[AndersB]

This is terrible!

First Christchurch, and now this....

Maybe Indonesia will be next?

[Bernard L. Madoff]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 05:59 AM, said:

there appear to be indications that the rods in reactor 1 are starting to melt. the level of the coolant has dropped another 80 centimeters (now leaving 1.7 meters of the rods exposed) since the last update. they have detected the release of cesium which, apparently, indicates melting...

and the same talking heads ("experts" of nuclear safety) that were on japanese tv 2 hours ago telling people in the 3-10 km radius to stay indoors and not panic are now saying that they probably won't be able to get everyone out of the 10km zone before they have to vent gasses (which, it seems, are not as harmless as they said 2 hours ago). 10km? f-that. i'd start driving the opposite direction the wind is blowing for at least 100 kms. the safety "experts" on the japanese news are getting very sweaty and nervous and keep saying how it is a "very serious situation"... that cannot be good...

Got a link for this info? The sites I'm getting are scientifically airy fairy.

[urchin]

Bernard L. Madoff, on 12 March 2011 - 07:20 AM, said:

Got a link for this info? The sites I'm getting are scientifically airy fairy.

i'm getting it from the japanese news broadcasts (http://live.nicovide...atch/lv43019860) and japanese news sites--not the english ones. the english language news is about 6-12 hours behind. though obviously there's a lot of confusion and uncertainty on the japanese side too. but things are pretty grim. i'm just glad that we didn't have any students in the area.

[urchin]

the quality is bit better here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tbstv

some of the people commenting provide rough english summaries. it's heartbreaking though--sendai is (was) a beautiful city. one of my favorite in Japan and a place i was seriosuly thinking about living in... the wife, presciently, was opposed as it is particularly prone to earthquakes (even for japan).

[urchin]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 07:50 AM, said:

i'm getting it from the japanese news broadcasts (http://live.nicovide...atch/lv43019860) and japanese news sites--not the english ones. the english language news is about 6-12 hours behind. though obviously there's a lot of confusion and uncertainty on the japanese side too. but things are pretty grim. i'm just glad that we didn't have any students in the area.

there was an explosion at reactor 1...

edit: it looks like steam built up to unsustainable pressures. an explosion followed by a significant release of steam. several employees were injured. nobody really knows how significant this is yet, but things seem to be spiralling in a bad way.

[urchin]

apparently they are preparing to use boric acid to slow down/stop the reaction... someone more familiar with nuclear physics might be able to explain what it means. here's hoping it works.

[urchin]

apparently the explosion took out the roof of the building housing the reactor. if the explosion occurred outside of the reactor it won't be too bad, but if it basically means the top has blown off the reactor then we are looking at chernobyl v.2... i don't know why the explosion would occur outside of the reactor but then again there is a lot i don't know. it doesn't look good, though. presumably the amount of radiation being released would make it fairly clear which situation they are facing but they aren't releasing that information if they know it. people w/in 10 km are still being told to leave...

[tor]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 08:55 AM, said:

apparently the explosion took out the roof of the building housing the reactor. if the explosion occurred outside of the reactor it won't be too bad, but if it basically means the top has blown off the reactor then we are looking at chernobyl v.2... i don't know why the explosion would occur outside of the reactor but then again there is a lot i don't know. it doesn't look good, though. presumably the amount of radiation being released would make it fairly clear which situation they are facing but they aren't releasing that information if they know it. people w/in 10 km are still being told to leave...

This is insane! Once again I fall asleep and awake to find the world is really losing the plot. The design of modern reactors is that they just fail to continue the chain reaction when the coolant is removed. Boric acid is used in the water to adjust the core temperature (like heavy water in the old designs) as boron absorbs neutrons and so stops the speed of the reaction but that is the coolant. Adding boric acid when there is no coolant is like saying "the brakes on my car have been cut so I created new brakes" it just doesn't make sense on the surface of things. It is not like someone grabbed a tin of it and wandered over and dumped it in the core.

There is no way that anything like this should have happened in modern design.

I do agree with the basic idea of getting the hell out of there (as I would with any type of power plant having problems) but this is going to set nuclear power back another few decades.

All I can hope is that it is lack lustre journalism because at least then people don't actually get hurt.

Edit: The above is based on my nuclear fission knowledge from when I was about 12 and wanted to be a nuclear physicist. I am by no way up to date with nuclear power.

This post has been edited by tor: 12 March 2011 - 09:20 AM

[urchin]

link of explosion - it looks messy



edit: it's interesting that, in all the japanese news (live broadcasts) i've been watching, nobody has shown the footage in the youtube video. in the meantime, however, the evacuation range for the 2nd reactor has also been expanded to 10 km.

one of the problems, apparently, is that there is no means for communicating with the people at the reactor (all the phones are down). this sounds suspcious to me. they wouldn't have a single satellite phone or its equivalent for such occasions? how about writing big letters in the parking lot so helicopters can read them?

they are saying that people don't need to evacuate beyond 10 km but you'd have to be a sucker to believe that.

[tor]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

link of explosion - it looks messy

Did they try to bring one of the other bits online? That does not look like something caused by a dying reactor, looks more like a failed startup. That shockwave is huge. Massive failure like that doesn't tend to occur just out of the blue; it would require the failed reactor to have been contained for a day and then fail catastrophically which seems a tad unlikely.

I can understand that with power out they would desperately want power to be generated but if they really did try to bring one of the other reactors online when they had coolant failures on at least one of them I think they are going to get into trouble.

