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

Firestar_3x said:
It seems to be a fruitless task to me, my understanding of the situation at the moment is it's not like the reactor has blown its top off and the rods are sat in the open with water being poured on them, everythings still largely contained.

Next to dumping enough water into the building to fill it to the level of the rupture (which would be 100& stupid) the heli trips will have little / no effect other than knock and dust layen particals back down to ground level?
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Well, its the spent fuel pool which is right at the top so its not quite as silly, its not like they are filling it from the bottom up.

I just get the impression they'll need to essentially flood the floor and raise the water a little before it will tip over into the spent rod pool, how much higher I haven't got a clue, but it would seem from suggesting they have no way to monitor or it would seem, fill them up, which is most troubling.

SO it would seem they might be expecting reactor 5 and 6 spent fuel pool's to be heating up, just significantly slower than reactor 4.

Why they'd think radiation increasing exactly as smoke/steam starts pouring out of reactor 3 might be an increase from reactor 2 I don't know, it seems an over complicated take on what it might be, smoke pours out, radiation goes up...... chances of it being unrelated at least to me seem remote.

In terms of reactor 4, the fuel rods essentially are open to the air, and potentially not covered and continuing to heat up, and considering the 400millSv radiation levels were at the height of the fire coming from the area the spent fuel pond is in, again, I'd assume they were related.

THough the spent fuel rod pool being open doesn't mean anything inside the reactor can get out, the potential for one extra layer of contamination is just one extra thing that can go wrong at this point.

The big, according to many people unfalible containment building simply is broken on reactor 4. Worst place possible for reactor 4 as it has no fuel left in the reactor, though I don't know how full of left over radiation they are.

The problem I see is, reactor 3, basically if something leaked inside the containment building, so theres a leak from the reactor vessel into the containment building, that should not at all be able to get out. So the question is, where was the smoke/steam from, if its coming from inside the building through the containment building, well, the containment building again should not allow that.

Unless they left the vent open to prevent dangerous build up, basically IF the worst case scenario happens, you want to seal that containment building, the outter steal building, tight as hell so nothing can get out. To me it seems plant 4 is completely open to the spent fuel pool, and the reactor had been emptied completely into the pool, and reactor 3, has potential leak that let all that steam/smoke out of. So its rather looking like 2 of the 4 have a "way out" into the atmosphere.
 
simulatorman said:
There are food/ fuel shortages, power cuts and a loss in human life that is yet to become confirmed. Now even the weather has turned against the nasty, it just goes from bad to worse. :(
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I found it rather ironic how Sky* were saying how there's these fuel shortages, people can't get to the hospitals or get to work etc, and then in the same sentence without any shame said that their crews have emergency access to fuel.

Do Sky really need that many people there using fuel and eating food and drinking water that the citizens of Japan could be using? Do we really need that many different news crews from the UK there? Do we really need that many countries sending their news crews? Does dave_beast's mate really need to be there? Etc.


* - I'm sure the BBC are just as bad. I've given up watching them on this.
 
Cheers for that Drunkenmaster, it truly is a perplexing situation in terms of what to do, i really want to know the condition of the low pressure emergency cooling system, if it was simply a power generation issue i'm sure a helicopter would have flow backup generators in by now, odds are the explosion which took the roof off has also damaged lots of the coolant / steam pipework, so rebuilding / cooling via that system is a total none starter, i'd also like to know the coolant (seawater) leakage rate.

It's one of those situations that i'd love to go and see and look at what's gone on, however clearly thats not a a good idea, fascinating really.
 
Dont think this has been posted yet.

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Dr Colin Brown, the Institution’s Director of Engineering gives an overview of the main issues facing engineers working to contain the plant.
Q: What are the two main engineering challenges?

A: There are two main engineering problems. Firstly, the safe operation of the reactors relies on the supply of electrical power. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami wiped out the electrical power to the plant, so there is no power to operate safety systems and especially power the high pressure cooling pumps.

This is a double negative as the failed grid means that there is no way to take energy from the site. Currently, there is nothing to absorb the decay heat in the reactors, and the only solution is to boil water, and releasing the steam it generates to take the heat away.
Q: Looking at the world’s responses to the emergency, the public seems to have three questions about how the stored energy in the reactors can be absorbed; why the buildings are exploding; and lastly, whether Fukushima will turn into the next Chernobyl.

A: Firstly, the engineers have got to dissipate the decay heat. The only effective technique is to boil water, and so as much water as possible has to be pumped into the reactors. This will be combined with venting and releasing steam and then more pumping. Overall, the engineers are faced with the challenge of trying to dissipate the equivalent of the power of 100 large wind turbines using boiling water.

