Nuclear Meltdown!

[Michael Alexander]

Japan has warned of a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor damaged after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the country's northeast coast.

Emergencies have been declared at two nuclear power stations in Fukushima, 150 miles (240km) north of capital Tokyo, due to cooling problems.

Radioactive steam has been released to reduce rising pressure in the plants and the Japanese prime minister has ordered thousands of people living within six miles to leave the area.

Japan's nuclear safety commission's Ryohei Shiomi said officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Daiichi power plant.



What get's me, is how these nations can build Nuclear plants on know Earthquake Zones.....

If that plant has a meltdown, it's gonna have a negative impact on Namibia's economy..... the world was just tuning into Nuclear energy, we were about to become a major player in the Uranium industry, if this happens then people will get scared to build these plants....

Just my 2 cents.....

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

They say the type of radiation that is being released only has a half life of 5 seconds....

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

An explosion has been heard and smoke was seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant, say reports. Japanese TV is reporting that several workers have been injured in the blast.

[Michael Alexander]

and the evacuation area just got bigger..... here comes a major problem....

[toonfandangl]

They have been toying with that idea here in Oz, building nuclear power stations, although we are powered by black and brown coal which is in abundance here so is yellow cake The worldwide production of uranium in 2009 amounted to 50,572 tonnes, of which 27% was mined in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia  are the top three producers and together account for 63% of world uranium production. Other important uranium producing countries in excess of 1000 tonnes per year are Namibia, Russia, Niger, Uzbekistan, and the United States. 'The Greens' (political party) are opposed to building nuclear power stations but our CO2 emissions * Australia emits around 28 metric tons of carbon per person per year, one of the highest per capita levels in the developed world, primarily as it relies on coal to generate about 84 percent of it electricity.   Many organizations have put steps in place to identify and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, implemented Reduction Strategies and offset any unavoidable emissions.And for those that haven't yet started, they need to understand, measure and manage their emissions and environmental impact as greenhouse gases are on the government and consumer agenda. Living in England in 1957 we had one of the first nuclear accident at the Windscale nuclear power station this below was part of the report quite scary at that time............................

On 7 October 1957, operators began an annealing cycle for Windscale Pile №1 by switching the cooling fans to low power and stabilizing the reactor at low power. The next day, to carry out the annealing, the operators increased the power to the reactor. When it appeared that the annealing process was taking place, control rods were lowered back into the core to shut down the reactor, but it soon became apparent that the Wigner energy release was not spreading through the core, but dwindling prematurely. The operators withdrew the control rods again to apply a second nuclear heating and complete the annealing process. Because some thermocouples were not in the hottest parts of the core, the operators were not aware that some areas were considerably hotter than others. This, and the second heating, are suspected of having been the deciding factors behind the fire, although the precise cause remains unknown. The official report suggests that a can of uranium ruptured and oxidised causing further overheating and the fire, but a more recent report suggests that it may have been a magnesium/lithium isotope cartridge. All that was visible on the instruments was a gentle increase in temperature, which was to be expected during the Wigner release.

Early in the morning on 10 October, it was suspected that something unusual was going on. The temperature in the core was supposed to gradually fall as Wigner release ended, but the monitoring equipment showed something more ambiguous was going on and one thermocouple indicated that core temperature was instead rising. In an effort to help cool the pile, more air was pumped through the core. This lifted radioactive materials up the chimney and into the filter galleries. It was then that workers in the control room realised that the radiation monitoring devices which measured activity at the top of the discharge stack were at full scale reading. In accordance with written guidelines, the foreman declared a site emergency. No one at Windscale was now in any doubt that Pile 1 was in serious trouble.
[edit] The fire

Operators tried to examine the pile with a remote scanner but it had jammed. Tom Hughes, second in command to the Reactor Manager, suggested examining the reactor personally and so he and another operator went to the charge face of the reactor, clad in protective gear. A fuel channel inspection plug was taken out close to a thermocouple registering high temperatures and it was then that the operators saw that the fuel was red hot.

"An inspection plug was taken out," said Tom Hughes in a later interview, "and we saw, to our complete horror, four channels of fuel glowing bright cherry red."

There was no doubt that the reactor was now on fire, and had been for almost 48 hours. Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy[4] donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled the 80 feet to the top of the reactor building, where he stood atop the reactor lid to examine the rear of the reactor, the discharge face. Here he reported a dull red luminescence visible, lighting up the void between the back of the reactor and the rear containment. Red hot fuel cartridges were glowing in the fuel channels on the discharge face. He returned to the reactor upper containment several times throughout the incident, at the height of which a fierce conflagration was raging from the discharge face and playing on the back of the reinforced concrete containment—concrete whose specifications required that it be kept below a certain temperature to prevent its disintegration and collapse.[5]
[edit] Initial fire fighting attempts

Operators were unsure what to do about the fire. First, they tried to blow the flames out by putting the blowers onto full power and increasing the cooling, but this fanned the flames. Tom Hughes and his colleague had already created a fire break by ejecting some undamaged fuel cartridges from around the blaze and Tom Tuohy suggested trying to eject some from the heart of the fire, by bludgeoning them through the reactor and into the cooling pond behind it with scaffolding poles. This proved impossible and the fuel rods refused to budge, no matter how much force was applied. The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot and, once, a pole was returned red hot and dripping with molten metal. Hughes knew this had to be molten irradiated uranium and this caused serious radiation problems on the charge hoist itself.

