...Nuclear MELTDOWN in Japan, is US Threatened???

On 3/13/2011 5:31 PM, Bill Smith wrote:

How can you tell? Containments on PWRs are round topped heavily
re-enforced concrete structures. The Only BWR I've been in was
rectangular topped sheet metal building on top of the refueling floor
where the reactor vessel head was plainly visible. getting an accurate
description from new reports is far all intents and purposes,
impossible. I doubt very much that these plants are substantially
different from others of the time.

Here's a cutaway of one of the Japanese reactor buildings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BW...t,_cutaway.jpg
That big concrete lid on top of the reactor containment blowing off
would neatly account for that shockwave heading straight into the air in
the video of the explosion.

Pat

On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:56:54 -0700 (PDT), Akira Bergman
wrote:

On Mar 14, 3:46=A0pm, WarrenC wrote:

I wonder if we are dealing with "decay heat" which occurs after the
core is already shut down. "decay heat" is thus:

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown

The fuel assemblies in a reactor core can melt if heat is not removed.
A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a core damage
incident to occur, because decay heat continues to heat the reactor
fuel assemblies after the reactor has shut down, though this heat
decreases with time".

Now question, are we dealing with just previous heat and decay heat
with no longer any live nuclear reactions taking place? Have all the
control rods successfully lowered down? How many days based on your
calculations before the heat can become controlled if they are just
decay heat and previous heat?



I am no expert, just informed to a level. Many establishment experts
are hiding vital information and denying others opinions.

I do not think the situation of the control rods is known fully. As I
understand, rods and the water cooling work in some kind of
combination. Since the water cooling is damaged, the control rods may
not be enough to stabilize the temperature.


The control rod situation is fully known. The control rods were fully
inserted. The fission reaction was shut down and the diesel
generators were powering the cooling system for about an hour before
the tsunami knocked out the diesels. Then they ran the system on the
emergency-backup battery system for another 8 hours or so. Those
batteries were not designed to run the cooling system forever, they
were designed to give you time to fix the other problems (in the main
power grid or with the diesels). But in the wake of the earthquake
and tsunami damage EVERYWHERE, and the extensive damage to the diesels
(flooded with seawater, not a situation that was anticipated), repairs
could not be made in time.

So they had around 9 hours of successful "shutdown" before they
actually lost the coolant system and temperatures started to rise.
There was no question about the control rods having been completely
inserted - but as the wiki article says, the core still generates a
LOT of decay heat even when fission has stopped. Enough heat to boil
away a lot of coolant, thus exposing at least part of the fuel rods.
The much-hotter-than-it-should-be zirconium in the exposed fuel rods
leads to the production of hydrogen gas. They decided that they
needed to vent the hydrogen, knowing full well it might explode
OUTSIDE the reactor when it mixed with the oxygen in the air. It did
explode - OUTSIDE. There was no explosion inside the reactor.

Now, from the byproducts of what's going on inside they know that fuel
rods were exposed and damaged. It's possible to make guess-timates of
the amount of damage based on how much of certain elements are
produced (or not produced), and with the injection of sea water they
appear to have limited the damage to a very manageable level. I'd say
significantly LESS than Three Mile Island - and for all the TMI hype,
the damage outside the plant was zero. No rise in cancer rates or
anything else, nothing noticable that affected people outside AT ALL -
except for stress and panic. And it looks (so far) like the damage in
Japan is significantly less than at TMI.

Yes, it is POSSIBLE that the damage will turn out to be worse than
generally believed. It's also POSSIBLE that even the 8.9 quake was
just a foreshock of an even bigger one to come. But in general it
looks like that while the reactors will be lost (they conceded that
when they used the seawater) the release of radiation/contamination
will be very small. I'm on the west coast of the US, right where any
contaminated particles would come - and I'm not worried about it at
all. There is far more risk of death in a whole bunch of things we do
on an everyday basis that we don't worry about (like commuting to work
by car).

"Sylvia Else" wrote in message
...
| On 14/03/2011 4:01 PM, Androcles wrote:
|
| "Sylvia wrote in message
| ...
| |I can't help feeling that given that Japan is frequently the subject of
| | tsunamis (even if not usually this bad), and that there is a clear
link
| | between tsunamis and earthquakes, the nuclear plant backup generators
| | should have been in a place that is hardened so as to resist a
tsunami.
| |
| | Sylvia.
|
| Most people have 20-20 hindsight. Build a 30 foot sea wall and
| a 40 foot tsunami comes along. Who'd a thought it? Not me, not
| you, not the Japanese. It's also called Monday Morning Football.
| The quarterback should not have been sacked and the referee was blind.
|
|
| Is this just hindsight? Had *any* steps been taken in respect of
| protection from tsunamis?