Secondly, the public rightly wants to know why explosions are happening when the engineers tell us that the reactors are safe. The answer to this is that during the period when there was no power, the reactor cores were uncovered, and they decomposed. Hydrogen was formed, and the result was that the venting system, which was designed to vent steam, instead had to vent large quantities of hydrogen and this is why the buildings exploded. There may well have been a failed catalytic converter system on the vent relying on electrical power, that would normally have safely have converted hydrogen to water. Prior to the third explosion, engineers had started to tak panels out of the buildings trying to release the hydrogen.

Thirdly, a concern for the people not just of Japan but the Pan Pacific area is whether Fukushima will turn into the next Chernobyl with radiation spread over a big area. The answer is that this scenario is highly unlikely, because of the wildly different design of the two reactors. The reason why radiation was disseminated so widely from Chernobyl with such devastating effects was a carbon fire. Some 1,200 tonnes of carbon were in the reactor at Chernobyl and this caused the fire which projected radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere causing it to be carried across most of Europe. There is no carbon in the reactors at Fukushima, and this means that even if a large amount of radioactive material were to leak from the plant, it would only affect the local area. The Japanese authorities acted swiftly and decisively in evacuating people living within 20km of the plant, and ensuring people living within 30km of the plant remained in their homes, with windows and doors closed. The radiation measured so far at Fukushima is 100,000 times less than that at Chernobyl.

Appraising the situation at Fukushima as it stands now, it seems as if the engineers have enough cooling water pumping into the reactors, and all three of the buildings have exploded, so in my opinion, the engineers on site now have to continue their efforts for 5 – 10 days to get the core heat down, and then hopefully the plant will be finally safe.
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Hmmm call me suspicious but there are no trees at all anymore on the right! Is that genuine? Fair enough they might have been removed / fallen over in the quake...different stretch of road etc. but looks like a different season.

Incredible if real, they really are efficient buggers.
 
sanaxe1 said:
Wow let the rebuilding begin.
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Good luck to them,

Edit , hmm mibbe I see it now, the angle is completely different much lower on the left

They are very efficient, I just saw their "refugee camp" on sky, a gym hall with very organised rows of blankets and beds in squares of about 4x3, Showing little signs of panic
 
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I've been talking to a friend who has family over there (not near the worst affected area) but his family were explaining (for my benefit :D) about the response and how the Government were very well prepared. (in relation to rebuilding / clearing / getting aid)

I've been god smacked by some of the things that they've been doing and how quickly and effectively they've been working. It's incredible, but part of me knew it would be because of the culture and the people.

Nuclear is sounding a lot better, close to being much more stable. Shame most easily influenced people will just eat up what Sky / BBC have been feeding them.
 
Sounds from a press conference that they might be getting power back online from outside within a day or so, that would be great news assuming they can get the cooling back online and its not broken.

But they are also being very evasive and listed almost everything people wanted answered as something they'd answer much later today(17th there already so within 20 odd hours).

Establishing the normal cooling would just be, insanely good as they can fill up the tanks once, stop steam being generated and keep it cool, though, not sure on the spent fuel pools hopefully the ability to fill them would come back with power online.

One of the biggest causes of radiation release and the biggest cause of danger, the pressure, is from the inability to turn steam back into water, if they can fix that, it should be pretty stable.

That picture only just loaded for me, wondered what you were all talking about, freaking amazing, who was it who said Japanese people wouldn't be getting back to work for ages? Everyone who can seems to be working hard all over the place, that though, is just unbelievable.

Shocking I saw a doctor on fox news, talking sensibly, talking down any chance of US problems even in the worst case scenario, and talking mostly about how great the Japanese response has been due in large part to being prepared for a large scale event. Then mentioning that is what the USA needs, if the same thing happened in the states he thinks it would be utter chaos.
 
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Terrible stuff.

It seems that many people are just focusing on the nuclear aspect of this huge disaster. We shouldn't forget that there are areas that have just been flattened, we have nearly half a million people living in shelters. There are food/ fuel shortages, power cuts and a loss in human life that is yet to become confirmed. Now even the weather has turned against the nasty, it just goes from bad to worse.
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I think the reason why there's more focus on the nuclear situation rather then the earthquake/tsunami is because people are affraid of the nuclear situation, and we're worried about how bad this could get and how many more people will die...if the nuclear side of things hadn't happened and this all ended with the earthquake/tsunami, then we'd only be talking about the earthquake/tsunsami and we would only be upset for those that have died already...but its hard to even begin to focus on that aspect when we're still worried about the radiation being released from these nuclear plants.

This seems like a really serious situation to me, I've read almost every reply in this thread over last few days and there's 76 pages now and I've learnt allot because there's allot of information given in this thread and allot of people that know in detail about how a nuclear power plant works and the more I've learnt the more concerned I've got.

I think everyone in the world just wants this to be over now, it's such an awful situation, a really terrible disaster but I think the world needs to get together and support japan best as possible until this situation is under control. And even when this does end, we can't forget those that have died and we need to help rebuild japan and support the survivors.
 
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