Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[82_28]

Just a couple out of the THOUSANDS of stories (propaganda really) I've found in the Seattle Times archives. Look at the arrogance in the first one and then look at the short and uninformative story of Japanese fear of anything nuclear in the following clip.


http://classifiedhumanity.tumblr.com/po ... o-be-found

April 4th, 1975



May 27th, 1981

[crikkett]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20110406/tp ... bfc7e.html

Japan No 2 core melted through reactor vessel - Markey
8 hours 33 mins ago


The core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday. Skip related content

"I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the core of Unit Two has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel," said Markey, a prominent nuclear critic in the House of Representatives.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Ayesha Rascoe)

On edit, adding:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/japan-no-2-cor ... 9-708.html

NRC says not clear that Japan reactor has melted vessel

Edited on Wed Apr-06-11 08:59 AM by dipsydoodle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top official from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Wednesday it was not clear that Japan's Fukushima No. 2 nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel.

Earlier, Democratic lawmaker Edward Markey told a House of Representatives hearing on the nuclear disaster that the NRC had told him the core had melted through the vessel.

"That's not clear to us, nor is it clear to us that the reactor has penetrated the vessel," said Martin Virgilio, deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs at the NRC.

[crikkett]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7765#comments_top

Engineers discuss the Nuclear meltdown in an open thread (dense! or is that just me)
I'm reading this now.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

BTW: From what I've read and heard, yes these workers were missing since the tsunami hit and were presumed drowned -- not the result of hydrogen explosion -- which in any case didn't affect unit 4 -- its damage was apparently the result of a spent-fuel cooling pool fire occurring several days later thru the fuel rods being exposed to air and overheating.

Thanks Starman!

EDIT: And everybody else on the thread, of course.

[Jeff]

Japan's Radioactive Ocean

By Julia Whitty
Tue Apr. 5, 2011 2:29 PM PDT

It's spring in Japan's ocean waters, the time of highest primary productivity, when lengthening days reawaken the hibernating marine foodweb.

The satellite image above is from the area about 160 kilometers/100 miles north of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. It was shot on 21 May 2009 and shows where Japan's two mighty ocean currents—the Kuroshio and the Oyashio—collide.

The convergence zone is awesomely rich. The Oyashio flows down form the Arctic, the Kuroshio up from the subtropics. Where they meet you get all kinds of fascinating expressions of fluid dynamics—highlighted in the image above by eddies colored aquamarine by the presence of intensely blooming phytoplankton.

Fluid dynamics drive biological dynamics too, and the phytoplankton are busting their tiny chlorophyll guts, so to speak, feasting in the collision zone—where nutrients are getting churned up from the seafloor to deliver nature's own signature blend of Miracle-Gro.

According to the engineering specs for Earth, without phytoplankton making life from nonlife, there would be little life in the ocean, perhaps none in Japan or just about anywhere else.

But this year the phytoplankton that feed everything else in the sea, one or four trophic levels removed, are likely to be sporting a couple of far-out new ingredients: iodine-131 and cesium-137.

...

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011 ... tive-ocean

[Peachtree Pam]

NRC: Japan no reason to de-license NJ nuke plant

By WAYNE PARRY


TRENTON, N.J.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says nothing it has learned from the Japanese nuclear disaster warrants revoking the license of the nation's oldest nuclear power plant in New Jersey.

The agency filed its response Tuesday to a federal appeals court that had asked if the Japanese crisis should lead to a re-thinking of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station's current 20-year license that was awarded two years ago.

The agency says that while it is studying the ongoing crisis in Japan, it remains confident of the safety of U.S. nuclear plants.

"Licensed nuclear power reactors in the United States are currently safe and may continue to operate under NRC's comprehensive scheme of safety regulations and inspections, pending development of any new safety measures that emerge," the agency wrote.

A coalition of anti-nuclear groups is challenging Oyster Creek's 2009 license renewal. It asked the appeals court to reconsider whether Oyster Creek's license should have been renewed, citing concerns about its age and wear and tear on the plant, which went online in 1969.

The New Jersey Sierra Club says the NRC has not learned anything from the Japanese disaster.

