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Exceedingly high radiation levels found inside crippled reactor buildings at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant were labeled by nuclear regulators as an “extremely serious” challenge to the shutdown process and overall decommissioning of the site.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said a huge amount of radioactive materials apparently had attached to shield plugs of the containment vessels in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
Radiation levels were estimated at 10 sieverts per hour, a lethal dose for anyone who spends even an hour in the vicinity, according to experts.
Radiation levels at Fukushima plant far worse than was thought
The finding would make it exceptionally difficult for workers to move the shield plugs, raising the prospect that the plan to decommission the reactors will have to be reassessed.
Toyoshi Fuketa, chairman of the NRA, noted that removing the highly contaminated shield plugs added to the enormous difficulty of retrieving nuclear fuel debris, the most daunting part of the decommissioning process.
“It appears that nuclear debris lies at an elevated place,” he said at a news conference earlier this month. “This will have a huge impact on the whole process of decommissioning work.”
A shield plug, made of reinforced concrete, is circular in shape and measures about 12 meters in diameter.
It has a triple-layer structure, with each layer about 60 centimeters thick. It is placed above the containment vessel like a lid on the top floor of a reactor building.
The shield plug blocks radiation from the reactor core at normal times.
When nuclear fuels need to be replaced, workers remove a shield plug to gain access to the interior of the containment vessel.
In a study that resumed in September after about a five-year hiatus, the NRA carried out fresh measurements of radiation levels in the vicinity of the shield plugs of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
The study was undertaken following investigations by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the plant, and other entities, which had shown extraordinary levels of radiations there.
The NRA’s study found that the amount of radioactive cesium 137 was estimated at 20-40 petabecquerels between the space between the top and middle layers of the shied plug of the No. 2 reactor.
That works out to more than 10 sieverts per hour based on readings of radiation levels nearby. Radiation at such levels can kill a person if they are exposed for an hour, according to experts.
The estimated figure was 30 petabecquerels for the No. 3 reactor.
In the triple meltdown triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, the shield plug of the No. 1 reactor slipped out of place and was damaged by a hydrogen explosion that occurred at the reactor building.
As larger amounts of cesium 137 leaked from the No. 1 reactor through the damaged plug, the amount of the radioactive material attached to its shield plug was estimated at 0.16 petabecquerels, considerably lower than for the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
In contrast, the shield plugs for the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors remained relatively unscathed, blocking a huge amount of radioactive substances that leaked from their containment vessels from escaping into the atmosphere, according to the NRA.
TEPCO announced Dec. 24 that the removal of nuclear fuel debris will be postponed to 2022 or later, rather than the initially scheduled 2021, due to a delay in the development of equipment to carry out the work.
The Chinese Embassy in Japan have issued a radiation warning over Fukushima radiation last Sunday, February 2017 causing some panic in China. But in Japan, everything went on normally, tourists and residents remain largely unaffected by the radiation matter.
In recent years, as the popularity of Japan as a tourist destination increases, Chinese people have
developed a love-hate relationship with their neighbor. Any political rift or societal change between the two countries can cause large-scale effects
Fukushima China Syndrome
An update of an old issue in Japan has sent ripples across the East China Sea to shake China. After Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced it's latest analysis of the inside of its crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima that showed the radiation level there has seemingly now risen from 73 sieverts per hour to 530 sieverts.
A lethal radiation dose is considered to be around 10 sieverts exposure for only a few minutes!With a slow death to follow from radiation sickness..
However the news of Fukushimas deadly 530 sievert radiation record that might I add puts the 1986 Chernobyl disaster to shame have been traveling fast on the Chinese Internet.
Last Sunday, the Chinese Embassy in Japan issued a safety warning in reaction to this announcement, telling Chinese citizens to manage their travel plans to avoid potential radiation risks that may come if nuclear material leaks out into the surrounding environment. The warning caused even more discussion and when rumors started spreading, many Chinese became worried, some even canceling their trips to Japan.
Business as usual
A couple of weeks after the news came out, people in Japan seemed as calm and reserved as ever. There are still many Chinese tourists on the streets and in shops. According to Chinese tourism agencies, their business has been basically unaffected.
The director of a large Chinese travel agency told the Global Times last Sunday that Fukushima wasn't a regular travel destination for Chinese tourists anyway, and the company doesn't offer any travel packages there.
