Nuclear DISASTER Thread !!

[ELVIS]

Current headlines:

ANOTHER PLANT EXPLOSION...
Firefighters battle blaze at reactor...
Rods fully exposed for 2.5 hours...
Spewing radiation...
Higher radiation recorded north of Tokyo...
RACE TO SAVE THE REACTORS...
Japan Asks USA To Help...
Third explosion raises spectre of nuclear nightmare...
USA West Coast in Path of 'Fallout'?
Winds Should Send Radiation Out to Sea...
Run on iodine tablets -- in Finland...
German airline scans Japan flights for radioactivity...
17 U.S. Navy crew members contaminated...


This is WAY worse than any of our so-called leaders are telling us...

It's also wrapped in political BULLSHIT!!!

I'm getting some POTASSIUM IODIDE tablets today...

[ELVIS]

[Blaze]

Japan Nuclear Crisis: What Is a Full Meltdown?

Josh Dzieza – Tue Mar 15, 1:17 am ET

NEW YORK – As Japan races to prevent a nuclear catastrophe, Josh Dzieza asks MIT's Ron Ballinger and Columbia’s David Brenner about partial and full meltdowns, hydrogen blasts, and windblown radiation. Plus, full coverage of Japan’s crisis.

Japan is on the brink of a nuclear disaster in the wake of its devastating earthquake and tsunami, with a third explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station damaging the steel containment structure of one reactor, and a fire at another spewing radioactive material into the air. Before the latest explosion and fire, as workers raced to stay ahead of a full meltdown, The Daily Beast spoke with Ron Ballinger, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, and David Brenner, director of the Columbia University Center for Radiological Research, about the difference between partial and full meltdowns, hydrogen blasts, and windblown radiation.

Gallery: History’s Worst Nuclear Disasters

What’s the difference between a “partial” and “full” meltdown?

Brenner: Both phrases are not technical phrases. What they’re to do with is the radioactive core of the nuclear reactor, which needs to be covered with water to keep it cool. What one means by meltdown is that at some point the core isn’t covered by water. It could mean that a few inches are uncovered for a few seconds, or that the entire core is uncovered. The phrase covers a multitude of sins.

Ballinger: In that context they’re talking about fuel that’s been damaged and partially melted. Some of the fuel has probably been oxidized and breached and melted at the top of the core where the heat rises. The core height is about 4 meters, so the top meter of the core has probably been damaged.

And a full meltdown?

Ballinger: If they don’t cool the plant, if they’re not successful... then eventually the entire core would melt. Then it would melt into the bottom of the vessel. Then you get to this theoretical point where if they can’t cool it, then eventually the vessel itself, the steel, would melt, and you’d end up with a bunch of melted fuel and steel on the bottom of the concrete faceplate of the plant, in the containment vessel. And then it would have to get out of there. That’s what I would call a full meltdown....

Are meltdowns necessarily dangerous?

Brenner: They’re certainly not good. You can contrast the two major nuclear incidents of the past: Both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were meltdowns, but the difference in scale is enormous. Chernobyl was the equivalent of 1 million Three Mile Islands. A “meltdown” certainly is not a good thing, but the ultimate consequence is how much radioactivity is released into the environment. You can have a situation like Three Mile Island, where it’s extremely small amount, or a situation like Chernobyl.

Which does Fukushima look like?

Certainly looks much more like a Three Mile Island. There are a lot of similarities between this and Three Mile Island. In both cases they were able to shut the reactor down almost immediately. That was not the case in Chernobyl. The whole point was that they couldn’t shut the reactor down. In Three Mile Island and in the Japanese reactors, they shut it down.

Once you shut it down, there’s still a low-level reaction going, so you have to keep water covering the fuel. What happened in Three Mile Island and Japan is that they couldn’t do that. The secondary cooling system that pumps water over the core failed.
Cooling

All of the Daiichi reactors shut down automatically when the earthquake struck. The problem is that it fission reactions don’t just stop; they fade slowly, continuing to produce energy and tremendous heat for days. Normally a cooling system would run water over the core after it shut down, but that system lost power, first when the power station was cut off from the grid, then again when the tsunami swamped the backup diesel generators.

Now that the cooling system has failed, what happens?

The core is going to get hotter and hotter. The nuclear material is enclosed in a metal cylinder, zirconium, which can react with water at high temperatures and produce hydrogen, which is explosive in the right situation. So when you start to get buildups of hydrogen, you have to vent it. But when you vent it, you also vent the radioactive material in the air inside the container. That’s probably where the radioactivity detected comes from.