"It [the exposed fuel channel] was white hot," said Hughes' colleague on the charge hoist with him, "it was just white hot. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can believe how hot it could possibly be."
[edit] Carbon dioxide

Next, the operators tried to extinguish the fire using carbon dioxide. The new gas-cooled Calder Hall reactors on the site had just received a delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide and this was rigged up to the charge face of Windscale Pile 1, but there were problems getting it to the fire in useful quantities. The fire was so hot that it stripped the oxygen from what carbon dioxide could be applied.

"So we got this rigged up," Hughes recounted, "and we had this poor little tube of carbon dioxide and I had absolutely no hope it was going to work."
[edit] The use of water

On the morning of Friday 11 October, when the fire was at its worst, eleven tons of uranium were ablaze. Temperatures were becoming extreme (one thermocouple registered 1,300°C) and the biological containment around the stricken reactor was now in severe danger of collapse. Faced with this crisis, the operators decided to use water. This was incredibly risky: molten metal oxidises in contact with water, stripping oxygen from the water molecules and leaving free hydrogen, which could mix with incoming air and explode, tearing open the weakened containment. Faced with a lack of other options, the operators decided to go ahead with the plan. About a dozen hoses were hauled to the charge face of the reactor; their nozzles were cut off and the lines themselves connected to scaffolding poles and fed into fuel channels about a metre above the heart of the fire.

Tom Tuohy then ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief. All cooling and ventilating air entering the reactor was shut off. Tuohy once again hauled himself atop the reactor shielding and ordered the water to be turned on, listening carefully at the inspection holes for any sign of a hydrogen reaction as the pressure was increased. Tuohy climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. During one of the inspections, he found that the inspection plates—which were removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core—were stuck fast. This, he reported, was due to the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.

"I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in an interview.

Finally he managed to pull the inspection plate away and was greeted with the sight of the fire dying away.

"First the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down," he described, "I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out. I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully," he went on to say, "but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation."Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold....

[Henk Coetzee]

• Official: Second blast possible at nuclear site
• Workers trying to cool reactors at Fukushima
• Follows suspected meltdown at No. 1 reactor

[10:39 a.m. ET, 11:39 p.m. Tokyo] A state of emergency has been declared at a nuclear power plant in Onagawa, Japan, where excessive radiation levels have been recorded following Friday's massive earthquake, the United Nations' atomic watchdog agency said Sunday.

[Bob Molloy]

Good piece on the Windscale disaster, Frank. It looks as it the Japanese problem is shaping up to be a major unless they can get it under control.
Here is a recent opinion on that; source at the end. I had a couple of good schematics showing the interior of the vessel but unfortunately I can't post pix on this site.

        "The reactors reported to have suffered damage in Japan are of the class 'boiling water reactor' sold only by General Electric.  They have only 1 large pressure (c. 1 ton/sq in) vessel whereas the pressurised-water reactors of Westinghouse etc have a (somewhat smaller) reactor pressure vessel plus 4 'steam generators'.  These vessels are of 20 cm stainless steel, welded by methods not believed feasible until c.1970.  The metals in question undergo neutron embrittlement over the decades  ...

Each has a 'torus'  -  the fat 'doughnut' underground, to receive blowdown of radioactive fluids. That's what Prof Miller, applied math @ UC Berkeley, pointed out would be wrecked if ever the fluids came blasting down those sloping pipes according to the design.
        Greg Minor, who toured NZ courtesy of the Campaign for Non-Nuclear Futures at the time of the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, soon after his quitting the GE nuclear division on ethical grounds, told us this 'containment' had been "designed" in the sales division of GE.  It allows a lower-profile, more 'normal' bldg above ground  -  the top 1/3 of which was blown off in the weekend explosion.
        Miller's 'torus jump problem' called gravely in question this alleged 'containment'.

