projects," published on the internet so I have actually studied the results of soil pollution in the metropolitan area, people in the metropolitan area that everyone must see this. As of June almost shrubbery and gardens are out the amount of radioactive cesium deposition of soil and parks. Prefectures as measured by the number of samples are different because, at pinpointing risk is not only the average value, measured in points with 56 locations in Tokyo so many may be seen as a reasonably accurate indicator.
Looking at this figure, even in Tokyo on average, the Soviet government after the Chernobyl accident (at the time) is almost the same as the danger zone was specified as the fourth district of the contaminated areas.
Fourth Ward and the residents forced to evacuate, but do not, upon leaving the area where risk has been carried out with strict health, is 5000 ten thousand becquerels per square 7000-180003 radioactive cesium. 1 curie per 37 billion becquerels of radioactivity because it corresponds to 1-5 curie per square kilometer. Tokyo's average is almost identical to this one Curie.
If recurrent crisis of food self-sufficiency ◆ ◆ Accident
"1 curie per square kilometer" is a dangerous location or what? In large hospitals, one to handle radioactive material is not Curie. The problem with the human body, picocuries, that is one trillionth (1 / 1, 000,000,000,000) is Curie. After the Chernobyl accident, the criteria established by the Japanese food import ban, radioactive cesium for "less than 370 becquerels per kilogram of food (less than one billionth of a curie 1)", respectively. This is the dangerous goods jumped a surprising, such as the Yokohama Customs inspectors. Assuming a specific gravity of water and contaminated food as a dangerous cesium 370 becquerels per kilogram, the state is laid at a thickness of 10 cm square kilometer in this area, "one curie per square kilometer pollution zone "will be called.
Never eat the same land as contaminated food should not tightly packed, it is Chernobyl Zone 4. On like this, you will want to live either. You can grow food on land, I would think that young children can live.
The soil is an average, however it is in Tokyo. However, food self-sufficiency in Tokyo since 1% is 13 million citizens who rely on food for all other land. Food self-sufficiency rate by prefecture is shown in Figure 2, hitting a large production area mainly in Hokkaido Tohoku Hokuriku. The percentage of land occupied by these three local governments across the country reaches 51%. This vast area is mainly contaminated by a nuclear accident he Fukushima.
Applying the strict regulations here, because there is no food, and sky-high standards set more than 100 times that of children in Germany 致Shi方Naku standards, the Japanese are eating Pakupaku everyone.
Fortunately, the backbone of the Japanese Islands has a mountain, there is a watershed, the pollution level of the Sea of Japan to date, significantly lower than in the Pacific Ocean. Yoshihiko Noda, the cabinet took office, but this prime minister, a man eager to resume operations of nuclear power, plus you can not trust at all that corruption and the Nuclear Safety Commission Nuclear Safety Agency "nuclear mafia" that our Prime Minister give legitimacy to the work contained in it and running again in the future according to the instructions.
Japanese I, Listen up!
It's a major accident is imminent and now the next big earthquake. Not allowed a moment to lose in Japan to achieve the decommissioning of all nuclear power plants, nuclear power and running again by 踏Mi切Tsu to, now, do the Kashiwazaki Kariwa in Niigata, Shizuoka Country Hamaoka you either stay in Hokkaido in the Sea of Japan or the West any nuclear accident, there are no other Japanese people eat? !
All things, there is a nuclear power plant in Kyushu, Saga and Kagoshima only higher food self-sufficiency. Closed around the south of Kyushu Lecture Series last month, when the ferry crossing Kagoshima Bay, and then come and seen Dawn and Sakurajima erupted, I lost words. If you leave public life to stupid politicians seeking to resume operations at nuclear power plants, the other is Japanese, so long will. (M. Horii configuration magazine)
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But Hiro was born in 1943. Graduated from Department of Applied Science and Engineering, Waseda University. "Nuclear bomb - a big earthquake frightened the Japanese islands" (Inc.), "Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown FUKUSHIMA" (Asahi Paperback) Author of many such. Collection of this series' primary case prevented the catastrophe? "(Asahi Shimbun Publishing) was published on August 30 that an emergency
Typhoon Talas has slammed into western Japan, bringing heavy rains and fierce winds. Talas made landfall Saturday on the island of Shikoku and is slowly moving north. The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued a warning that the heavy rains and strong winds could lead to flooding and landslides.
