Pick a number, and that reactor is described as being near a meltdown. The news coverage coming out of Japan is even more confused when American media deciphers it. Hopefully hard facts come in soon…
Meltdown occurred according to Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
URGENT: March 12 00:00 PST: Explosion at Nuclear Facility
VIDEO of explosion at nuke plant.
Reuters Live Earthquake News Feed
Several people appear to be injured at Fukushima nuclear plant – NHK
Walls and roof of a building at site destroyed by blast – NHK via Sky News
UPDATE: 22:50 PST: BREAKING NEWS: Pressure successfully released from Fukushima No. 1 reactor: agency
UPDATE: 21:47 PST: Meltdown underway at Reactor #1? http://twitter.com/#!/dicklp
Fukushima fuel cores are melting at 2000C and dropping onto steel floor. Steel melts at 1500C. Could still be brought under control, but Four other Fukushima nuke reactors are struggling with similar problem. If multiple meltdown begins, it will be uncontrollable.
Nuclear reactor coolant systems are running on batteries, and the coolant has reached the boiling point. Extremely critical situation currently at several earthquake affected nuclear reactors. Officials are concerned that a Three Mile Island 1979 meltdown could happen here. Reuters Link
From the LA Times:
Conditions appear to be worsening at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan, according to local media.
The Kyodo news agency reported that the cooling system has failed at three reactors of Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant. The coolant water’s temperature had reached boiling temperature, the agency reported, citing the power plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power.
The cooling system failure at the No. 2 power plant came after officials were already troubled by the failure of the emergency cooling system at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which officials feared could cause a meltdown.
The talking head used by CTV (Canada) on nuclear matters was one Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, an anti-nuclear campaigner. I sent them a cross note…..
IanM
@wayne says:
March 13, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Don’t know of others but, I had never heard explicitly the portion bolded below:
The Japanese reactors are a completely different design [than Chernobyl] known as Boiling Water Reactors, which are old and tested, and have three quite elaborate systems of containment designed to constrain radioactive leakage, points out Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. “The third containment is designed, built, and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown,” he writes.
Wayne, you might enjoy reading some of this technical publication. See page 16/25 of Univ of Illinois’s Prof. Ragheb’s “Containment Structures.”
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20457%20CSE%20462%20Safety%20Analysis%20of%20Nuclear%20Reactor%20Systems/Containment%20Structures.pdf
He discusses the role of the suppression pool, levels of containment etc. of boiling water reactors. The Japanese units are GE Mark I design, they are older systems that were apparently ready to be decommissioned in the near future.
Here’s a news stream direct from Japan (English version) on the expected explosion, radiation levels (benign so far), pressure, etc.:
(might have to sit through some general news on train scedules and such)
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv
Somewhere upthread I’d made a comment about the spent fuel ponds being possibly affected by the explosions in the reactor buildings. That was based, it seems, on a misunderstanding of some schematics.
There’s a common spent fuel storage facility for all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, some distance from the reactors. The pool in the reactor hall, it seems, is purely an intermediate storage for use during refuelling operations. It’s 6 months since unit #3 restarted after it’s last refuelling, so I’m assuming that the pool will have been empty (as that at unit #1 seems to have been).
View from the Solent gave a truly excellent link a few comments ago:
A very “simple and accurate explanation” of Fukushima
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
Following the “Updates and additional Q&A information” link on that page leads one to (amongst other useful things) this statement:
“Professor Barry Brook, an environmental scientist at the University of Adelaide, said the effect on the Australian debate depended on whether it would be ”argued on a rational basis or an irrational basis”.
A rational debate would acknowledge that Japan’s largest recorded earthquake produced an incident at a 40-year-old reactor that was ranked at a level less than the Three Mile Island emergency, he said. ”I think the nuclear reactors have come through remarkably well.””
Debate argued on a rational basis? He’s gotta be joking.
It is my understanding that the Japanese were assured that tsunamis could not affect Japan because the coast was designed to withstand a 6 m Tsunami.