"NRC stands for No Regulatory Commission," said Jeff Tittel, the group's director. "The agency is a cheerleader for industry and looks the other way it comes to relicensing, especially around issues of public safety.

"The NRC should be saying license renewals across the country should be on hold while we reevaluate the safety of these facilities," said Tittel. "This brief shows the NRC will not learn any lessons from Japan, just as they did not learn any lessons from Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Given what we are learning about Japan, it does not make any sense and could be outright dangerous to keep Oyster Creek open."

The NRC noted in its response that it adopted new standards and practices following Three Mile Island, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"As with the post-TMI and post-9/11 regulatory enhancements, any lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi event will be applied generically to all reactors, including Oyster Creek, as appropriate to their location, design, construction, and operation," the agency wrote. "No safety, technical, or policy justification exists to single out particular reactors for different treatment just because of their place in the licensing queue or status on judicial review."

Oyster Creek's license allows it to operate until 2029. But its owners, Chicago-based Exelon Corp., struck a deal with New Jersey in December to shut Oyster Creek 10 years early, in 2019. In return, the state dropped its insistence that Oyster Creek build costly cooling towers to drastically reduce the number of fish and small aquatic creatures the plan's operations kill each year.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financia ... E84H00.htm

[23]

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=127092
Radiation Leak in Japanese Onagawa Plant in Quake Aftermath

Four people have died and over 100 are injured from the aftershock of 7.1 point magnitude on the Richter scale earthquake that rocked northeastern Japan Thursday evening.

The victims are listed as two women, 63 and 83, and two men, 79 and 85.

The earthquake also damaged the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, where a leak of radioactive water is reported by Japanese TV, citing the NPP operator Tokyo Electric Power. The leak comes from the pools where the used fuel of reactors one and two is stored, but no elevated levels of radiation have been recorded.

The shock was registered at 11:32 pm local time (5:32 pm Bulgarian time) and has an epicenter in the Pacific, 49-meters deep, according to the US Geological Survey.

Eyewitnesses say many buildings have been damaged; there are also reported fires and damage in the gas supply system; over 3.6 million households are without electric power.

There is no new damage discovered at the Fukushima NPP, which was badly struck by the devastating March 11 9-point magnitude on the Richter scale quake and following 10-meter tsunami.

[Jeff]

Driving towards Fukushima:

[anothershamus]

Great video Jeff! I feel like I got my yearly dose of radiation just watching that.
Makes you wonder where all those animals will migrate to.

[82_28]

Driving towards Fukushima:

Jesus, Jeff. Thanks.

Anybody every played Half Life 2? That right there, the terrain, the here and there destruction in abandoned environs and such are a spittin' image. That final dog and the herd of cows literally made me cry. What a fucking disaster. I can't believe how much like a video game it seems.

[Stephen Morgan]

One killed in HMS Astute nuclear submarine shooting


One person has been killed and another is in a life-threatening condition after a shooting on board the nuclear submarine HMS Astute.

A man was arrested after police were called at 1212 BST to Southampton docks where the vessel has been berthed since Wednesday as part of a five-day visit.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale understands that a crew member shot two of his crew mates before being overpowered.

A police spokeswoman said the incident is not linked to terrorism.

She said there is no public safety risk and the area is sealed off.

BBC News understands the arrested man was handed over to Hampshire police by Ministry of Defence police.

Brian Cedar, who lives in Hythe marina, said: "I saw at least six people carry a stretcher off the gangway into a waiting ambulance.

"There were a couple of forensic people who have now left.

"If you can have a shooting like this on a nuclear submarine it is worrying."

The area around the docks has been sealed off by officers from Hampshire police.

The 97m-long (318ft) HMS Astute, the UK's newest and largest nuclear submarine, is based at the Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde.
HMS Astute berthed in Southampton HMS Astute is currently berthed in Southampton as part of a five-day visit

It ran aground on a shingle bank between the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Skye in October last year and remained marooned for several hours.

HMS Astute was named and launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in June 2007 before being welcomed into the Royal Navy in August last year at a commissioning ceremony at Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde.