Of course. The Japanese aren't stupid, they know how to build
a sea wall the same way the Americans know how to build a levy.
It didn't work when Katrina hit New Orleans and that was only
a little old puff of air stirring up the waves, not a giant tsunami.
When the next earthquake hits Los Angeles (and it will) the tsunami
will put the RMS Queen Mary ON Long Beach instead of beside it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary
Then the Californians will say "send money" and I will say "No,
you didn't put a high enough wall around the ship and the ship is
on a known seismic fault line." That is foresight, who'da thunk it?
Do tall buildings fall down? WTC 9-11 was two airplanes, not an
earthquake. Who'da thunk it?

Sylvia Else wrote:
I can't help feeling that given that Japan is frequently the subject of
tsunamis (even if not usually this bad), and that there is a clear link
between tsunamis and earthquakes, the nuclear plant backup generators
should have been in a place that is hardened so as to resist a tsunami.

I don't know the specs. I just read a post, elsewhere, which said that
they were built to withstand tsunamis, but not the 30' flavor.

I've been trying to think aobut what kind of shape would have survived
a 30' wave but I'm not skilled enough in this kind of thought
experiment.

A round cement structure with a center of gravity at the bottom would
bob and move around. I'm not sure you can make plumbing elastic....
or would it have to be elastic if the pipes were in the cement ball?

/BAH

There seems to be little perils in the 3 nuclear reactors in Japan.
Anyway. Wonder if the following is true:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/...ave_been_nuked

"If the Same Magnitude Quake Had Hit California, We Could Have Been
Nuked

An 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake could have ripped apart at least four
coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the
entire United States."

In article d2527d39-015a-4f2d-8bb9-
,
says...

There seems to be little perils in the 3 nuclear reactors in Japan.
Anyway. Wonder if the following is true:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/...ave_been_nuked

"If the Same Magnitude Quake Had Hit California, We Could Have Been
Nuked

An 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake could have ripped apart at least four
coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the
entire United States."

I think many (here and in the media) are overreacting to the problems
Japan is having with their earthquake and tsunami damaged nuclear power
facilities.

After all, a recent report says "Approximately 2,000 bodies were found
Monday in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan's northeast coast, the Kyodo news
agency reported." These deaths were all a direct result of the
earthquake/tsunami.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

On Mar 13, 1:57*am, Robert Clark wrote:
On Mar 12, 4:41*pm, Robert Clark wrote:





Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors
12 March 2011.
UPDATE 6: 10.15 am GMT
"Three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors were in operation when
yesterday's quake hit, at which point they shut down automatically and
commenced removal of residual heat with the help of emergency diesel
generators. These suddenly stopped about an hour later, and this has
been put down to tsunami flooding by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA).
"The loss of the diesels led the plant owners Tokyo Electric Power
Company (Tepco) to immediately notify the government of a technical
emergency situation, which allows officials to take additional
precautionary measures.
Even now, the primary focus of work at the site remains to connect
enough portable power modules to fully replace the diesels and enable
the full operation of cooling systems."
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS...e_earthquake_r...

*If the main problem is just getting enough portable power there then
there are portable gas turbine generators capable of putting out 10's
of megawatts. You could also use the power from a nuclear aircraft
carrier at a power range of 200 megawatts, though there might concern
about bringing it off shore in a zone subject to tsunamis.

Nuclear powered submarines would provide another means of providing
portable power for the reactor cooling systems. The American Seawolf
submarine uses 40 megawatt reactors and the Russian Akula class
submarines operate at 190 megawatts.
There would be less concern for tsunamis for submarines if operated
off shore. You would still need likely to be hundreds of yards off
shore for their required depth to operate. Then you would also need
sufficient cabling to cover that distance.


Ever happen to you that you're watching a news program or interview
and an obvious but very important question doesn't get asked? Remember
how frustrating that is?
An obvious question not asked is if these mobile diesel generators
were trucked in why is it they did not work? Was it really because the
plugs did not fit? After three days they couldn't get adapters to go
from one set of connectors to another? After three days they couldn't
find a diesel generator of the same type they used at the plant? After
three days they couldn't figure out a way to cut off the connectors
and splice the cables directly together?


Bob Clark

On Mar 12, 8:38*am, "Jonathan" wrote:
Look at this explosion at *47 seconds into the video.
A violent hydrogen explosion, demolishing such a
heavily reinforced containment building, must have
been the result of a badly overheated reactor.