Li Dan, manager of a branch of the Beijing-based Tianping International Travel Agency, said that there haven't been any tour groups traveling to Fukushima since the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami. She also said that even tourists who travel independently do not usually go to Fukushima.
Last week, Will Davis, a member of the American Nuclear Society, refuted claims that radiation levels are soaring at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as "demonstrably false." In a post on the society's blog, Davis wrote that the readings have not changed and that TEPCO's reported 530 sieverts per hour estimate was not "unimaginable" or particularly worrying.
His argument is that rather than a real increase from 73 to 530 sieverts, the 530 reading is simply a more accurate estimate of the radiation level at a particularly affected area that has remained relatively unchanged over the past few years.
Compared with China, news of the radiation levels in Fukushima has not generated much discussion in Japan. The responses from the media or public to the Chinese safety alert are also few.
For people living in Tokyo, three hours' drive from Fukushima, life has continued as usual. While they feel a little concerned whenever such reports come out, they are not actively worried in their daily lives, several Japanese white-collar workers said.
For people trying to get their lives back to normal in the affected area, their biggest headache and frustration is the bad reputation and rumors that dog their agricultural products.
In supermarkets, consumers who are concerned about radiation contamination choose more expensive products from different areas over cheaper product from Fukushima. Local residents, NGOs and governments are still working to scrub the stain off the reputation of food produced in Fukushima.
"I am concerned about the long-term effects on our bodies," said Zhang Chen, a sociology student at Sophia University of Tokyo. "Even if they were to call off the alert, I would still be worried." Despite these concerns, she said she would continue to stay in Tokyo for the time being and try finding a job in Japan.
Meanwhile, several Chinese residents in Japan the Global Times interviewed expressed their faith that the Japanese government and media would keep people accurately updated on the Fukushima situation and any potential dangers.
Zhao Xue, a Chinese woman who works for a Japanese company in Tokyo told the Global Times she hasn't seen much focus in the newspaper headlines concerning this matter, the big stories recently are Trump and Toshiba's financial problems.
"Why would we panic over something like this? It's an updated version of old news," she said.
Others said as long as one stays out of the evacuation areas the Japanese government designated around the nuclear power plant, one has nothing to worry about. Besides, Tokyo is more than 300 kilometers from Fukushima and as so little radiation can reach there, there's nothing much to do besides go on with one's daily life.
There is a heavy steam event taking place at Fukshima reactor building 4 at this very moment!
The livecam closest to the reactor building 4 is the only one that display the steam event taking place. The JNN livecam is currently offline showing a "green screen" and the Futaba traffic cam is not picking up anything. And the other livecam showing reactor buildings 1 and 2 does not pick up anything but a little bit of the ongoing radioactive releases.
The forecast for the next few days and weeks for people living in the Northern Hemisphere will be radioactive rain with a tad of sunshine and airborne radiation.
And remember scientists say one medium banana packs about 422 milligrams of potassium, about 11 percent of the 4,700 milligrams adults should aim to get daily. So don't go eating any bananas this week, the added potassium could kill you! That will be all for today's radioactive news.
Fukushima Steam Events Aug 3, 2014 Radioactive Releases
Well it's happening again, massive amounts of steam / fog covering the reactor buildings at Fukushima. Good thing there are people in the chat that brings it to attention when it happens. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the boiling reactor buildings.
I also looked at some old pictures I had taken two years ago in August 2011 and if we have a look at those pictures things have not really changed at all. Sure there might be less fires and spectacular lightning going on now, probably due to the fact that the melted reactor fuel corium have now gone very deep underground. But there still is the steam events taking place on a regular basis over at Fukushima.
This is an old video from 2011.08.04 showing some of the events going on. Notice how Tepco turn the camera to black and white at the 1 minute mark to hide away the things taking place. It really starts to pick up at about 1:40 min into the video.
I have to say that anyone who claim the contamination taking place (about 400 tons of radioactive water per day into the Pacific Ocean) that comes directly from molten nuclear fuel corium in contact with groundwater that say somehow it is "diluted and safe" is a MADMAN!
Well this have been going on now for a while, I'm sure if you have been following the livecam you have seen from time to time the "fog" that sometimes makes a complete blackout of the picture. Well actually it has not been this bad in a long time, so I thought I would take a picture of the reactor units when I saw it happening. Time here is 1:50 JPT - Todays Date 2013-7-29.
