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Uranium oxide isn't really combustible. Graphite can be, but nothing in that reactor suggested temperatures got high enough to ignite it.
Not necessarily. Depends on the amount of gamma radiation doses they received. Alpha and beta are stopped by their hazmat suits.Still pretty damn courageous though.
That is so much bs. Rods are about 4% fissionable uranium. Weapons grade uranium at a minimum are 20% and usually 80-85%.Yikes. This article describes a worst, worst case, but YIKES! Bio of the journalist makes him seem credentialed.
http://dcbureau.org/...-fukushima.html
"Both United States and Japanese governments have for decades allowed re-racking of the pools to reduce the originally-designed minimum safe distance between the assemblies so that more rods can be stored in each pool. Utilities complained they were running out of storage space on site at the reactors. The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion. In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material."
You have to put the shiny side on the outside. Make sure it completely covers your brain so you don't turn into a zombie or even worse, a union member.
The biggest problem to these guys is the actual act of cooling. Since it seems they are just dumping water on it and it's not contained they will be exposed to gamma radiation. Of course, I don't know all the details, but it appears they are just flushing seawater over it, which will do the trick for cooling, but it's going to make radioactive nitrogen which has gamma decay. I'll hold off on any predictions until I know facts but I am just saying it is not tinfoil hat to think these guys are going to be exposed.
It's BS. They aren't going to explode. They can't hit critical mass sitting around. They can melt, though, which is no picnic.I'll sleep better... But even if there's a minute chance of a fission explosion, that's pretty scary... I'm going to assume it's bs and leave it at that.That is so much bs. Rods are about 4% fissionable uranium. Weapons grade uranium at a minimum are 20% and usually 80-85%.Yikes. This article describes a worst, worst case, but YIKES! Bio of the journalist makes him seem credentialed.
http://dcbureau.org/...-fukushima.html
"Both United States and Japanese governments have for decades allowed re-racking of the pools to reduce the originally-designed minimum safe distance between the assemblies so that more rods can be stored in each pool. Utilities complained they were running out of storage space on site at the reactors. The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion. In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material."
You'll have 5 days to buy it if you live on the west coast and 10 days if you live from great basin to great plains.
There are certain radiation levels that trigger certain activities - by law. Some of them will likely have health issues - others won't. They are brave men, but hardly sacrificial lambs. As to the tin foil hat, you brought that upon yourself, my friend. Read the very wiki article you posted where it discusses health issues.
They are pumping water into the containment vessels. Problems have happened when they ran out of fuel for the generators that ran the pumps. It is not like they are standing next to the rods. You add seawater, it gets hot, and it looks to me like they aren't venting the steam on time. I would be pissed if I found out that there is some law preventing them from releasing and replacing the dirty water once it is too hot to be effective. Are they exposed? Yes, but they also have protective suits. They aren't exactly working in their shirt sleeves.
I think the media is playing to the fear factor - it sells.
That is why I put so many disclaimers on my message. We don't know if the containment vessels were cracked from the explosions. They probably weren't but all I am saying is that it is not 100% tinfoil to say these guys aren't being exposed to lethal levels. They probably aren't. I'd say it is likely they aren't. All I am saying is it is possible.And I'm totally in agreement that it would be horse#### if they were prevented from replacing dirty water due to some inflexible law.
That guy doesn't really know what he is talking about. Concrete isn't going to help right away if your rods have lost coolant. That's a last-ditch effort. You first and foremost have to get water or some other fluid flowing over the rods right away. Pumping concrete into it will just hope and pray that you get it in before total meltdown. If you can't cool it then you go there.Also, I highly doubt they were trying to save anything as those reactors were about EOL. They only have a life of about 30 years before Xenon poisoning kills them. I read an article earlier that said at least a couple of these were slated for decom in the next few months.No, they were following procedures.
It's not the chain reaction that is the problem. In a pressurized water reactor if you lose coolant you no longer have a chain reaction. The whole principle of a pressurized water reactor is getting the coolant to a specified temperature and pressure. They keep temp/pressure at a point where you get maximum thermal neutrons.The problem with losing coolant is the material is so hot that it melts and that causes massive issues like hydrogen explosions because the water separates on contact due to temperatures, and a total meltdown could possibly cause fuel getting critical mass.