Japan claims the reactor is intact. But that large of an explosion
could have caused all kinds of damage and leaks that
have yet to be found, or admitted by the Japanese govt.

Japan Nuclear Reactor EXPLOSION Fukushima Meltdownhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvC4WQrQwTs

Japan Nuclear Fallout Map? *(gulp)http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/438/fallout.jpg

Fukushima overhead viewhttp://everist.org/pics/misc/fukushima_worse.png

Japan is reporting the prevailing winds are out to sea.
They've already evacuated 300,000 from the area.
And Fukushima #1 is one of the largest 25 reactors
in the world. And was built ...way back..in 1970.
The first reactor built by it's builder.

s
It’s highly unlikely the long-term and/or all-inclusive death toll
related to this will exceed 50,000. However, human and animal
suffering plus multiple biological and biodiversity consequences could
easily involve 500,000 (possibly millions) of us. Perhaps Japan
should establish a similar BP blowout fiasco escrow relief fund of at
least $100 billion to start with. Each radiation related death should
be compensated to whatever surviving relatives at a minimum of $1M, up
to $100M for each of the most active income earning adults, because
otherwise government and their Big Energy puppet masters will never
learn.

Ocean radon detections are less than 5th grade physics and
science-101. Japan has many test wells that were specifically drilled
and instrument outfitted for detecting radon and other gasses, as well
as for gathering geothermal and seismic data. Oddly all of that
public funded science data is MIA.

Any critical backup power system (especially those at any reactor
site) needs to be fully operated at least once a week. I have a 30 KW
auxiliary diesel generator with a 275 gallon fuel tank that I have
treated with fuel stabilizers, and having otherwise drained off the
very bottom so as to remove any accumulated moisture, plus I've
changed the two very large capacity fuel filters as well as the lube
oil filter and having changed its 12 quart lube oil capacity every
other year, plus I've test run my generator as often as once a month,
however I've also neglected it for 6+ months at a time. Never the
less, it has always started right up and the fuel supply was always
perfectly fine and dandy.

Such standby commercial generators or whatever standby diesel engine
driven pumps are usually kept preheated to at least 120 degrees F,
plus they have pre-lube pumps, which insures a quick and reliable
start-up and full load capability within seconds. My 3600 RPM diesel
driven generator is only kept at 80ish degrees F, and along with it’s
pre-lube accumulator means that it’s ready for full load within as
little as 12 seconds from its timed glow-plug preheat sequence,
starter engagement and delivering 60 Hz.

It's called preventative maintenance, of which few if any utility
power companies do anymore because they don't get public and insurance
disaster funding and their highly lucrative double-time pay when
nothing brakes or goes bad.

The gross incompetence of our ZNR/GOP "mission accomplished" DoD and
NEI is always to be expected. Apparently the NEI “Clean-Air Energy”
motto doesn’t bother to list atmospheric, ground and ocean radiation
polluting factors as any concern, any more so than our NRC or the NEA,
OECD and IAEA has bothered to fully educate us. Of course government
and special insider agencies that get to regulate themselves seldom
communicate with one another without involving obfuscation, including
their puppet government of Japan that has lied from the very get go by
saying that everything was under control and that those primary
containment vessels were not damaged.

Perhaps we need an entirely new and improved global nuclear agency,
the IACA (International Atomic Clown Agency), as somewhat like our
dysfunctional DHS that has to use entrapments in order to enable and
then catch potential terrorist that probably wouldn’t gotten 10% as
far along without those spendy entrapment (means and opportunity)
benefits.

Seeing is believing, although as for our seeing anything inside of
those reactor facilities as of just before and shortly after those
reactors exploded is simply not in the cards, obviously because the
NRC and IAEA house of cards has always been systematically stacked
against us.

There should have been multiple rad-hard cameras in place as of before
and especially as of minutes after those explosions, so that the
public and other remote agencies of supposed expertise around the
world could be directly informed as to the extent of damage, instead
of being lied to by those of nuclear energy and their puppet
government authority.

With thousands of miles and loads of secondary storm cells in between
us and them, hopefully the radiation dosage for the PNW shouldn't be
excessive, although as one might easily conclude the nature of some
kinds of radiation are going to be far worse and otherwise more
problematic than others.
http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_pac_loop.gif
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com...-asia-sat.html
Unless a new storm cell develops that alters the prevailing winds, it
looks like Oregon and California are going to receive the worst of it.