You usually see some buildings or can make out the reactors and cranes when there is heavy fog, but this time they are all engulfed in this steam of fog whatever you want to call it.
The crisis that radioactive water is leaking into the groundwater is not anything new. But the amount of contamination is hard to comprehend.
"Asahi Shimbun: A liter of the water was also found to contain 750 million becquerels of radioactive substances that emit beta rays, such as Strontium." "EXSKF: 5,000 cubic meters, or 5,000 tonnes of this water is in the trench. Note: 5,000 cubic meters of water is equal to 5 million liters. One liter was found to contain 2.35 Billion Becquerels of Cesium. If this concentration is consistent, the total amount would be nearly 12 Quadrillion Becquerels of cesium in this one trench."
Now when we have heavily contaminated groundwater there is for a certain fact the reactor core is exposed to this water. And considering the amount of contamination found in the water there is a high probability that the reactor core or should we say molten reactor corium is the cause for the steam seen here.
Some of you who have been keeping an eye on Fukushima and the Live Cam they have, might have noticed that yesterday Tepco changed the angle of the camera. It's now located at the opposite side from where it was before with reactor unit 4 closest in view to the camera instead of unit 1.
I've been busy with other things lately so I didn't notice the work that was going on top of reactor unit 4. FC pointed out in the chat that there was flashes going on in the bottom right corner of the screen, and sure enough when I looked at the live cam there was even workers moving around there.
Here you can see an ILLUSTRATION showing the location where the welding work is being done on top of reactor unit 4. The actual flashes where much smaller than this illustration shows but the scale of the workers to the right is about the same.
I figure the flashes was caused by the workers welding some beams, that's what it looks like to me. I tell you they better weld in some support because that 60 Ton "cover" they put in place a month ago on top of the fuel pool to an already damaged structure is not going to help the building situation.
I'm sure you already have read about what happens when that fuel pool hits the ground in the event of an bigger earthquake. The contamination released would equate to some 800-1000 nuclear weapons going off all at once.
And I hope those workers where wearing gas masks because that steel is
contaminated with all kinds of radioactive particles, welding always
cause smoke and people doing it for a living need regular health
checkups to check their lungs.. Add radiation to that smoke and it is not going to turn out good for the workers later on.
Now the camera angle like I told you earlier is different now from what it was when the livecam first was put into place 2011. But we can still see all the reactor units and cranes working on the site. To explain the map, Unit 4 is in the right corner of the screen and we can see part of Unit 1 way back with Unit 2 blocking most of the view (Unit 1 is the white reactor unit because of the tent they put up).
I hope this Fukushima update have shed some light on the recent developments on site.
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.
Not long ago the amount of nuclear reactors that were shutdown in Japan for inspection was 93%. However today (26 Jan 2012) yet another reactor is shutdown.
Read below the news report:
The operator of a nuclear power plant in Shimane Prefecture, western Japan, says it will shut down another reactor for regular inspections. The decision means that 51 of Japan's 54 reactors - 94 percent - are now offline.
The Chugoku Electric Power Company says it will begin Thursday evening shutting down reactor-2 of its Shimane power plant. The work is scheduled to be completed early Friday morning. The plant's only other reactor is already offline for regular checkups. With the addition of the ongoing shutdown, all the nuclear power plants run by the company will be suspended.
The company is conducting stress tests on its reactors, a prerequisite for deciding whether to resume operations. But protests from local government mean that there is still no indication whether the company can restart its reactors. The Shimane Prefectural government and the local municipality insist that the utility should first thoroughly examine last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima and seek more understanding of local residents.
All 54 reactors in Japan will be offline by late April if there are no restarts before then.
*************
So that's how it is, I'm thinking that this is for the best because of the many earthquakes that have hit Japan lately. None of the earthquakes have done any serious damage as of yet, they have been around M5. However because experts are expecting some M9 earthquakes in the near future the choice to shutdown reactors to me is for the best.
Well this story came out today, it was about the Spent Fuel Pool cooling systems going offline at the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi but also for the other Nuclear Power Plant Daini. They say the cooling, Cesium absorbing system, Nitrogen injecting system for reactor 1,2,3, and the gas purifying system of reactor 2 were stopped because of trouble with the power exchanging facility in Iwaki Fukushima.