Being Japanese, no one was worried as they were told and believed, as only the Japanese can believe, that the authorities knew what was right and needed.
Based on previous experience, they were probably right, but of course rogue events happen.
@Mike g says:
March 11, 2011 at 9:00 pm
What we may learn from this tragedy is that we just can’t engineer our society to withstand magnitude 9 earthquakes. Measly 7′s, yes, and the ocasional 8.0. But, maybe not 9.x.
_________________________________________________________________
Level of design strength is a matter of choice based upon professional judgement review of all available information…
It IS possible to design for a 9 or even a 10… and there is a safety factor ABOVE the specified design strength. My read is that 7.9 was the chosen design strength but no mention of safety factor – typically 1.5x to 2.0x, this would possibly explain why the facilities are still standing.
@ur momisugly Wondering Aloud says:
March 13, 2011 at 8:05 pm
>millisieverts are not the same as millirem.
yeah: they’re not. Looked through what I posted and don’t see why you’d think I’d think that. (Quoting what you’re refring too would help) I’m guessing you raised this because the measured rems reference (which was on http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2 ) that had me mention 88.2 rems; that post on there has vanished since, for the better I guess, as it was inaccurate due to use of the wrong unit, apparently. (luckily, too)
1 Sv = 100 rem
1 mSv = 100 mrem = 0.1 rem
1 μSv = 0.1 mrem
1 rem = 0.01 Sv = 10 mSv
1 mrem = 0.00001 Sv = 0.01 mSv = 10 μSv
The 88.2 rem was clearly a misreporting, as I’ve seen 882 microSievert since, matching other reports (such as “751.2 microsievert per hour” at the plant, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/japan-quake-radiation-idUSL3E7ED0MI20110313 )
Many politicians, designers and industrialists are very confused in the use of the sun.
Passive Solar design and Daylighting has been in use for centuries… I have found the process to not add more than 1 to 2 % to the cost of construction.
The designs tend to be more alive ( stimulating ), plants, pets and people do very well in these structures.
Productivity increases from 15% to 30% in office environments.
Sales increase in stores.
And the energy bills ( as well as the need for fuels ) decrease.
Absolutely no excuse in continuing to ignore the obvious.
Yes we need to educate; architects, engineers, building officials, builders, politicians, and the public.
The reward is about 50% savings.
All this without a single Photovoltaic Panel…
I am not including my website as I do not wish this to be an ad.
@Mike g.
Not sure where exactly on Dr. Gales sites you find easily-accessible statistics, but I doubt he would disagree. Quote your source precicely.
You can read through this report from the WHO: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html
You’ll find plenty of lines to add nuance to alarmist statements, but bottom-line thousands of ADDITIONAL (radiation-related) cancers is pretty much what experts settled on awhile ago as a result of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. This may not be all that much in the big picture, and radiation really isn’t that big of a deal (unless you’re in the 1 Sv/hr range, though I doubt anyone reading this will be strolling through a badly damaged reactor any time soon), but there’s no point to downplay the reality of it either.
@Mike g says:
March 13, 2011 at 7:44 pm
@MVB “…thousands in the surrounding areas from cancers later.”
Of course, cancer wasn’t invented by Chernobyl. There would have been “thousands” if Chernobyl had not happened. Last time I looked at Dr. Gale’s site, they weren’t attributing anywhere near that many to Chernobyl.
RT video of second explosion at Fukushima, with minimal screen clutter and close up. Fire ball clearly visible with a rising black cloud of smoke (in an unfortunate shape) and falling debris clearly visible. This is really not good at all.
“Explosion rocks third Fukushima reactor
14 March 2011
First published: 3.08am GMT
UPDATE 1: 3.25am Addition of background information
UPDATE 2: 3.49am Technical details on pressure
UPDATE 3: 4.34am Injuries, radiation rates and pressure data
Another hydrogen explosion has rocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, this time at the third reactor unit. Initial analysis is that the containment structure remains intact.