L. R. B. Mann  M.Sc  Ph.D
applied ecology
22a Ardern Ave.
Stanmore Bay, Whangaparaoa 0932,
NEW ZEALAND
Tel: 0064-9-424 0808

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

Frungy - 2 hours ago
Report comment
"Japan struggled on Monday to avert a nuclear disaster "

... bullshit. I'm in Japan. Yes, the earthquakes and tsunami caused a lot of damage, but there is NO nuclear "disaster". I'm actually quite peeved with the international media. The Fukushima reactors are light water reactors and the moment the disaster happened the control rods slid into place stopping 93% of the nuclear reaction, and all that was needed was time for the remaining 7% to cool off and stop reacting, and there were problems with cooling the reactors during this period, but it wasn't a "disaster".

Worst case they would have just let them overheat, the reactor cores would have dropped to the heavily shielded reactor room floor and that would be the end of it really (they could then have flooded the entire complex and some radioactive steam would have escaped and rapidly dissipated).

There is no nuclear "disaster". The 10km area around the reactors is a bit of a mess, but this is not Chernobyl. *sigh* Reporters are such idiots, if I could find the atomic safety commission's page on lightwater reactors, read up on this and realise that there's no real danger then I can only conclude that reporters are DELIBERATELY misleading the public in order to get more attention. They should be ashamed of themselves, spreading panic and delaying relief shipments to people who need them after the tsunami because of radiation fears that are completely groundless!

[Michael Alexander]

Stennie. where's the link?

[Paul (Pepe) Freemantle]

2nd blast rocks Japanese nuclear plant
2011-03-14 07:15


Soma - The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant on Monday, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding six workers.

It is not immediately clear how much - if any - radiation was released.

The explosion at the plant's Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.

The blast follows a similar explosion on Saturday that took place at the plant's Unit 1, which injured four workers and caused mass-evacuations.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said six workers were injured in Monday's explosion but it was not immediately clear how, or whether they were exposed to radiation. They were all conscious, said the agency's Ryohei Shomi.

Earlier, Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the reactor, said three workers were injured and seven missing.

Inner containment vessel intact

The reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods was intact, Edano said, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public. TV footage of the building housing the reactor appeared to show similar damage to the previous blast, with outer walls shorn off, leaving only a skeletal frame.

More than 180 000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation.

Earlier on Monday, pressure had jumped inside Unit 3, forcing the evacuation of 21 workers. But they returned to work after levels appeared to ease.

Associated Press journalists felt the explosion in the tsunami-devastated port town of Soma, some 40km north of the reactor. They reported feeling the faint rumble of a blast and the ground shaking.

At the time, sirens were wailing as rescue workers were in the midst of evacuating all those in the city to high ground due to a tsunami warning. That turned out to be a false alarm.

[Paul (Pepe) Freemantle]

Japan begins to dig for its dead
2011-03-14 08:47


Soma - Rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks on Monday to dig out bodies in Japan's devastated coastal towns, as Asia's richest nation faced a growing humanitarian, nuclear and economic crisis in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami.

Millions of people spent a third night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the devastated northeastern coast.

Also, the containment building of a second nuclear reactor exploded because of hydrogen buildup while the stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.

More than 10 000 people are estimated to have died in Friday's twin tragedy that has caused unimaginable deprivation for people of this industrialised country that has not seen such hardships since World War II.

In many areas there is no running water, no power and four- to five-hour waits for gasoline. People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.

"People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming," said Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest hit.

"We have repeatedly asked the government to help us, but the government is overwhelmed by the scale of damage and enormous demand for food and water," he told The Associated Press.

"We are only getting around just 10% of what we have requested. But we are patient because everyone in the quake-hit areas is suffering."

150 aftershocks

He said local authorities were also running out of body bags and coffins.

"We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don't have enough. We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It's just overwhelming."

Sato said local authorities may ask foreign funeral homes to send supplies.

The pulverised coast has been hit by more than 150 aftershocks since Friday, the latest one a 6.2-magnitude quake that was followed by a new tsunami scare on Monday.

Abandoning their search operations, soldiers told residents of the devastated shoreline in Soma, the worst hit town in Fukushima prefecture, to run to higher ground.

Sirens wailed and soldiers shouted "find high ground! Get out of here!" Several uniformed soldiers were seen leading an old woman up a muddy hillside. The warning turned out to be a false alarm.

"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters on Sunday, adding that Japan's future would be decided by its response.

On Sunday, search parties arrived in Soma for the first time since Friday to dig out bodies.

1 800 confirmed dead

Ambulances stood by and body bags were laid out in an area cleared of debris, as firefighters used hand picks and chain saws to clear an indescribable jumble of broken timber, plastic sheets, roofs, sludge, twisted cars, tangled powerlines and household goods.

Helicopters buzzed overhead, surveying the destruction that spanned the horizon. Ships were flipped over near roads, a kilometre inland. Officials said one-third of the city of 38 000 people was flooded and thousands were missing.

According to officials, more than 1 800 people have been confirmed dead - including 200 people whose bodies were found on Sunday along the coast - and more than 1 400 were missing in Friday's disasters. Another 1 900 were injured.