The press conference TEPCO held we can read what was said
TEPCO’s switching station in Minami Iwaki had a problem that caused the voltage to drop momentarily. They turned the switch off for a few milliseconds to clear the system.
TEPCO doesn’t know what caused the problem at the switching station.
The systems are getting back online. Kurion is still stopped. None of the systems needs to be continuously operated.
(There is absolutely no urgency in either question or answer, so I think everything is dandy now. I’m signing off.)
Everything seems to be online again and power have been restored since this incident, but what really is surprising to find out if you read between the lines is that the Fukushima Plants are running without any backup power generators!!
We have had some big (M5) earthquakes these past weeks around Japan and Fukushima with one of them causing damaged to the Fuel Pool at the Daiichi Nuclear Plant (not reported on in the news) cracking the cooling system causing an evacuation at the plant. Military helicopters to come in and 100s if not 1000s of Police have been seen by locals to arrive at nigh time (to try and avoid any suspicion by the locals)
Well this happened the first day of 2012 at nigh when the earthquake struck. I'm getting a little bit of track here but I only want to keep you updated that's all. Because the news sure doesn't.
This is just insane, to think that all this time the plant would have been running without backup generators working properly. Is this really true? How stupid are they really. We have been so close to another big earthquake that could easily take out the power another time just as long as it did that day in March 2011 when the earthquake struck these past weeks. And looking at the earthquake activity and reports from people studing the activity seem to agree that there is going to be another big earthquake sometime in the near future.
Some scientists also have alarmed about the posibillity that another tsunami could come in that is as big or even bigger than the one that caused the disaster.
Given all these threats, you really would expect them to have working generators in place at the Fukushima Plant / Plants if we count in Daini also. But reading this story it sure don't seem like it. Another devestating quake and Daini is also going to follow the same fate as the disaster stricked Daiichi plant.
Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks talks to Russia Today Dec 27, 2011 about the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Cold Shutdown Extremely Unlikely. This is an Criminal Affair with the Japanese government and IAEA publishing understated figures on the spread of the radiation.
Transcribed Video:
RT: Fukushima crisis says that it was down to the plants operators being ill prepared and not responding properly to the quake and tsunami disaster. A major government inquire said some engineers abandoned the plant as the trouble started and other staff delayed reporting significant radiation leaks. To discuss more on this I am joined by Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks.
RT: Thanks for joining us, so the report claims that the operators failed to respond properly and you said before that the authorities had been lax and slow in handling the situation. To what extent do you feel the assessment has been confirmed by these findings?
Busby: Well I think my assessment has been confirmed 100% but I do have to say that I don't think that this enquiry has goon far enough. Because there are lots of questions that they haven't asked and lots of questions that still haven't been answered.
RT: What are some of those?
Busby: Well the main, the most important one has to do with the health effects off the contamination. Now it's kind of assumed that everybody knows that these health effects are not going to be serious, but just like I said before that this was a much more serious incident than anyone were suggesting at the time. I'm now saying or have been saying all along that the health effects will be very much more serious than anyone is saying now. And I can tell you now there will probably be in some years time another enquiry that will show also that I am right there. And this is really sad because actually if they did concede that there was a big problem then people could be moved out and other activities could take place which would ensure that fewer people got sick than are going to.
RT: Why do you think it has taken Japan so long to admit that it's response was inadequate.
Busby: I think that there is an enormous pressure from the nuclear industry and from the people who stand to loose a lot of money with regard to the general nuclear expansion scenario that we have been seeing in the last year or two. I mean for the nuclear industry, this was an absolute disaster and it does seem to me from not only the way in which the Japanese has been constrained to handle this event but also the way in which people all over the world are handling this event through the media. I have to say not Russia Today, and I am very pleased about that. There does seem to be an enormous iron grip on the media with regard to the effects of this terrifying accident, this catastrophe.
RT: The report also said the government published understated figures on the spread of the radiation, can that be justified when millions of life's are at risk.
Busby: Well of course that really is an criminal event as I said before. This is criminal irresponsibility because if people had known the extent of the radioactivity, had the government and I also have to say the international atomic energy agency come clean with the extent of the contamination people would have left. People would have got out and these people who didn't get out would have been seriously contaminated and this will effect their health. So really this is quite an criminal affair and I would hope that eventually that someone would be brought to justice, or at least there should be some court case about it.