(again remember I am relying on remembered knowledge from when I was 12, I could be way off base).

[Bernard L. Madoff]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 08:55 AM, said:

if it basically means the top has blown off the reactor then we are looking at chernobyl v.2...

Chernobyl...

Quote

The Chernobyl disaster occurred at 01:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union. Reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic steam explosion that resulted in a fire, a series of additional explosions, and a nuclear meltdown.

http://www.solcomhou...m/chernobyl.htm

IF (big IF) it is V2 Japan is screwed. Game over, tilt. All islands would fit into the map on the link.

I suggest Japanese authorities are trying to keep a lid on it to prevent panic whilst they do what they can to stop it.

Looking at the wind on the following link all you could really do if she goes is grab two bottles of Saki and kiss your arse goodbye in the mid term.
http://www.weather-f...orecasts/latest

[urchin]

tor, on 12 March 2011 - 10:05 AM, said:

Did they try to bring one of the other bits online? That does not look like something caused by a dying reactor, looks more like a failed startup. That shockwave is huge. Massive failure like that doesn't tend to occur just out of the blue; it would require the failed reactor to have been contained for a day and then fail catastrophically which seems a tad unlikely.

I can understand that with power out they would desperately want power to be generated but if they really did try to bring one of the other reactors online when they had coolant failures on at least one of them I think they are going to get into trouble.

(again remember I am relying on remembered knowledge from when I was 12, I could be way off base).

it may be as you say. 4 people were injured, they were in the middle of doing "something". the potential liability for the accident might account for the apparent effort to suppress the video/extent of the damage.

on the other hand i recall reading/hearing that they were having difficulty venting the gas, (pressure was ~2.5 designed capacity about 12 hours ago...). the news broadcasts are confusing as they are getting a lot of conflicting information and my grasp of nuclear disaster related vocabulary in Japanese is not perfect (though, alas, it's improving rapidly). nobody really knows what's going on but i think, in that situation, the best move is to get everyone the hell out of there rather than pretend everything is fine until it's too late. there are a lot of sick and elderly people in that area that will not be able to hop into a car and speed off. at last count ~800 people +/- had not made it outside the (overly conservative) 10km evacuation radius.

[tor]

Bernard L. Madoff, on 12 March 2011 - 10:35 AM, said:

Chernobyl...

Wasn't chernobyl one of the really old designs? I know the japanese designs are not up with the chinese proposed ones (thanks a lot hippies) but I was under the impression that they were retrofitted / initially designed to prevent coolant failure causing explosive situations.

Personally I am betting that nothing will come of it even if people did dumb stuff. The media is focussed on it because of the headline quality of radiation.

No one will come out and say "hey even with a MASSIVE earthquake, tsunami and some tools doing dumb arse stuff the reactor killed less than a tenth of the annual coal miners deaths without any disaster" though.

[urchin]

just a quick update - they are saying that the explosion occurred outside the core... here's hoping that it's true. i understand that the concrete around the core is something like 2m thick so perhaps it could withstand the blast....

[tor]

urchin, on 12 March 2011 - 11:55 AM, said:

just a quick update - they are saying that the explosion occurred outside the core... here's hoping that it's true. i understand that the concrete around the core is something like 2m thick so perhaps it could withstand the blast....

I thought the core on those PWC was steel? as in it was one of the problems with the design due to corrosion.

Steel on the containment vessel would easily deal with that kind of blast I believe. Ablatives on steel can go to hell compared to concrete.

If the core had gone they would not have journalists running in.

[tor]

Someone is saying these are not PWC. That seems a bit weird.

Stupid hippies. How in the hell do we even have PWC in this day and age let alone something dumber than that.

[Bernard L. Madoff]

Its a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) not a PWR, 1970 vintage. Just heard a Nuke Engineering guru on BBC driving home from work. He said that if the explosion was in the protected core it would be Chernobyl end game. He suspects a Hydrogen pocket. 3 mile island worse case (which was SFA) according to Prof Big Brain (Crawford?).

[ummester]

sh*t man - this is sad. As if the Japanese haven't been through enough Nuclear crap already with WW2.

On current natural disasters, I heard that some guy who predicted the QLD floods also predicts they are nothing compared to what is coming to Australia on the 19th of this month. Hopefully we'll make it through to the 20th unscathed and the guy is just an attention seeker.

Our planet is truly unsettlerd ATM, isn't it?

[Bernard L. Madoff]

As Tor says how many folk die in coal mining or by breathing the sh*t from coal stations?

A disel engine doesn't start (All 13 generators failed (!!) in the ECCS) and the core is not cooling in an old reactor.

If I documented the endless crashes in the commercialisation of flight and jet travel post WW2 you wouldn't walk near an aeroplane circa 1960s.

The spiittle is flying on facebook and twitter. Sad. People don't understand something and they blow bile. Cars, Aeroplanes, Nuclear Power etc

[tom]

Maybe they were not so well prepared after all.

Quote

Tepco declared an emergency and the government ordered thousands to evacuate the area, while engineers worked to restore power. The company is bringing in mobile generators to restore the power supply, but pressure inside the containment of Unit 1 continued to increase.

http://au.news.yahoo...-loses-coolant/

One would have thought for the costs mobile diesel generators ready to go would always be on site?

It is going to be a nervous 24 hours for the personnel trying to get this thing under control. They are going to have the toughest job in the world tonight.

Edit: well at 1000kVa or whatever they would need to be they would not be real mobile being more like the size of a truck!