Major Earthquake & Tsunami in Japan
- Thread starter a6m5
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Boffin on the telly was describing the relative safety of a steam explosion versus a reactor explosion.
He seems confident that it probably is a steam release, and that the problem was caused by the decay heat and the failure of both the primary (i.e. ordinary use) closed cooling loops as well as the auxiliary / backup units. Obviously they have external pumps now and are indeed flooding the casing with coolant. Also, the decay heat problem decreases exponentially over time, so the longer this goes on (without major incident), the better the outlook.
The boffin was: Prof. Robin Grimes (or similar spelling...) EDIT: the spelling is exact, he's a professor of material physics at Imperial College in London.
He seems confident that it probably is a steam release, and that the problem was caused by the decay heat and the failure of both the primary (i.e. ordinary use) closed cooling loops as well as the auxiliary / backup units. Obviously they have external pumps now and are indeed flooding the casing with coolant. Also, the decay heat problem decreases exponentially over time, so the longer this goes on (without major incident), the better the outlook.
The boffin was: Prof. Robin Grimes (or similar spelling...) EDIT: the spelling is exact, he's a professor of material physics at Imperial College in London.
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It's radioactive content is about 50 times background so it's not really that dangerous, assuming it is a steam cloud.
- 14,066
- Ireland
- driftking18594
- CiaranGTR94
^ If the cloud did somehow reach Europe, I doubt it will be in a highly concentrated state (i.e. enough to cause our kids to be born with the wrong numbers of toes, fingers or limbs).
Edit: Damn, I've been triple-tree'd!
Edit: Damn, I've been triple-tree'd!
Not according to my relatives who have a farm amongst the valleys of Powys (and have had for 40+ years), but I guess it could have affected people differently. Their ewe's are now routinely scanned before taken to market and rarely does one return significant positive results. I'm not saying that nobody was significantly affecteds, but the initial scare was an over-reaction and many weren't affected at all.
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- 428
- london
10 years after sheep was still effected and we ain't had any British lamb to the standards it was at before Chernobyl since
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sheep-in-wales-still-affected-by-chernobyl-1302743.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sheep-in-wales-still-affected-by-chernobyl-1302743.html
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Yes, it is harmful. All radiation is harmful, and you're exposed to it every day. How much more harmful this is remains to be seen. About 50 times more harmful is the minimum (which was described as a "very small amount" anyway).
As for which countries it will affect, that's impossible to tell. It didn't get blasted particularly high, so the local weather conditions will dictate the immediate effect.
A guy from Greenpeace is saying that 90cm of the core was exposed to air overnight (the pressure vessel is 22 metres tall, the core occupies about a quarter of that height)
EDIT: it's 3.6 metres in Fukushima-Daiichi 1
Found a nice schematic here. It's missing the auxiliary and ordinary shut-down cooling loops, which are what failed after it shut down.
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- 428
- london
None of these sheep 'barely pass' the test. Radioactivity occurs everywhere in nature, naturally, in tiny amounts. These animals either pass, or fail the test. There are none which are 'just safe' or 'affected but edible' ! Scaremongering is not helpful in situations such as this.
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- Application hell
- MP-Omnis
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- Glasgow
- GTP_Mars
Today's winner of the "Zero Excrement, Sherlock" Award, Walt Patterson:
BBC: "Let's have a look at the explosion, what is your view of what happened?"
WP: "Well, there must have been something that blew up..."
BBC: "Let's have a look at the explosion, what is your view of what happened?"
WP: "Well, there must have been something that blew up..."
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- Bavaria
- TheGermanBastorD
Ohh it was "just" a hydrogen explosion. 
Do you think it makes it easier to cool the core now? For sure not. The meltdown is comming.
But: "One expert said he does not believe that a Chernobyl-style disaster will occur, citing the differences between the designs of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. He speculated that any nuclear material released during the incident would likely be confined to the grounds in and around the power plant."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Have they said anything about the other 2 cores, Fukushima 2 & 3?
"After the March 11, 2011, earthquake, Nuclear Engineering International reported that units 1 to 3 were automatically shut down, and units 4 to 6 were already in maintenance outages."
I assume the cooling system for the other 2 will also not work. Then it could be they are blowing up, too.
Do you think it makes it easier to cool the core now? For sure not. The meltdown is comming.
But: "One expert said he does not believe that a Chernobyl-style disaster will occur, citing the differences between the designs of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. He speculated that any nuclear material released during the incident would likely be confined to the grounds in and around the power plant."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Have they said anything about the other 2 cores, Fukushima 2 & 3?
"After the March 11, 2011, earthquake, Nuclear Engineering International reported that units 1 to 3 were automatically shut down, and units 4 to 6 were already in maintenance outages."
I assume the cooling system for the other 2 will also not work. Then it could be they are blowing up, too.
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- GTAce
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
EDIT: Yes, there are more reactors which could still melt down.
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No, it's not on there at all. It's on page 12 of this PDF. EDIT: that's a BWR/5, like Fukushima-Daiichi 2, 3, 4 and 5. No. 1 is a BWR/4 - the differences may explain why No.1 is in so much trouble and the others are coping so far.
From twitter, it seems it was a Hydrogen explosion. But, this was contained in the containment vessel, where the pressure vessel can be vented into the suppression pool. This would also explain why the containment vessel was rising in pressure earlier on, because they were venting the core continuously into the containment vessel, and is fairly sensible. Except that it ignited.
This means the cloud is still mostly water.
Source. EDIT: same as above.
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Haha, I immediately thought Harry Hill would pick this up.
- 6,356
- Michigan
- DaveTheStalker
9500 people are missing.
- 428
- london
So please explain what they do with the one's that failed the test,
do we eat them to?
There has to be a limit where the test can go either way, otherwise its pointless doing the test, if its close to that fail point but not quite there, that's called barely passing the test
and i'm not scaremongering i'm trying to join in with a discussion
but i give up now.
No need to give up
But copying partial stories from web sites without reading a good cross-section of stories/reports from anumber of different sources in order to get an overall 'real' view can sometimes be unhelpful.
Sure you meant well
It's really sad.
Yeah, my news channel also reported, that in an harbor city, up to 10000 people are missing. Damn, that´s hard.
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