RT: Japanese officials claim the plant is now under control but there have been reports that many Fukushima evacuees remain reluctant to return to their homes, do you think those concerns are valid?
Busby: I think that those people should not return to their homes and I think it's extremely unlikely that these reactors are in what they call cold shutdown, I mean I think this is discourse manipulation. Very recently Xenon Isotopes have been released from those plants, and these Xenon Isotopes have sufficiently short half life's for us to know that fissioning is still taking place in those reactors.
RT: Alright and briefly, what do you think should be done with the Japanese nuclear network now?
Busby: Well you know the Japanese nuclear network was always dangerous, it was always built on the coasts in areas where there was tsunamis, it was always build in areas where there possibly were going to be earthquakes so really if I were the Japanese people I would demand that the government closed down the entire nuclear operation in Japan and revert to some other form of generating energy.
RT: What would that be you think?
Busby: Well there have been studies made that show that Japanese, that Japan is very rich in wind power and there is lots of ways in which you can get alternative generation of electricity. But the main problem of course is that there is to much electricity being used, we are burning up the planet in order to continue with a lifestyle which really is not sustainable and I think that is the real answer to all of these questions about nuclear and fossil fuel and the rest of it, we are just burning to much fuel.
RT: Alright we have to leave it there Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks thanks for your time.
There have been a lot of talks these last days about Fukushima and the fact that TEPCO have made analysis of the reactor units confirming that the Nuclear Fuel have melted the pressure vessel and eroding it's way down into the earth. They can't seem to find the Corium (melted nuclear fuel) because they can't get near the reactors because of the radiation.
Experts have also come out to say that the Fukushima Disaster is the worst Nuclear Disaster in the worlds history and that there was an Nuclear Explosion when Reactor Unit 3 went boom. This is because if it would have been an Hydrogen explosion that happened, then there would not have been the black smoke and mushroom cloud seen on video afterwards. I have done some hydrogen explosions in the kitchen and I can tell you they are loud and hurt your ears, but I never encountered black smoke. I'm not joking, however if for some reason there was some evaporation of concrete or other flammable materials along with the explosion I could understand that there would be some smoke.
I remember how much crap was said early on from idiots here and on other sites. Media downplaying the Disaster (well still is actually) and Japanese Government coming out with all sorts of crap. Highly respected medical doctors assuring people that if they smile radiation wont hurt them and go ahead and eat the contaminated food, visit Japan.. If not you are not supporting us. Bla bla.. Everything is under control, nothing to see here, move along.. And most people fell for it, again like they do, walking into a trap, believing everything they hear.
I do see a change though, the "internet experts" are not getting much headway in their attempts to downplay this anymore because they have been proven wrong so many times already. Now they are pretty much laughed at and put to the wall when they come online. And I would like to put a shout out to all my buddies that stood their ground and still do in these "battles". We actually saved lifes, we made people move away from affected areas, gave our oppinions and prevented people from moving to Japan. And much more!! So keep going!! If you that are reading this remember even doing something simple as posting a link, then my hats off to you. It counts and it still does.
Anyhow I would need to summarize the past days, but due to some blogger problems I have not had the time to do regular updates and stay updated with the news these last days for that matter. So I give you Arnie Gundersen. Arnie talks this time about the probable China Syndrome that is going on at Fukushima Daiichi and how it would happen, even giving us a clip from the 1976 blockbuster movie The China Syndrome.
Here is the video and below I have the transcribed text if you want to read what's said.
And this is the link to the Fairewinds website where Arnie gives us regular updates of the Fukushima Disaster situation: https://fairewinds.com/content/fukushima-could-it-have-china-syndrome
Arnie Gundersen: Hi, I'm Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds.
Last week, Tokyo Electric announced that the core inside the nuclear reactor had definitely melted through and had also melted partly through the containment at Fukushima. I wanted to talk about that today because I think that there have been a lot of exaggerations and misunderstandings on the internet about what is actually going on.
So the question I would like to talk about today is, can Fukushima become what is called The China Syndrome? And what exactly does The China Syndrome really mean?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Clip of The China Syndrome begins)
(male actor #1) "I don't know. They might have come close to exposing the core.
(male actor #2) "If that is true, then we came very close to The China Syndrome."
(Jane Fonda's Character) "The what?"