The blast that occurred at 11.01am today was much larger than the one seen at unit 1 two days ago. An orange flash came before a large column of brown and grey smoke. A large section of the relatively lightweight roof was seen to fly upwards before landing back on other power plant buildings.
…”
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Explosion_rocks_third_Fukushima_reactor_1402111.html
CNN on second explosion:
@ur momisugly CRS, Dr.P.H.
Fantasic paper. Thanks. Saved me from writing many comments!
One thing I still don’t competely understand is the sea water being injected; is it into the suppression pool to replenish it or directly into the RPV? I keep hearing that the level is not as high as it should be but don’t see what is keeping them from raising it. If it’s gas at the top of the RPV why don’t they just vent more to the atmosphere, or, is it a deeper problem. (surely it’s not just to prevent some bad PR)
Ian L. McQueen says:
March 13, 2011 at 8:35 pm
“The talking head used by CTV (Canada) on nuclear matters was one Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, an anti-nuclear campaigner. I sent them a cross note…..”
On BBC America their chosen source was a guy from Greenpeace. My eyes crossed.
The RT reporter reporter that the second containment vessel is still intact.
http://twitter.com/#!/norishikata is tweeting again now after a sleep. Blast interrupted cooling at #2 so seawater injection planned there. #3 cooling temporarily interrupted by blast. This blast had been predicted yesterday, by the way, if you read back through his tweets (to before he had a sleep). Initially it was thought that the blast might mean a ‘ large amount of radioactive materials are released to the air ‘ but since then he says ‘Unit 3 ,after the hydrogen blast this morning, has not so far shown a rise of radioactive level based on the on-site monitoring’.
3 things to this post:
a) – a better clarification on radiation units than I posted earlier
b) – an explanation why radiation levels seen in Japan are no big deal (so far), whatsoever (seriously, they’re not, not as of early March 14, 2011 at least.)
c) – and a comparison with the bananas (which, btw was an excellent post, IMO, Anthony. tx!)
a) This table of radiation units lays it out well:
http://www.albert-cordova.com/iso/Units.htm
(though note they apparently couldn’t come up with a “µ” for micro.)
1 millirem ( 1 mrem) = 10 microsievert (1 µSv) (NOT “mSv”) )
b) In the US, the ‘annual estimated average effective dose equivalent from radiation’ is 360 mrem per adult. This is broken down as:
ANNUAL estimated average effective dose equivalent received by a member of the population of the United States, NATURALLY.
Table Source: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm
Source of Radiation Average annual effective dose equivalent (in µSv or mrem)
(µSv) (mrem)
Inhaled (Radon and Decay Products) 2000 200
Other Internally Deposited Radionuclides 390 39
Terrestrial Radiation 280 28
Cosmic Radiation 270 27
Cosmogenic Radioactivity 10 1
Rounded total from natural source 3000 300
Rounded total from artificial Sources 600 60
TOTAL: 3600 360
Normal background radiation received in the US is 3600 µSv, or about 0.41 µSv/hour [3600 µSv per year / 365 days / 24 hours –> = 0.41 µSv/hour]
Yet other sources (such as current news) estimate the normal dosage a lot lower: “A microsievert is an internationally recognized unit measuring radiation dosage, with people typically exposed during an entire year to a total of about 1,000 microsieverts.” [Source: CNN on March 14, 2011: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1 ]
Anyhow: Using the “US normal dosing of 0.41 µSv/hour”, then the reported readings in the general range of 500 to 1500 microSieverts per hour thus translate to the range of 1,220 – 3,660 TIMES the normal rate.
Now, to get to a troubling 1 Sv dose, at 500 µSv/hour, you’d have to be continually exposed for over 2 years to that. In other words: the radiation levels currently measured my seem high, but Japanese authorities are not covering anything up when claiming that there is no reason to panic and no immediate danger. That is NOT an understatement. Things don’t even get really bad until one gets into the 2Sv and above levels anyhow.
