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

Exactly, once everything is capped and otherwise cleaned up, they
could put as many a 6 AP-1000 class reactors on top of that site. *Two
trillion dollars later and a decade from now they'll have their $1/
kwhr energy that's relatively safe.


you mean like USSR / Russia has cleaned up the chernobyl region?

basically its impossible to clean up a large power plant thats melted
down and leaked radiation and espically pluntonium over a large area.

whats required is time, lots and lots of time, essentially
generations, till things cool off enough to allow
repopulation........

by closing permanetely some plants and taking so many off line for
inspection japan is locking the barn door after the cows have escaped.

you know their problem could of occured to a plant near tokyo, imagine
trying to evacuate that city, just attempting to house residents in
other areas would be a horror.

worse than the US trying to evacuate new york area, since at least our
country is large enough to put people somewhere else

IAEA is a joke they havent put up a accident update since may
5th.......

Apparently they only want to post good news, and since theres no good
news from japan, and they see the distinct possiblity of their
industry going away they prefer to keep silent

On May 13, 2:19*am, bob haller wrote:
Exactly, once everything is capped and otherwise cleaned up, they
could put as many a 6 AP-1000 class reactors on top of that site. *Two
trillion dollars later and a decade from now they'll have their $1/
kwhr energy that's relatively safe.

you mean like USSR / Russia has cleaned up the chernobyl region?
They did a truly ****-poor job of it. They just through together a
temporary cap and abandoned the entire area because that was the
cheapest and quickest thing to do. Japan can't afford to be so
wasteful.


basically its impossible to clean up a large power plant thats melted
down and leaked radiation and espically pluntonium over a large area.
That's not exactly true. The contamination is easy to detect,
although It's spendy as hell and time consuming to clean up, but
otherwise technically doable.


whats required is time, lots and lots of time, essentially
generations, till things cool off enough to allow
repopulation........
Mostly robotics and long-reach cranes can do 90+% of the work. Actual
workers can be exposed to 1 Sv per every other year for about ten
years. That's 5 Sv in ten years. There will be some genetic and
biological consequences to that amount of exposure, but it's doable.


by closing permanetely some plants and taking so many off line for
inspection japan is locking the barn door after the cows have escaped.

you know their problem could of occured to a plant near tokyo, imagine
trying to evacuate that city, just attempting to house residents in
other areas would be a horror.

worse than the US trying to evacuate new york area, since at least our
country is large enough to put people somewhere else.

You've already been told exactly what and how things should be done a
whole lot better, and obviously none of the existing reactors in Japan
are ideally suitable for that kind of seismic active application, nor
suited for being underwater or hardly passively failsafe like the
AP-1000 reactor configuration, so eventually another serious reactor
problem will happen. The government of Japan has obviously been
corrupted as well as dysfunctional, so no matters what it seems Japan
energy-wise has screwed itself.

The international nuclear regulatory agency should not allow any new
uranium or MOX fuel into Japan, because that alone would force changes
for the better.

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TEPCO makes effort to grasp precise water levels

Tokyo Electric Power Company will fix gauges in two of the reactors at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to determine precise water levels.

It appears there was a problem with the gauge in the No.1 reactor that
showed the level of cooling water at about half the level of the fuel
rods. The gauge was fixed on Thursday and then revealed that the rods
were completely exposed and melted down.

TEPCO says the gauges at the No.2 and 3 reactors might not be showing
the actual water levels, and that the worst case is that the rods have
melted down.

The company says the temperatures of the two reactors are stable, so
it can proceed with cooling them even if finds that meltdown took
place.
TEPCO says workers will go into the reactor buildings and fix the
gauges, getting the precise data on water levels needed to continue
cooling the reactors.

But conditions inside the buildings are not known and the operation
will be difficult.

Monday, May 16, 2011 05:31 +0900 (JST)

On May 15, 11:02*am, bob haller wrote:

Rapid meltdown in No.1 reactor

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant, says most of the fuel rods in the No.1 reactor
had dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel within 16 hours of
the earthquake on March 11th.

The utility revealed its study on the subject on Sunday.

TEPCO said it analyzed the data and calculated a timeline for the
developments in the No. 1 reactor on the assumption that the reactor
lost its cooling system as soon as it was hit by the tsunami.

The firm said that within about 3 hours after the reactor
automatically shut down, the cooling water had evaporated to a level
at the top of the rods.

In the next hour and a half, parts of the fuel rods are believed to
have begun melting.

The temperature of the fuel rods is believed to have reached 2,800
degrees Celsius at this stage, and the meltdown advanced rapidly.

Almost of all the fuel rods melted and dropped to the bottom of the
pressure vessel by 6:50 am on March 12th.

TEPCO said the temperature dropped after water was poured into the
reactor starting at 5:50 am on the same day.

The firm says the melted rods created small holes on the bottom of the
vessel, but that no major problems are developing there. It believes
that the amount of radioactive substances that could spread from the
reactor will be limited.

Sunday, May 15, 2011 23:29 +0900 (JST)

That's certainly what we'd expected happened early on. Uncooled
reactors of that vintage are not very forgiving.

Sandia NL was also supposed to be telling us the truth. So much for
putting any trust in our Sandia National Lab FUD-masters.

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Fukushima companies want nuke plant scrapped

Companies operating near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have
demanded that its operator permanently shut down the damaged facility
as its radiation leaks are harming their business.