(male actor #2) "If the core is exposed, for whatever reason, the fuel heats beyond core heat tolerance in a matter of minutes. Nothing can stop it and it melts right down through the bottom of the plant, theoretically to China. But of course, as soon as it hits ground water, it blasts into the atmosphere and sends out clouds of radioactivity. The number of people killed would depend on which way the wind is blowing, render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable, not to mention the cancer that would show up later."
Arnie Gundersen: The term is really old; it dates back at least until the 60's. And what it means is that the nuclear core melts, and of course it is an American term, so it melted from America toward China through the center of the earth. That is what the term means. It is an over-exaggeration to begin with, but it does mean that the nuclear core leaves the nuclear reactor, leaves the containment, and gets into the earth. That is what a China Syndrome really means. Now I will be using some rather crude demonstration items today. I realize a lot of engineers watch this and just bear with me here. I think these are analogies and they are always a little risky, but I do think they explain what is happening inside Fukushima.
The first phase of the accident was when the nuclear reactor core lost it's cooling. Now you will remember uranium atoms split; 95% of the power comes from uranium atoms splitting. But these pieces that are left over are called fission products, and they retain a lot of heat. When you shut a nuclear reactor down, a process that takes about 2 seconds, 95% of the heat stops immediately, but 5% of the heat cannot be stopped. That, as long as there is extra water flowing, is all you need to keep a nuclear reactor cool. You remember back in April, I did a video where I talked about a nuclear reactor fuel pellet. It was about as big as my pinkie, and the fuel rod is about the diameter of my pinkie, but 12 feet long. In a lot of ways, it is like spaghetti. It is just as flexible as spaghetti, but of course it is 12 feet long. And there are thousands of these nuclear fuel rods inside a nuclear reactor. A nuclear reactor is not anything but a glorified pressure cooker. A pressure cooker cooks at 15 pounds. A nuclear reactor cooks at 1,000 pounds. But essentially they are the same thing: they are designed to hold really hot water and not to leak.
Well, the nuclear fuel is placed into the nuclear reactor, and as long as the water is in there, everything is fine. But like when you overcook spaghetti, what happens? It can form a blob on the bottom of your pressure cooker. That is what happened at Fukushima. The decay products created enough heat to boil off all the water, the nuclear fuel collapsed, the pasta broke, and is now a blob at the bottom of the nuclear reactor. That happened in about 6-8 hours on Fukushima I and perhaps as long as 10 hours on Fukushima II & III.
So the first phase of this accident is called a meltdown. That is when the pasta collapses and lays in the bottom of the pressure cooker. That is when the nuclear fuel melts and lays in the bottom of the nuclear reactor. Phase one is a meltdown.
The second step in the process is something called a melt-through. Now we are at a point where we have got a blob of nuclear fuel at the bottom of the nuclear reactor vessel. TEPCO is saying that the nuclear reactor vessel is about 8 inches thick, about 30 centimeters thick, and that is enough to hold the nuclear fuel for quite a long time. I do not think that part of TEPCO's analysis is right. I have talked about it before, but on a boiling water reactor, there are over 60 holes in the bottom of the reactor for the control rods to go in and out. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already identified that it is likely that the nuclear fuel did not have to melt through the 8 inches of steel, but instead could do an end run around that and shoot out holes at the bottom of the reactor.
So almost like soft ice cream falling out of a dispenser, it is like hot nuclear fuel pouring out of these holes on the bottom of the reactor. That phase is called a melt-through. Probably within a day of the beginning of the Fukushima accident, we were in the phase where nuclear fuel was melting through the nuclear pressure vessel.
Now remember the nuclear reaction has stopped. None of this is heat from the chain reaction and all of it is coming from the nuclear daughter products. After about a day, instead of about 5% of the heat coming from the nuclear daughter products, we are down to less than 1% of the nuclear heat. So now we have got a blob that has left the pressure cooker, and is now lying flat on the floor underneath the nuclear reactor.
There are some assumptions here. If there were a crater on the bottom of the nuclear reactor, the blob would have fallen into that crater and the heat would have been concentrated. That would have allowed this nuclear blob to work it's way down into the nuclear containment faster. And again, that is an assumption. No one really knows what is really going on underneath that nuclear reactor. No one can get within 100 feet of the bottom of that nuclear reactor. And it will be 20 or 30 years before we really find out what that area looks like. But the assumption is that the nuclear fuel lying on the floor, has begun to eat away at the containment. So phase 2 is when it ate through the containment.
