Earthquake in Japan....9.0...ouch!

[Prime]

It does seem, that with each passing hour the job to get these reactors/waste pools cooled is getting more and more harder.

Reports on NHK earlier today suggested they are trying to get the power back into the station to restart the cooling system. By that i assume reconnect it to the grid, which has been damaged, then restart the cooling system, not the reactor itself.

 

[clv101]

I'm kind of interested to know what the long term aim is with regard to cooling these reactors...

Long term aim? Cover them up and walk away. Look what we did after the '57 Windscale fire. The pile is still sitting there in a locked up concrete building.

 

[teejay73]

These workers that have stayed to fight to the last minute are what Human kind has aspired to be at our best. I cant express how I feel about what they are doing knowing that it could be the last hours of their lifes.

Yep totally agree with this! Faced with dire consequences and adversity is when the true Human spirit is shown! A lot has been said in the past of mankinds desire to inflict pain and suffering on each other, through needless wars and yet on the other side of our face, we are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, so the suffering of others is lessened. The Human Race is a very complex being.

 

[clv101]

...and frankly, tiredness...

This is a good point, it's coming up to five days since the quake. Those folk on the ground, the managers, the politicians, everyone involved with the disaster response will be utterly shattered by now.

 

[Serenityxo]

I don't know if this has been posted as it's a long ass thread I haven't been following but I came across this site: http://www.mrhat.org/japan.php

It has ~1000 mostly high res photos of Japan after/during this catastrophe.

 

[thedoc46]

Yup, just heard this from AFP

Have to give credit to the Japanese for 'no reported looting' considering how desparate all those hit hard must be in.
Still seeing some grusome and unbelievable pics such as that ship perched on top of a house!

Here

The Japenese pretty much live in harmony with very little crime. Something like 1 murder to every 250 in the US. Plus their penal system is far more successfull than ours in no re-offending. They do seem to have it sorted over there for crime and behaviour. It doesn't suprise me that there's no looting.

Hats off to the Japenese. They are the perfect example on how a civilisation / race should behave.

 

[Nexus]

The BBC are now reporting another fire at reactor 4, infact they have turned about half their main news page to reflect that.

 

[drunkenmaster]

This is a good point, it's coming up to five days since the quake. Those folk on the ground, the managers, the politicians, everyone involved with the disaster response will be utterly shattered by now.

Thing is even the normal population have complained about simply being woken up constantly by aftershocks though they've been a lot less in the past couple days but.

Near that site, unfortunately they've been working non stop as its just really gotten worse every day since the earthquake, and don't forget this isn't a nuclear accident where say Three Mile has a bad day, these guys survived/lived through an earthquake, then a Tsunami, and then had to jump into work. I'd have just lost my mind by this point.

Then you've got increasingly high radiation and, unfortunately some of the guys there by now will be receiving, not healthy doses.


I've just been seeing that, the control room is now only able to be accessed for 10 minutes at a time because radiation is too high in there, which is pretty bad considering the shielding and, well, seeming contamination coming out of one of the reactors.

They were planning to drop water from choppers on Reactor 4 to cool the spent fuel rods, that is seemingly back on fire and , it would seem most of the high levels of radiation were recorded while reactor 4 was on fire. Which I assume means while the rods are directly throwing nasty stuff into the air, the building around is contaminated, the water is probably got nasty stuff in it and the fire is throwing it into the air. But with it on fire, a chopper above it will be in the path of that radiation so I don't know if they can easily continue their plan to fill the spent fuel pool with water.

 

[Fourstar]

I thought I read somewhere that during the Chernobyl meltdown, did they not use liquid nitrogen to try and help cool the reactor, though not sure how accurate that is as LN2 boils as soon as it come into contact with warmer objects

They injected liquid nitrogen into the ground beneath the reactor to solidify it. They were worried that the core would melt through the bottom of the reactor building, into the ground and reach the water table. They gave up on the idea fairly quickly and filled the basement rooms beneath the reactor with concrete instead.

LN2 boiling just means it's oxidising, doesn't mean it's suddenly turned super hot.

Boiling just means it's evaporating. Liquid nitrogen to gaseous nitrogen. Oxidising would mean reacting nitrogen with oxygen to create nitrogen monoxide/dioxide aka burning. Nitrogen doesn't like burning much below 1,500C.

So in Theory could it work?

My layman's brain doesn't see why it couldn't theoretically work though it does find a few reasons it might be much worse than using water.

For a start water is much better cooling medium than LN2 (at the temperature range of we are dealing with). It has a much higher specific heat capacity and latent heat of evaporation. This means given equal quantities water can absorb and therefore transport more energy away.

LN2 will vaporise in vast quantities causing all sorts of problems with venting the gas. The vents would have to be permanently open and the near hurricane of gas through the reactor will carry more radiation out. The reactor is designed to route steam through a suppression pool where some is condensed and also some of the radioactive material passed to the pool. If need steam is vented to the environment through additional scrubbers (I believe) to remove more radiation.