But police in Miyagi prefecture say 10 000 people are likely dead in their area alone. Miyagi, with a population of 2.3 million, was one of the hardest hit areas.

"I'm giving up hope," said Hajime Watanabe, aged 38, a construction industry worker, who was the first in line at a closed gas station in Sendai, about 100km north of Soma.

Just then, an emergency worker came over and told him that if the station opens at all, it would pump gasoline only to emergency teams and essential government workers.

"I never imagined we would be in such a situation" Watanabe said. "I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water."

He said he was surviving with his family on 60 half-litre bottles of water his wife had stored in case of emergencies like this. He walked two hours to find a convenience store that was open and waited in line to buy dried ramen noodles.

Nuclear disaster

The government has sent 100 000 troops to spearhead the aid effort. It has sent 120 000 blankets, 120 000 bottles of water and 110 000 litres of gasoline plus food to the affected areas. However electricity would take days to restore.

At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and around 1.9 million households were without electricity.

One reason for the loss of power is the damage to at least three nuclear reactors, two of them at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant.

Operators dumped seawater into the two reactors in a last-ditch attempt to cool their super-heated containers that faced possible meltdown. If that happens, they could release radioactive material in the air.

On Monday, the containment building of the second reactor exploded, just as the first one had on Saturday.

But Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the reactor's inner containment vessel holding the nuclear fuel rods was intact, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment. The containment vessel of the first reactor is also safe, according to officials.

Still, people within a 20km radius were ordered to stay inside homes following the blast. AP journalists felt the explosion 40km away.

More than 180 000 people have evacuated the area in recent days, and up to 160 may have been exposed to radiation after the first blast.

Power rationing

Also, Tokyo Electric Power held off on imposing rolling blackouts planned for Monday, but called for people try to limit electricity use.

Edano said the utility was still prepared to go ahead with power rationing if necessary. The decision reflected an understanding of the profound inconveniences many would experience.

Many regional train lines were suspended or operating on a limited schedule to help reduce the power load.

The planned blackouts of about three hours each were meant to help make up for a severe shortfall after key nuclear plants were left inoperable due to the earthquake and tsunami.

Japan's central bank has injected $85.5bn into money markets on Monday to stem worries about the world's third-largest economy.

Stocks fell in early trading on Monday on the first business day after the disasters. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average shed 494 points, or 4.8%, to 9,760.45 just after the market opened.

Towns wiped out

Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami that struck on Friday in the tens of billions of dollars - a huge blow for an already fragile economy that lost its place as the world's No 2 to China last year.

In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10 000 people - nearly two-thirds of the population - have not been heard from since the tsunami wiped it out, a government spokesperson said.

About a third of the town of Soma was wiped out, with several hundred homes washed away. Three districts of town on the shoreline are now covered in rubble, overturned cars and trucks and waist-high, dirty green water.

A tiny pink girl's bicycle, all twisted up, sits near a child's backpack - just some of the personal belongings littering the landscape.

Atsushi Shishito sat in a daze on the concrete foundation of his home, now completely washed away. He sleeps at an evacuation centre. The 30-year-old carried his grandmother to higher ground to escape the tsunami.

"All my other relatives are all dead," he added. "Washed away."

[Henk Coetzee]

A third reactor at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant loses its cooling capabilities, hours after another reactor building at the facility is rocked by an explosion.

The problem was detected in the plant's No. 2 reactor Monday afternoon after an explosion rocked the building containing the plant's No. 3 reactor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.
"We think that the hydrogen explosion in (the building housing) reactor No. 3 caused the cooling system of reactor No. 2 to stop working," Edano said.
Water levels were falling and pressure was building up inside the No. 2 reactor, he said, and officials were working on a plan to release gas and also inject seawater into that reactor.

[Michael Alexander]

I was reading somewhere that this is not as big a problem as Cherbynol was, these reactors have a failsafe type housing under them, that the reactors fall into that can absorb all the energy that they could create, I find this a bit hard to believe......

[Henk Coetzee]

I was reading somewhere that this is not as big a problem as Cherbynol was, these reactors have a failsafe type housing under them, that the reactors fall into that can absorb all the energy that they could create, I find this a bit hard to believe......

And what happens after that? Do they cover it all up in a million tons of cement for a 1000 years and hope that nothing ever leaks? Its a disaster, no matter how safe they made it, that area will never be used again, all u need is a bigger Tsunami / Earthquake  (at the current scenario, it can happen anytime) to take out the buildings, and what measure of protection for the environment, people, plant and animal life is in place to safeguard it all.

This disaster is going to have a global impact, not just on the economies, but environmental as well, for many years to come .

Japan has the 3rd largest economy, just behind China, and that alone tells you the impact this is going to have on goods the world import from japan, those goods are going to become very scarce, and prices are going to sky rocket.

[Henk Coetzee]