EFFECTS: Exposure to 1 Sv (10,000 mSv or 10,000,000 µSv) in a day of radiation can cause hemorrhaging, 2 Sv nausea, vomitting and diarrhea; 4Sv can cause death within two months, and 2,000 Sv can cause loss of consciousness within minutes and death within hours. [Combined sources for this:
– http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-14/understanding-radiation-poisoning-questions-and-answers.html
– http://books.google.com/books?id=JelgwgVx-P0C&lpg=PA124&dq=8000%20rads%20of%20fast%20neutron%20radiation%20(from%20a%20neutron%20bomb)&pg=PA122#v=onepage&q=8000%20rads%20of%20fast%20neutron%20radiation%20(from%20a%20neutron%20bomb)&f=false
– http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/sec21/ch317/ch317a.html ]
c) To quote from “Going bananas over radiation” Posted on February 16, 2011 by Anthony Watts: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/16/going-bananas-over-radiation/ :
“The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems (36 μSv).
36 μSv/ year from eating a banana/day or 0.0986 μSv/day from eating a banana would be 0.0041 μSv/hour if you took all day to eat it. 🙂
How does that compare to 500 μSv/hour? Well, the exposure you’d get from taking a walk miles away from the troubles Fukushima plants is more than one hundred twenty thousand times greater than taking a bite from your banana.
The one is unusual, but no big deal; the other completely insignificant.
Perhaps nuclear power facilities should not be allowed at sites that may be disrupted by worst-case tsunami or volcanic activity. I assume sites prone to catastrophic ground failure (liquefaction) are already ruled out. I do hope they manage to keep the lid closed on what appears to be a cracked Pandoran box.
It seems that the US Fleet has detected radiation so have moved position.
Andy
It is much to be hoped that the Fukushima incident does not prove a Reichstag fire moment for Green Collectivism.
@ur momisuglywayne says:
March 13, 2011 at 10:28 pm
@ur momisugly CRS, Dr.P.H.
Fantasic paper. Thanks. Saved me from writing many comments!
One thing I still don’t competely understand is the sea water being injected; is it into the suppression pool to replenish it or directly into the RPV? I keep hearing that the level is not as high as it should be but don’t see what is keeping them from raising it. If it’s gas at the top of the RPV why don’t they just vent more to the atmosphere, or, is it a deeper problem. (surely it’s not just to prevent some bad PR)
——–
REPLY Wayne, you are most welcome! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
They are flooding the core of the reactor (fuel rod assembly etc.) with seawater in order to stave off a completely meltdown of the rods. They are also putting boron into the water to reduce the nuclear reaction.
This is quite good:
http://enr.construction.com/infrastructure/environment/2011/0313-JapanNuclearMeltdownFears.asp
The seawater and boron will more than likely permanently cripple the units.
These old reactors were due to be decommissioned, but still, it is a massive loss of electrical energy to their economy.
dirkH says: You’re grasping at any straw to make up an argument against nukes… IOW you’re using the victims of the Tsunami for your position. Does anyone besides me find that vomit-inducing?
I’d guess that there are a lot of people from the missing 10,000 who are (or were!) grasping at straws hoping to be rescued. Pretending that the huge resources now being diverted to contain the multiple nuclear reactors that are out of control is not affecting the rescue attempts, is exactly what you are trying to accuse me of doing: twisting the facts to fit your preconceived position on nuclear power.
Yours and other’s comments that the only casualties of the nuclear incidents are the “2 or 3 people with bruises” is stupid, disingenuous and flying in the face of the facts.
vomit-inducing, as you say.
A detailed description of the Fukushima plant including with an engineer who designed safety systems including for the tsunami case who says what happened “was beyond our expectations”. Woops.
“Fuckushima Nuclear Reactor No2 Rods Exposed And Melting 14.03.11”
The Fukushima plant allegedly was designed for a 6.3 meter tsunami but they got a 10 meter tsunami which took out the diesel back up generators. Woops.
“Pools Of Stored Nuclear Waste Have Been Without Cooling For 40 Hours Now”
Yikes.