Fukishima is/was a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) not a PWR, but the idea is the same regardless of the use of a heat exchanger to separate the dirty side from the clean side.
Add spent fuel rod pools to the list of growing concerns.
How exactly have you determine that? The postca couple pages back says the radiation levels being released are still not harmful to humans.
You mean the post from a couple of pages back before the prime minister of Japan later told people within a 30km radius to seal their homes airtight and not to go outside for any reason because of a very real threat to their health from radiation?If so you might want to revise current appraisal of the situation...
Nobody here disagreed with that. But thanks.
DON'T CONFUSE US WITH FACTS!! WE ARE HAVING TOO MUCH FUN PANICKING!!
Serious question, is there concrete "standing by" for such a contingency? I don't know what the surrounding terrain is like going to this place, but wouldn't access to get things like concrete trucks to the disaster be complicated in unimaginable ways given the debris field?
Seriously
The debris field is not as big an issue as the roads being torn up. Some of the guys from our team that work over there says it's almost like a line in the sand where the debris stops and then everything looks totally normal. And it's a lot closer to the water than the media would have you believe.'Smack Tripper said:
once they started pumping seawater in to the plants they ruined it.
Seriously. Leave the facts and logic in the test forum please. Thanks.
call off the evacuation, the Internet has spoken.
Fair enough.
Are you as condescending to people face to face, as you are behind your keyboard?
Same reasoning some people use to never board an airplane.This is why nuclear power scares me. When something goes wrong, it really goes wrong.
Ditto hookers from Hunter's Point.Same reasoning some people use to never board an airplane.This is why nuclear power scares me. When something goes wrong, it really goes wrong.
David....Bueno has been 100% correct in his posts, and seems more familiar with commercial plant design than I am (I was Navy). You are wearing the foil hat.Nuclear Power facilities have ALWAYS operated under a cloud of suspicion and a litany of over-bearing safety precautions. The public has remained largely ignorant both of Nuclear power and of what radiation is, how it works, and what it can do. People have ALWAYS over-reacted to anything "Nuclear".These problems are serious, but this is not now, nor will it ever progress to anything remotely close to Chernobyl. The overhwhelming majority of the precautions taken by the Japanese gov't are just that...precautions. If someone's lifetime cancer risk could have quantifiably been raised by even 1/2 of 1%, and they DIDN'T take these precautions, they'd be eviscerated later.Radiation levels 20 feet outside of an operating power plant are NORMAL...IE: No differant from anywhere else. A "significant rise" to even 10X normal would not pose a risk. 100X normal would remain a manageable risk.TAKE OFF THE HAT!
According to the French (the leading authority on nuclear events, from my perspective), this is a 6 on the scale of 7. Chernobyl is a 7.To say it's "nothing remotely close to Chernobyl is premature.I can't stand the people that are causing fear-mongering and claiming that the radiation cloud is coming to the US.But I also am amazed at how many continually try and downplay this event when they have no reason to do so.It's serious stuff, and if I lived in Japan, my entire family would already be off the island.David....Bueno has been 100% correct in his posts, and seems more familiar with commercial plant design than I am (I was Navy). You are wearing the foil hat.Nuclear Power facilities have ALWAYS operated under a cloud of suspicion and a litany of over-bearing safety precautions. The public has remained largely ignorant both of Nuclear power and of what radiation is, how it works, and what it can do. People have ALWAYS over-reacted to anything "Nuclear".These problems are serious, but this is not now, nor will it ever progress to anything remotely close to Chernobyl. The overhwhelming majority of the precautions taken by the Japanese gov't are just that...precautions. If someone's lifetime cancer risk could have quantifiably been raised by even 1/2 of 1%, and they DIDN'T take these precautions, they'd be eviscerated later.Radiation levels 20 feet outside of an operating power plant are NORMAL...IE: No differant from anywhere else. A "significant rise" to even 10X normal would not pose a risk. 100X normal would remain a manageable risk.TAKE OFF THE HAT!
speaking of flying there is now a no fly zone within 30 km of the plantsSame reasoning some people use to never board an airplane.This is why nuclear power scares me. When something goes wrong, it really goes wrong.
What was condescending?
And people are opposed to Yuca mountain here in the US. Nice solution just to keep all these spent fuel at the plants. We are of course learning the risks of that.
THe environmental impact of the oil spill is certainly greater.