LN2 could also cause problems with thermal stresses as there would be temperature gradients of hundreds of degrees from the injection points to the fuel rods and beyond.

 

[drunkenmaster]

THey gave up the LN2 when they realised they needed like 25 metric tonnes of LN2 a day to keep the soil at -100C and went with the extra concrete.

Also yes, the valves to release stream have several filters/scrubbers on them to remove as much stuff as possible.


It seems, they say theres definately a fire at reactor 4 and radiation has gone up, they didn't say what to but are saying the reactor is "inaccessible" which suggests the radiation is too high to go near.

Did they explain how the fire went out earlier today? I don't know if it went out on its own, or if they were using standard firehoses, it wasn't clear.

EDIT:- oh that will be why then, apparently they just said they think the fire is back simply because it never went out fully in the first place.

 

[Rroff]

Radiation levels still rising at various monitoring points, still far from concerning levels and the rate of increase is far from rapid, but it is an abnormal upwards trend.

 

[Cosimo]

Fire breaks out again at Fukushima's No. 4 reactor: TEPCO

TOKYO, March 16, Kyodo


A fire broke out again early Wednesday at the troubled No. 4 reactor of the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Around 5:45 a.m., a worker at the plant saw flames on the fourth floor of the reactor's building, believed to be the same spot where an apparent hydrogen explosion caused a fire Tuesday morning in the wake of last Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake.

The plant operator said it has reported the incident to firefighters and local governments.

On Tuesday, the utility said water in a pool storing spent nuclear fuel rods at the reactor may be boiling and its level has dropped, exposing the rods, prompting the government to order Tokyo Electric to inject water into the pool ''as soon as possible to avert a major nuclear disaster.''

Unless the spent fuel rods are cooled down, they could be damaged and emit radioactive substances.

==Kyodo

 

[drunkenmaster]

Its a bit worrying, apparently workers taking batteries into the control centre, not sure what for, spotted the fire as they walked past.

As in, its a bit worrying they don't have eyes on every reactor at all times, camera's setup and the like or a guy on a hill with a ridiculous set of binoculars.

Because the control centre is too radioactive they are monitoring the readings from an offsite location, batteries for laptops transmitting either readings or pictures from inside?

 

[Evilsod]

Its a bit worrying, apparently workers taking batteries into the control centre, not sure what for, spotted the fire as they walked past.

As in, its a bit worrying they don't have eyes on every reactor at all times, camera's setup and the like or a guy on a hill with a ridiculous set of binoculars.

Because the control centre is too radioactive they are monitoring the readings from an offsite location, batteries for laptops transmitting either readings or pictures from inside?

Seriously? They found a fire in the reactor by chance? I know they're working with limited resources and having to bodge things together as they go but you'd think keeping an eye on the reactors would be number one priority.

 

[PhillyDee]

It might be an electrical fault in the system, as opposed to the reactor. The news flash does not say its a reactor fire

 

[bitslice]

they don't know what they are doing,
they need to ask rypt what he thinks.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Seriously? They found a fire in the reactor by chance? I know they're working with limited resources and having to bodge things together as they go but you'd think keeping an eye on the reactors would be number one priority.

Thats from an official statement from them, though they might be sending people through every 10 minutes and thats just what they happened to also be doing that time.

Fire is out, sounds like it burned itself out after half an hour, or at least, isn't noticable again.

Does anyone know where the control centre is exactly? THey were just showing a top down picture and reactor 4, the building alongside the reactor is almost twice as long as the other 3 reactors, I don't suppose thats because the control building is in there?

An estimated 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the troubled No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant and 33 percent at the No. 2 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday.

That sounds really not good and, very strange, weren't the rods at no.2 reactor basically uncovered for at least 6 hours, it sounds like about 10-11 hours but some partial cooling in the middle. Suprising to see reactor 1's rods being so heavily damaged.

 

[Kristoph]

Even if the rods are damaged. So long as the container does its job, and they continue to cool it in whatever makeshift way they're doing it, then I really can't see there being anymore problems?

Yes, steam will be released, and there will be some short lived radioactive things dispersed as a result, but I can't see anything getting any worse.

I'm pretty sure they're writing off these reactors for good, so as long as it's contained, it'll just end up being disposed of when the time comes. Expensive, probably, but no huge dangers.

 

[Burned_Alive]

What are the control rooms like at these places? Bunkers? Heavily protected?

 

[Azza]

From BBC news right now... Telegraph reporting that WikiLeaks saying they have documents from Atomic Energy Committee about Japans power plants and their ability to with stand an Earthquake and they were only able to with stand one up to 7.0 and the Telegraph has cleared their whole front page to it. I doubt no one could for see a Earthquake of 9.0 occurring never mind a freaking 30 foot high wave smashing the side of the country!



The presenter on the BBC right now, who may not be able to read from an auto-queue, is actually talking sense on Japanese related stuff!