The submarine weighs 7,800 tonnes, equivalent to nearly 1,000 double-decker buses, and is almost 100 metres (328ft) long.

Its Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles are capable of delivering pinpoint strikes from 2,000km (1,240 miles) with conventional weapons.

The submarine's nuclear reactor means it does not need refuelling and it makes its own air and water, enabling it to circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface.

[undead]

Link for above:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-13014640

A Royal Navy crewman has been killed and another is in a life-threatening condition after a shooting on board nuclear submarine HMS Astute.

A third Royal Navy serviceman was arrested after police were called to Southampton docks where the vessel has been berthed since Wednesday.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale understands that a crew member shot two of his crew mates before being overpowered.

[norton ash]

I guess personal tensions can really build up on a submarine.

[eyeno]

One killed in HMS Astute nuclear submarine shooting


One person has been killed and another is in a life-threatening condition after a shooting on board the nuclear submarine HMS Astute.

A man was arrested after police were called at 1212 BST to Southampton docks where the vessel has been berthed since Wednesday as part of a five-day visit.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale understands that a crew member shot two of his crew mates before being overpowered.

A police spokeswoman said the incident is not linked to terrorism.

She said there is no public safety risk and the area is sealed off.

BBC News understands the arrested man was handed over to Hampshire police by Ministry of Defence police.

Brian Cedar, who lives in Hythe marina, said: "I saw at least six people carry a stretcher off the gangway into a waiting ambulance.

"There were a couple of forensic people who have now left.

"If you can have a shooting like this on a nuclear submarine it is worrying."

The area around the docks has been sealed off by officers from Hampshire police.

The 97m-long (318ft) HMS Astute, the UK's newest and largest nuclear submarine, is based at the Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde.
HMS Astute berthed in Southampton HMS Astute is currently berthed in Southampton as part of a five-day visit

It ran aground on a shingle bank between the Scottish mainland and the Isle of Skye in October last year and remained marooned for several hours.

HMS Astute was named and launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in June 2007 before being welcomed into the Royal Navy in August last year at a commissioning ceremony at Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde.

The submarine weighs 7,800 tonnes, equivalent to nearly 1,000 double-decker buses, and is almost 100 metres (328ft) long.

Its Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles are capable of delivering pinpoint strikes from 2,000km (1,240 miles) with conventional weapons.

The submarine's nuclear reactor means it does not need refuelling and it makes its own air and water, enabling it to circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface.

Securing the Cities planning has culminated this week in an ongoing
five-day drill testing the line of defense — the largest exercise yet.

http://www.wral.com/news/story/9407219/

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31729

[StarmanSkye]

-- I'm kinda surprised no one has posted this recent NY Times Science-section article that cites the same Stanford University presentation by leading Nuclear Energy officials and select nuclear physicists to an invited-only audience of nuclear power and gov. insiders that Arnie Gunderson of Fairewind Associates referred to in his most recent Fukushima crisis updates.

Esp. relevant was the information of substantial core-meltdown damage as the reactor cores 1 thru 3 lost coolant circulation and volume, resulting in up-to 3/4 of the fuel assemblies being exposed to air and attaining temps of 4800 to 5000 F
-- sufficiently hot enough to cause the uranium-zirconium eutectic alloy of the fuel-rod assemblies to burn and severely damaging the boron control-rod assemblies.

Immediately below: Latest Fairewinds Update by Arnie Gunderson as of April 6 -- there should be a another update soon (he mostly posts something every-other day), but this one is very significant, detailing the concerted witholding of critical information to the public and mainstream media sources by TEPCO and the French Nuclear Fuel company AREVA. Also detailing the problem of Unit #4's cooling-pool failure due to earthquake damage. "Clearly we are witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern times" -- a near-exact quote by (most probably) AREVA NP exec. VP Aaron Hansen who was a featured speaker at the Stanford presention. Elsewhere it was reported (via the Rense audio featuring Iishi Schumacho that some RI poster provided -- VERY ihnteresting, THANX!) that many, many very radioactively-volatile Uranium-Plutonium fuel-rod fragments were distributed over a one-mile area when Reactor #3 exploded -- with very interesting info about the secret (and subsequently covered-up) US-Japan agreement made in the beginning of the Cold War that traded US-based nuclear-power tech for Japan's own nuclear-weapons capability.