There have been some spectacular lights going on these past hours at the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor Units. The interesting thing is that this time we can see the "fire" starting on the live cam picture slideshow that I made.
I have a theory why we see this now. I could be way off so don't take my word for this. Anyhow there have been reports, really strong once coming in that the Corium (molten reactor core blob) have gone through the containment, and is now found it's way below the reactor units. With the earthquakes making deep cracks all over the nuclear plant, there are those that think that some of this steam we can see is caused by groundwater coming into contact with the Corium. Now this steam along with lights and flashes that have been seen comes and goes. It's interesting to see that these last days there have been a lot of rain coming down from the Typhoon Talas. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that because of the Typhoon the groundwater level have either risen or the cracks have been filled with rainwater and in turn water have come into contact with the Corium making the spectacular lights that we see at the plant this time.
And like clockwork TEPCO turns the live cam black and white.
One thing that you might also want to have a look at, is in the beginning of things. The colors go from the shade of gray to more of a blue color. This could be caused by the weather and the light fading, but I have a theory about that as well. And it's called the Cherenkov effect. Pavel Cerenkov discovered this in 1934, while he studied the effects of radioactive substances on liquids. Pavel observed a faint blue glow in water close to a radioactive substance. This blue glow can be seen in fuel pools also. Now I'm NOT sure this is the case but it does look like things are starting to go blue.
Keep in mind that the blue glow in the fuel pool only show a tiny amount of the Cherenkov radiation because the rods are keept stored and under control. Again don't take my word for this, just throwing it out there so to speak.
What's going on there? Did the spent fuel pool dry up and catch fire? Now it seems to me that the people in charge of the live cam turned it to black and white about 55 sec into the video. Probably to keep down the dramatic effects going on. There are clearly massive amounts of smoke / steam coming from the Fukushima reactors or spent fuel storage pool.
And today Aug. 6 2011 19:00 Local time, the exact same TIME 19:00 and the exact same thing happend. The strange lights I saw was the aftermath of the event it seems. We clearly see on the photos that something is burning. And the funny thing is the split second after that last image about 50 sec into the video the live cam goes black and white again.
What we see after that is only white glowig and flashes going on. But still, something is very wrong at the Fukushima Daiichi Reactors. Or it could also be the Common Spent Fuel Storage Facility if you have a look at the map of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant below and how the camera is angled.
Watch 20 seconds into this video between 01:00-02:00 how a very strong flash occures and then at 50 seconds it's like it's lights out. Everything dies down. From now on it's just the strange flashes you see.
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it has detected 10,000 millisieverts of radioactivity per hour at the plant. The level is the highest detected there since the nuclear accident in March.
Workers of Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, on Monday measured the extremely high level of radioactivity near pipes at the bottom of a duct between the No.1 and neighboring No.2 reactor buildings.
According to the science ministry's brochure, if a human received 10,000 millisieverts, they would likely die within a week or two.
TEPCO has restricted access to the site and the surrounding area.
The utility says the workers taking measurements on Monday were exposed to up to 4 millisieverts.
The utility says the high level of radioactivity was detected because the pipes were used to vent air containing radioactive substances from the crippled No.1 reactor on March 12th.
The utility had detected a maximum of 1,000 millisieverts per hour outdoors in debris, and also found a maximum of 4,000 millisieverts per hour indoors in one of the reactor buildings.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011 06:33 +0900 (JST)
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Chiba, Tochigi to test rice for cesium traces
Highly radioactive water flows into another place
Govt bans beef cattle shipments from Iwate
No-entry decontamination to start next month
Govt to check rice for radiation
*Note: Single radiation dose of 2,000 millisieverts (200,000 millirems) and above causes serious illness. See also exposure list below.
Half-life of some radioactive elements
When it comes to radiation detection meters you really have a wide field of gadgets to choose from, however radiation detectors are the most common to use.
