Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Sep 2009
- Posts
- 5,267
- Location
- London
My friend James Reynolds arrived in Japan this morning.
A video from today
James 2nd video
My friend James Reynolds arrived in Japan this morning.
A video from today
James 2nd video
What about a Spongebob??
What a load of rubbish and a candidate for the youtube thread.![]()
What a load of rubbish and a candidate for the youtube thread.![]()
Don't say predicted... it makes it sound like you believe that bull****.
Yes because posting something to at least slightly brighten the mood instead of a gloom-image rss is a bad thing![]()
Yes because posting something to at least slightly brighten the mood instead of a gloom-image rss is a bad thing![]()
Calm down bitches.![]()
Spent-fuel storage pools at all reactors -- Cooling functions lost, water temperature or level unobservable at reactors Nos. 1-4, no water poured into pools.
Chinook's basically, seen footage of 3 HUGE helicopters taking off with pretty much tiny containers of water underneath, someone said they'd started and I've seen some footage(though that could have been "this is what we expect to happen" stuff from similar fire fighting footage from some other disasters) but seen no official word on it yet.
I think the other problem is, there are two 8metre holes in the building but they suggested the difficulty was the spent fuel pool isn't completely uncovered, meaning they are going to have to dump a quite silly amount of water in just to get it into the pool, which I took to mean quite a lot of trips, a lot of time and the potential of repeated exposure to the pilots.
The even more concerning thing is, they keep suggesting the steam from reactor 3 is coming from a damaged supression pool like in reactor 2, but that had no steam escape outside. Firstly how the hell is it getting outside, unless the pool has ruptured and theres a hole in the outer containment building, secondly, why is it steam, and consistant for hours, the supression pool water shouldn't be "that" hot, and after its leaked out of the reactor vessel and would be sitting pretty much on the floor of the containment building why would it then be continually turning to steam. Is it just the water being pumped into the reactor getting heated quickly, turning to steam and finding its way out, if so have they jammed the valve open to stop the pressure building up, or has it come out of an uncontrollable damage to the containment wall. They seem really very quite over the damage and how the hell the steam, and that much steam, is getting out.
Units 1 and 2: TEPCO has released estimates of the levels of core damage at these two reactors: 70% damage at Unit 1 and 33% at Unit 2. They have also stated that Unit 1 is being adequately cooled.
Outlook: It is difficult to make conjectures at this point about the final disposition of the damaged fuel without further information. However, during our only operating experience with a partially melted and subsequently cooled core, Three Mile Island, the fuel mass was fully contained by the reactor vessel, resulting in minimal radiation release to the public. A decision is currently being made on how to best supply cooling water to Unit 2.
Unit 3: At 8:34 AM JST, white smoke was seen billowing from the roof of Unit 3. The source of this smoke was not investigated because workers were evacuated due to radiation levels. These levels had been fluctuating during the early morning hours before rising to 1 millisievert/hr around the time that the smoke appeared. It was unclear at the time whether these rising levels were a result of some new event at Unit 3, or were lingering as a result of Unit 2’s recent troubles.
Outlook: In order to provide some perspective on worker doses to this point, radiation sickness sets in at roughly 1000 millisieverts. A future post will deal further with the health effects of various amounts of radiation. Response to the smoke seen at Unit 3 appears to be in an information gathering phase at this point. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano speculated that the smoke from Unit 3 might be the result of a similar wetwell explosion to that at Unit 2, but there is not enough information currently available to support or refute that statement.
Units 4-6: Flames at Unit 4 were reported to be the result of a pump fire, which caused a small explosion that damaged the roof of Unit 4 (See TEPCO’s press release on the most recent fire at http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031606-e.html) . Efforts at Units 4-6 are focused on supplying cooling water to the spent fuel storage pools. Temperatures in these pools began to rise in the days after the quake. At the time of the quake, only Unit 4’s core had been fully offloaded to the spent fuel pool for maintenance; roughly 1/3 of the cores of Units 5 and 6 had been offloaded. This explains in part why the temperature in Unit 4’s pool has risen faster than at the other reactors: it has a higher inventory, both in fuel volume and in heat load.
Outlook: The fuel within these pools needs to remain covered with cooling water in order to prevent the low levels of decay heat present from causing it to melt, and also in order to provide shielding. Boiling of the water results in reduction of the water level in the pools, so if/when the pools get hot enough for boiling to begin, water needs to be added to replace what boils off. The staff of Unit 4 plan to begin pumping water to the spent fuel pool from ground level as soon as radiation levels from Unit 3 are low enough for them to return. This pumping operation should be relatively easier than injection of cooling water into the reactor vessels at Units 1-3 because the pools are at atmospheric pressure.
Sources: TEPCO, World Nuclear News