As long as those nuclear facility workers don't mind giving their life
for saving the rest of us, there's hope that most of those exposed
fuel rods (especially of their No.3 reactor that's 7% plutonium) can
be covered up with something more substantial than dead bodies.

They need to attach substantial steel cables and essentially tow those
damaged reactor vessels off-site and out to sea, and then sink them in
a very deep ocean trench. They should have done this as of before
they exploded their buildings, but as long as the buildings are
destroyed makes it easier to attach cables and tow those nasty things
out to sea where Godzilla can best deal with them.

http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

On Mar 14, 10:00*am, Robert Clark wrote:
On Mar 13, 1:57*am, Robert Clark wrote:



On Mar 12, 4:41*pm, Robert Clark wrote:

Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors
12 March 2011.
UPDATE 6: 10.15 am GMT
"Three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors were in operation when
yesterday's quake hit, at which point they shut down automatically and
commenced removal of residual heat with the help of emergency diesel
generators. These suddenly stopped about an hour later, and this has
been put down to tsunami flooding by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA).
"The loss of the diesels led the plant owners Tokyo Electric Power
Company (Tepco) to immediately notify the government of a technical
emergency situation, which allows officials to take additional
precautionary measures.
Even now, the primary focus of work at the site remains to connect
enough portable power modules to fully replace the diesels and enable
the full operation of cooling systems."
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS...e_earthquake_r....

*If the main problem is just getting enough portable power there then
there are portable gas turbine generators capable of putting out 10's
of megawatts. You could also use the power from a nuclear aircraft
carrier at a power range of 200 megawatts, though there might concern
about bringing it off shore in a zone subject to tsunamis.

Nuclear powered submarines would provide another means of providing
portable power for the reactor cooling systems. The American Seawolf
submarine uses 40 megawatt reactors and the Russian Akula class
submarines operate at 190 megawatts.
There would be less concern for tsunamis for submarines if operated
off shore. You would still need likely to be hundreds of yards off
shore for their required depth to operate. Then you would also need
sufficient cabling to cover that distance.

*Ever happen to you that you're watching a news program or interview
and an obvious but very important question doesn't get asked? Remember
how frustrating that is?
An obvious question not asked is if these mobile diesel generators
were trucked in why is it they did not work? Was it really because the
plugs did not fit? After three days they couldn't get adapters to go
from one set of connectors to another? After three days they couldn't
find a diesel generator of the same type they used at the plant? After
three days they couldn't figure out a way to cut off the connectors
and splice the cables directly together?

* Bob Clark

Hard-wired emergency generators shouldn't have been a problem, unless
the monkeys in charge of everything simply ran out of bananas.

Voltage conversion transformers are the bread and butter or rice of
their utilities, and the same goes for those suppliers of portable
generators. It sounds like their computer controlled systems were too
fly-by-wire, whereas any one of any million connections or sensor that
fails brings to entire operation down to zero. They need to get rid
of that computer crap, except for monitoring and recording whatever
the reactor related systems and their human operators are doing.

Sorry about that, too little too late, because now we're all screwed.

http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

On Mar 14, 6:49*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 3/13/2011 8:15 PM, WarrenC wrote:

I don't think the core containers are damaged. Where did you hear it?
Also the control rods are functionining property. This seem to be what
this nuclear expert Fred Mccall is convincing us. That there is
nothing to be concerned about. The Japanese are just lowering the
temperature which existed prior to the Earthquake. It is no longer
producing new heat because the neclear reactions are already off when
the control rods are lowered. You were just speculating the control
rod didn't function property. We assume they are. If not, then it's
going to be a problem because the nuclear reactions can generate new
heat... but this is unlikely. Control rods are lowered by simple
actuator machine which seldom fail especially in mil spec
configuration used in nuclear power plants.

There's video of the explosion at reactor building #3 over hehttp://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/13...at-fukush.html
It looks a lot more severe than the explosion at reactor #1, and note
the large amount of debris falling back to earth from the blast cloud.
The speed it falls at makes it look like heavy material, rather than the
lightweight building covering in the reactor #1 explosion.
A photo of the building makes it look a lot more damaged than the first
building also:http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/a...APAN_EARTHQUA_...

Pat

news says 3 reactors are melting down, one had a large sudden drop in
cooling water, for unknown reasons, and earlier statements said lose
one reactor will probably mean all 3. Maybe they are too close
together? or their systems to entwined together?

I did stumble onto a report that chernobyl caused nearly a million
deaths.... I will post a link later

In japan people are wisely trying to move away from the reactor area