Although I am VERY skeptical about the claims made in the Rense audio re: Unit #4 was being used for nuclear research and was in operation at the time of the earthquake-tsunami. From my reading, I think Unit #4's problems extended from fresh-fuel adding to the thermal potential of zircalloy-reaction causing hydrogen gas explosion due to the pool's earthquake-damage leak exposing the fuel assemblies. Also -- speculation that a secret laboratory was UNDER the complex is WAAAAY out there.
**************



************
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/scien ... ted=1&_r=2

From Afar, a Vivid Picture of Japan Crisis
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: April 2, 2011

For the clearest picture of what is happening at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, talk to scientists thousands of miles away.

Thanks to the unfamiliar but sophisticated art of atomic forensics, experts around the world have been able to document the situation vividly. Over decades, they have become very good at illuminating the hidden workings of nuclear power plants from afar, turning scraps of information into detailed analyses.

For example, an analysis by a French energy company revealed far more about the condition of the plant’s reactors than the Japanese have ever described: water levels at the reactor cores dropping by as much as three-quarters, and temperatures in those cores soaring to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to burn and melt the zirconium casings that protect the fuel rods.

Scientists in Europe and America also know from observing the explosions of hydrogen gas at the plant that the nuclear fuel rods had heated to very dangerous levels, and from radioactive plumes how far the rods had disintegrated.

At the same time, the evaluations also show that the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi escaped the deadliest outcomes — a complete meltdown of the plant.

Most of these computer-based forensics systems were developed after the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, when regulators found they were essentially blind to what was happening in the reactor. Since then, to satisfy regulators, companies that run nuclear power plants use snippets of information coming out of a plant to develop simulations of what is happening inside and to perform a variety of risk evaluations.

Indeed, the detailed assessments of the Japanese reactors that Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave on Friday — when he told reporters that about 70 percent of the core of one reactor had been damaged, and that another reactor had undergone a 33 percent meltdown — came from forensic modeling.

The bits of information that drive these analyses range from the simple to the complex. They can include everything from the length of time a reactor core lacked cooling water to the subtleties of the gases and radioactive particles being emitted from the plant. Engineers feed the data points into computer simulations that churn out detailed portraits of the imperceptible, including many specifics on the melting of the hot fuel cores.

Governments and companies now possess dozens of these independently developed computer programs, known in industry jargon as “safety codes.” Many of these institutions — including ones in Japan — are relying on forensic modeling to analyze the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi to plan for a range of activities, from evacuations to forecasting the likely outcome.

“The codes got better and better” after the accident at Three Mile Island revealed the poor state of reactor assessment, said Michael W. Golay, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

These portraits of the Japanese disaster tend to be proprietary and confidential, and in some cases secret. One reason the assessments are enormously sensitive for industry and government is the relative lack of precedent: The atomic age has seen the construction of nearly 600 civilian power plants, but according to the World Nuclear Association, only three have undergone serious accidents in which their fuel cores melted down.

Now, as a result of the crisis in Japan, the atomic simulations suggest that the number of serious accidents has suddenly doubled, with three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex in some stage of meltdown. Even so, the public authorities have sought to avoid grim technical details that might trigger alarm or even panic.

“They don’t want to go there,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert who, from 1993 to 1999, was a policy adviser to the secretary of energy. “The spin is all about reassurance.” If events in Japan unfold as they did at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the forensic modeling could go on for some time. It took more than three years before engineers lowered a camera to visually inspect the damaged core of the Pennsylvania reactor, and another year to map the extent of the destruction. The core turned out to be about half melted.

By definition, a meltdown is the severe overheating of the core of a nuclear reactor that results in either the partial or full liquefaction of its uranium fuel and supporting metal lattice, at times with the atmospheric release of deadly radiation. Partial meltdowns usually strike a core’s middle regions instead of the edge, where temperatures are typically lower.