First of all if you need to know what type of radiation you are looking for. There are Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation detectors. And also there is neutron emission of nuclear radiation. And all these different types of emissions have radiation detectors for a specific type of radiation that you can buy radiation detector for. Some also measure both Alpha and Beta. Others detect Alpha, Beta and Gamma. While others let you measure Beta and Gamma radiation.
What most people have use for though are Dosimeters you can buy a handheld radiation detector pretty cheap that are good addition to a survival kit. There are different kinds that you can use that will detect radiation. There are radiation badges that will tell you when radiation become high. Workers at nuclear power plants use these to inform them of how much radiation they have been exposed to. Now also children in the Fukushima prefecture have each been given a radiation badge so they know if they are exposed to radiation. Some come in the shape of a pen that you can carry in your pocket while other are made more compact so that you can attach them to your keychain. And then you have what is called a personal radiation monitor. These are also called Dosimeters and also normally called Geiger counters. Although not all use the Geiger-Muller Tube for the radiation detection some use a semiconductor instead. These and mostly the older geiger counters seen are pretty big to carry around, so they might not be best suited for a survival situation where you only need to carry the most important things. However if you have land and want to check radiation around the property and drinking water then these are the geiger counters to get because they are very well built units.
These are the once that you normally see people use. They have different units of radiation detection, because when it comes to radiation there are many standards used. some give the measurements in Rads, while other use Sieverts. Some have the maximum radiation value for the measured radioactivity quite low but they will still give you an idea of the amount of radiation in the area. With the units ranging from between background radiation 0.001 mSv/hr all the way up to 10 Sv/h. Normally a dosimeter will measure radiation in micro siverts per hour. If you were to walk into one of the reactor units at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant you probably would get an error reading from your dosimeter because the radiation levels are so high there.
Note that some places outside the exclusion zone in Fukushima that are too radioactive for people to live in have areas where the radiation levels are above 30 Sv/h. So if you are in a area that have high radiation the radiation detectors would also there go off the scale. However Geiger counters or radiation detectors are still favored as general purpose alpha/beta/gamma portable radiation detectors and radiation detection equipment, due to their low cost and robustness. Most come with an LCD Display that show you the radioactivity in the area. Nowdays you will even get alarm sound and the possibility to connect the device to a computer. Either with a Infrared, Bluetooth or USB connection.
So if you look at the radiation detectors for sale that have this, then these radiation detection meters will allow you to make maps of contaminated areas that show where the radiation is high and low. This also will help you to see which areas are becoming more contaminated over time. With several nuclear reactors in the US and around the world located near fault zones that makes it a danger if a big earthquake would hit the area there is always a good choice to have a radiation dosimeter avaliable. I'm sure many in Fukushima would have been grateful to have dosimeters avaliable at the time of the disaster and I am sure you to would be grateful to have a geiger counter handy when you need one.
radmon.org - Global Radiation Monitoring Live Map
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In 1959 a little known Nuclear Disaster only 30 Miles from Downtown Los Angeles began to unfold at an important Cold War facility located in Simi Valley. Simi Valley is an incorporated city located in a valley of the same name in the southeast corner of Ventura County, California, bordering the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
5 weeks after the Nuclear Disaster the Atomic Energy Commission released an press release claiming that only 1 Nuclear Fuel Rod had been slightly damaged and NO Radiation had been released into the environment. However that is far, far from the truth.. The Atomic Energy Commission was trying to cover up the fact that 13 Fuel Rods had been damaged and High Levels of Radiation had already been released from the failed experimental nuclear reactor. 1/3 of the Nuclear Fuel had experienced melting, it was one of the worst Nuclear Accidents in the history of the U.S and the Atomic Energy Commission lied about it.
All this would have never been disclosed at all if it was not for Daniel Hirsch's
student Michael Rose. The SSFL facility has had some 24 nuclear accidents
over the years. These accidents go by the name "excursions" to hide the seriousness of the situations from the common public. There have
been several non-nuclear accidents at the site as well. A most recent one
(that are known to the public) occurred in 1994 when one scientist was killed an
another was seriously injured while trying to (illegally) dispose of
chemicals by burning them..