About 120 business people attended a briefing by Tokyo Electric Power
Company in Iwaki City on Monday to hear how the utility is addressing
the accident at the plant.

Iwaki is more than 30 kilometers away from the nuclear plant and so
outside the evacuation zone.

But manufacturers in the city say clients are demanding radiation
checks for their products. Sales of local farm produce have fallen.

TEPCO officials said the utility will have to revise its strategy to
stabilize Reactor No. 1, where nuclear fuel rods are believed to have
melted.

But they said the initial plan for stabilizing the No.1 and other
reactors by January next year remains unchanged.

The officials declined to say when the plant will be decommissioned,
on the grounds that TEPCO does not know what is taking place inside
the reactors and so cannot give timelines.

Monday, May 16, 2011 19:49 +0900 (JST)


gee consumers worried about buying products or food grown near the
reactor who would of thought

With a totally melted down reactor 1 and most likely all that were
operating and then shut down but had no cooling for over a week The
defueling and halfway clean up will take forever. TMIs partial
meltdown was over 10 years, they must wait for the fuel to cool a
little naturally........

10 to 20 years might be a good start, japanese can start having kids
now to be reactor clean up workers, they will need a LOT..........

On May 16, 5:15*am, bob haller wrote:
Fukushima companies want nuke plant scrapped

Companies operating near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have
demanded that its operator permanently shut down the damaged facility
as its radiation leaks are harming their business.

About 120 business people attended a briefing by Tokyo Electric Power
Company in Iwaki City on Monday to hear how the utility is addressing
the accident at the plant.

Iwaki is more than 30 kilometers away from the nuclear plant and so
outside the evacuation zone.

But manufacturers in the city say clients are demanding radiation
checks for their products. Sales of local farm produce have fallen.

TEPCO officials said the utility will have to revise its strategy to
stabilize Reactor No. 1, where nuclear fuel rods are believed to have
melted.

But they said the initial plan for stabilizing the No.1 and other
reactors by January next year remains unchanged.

The officials declined to say when the plant will be decommissioned,
on the grounds that TEPCO does not know what is taking place inside
the reactors and so cannot give timelines.

Monday, May 16, 2011 19:49 +0900 (JST)

gee consumers worried about buying products or food grown near the
reactor who would of thought

With a totally melted down reactor 1 and most likely all that were
operating and then shut down but had no cooling *for over a week The
defueling and halfway clean up will take forever. TMIs partial
meltdown was over 10 years, they must wait for the fuel to cool a
little naturally........

10 to 20 years might be a good start, japanese can start having kids
now to be reactor clean up workers, they will need a LOT..........

Each young and healthy worker can survive upwards of 1 Sv/year as long
as nothing radioactive gets inhaled or ingested. In some locations
that full body exposure of 1 Sv could happen within as little as one
hour, whereas in other areas it could take as many as 100 hours. The
methods of measuring whole body exposure seem to vary widely, so
there's still no accepted way of exactly telling who is getting more
than their fair share, or able to safely stay on the job for an
extended period of time without doing extensive cellular testing of
vital organs (such as eyes) that can be most easily damaged past the
point of no return.

Once the body starts rejecting little damaged bits of itself is when
the survival of the exposed worker gets more than a little testy and
iffy. Any dosage of several Sv per given month or even per year will
likely have serious consequences. Some workers exposed to as little
as 1 Sv may eventually have to pay the ultimate price, because there's
ongoing accumulative dosage of before and after the job related
exposures that also has to be taken into account.

Of course our very own Sandia NL folks knew this all along, and
they're still playing this whole thing down as though it's no big
deal.

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It appears some human error by the plants operator contribuited to the
disaster


Nuclear plant cooling system manually shut down

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers
may have manually shut down the No.1 reactor's emergency cooling
system in order to prevent damage to the reactor. It says pressure
inside the reactor had dropped sharply after the earthquake struck the
plant on March 11th.

Tokyo Electric Power Company on Monday disclosed records of its
operations at the plant.

They show that the reactor automatically halted operations after the
earthquake.

The emergency cooling system was automatically activated but stopped
about 10 minutes later and remained off for about 3 hours until after
the tsunami arrived.

TEPCO says plant workers may have manually shut down the cooling
system because pressure inside the reactor had dropped sharply from 70
to 45 atmospheres.

The system is designed to cool the reactor even if all external
sources of power are lost, but the move to shut it down temporarily
means that it did not fully function.

TEPCO says the decision may have been made based on a manual to
prevent damage to the reactor.

It says if the system had worked, it may have had more time until the
meltdown, so it will investigate developments leading up to the
decision to turn it off and whether the move was correct.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 13:18 +0900 (JST)
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again it appears most nuke accidents include operator error of some
type

On May 17, 8:36*am, bob haller wrote:
again it appears most nuke accidents include operator error of some
type

That's why it's imperative to simplify and automate with multiple
access in order to oversee and remote control whatever isn't doing
what's expected.

The AP-1000 class of reactor does just that, requiring fewer than half
as many staff per shift, and it gets way better yet if it were fueled
with thorium instead of uranium or MOX.

Control room and reactor confinement area cameras could see and read
instruments better than most human eyes, not to mention the direct
digital readings of absolutely everything getting logged up to a
thousand times per second.

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