Ballinger: There are two vectors going on. There’s the decay heat generated by the fission products in the fuel, and that heat has to be removed. If they can’t remove the heat, then the thing heats up. But the decay heat rate is decreasing with time, because the radioactive fission products are decaying away, at the same time you’re having to remove the heat. So the amount of heat you have to remove is decreasing with time, so the amount of cooling they need is going to decrease with time.

The other source of vector is the reaction between the zirconium and water. The zirconium alloy will react with water to produce hydrogen and oxide, but it also produces heat that has to be removed. So one source of heat—the decay of the fission products—is decreasing with time, and the other is a function of temperature, so you decrease the temperature, you decrease the oxygenation rate. It’s like baking a cake. If you set the oven at 300 degrees it’ll cook in a hour. If you set it for 350 degrees it will cook in 20 minutes. So as they cool the plant down, the rate of oxygenation will also go down. And it’s not a linear function. For every 50 degrees Centigrade, you change the chemical reaction rate by a factor of two.

Are there any signs that indicate how successful they’re being in cooling the reactor?

You can get an idea of how successful that is by looking at how often they have to vent the gas—the non-condensable gasses, the hydrogen and stuff. That’s going down and down and down. So they’re having success at cooling. It doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of fuel damage, it just means the oxygenation rates are going down, so they’re having success at cooling it.

There were explosions at the No. 2 and 3 reactors when they vented them. Why do they keep exploding? And what can they do to prevent an explosion?

The trick when you’re venting is to make sure you have a lot of dilution, to make sure you don’t have a hydrogen concentration above 5 or 6 percent. So I’m sure what they’re doing is they’re venting it slower and using a lot of blowers to make sure the concentration doesn’t get that high. Hydrogen is a funny gas. It tends to pool. It’s lighter than air, so it rises, and in a building—think of where the fans are, they’re in the ceiling, well that’s where the sparks from the motors are. Hydrogen will tend to rise and pool in the ceiling area, so the hydrogen concentration could be less than flammable on average, but in certain areas if you’re not careful it can get above the flammable point. They either vented too fast or didn’t realize it was concentrating.

I’ve read that there’s spent fuel stored near the reactor. Is it common practice to store fuel on site?
Yes, there are two places where they put spent fuel. When they take it out of the reactor it’s still generating heat. The decay heat is still there. So they put it in pools full of water. After a long enough period of time they can take the fuel and put it in these monstrous cement casks that you could fire a missile at and nothing happens, and they put them out on a pad and it’s cooled by natural convection.

Radiation

Officials have expanded the evacuation radius around the stricken reactors. First it was 3 kilometers, then when they vented the reactor it was expanded to 10 kilometers. When the reactor exploded, it went up to 20. Then the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States said radiation was unlikely to reach the West Coast in harmful amounts.

Is the amount of radiation emitted when they vent the reactor dangerous?

Brenner: Depends on how much comes out. From the point of view of the surrounding population, probably not. But the situation is still ongoing, so we don’t know. There’s one good thing in this terrible situation: Winds are offshore at the moment, blowing what radioactivity is in the air out into the ocean.

Could the wind blow the radiation to North America?

Brenner: Yes, but the question is how much. The Chernobyl accident was far larger than we can imagine this one to be. You could detect the radioactivity worldwide. But it’s a matter of how much radioactivity would arrive at the West Coast. Right now it’s absolutely negligible. And even in a worst-case scenario, it’s hard to imagine it would be significant. It’s hard to imagine a significant exposure to anyone on the West Coast simply because of the distance involved: As the wind blows the plume further, it gets more and more dispersed. The worst case still wouldn’t be Chernobyl.

Would it be dangerous to people nearer the reactor? They’ve evacuated people within a 20-kilometer radius.

Brenner: It’s not an unreasonable precaution. In any scenario, the dose will be less and less as you get further from the source. But it will certainly be closer to Three Mile Island than Chernobyl.

How long will the radiation last?

Brenner: It depends on the isotope. Iodine has a half-life of a week. Cesium will be around for years. But the consequences depend on how much is released. Even if cesium is around for a long time, if there’s not much of it, it won’t be an issue. And it depends on which direction the wind is blowing, and again, that’s favorable right now.