The main meltdowns of the past at civilian plants were Three Mile Island in 1979, the St.-Laurent reactor in France in 1980, and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.

One of the first safety codes to emerge after Three Mile Island was the Modular Accident Analysis Program. Running on a modest computer, it simulates reactor crises based on such information as the duration of a power blackout and the presence of invisible wisps of radioactive materials.

Robert E. Henry, a developer of the code at Fauske & Associates, an engineering company near Chicago, said that a first sign of major trouble at any reactor was the release of hydrogen — a highly flammable gas that has fueled several large explosions at Fukushima Daiichi. The gas, he said in an interview, indicated that cooling water had fallen low, exposing the hot fuel rods.

The next alarms, Dr. Henry said, centered on various types of radioactivity that signal increasingly high core temperatures and melting.

First, he said, “as the core gets hotter and hotter,” easily evaporated products of atomic fission — like iodine 131 and cesium 137 — fly out. If temperatures rise higher, threatening to melt the core entirely, he added, less volatile products such as strontium 90 and plutonium 239 join the rising plume.

The lofting of the latter particles in large quantities points to “substantial fuel melting,” Dr. Henry said.

He added that he and his colleagues modeled the Japanese accident in its first days and discerned partial — not full — core melting.

Micro-Simulation Technology, a software company in Montville, N.J., used its own computer code to model the Japanese accident. It found core temperatures in the reactors soaring as high as 2,250 degrees Celsius, or more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to liquefy many reactor metals.

“Some portion of the core melted,” said Li-chi Cliff Po, the company’s president. He called his methods simpler than most industry simulations, adding that the Japanese disaster was relatively easy to model because the observable facts of the first hours and days were so unremittingly bleak — “no water in, no injection” to cool the hot cores.

“I don’t think there’s any mystery or foul play,” Dr. Po said of the disaster’s scale. “It’s just so bad.”

The big players in reactor modeling are federal laboratories and large nuclear companies such as General Electric, Westinghouse and Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Japanese complex.

The Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque wrote one of the most respected codes. It models whole plants and serves as a main tool of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Washington agency that oversees the nation’s reactors.

Areva and French agencies use a reactor code-named Cathare, a complicated acronym that also refers to a kind of goat’s milk cheese.

On March 21, Stanford University presented an invitation-only panel discussion on the Japanese crisis that featured Alan Hanson, an executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of the company focused on the nuclear fuel cycle.

“Clearly,” he told the audience, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.” Dr. Hanson, a nuclear engineer, presented a slide show that he said the company’s German unit had prepared. That division, he added, “has been analyzing this accident in great detail.”

The presentation gave a blow-by-blow of the accident’s early hours and days. It said drops in cooling water exposed up to three-quarters of the reactor cores, and that peak temperatures hit 2,700 degrees Celsius, or more than 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt steel and zirconium — the main ingredient in the metallic outer shell of a fuel rod, known as the cladding. “

Zirconium in the cladding starts to burn,” said the slide presentation. At the peak temperature, it continued, the core experienced “melting of uranium-zirconium eutectics,” a reactor alloy.

A slide with a cutaway illustration of a reactor featured a glowing hot mass of melted fuel rods in the middle of the core and noted “release of fission products” during meltdown. The products are radioactive fragments of split atoms that can result in cancer and other serious illnesses.

Stanford, where Dr. Hanson is a visiting scholar, posted the slides online after the March presentation. At that time, each of the roughly 30 slides was marked with the Areva symbol or name, and each also gave the name of their author, Matthias Braun.

The posted document was later changed to remove all references to Areva, and Dr. Braun and Areva did not reply to questions about what simulation code or codes the company may have used to arrive at its analysis of the Fukushima disaster.

“We cannot comment on that,” Jarret Adams, a spokesman for Areva, said of the slide presentation. The reason, he added, was “because it was not an officially released document.”

A European atomic official monitoring the Fukushima crisis expressed sympathy for Japan’s need to rely on forensics to grasp the full dimensions of the unfolding disaster.

“Clearly, there’s no access to the core,” the official said. “The Japanese are honestly blind.”