Phase 3 is the beginning of what would ultimately become a China Syndrome. At the bottom of the nuclear containment is about 3 feet of concrete and about 2 inches of steel. We are quite certain that the nuclear fuel has left the reactor and is lying on the bottom of the containment. The question is how deep into the concrete it has worked it's way and has it broken through the steel? I do not think it has broken through the steel and I think it is perhaps as much as a foot or two into the 3 feet of concrete. But that does not make a China Syndrome. The reason it is not working it's way down any further, is because the radioactive daughter products are no longer generating anywhere near as much heat as they did on the very first day of the accident. In fact, they are probably generating less than a million watts of power right now. Now that is a lot of heat: a million watts is ten thousand 100 watt light bulbs and you can imagine that that would generate a lot of heat. But compared to what was available on the first day, and the second day, and first week, the amount of decay heat is very small.
In addition, right above all this nuclear melted fuel, is an awful lot of water. The water is at less than 100 degrees Centigrade. It is not boiling. And what that means is that there is an enormous ability for that water to suck the heat out of the nuclear core as it lies on the bottom of the containment. I do not believe that the nuclear core can melt down through the containment and into the water table. There have been all sorts of postulations about violent explosions from this. And again, I do not think that can happen because the amount of heat available (now we are almost 9 months after the accident) is not great enough to create what is called a steam explosion.
So the good news is I do not think a China Syndrome can happen. I do not think this core can keep melting into the bottom of the earth. And I do not think there will be a steam explosion either. That is the good news.
Here is the bad news. That nuclear core is in direct contact with tons of water. And that containment, while not leaking down, is leaking out the sides. That contaminated water is going into every other building on site. And there is literally thousands and thousands of tons of water in other buildings. That water contains radioactive cesium, radioactive strontium, and it also contains nuclear fuel. There will be uranium in that water and plutonium in that water as well. We know for sure that that water is leaking into the ground water and into the Pacific Ocean. So while it is important to know that we are not going to release the nuclear core directly into the center of the earth, the problem is not over. And as a matter of fact, the problem will last for tens, perhaps even as long as 30 years because this contaminated water is in the basements of all the buildings on site. And not only does it contain cesium (that hangs around for 300 years), strontium (hangs around for 300 years), but it also contains plutonium and uranium and they have half lives of tens of thousands of years.
So the problem is, what do we do with all that water that is contaminated? It is already leaking into the groundwater. It is already leaking into the ocean. TEPCO is frantically catching it and putting it into tanks. But just today, TEPCO announced that they are running out of tank space on site, and eventually they are going to have to release those tanks into the Pacific Ocean. Now they will try to clean up some of the isotopes like cesium. But they have been unable to capture all the strontium. Strontium is a bone seeker that causes leukemia.
So we are not out of the woods. We are far from out of the woods. It will be 30 years before we capture all that nuclear fuel that is underneath that reactor vessel. And until then, it will be surrounded with water that is leaking into the groundwater.
I will keep you informed as situation develops.
Thank you.
Yes it's been confirmed ,what we all have suspected for so long now. Former head of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant No. 1 Masao Yoshida, that retired from an unknown illness about a month ago have esophageal cancer. TEPCO said Friday (Dec 9, 2011).
Masao Yoshida have kept his illness hidden from the public for personal reasons. But because TEPCO plant workers along with people from rest of the world have made speculations as to what is wrong with his health Yoshida made the decision to step forward. Yoshida visited the Fukushima No. 1 plant Friday and talked about his illness with workers. He did not want speculation about his health to affect the morale of the TEPCO plant workers and their families.
The total amount of radiation Yoshida, 56, was exposed to since the nuclear crisis started in March was 70 millisieverts. It is unlikely his cancer is linked to the radioactive materials spewed by the plant's crippled reactors. Although no signs of esophageal cancer were found during Yoshida's regular checkup in autumn 2010.
Tepco noted that Makoto Akashi, executive director of the National Institute of Radiological Science, estimates that the incubation period of esophageal cancer is around five to 10 years.