Josh Dzieza is an editorial assistant at The Daily Beast.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/12930_japannuclearcrisiswhatisafullmeltdown

[Nitro Express]

Relax dude. Those are cesium 137 reactors and they won't blow like Chernobyl. The explosions are probably caused by the hydrogen being produced by being forced to cool the reactors with sea water. It's the outside buildings that have blown up and the reactor vessels are still intact. What caused the problems was they didn't have enough power to run the 300 horse power cooling pumps and the reactors heated up. Now they are are trying to save the reactors but they won't blow up like an old carbon block Russian reactor. The radiation is actually at very low levels. It might be a good idea to take potasium iodine if you are in the local area in Japan; especially, if you are under 40 years old but over here in the states you don't have to worry. That fall out map is a hoax and the media is going to make it sound like the end of the world so people keep tuning in so they can sell more advertising.

[ELVIS]

I'd rather be prepared with a $30 precaution...

[Nitro Express]

Be careful with the potassium iodine. Too much will be way worse for you than any radiation you may get. I really wouldn't worry about it. I worked at two different nuclear facilities and have had all the radiation safety training. The worst thing that can happen is the bottom of the vessel gives way and the core of the reactor falls out. Modern cesium 127 reactors don't explode like a bomb. They melt down. I'm sure they have had to vent the vessel headspace to relieve some pressure and that is probably where the radiation is coming from.

The media wants to sell advertising and the speculators want to play the markets. People make money off of scaring the shit out of everyone. This is not going to be a Chernobyl. In fact, those reactors probably will be rebuilt and go back on line again.

[Nitro Express]

Be careful with the potassium iodine. Too much will be way worse for you than any radiation you may get. I really wouldn't worry about it. I worked at two different nuclear facilities and have had all the radiation safety training. The worst thing that can happen is the bottom of the vessel gives way and the core of the reactor falls out. Modern cesium 137 reactors don't explode like a bomb. They melt down. I'm sure they have had to vent the vessel headspace to relieve some pressure and that is probably where the radiation is coming from.

The media wants to sell advertising and the speculators want to play the markets. People make money off of scaring the shit out of everyone. This is not going to be a Chernobyl. In fact, those reactors probably will be rebuilt and go back on line again.

[ELVIS]

I'm really just posting the current flavor of fear...

But I have looked into it a bit and having the iodide in my first aid kit is not a bad idea...

Thanks brutha!

[Seshmeister]

I'd rather be prepared with a $30 precaution...

Shouldn't you just talk to your invisible sky daddy about it?

[ELVIS]

Sure, I already did...

[kwame k]

Phew! I'm glad you found a way to blame our current administration........almost been a week and no one was blaming Obama, thanks ELVIS

[Nitro Express]

iodine is never a bad thing to have in an emergency kit. It can keep wounds from getting infected. You can sterilize water with it. Everyone should have a 72 hour emergency kit to grab if you do have to leave your home in a hurry. I keep a water purification pump and extra mylar blankets in mine.

Thank goodness this Japanese disaster didn't happen in the dead of winter but it's still cold, the wind blows off the ocean constantly there and it rains a lot this time of year. A simple mylar blanket can keep you from freezing to death and potable water is always a challenge. You can put iodine in the water and run it through a good sterilizing pump and drink it. Shit happens: Forrest fire, tornado, blizzards, hurricanes, earth quakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, chemical spills. Sometimes you just need to bug out and the system collapses. So everyone should have some emergency supplies on hand they can grab quick and go. It doesn't hurt to have some in your car either.

[hambon4lif]

Shouldn't you just talk to your invisible sky daddy about it?

I'm sure Alex Jones instructed all of his sheep to kneel and pray, but not before plugging his brand new DVD "Obamas Blackness Rattles Japan", available for $19.99 at schizowars.com.....

[ELVIS]

You have that one ??

That's awsome!!!





































Fuckin' pussy...

[FORD]

The one thing I haven't heard anywhere in the corporate media (only from Hartmann and Malloy, as usual) is the most fucked up thing about the design of these nuclear plants:

The "spent fuel" nuclear waste is stored above the fucking nuclear plants!!

Basically, they keep it in a big swimming pool on the roof and cover it with sheet metal. Only now it's leaking and the water's boiling off.

My main problem with nuclear power has always been what the hell to do with the waste. Obviously these morons (GE designed the plants) did everything exactly WRONG.