Yoshihisa Matsumoto, an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology's Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors, told The Japan Times he also believes the link between Yoshida's cancer and the nuclear disaster is highly improbable, given the amount of radiation he was exposed to and the short incubation period since the crisis started. Matsumoto said no deterministic effects from 70 millisieverts or less have been found.
Tepco said Yoshida does not wish to disclose further details about his illness, such as how bad the cancer is, where he is hospitalized and what treatment he is currently receiving. Yoshida worked in the Fukushima plant since June 2010. He left his post Nov. 14 on health grounds.
Now even if it's "improbable" that this type of cancer should show up all of a sudden, there is still the fact that Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have 3 full nuclear meltdowns with another 3 reactor units that have problems. Problems that are not known. They can't even seem to find the reactor cores anymore because they have eroded their ways down into the earth.
Is it really that far fetched that being close to the biggest nuclear disaster that have ever happened on this planet in it's whole history could have helped "speed up" or directly caused cancer in him.
New reports coming out saying that all of the nuclear fuel at reactor unit 1 have melted and broken the bottom of the steel pressure vessel inside the reactor. The corium (melted nuclear fuel) is now on the bottom of the concrete below and is eating it's way down further and soon it will reach the containment vessel steel that is the last defence before completely outside.
Reports say that not only is this happening in reactor unit 1 but also in Unit's 2 and 3. In the light of this it has again shown the seriousness of the Fukushima Disaster.
The melted nuclear fuel in reactor unit 1 have already eaten it's way 65cm into the concrete below and have another 37cm left before it reaches the containment vessel steel.
In Unit 2 and Unit 3 it is estimated that 63% and 57% of the nuclear fuel have melted outside. The situation is serious and with this new information there are doubts in my mind that workers can continue to work close the the reactor units for much longer. Radiation readings outside the reactor buildings are already high.
This is a confirmation that radiation levels are high even outside the reactor buildings. There are reports done from Yoichi Shimatsu that radiation levels outside the Nr. 2 reactor building to be 1000 millisieverts or 1 Sieverts per hour.
We also hear from Henry living in Japan about 100 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that news is highly controlled and he show us a video from a private owned television channel showing 300 microsieverts on camera when reporters where allowed to take a bus tour outside.
Unit 1 fuel melting erosion 65cm
November 30, 6:19 minutes
Accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co. Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Unit 1 fuel meltdown occurred, the substantial fall in the amount of containment of the reactor by breaking the bottom of the steel melt the concrete bottom of the vessel estimated to be 65 inches maximum erosion has revealed the results of TEPCO.Some fuel for Unit 2 and Unit 3 has been estimated that fall into the containment vessel, has again highlighted the seriousness of the accident.
For Unit 3 from Unit 1 of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is going to melt fall meltdown of nuclear fuel, but was seen as falling into the molten fuel from the reactor containment vessel, some more than eight months from the accident Even after the situation is not known for more.
Multiple research institutes and national TEPCO about it, different ways to analyze the state of the molten fuel from the reactor temperature and injection situation obtained so far, 30 days, resulting in open country Study Group announced. TEPCO's analysis of this evaluation was the most severe cases, for Unit 1, burn all the fuel has been estimated to have dropped considerably in the amount of containment break through the bottom of the reactor. The store has a concrete bottom of the container, and further covered with steel plates.
Falls to the bottom of the vessel containing the fuel, in the sense that this concrete erosion and melting reactions in the heat, the worst case, has been estimated to reach to a depth of 65 cm in Unit 1. At the most concrete thin, with only 37 centimeters until later that no containment, has again highlighted the seriousness of the accident. Also, Unit 2 and Unit 3, the worst case, the fuel burn of 63% and 57%, respectively, has been estimated to have been part of it falling into the containment.
According to TEPCO, the temperature of the containment vessel and the reactor is now 21, has not been below 100 degrees both fuel melted and is cooled by water, erosion of the concrete was evaluated and has stopped and. Study group is also presented another analysis of this research was to discuss the state of the reactor and fuel on multiple results. TEPCO and countries to further analyze the results of this analysis, we have decided to consider how and whether to retrieve the decommissioning of nuclear fuel for the future.
NITE Nuclear Safety, Mr. Seiji Abe, technical advisers, the results of TEPCO's analysis, "and I do not think it is wrong, yet have taken that first step. Results can be derived only one answer I can not. the future is different stacking analysis, we need to analyze the reality of the accident, "we said.
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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