Fukushima: Radiation now reported in West Coast Tuna
So, I ended up on a hunt for just what happened at Reactor number 3 and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the damn thing actually blew up. There is some stories that it was due to an externally planted device, but there is a better case to be made for the total failure of all cooling, a lack of batteries for valve operation (they evidently had a cubic butt ton of 2V batteries when they needed 12V) but when you look at the videos of the explosion, there was definitely large pieces of something flying in the air and three distinct explosions. The claims I have found that seem most likely was that the core melted, and then mixing with steam allowed for a low order nuclear detonation to occur. Now, the really bad part, that no one seemed to want to mention: There was a spent rod pool ON TOP of the reactor vessel, which means that went up too, with a full load of MOX (mixed uranium/plutonium roods) that became pulverised, particulated, and pieces are said to have been found up to 3 miles away. Look at the videos and you can see several large pieces falling, and, bad for us, a huge plume of mixed radioactive material now airborne. If you go look at the pictures of Reactor three, I cannot see a reactor, the 3rd and 4th stories where the top of it should be sting up are caved in, when, if it was intact, it would be a thing sticking up out of the mess about 24 feet high. Yet everyone, Tepco, US, NRC, all say it was only a hydrogen explosion. So, would our government deliberately cover up something this severe? The stories of radioactivity didn't seem to match the event, but now I am not so sure.....
Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.
The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.
At 530 sieverts, a person could die from even brief exposure, highlighting the difficulties ahead as the government and Tepco grope their way toward dismantling all three reactors crippled by the March 2011 disaster.
It annoys me that this incident probably means no more nuclear power will be built, when the disaster had nothing to do with any danger of nuclear power per se and everything to do with the dangers of building sensitive equipment on an ocean coastline without protection against tsunamis.
I would like to see at least some attempt to test isotope levels in fish. (The level of radiation is less important than what isotopes are present, because that will determine how long the radiation source is likely to stay in your body once eaten.) But I predict the government will squash any attempt to enable people to make informed decisions about that, just as it did when mad cow disease appeared.
As the Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday, members of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority are now urging plant operators Tokyo Electric Power Company to find new technology and methods to aid in the cleanup.
Robots keep getting fried on their missions, literally from radiation damage, or stranded on-site wasting precious money and time.
The implication is that, perhaps, the clean up will move faster if Tepco’s energy and the government’s money is redirected to chemistry, biology, and so-called “safe containment,” building some sort of structure around Fukushima Daiichi like the “sarcophagus” around Chernobyl. Or perhaps humans need to trust AI to move robots through some of their tasks.
The government watchdog’s critical comments followed the latest robo-fail revealed by Tepco.
But the PMORPH survey robot, developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), couldn’t get its cameras to the predetermined location. As a result, it only sent back a partial report.
Just one month earlier, Tepco aborted a mission using a Toshiba “scorpion” robot that was built to scramble over rubble, capture images and data inside the plant’s facilities. The robot could tolerate up to 1,000 sieverts of radiation. And yet, it had trouble within the hostile environs of the number 2 reactor where it was dispatched.
These followed a string of earlier robot losses at the plant going back to the Quince 1, the first robot to enter the facility after the disaster. Developed by the Chiba Institute of Technology, the International Rescue System Institute, and Tohoku University in Japan, Quince went into the power plant’s reactor 2 building where it measured radiation levels, collected dust samples and video footage. It ran several missions but eventually disconnected from its communications cable and got stranded within the building.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if they said after the quake and tsunami " we have a very very serious catastrophe that potentially could pollute a large part of the planet with dangerous radiation we need to focus all our attention to get this under control. We need ideas and innovation and we need them immediately! " The reward will be commensurate.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cru...
I first read about this happening near Chernobyl in a book titled Think! by Michael R. LeGault
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...
Interesting stuff.
There is no chance that the R3 explosion was "nuclear" in nature, unless laws of physics and chemistry suddenly took a break. It was a loss of power and cooling, causing water to boil away, the core to melt, the steam to superheated steam to hydrogen production, and a spark, causing a hydrogen and steam driven explosion that broke other fuel apart and chucked pieces of various things around as explosions tend to do.
That being said, yes, a lot of radioactive fission products and activated fuel (meaning larger actinides like Pu) did get released to the environment over time, once the various containment buildings were breached (remember R4 had it's spent fuel pool also have a hydrogen explosion). The drainage from the attempts to keep them cool using seawater ensured that. And by now, it's certainly plausible that some of the longer lived stuff could have migrated close enough to the west coast to show up. Depends on what material was actually found, and it's corresponding half-life, as to whether it was from Fukashima or bombing of Japan or south pacific testing.
"Fukushima DaiIchi (just means number 1, Fukushima means Island of Dreams) unit 3 and 4 blew up in a nuclear type of explosion called a Prompt Moderated Criticality. It is a runaway neutron event with a massive release of energy usually in milliseconds, which is the presence of water also becomes a steam bomb which amplifies the explosive force due the volume expansion during phase change from liquid to vapor."
http://beforeitsnews.com/survival/201...
I know that internet "sources" are weak at best, and unreliable, however, some diligent searches still do not produce viable explanation for what you see, which is number 3 has apparently gone on vacation and no longer home, a 4 story reactor just doesn't "disappear". There is only a 2 story wreck left. And I agree Chernobyl was not an explosion, but was a steam explosion, and that type of reactor is even worse than the nes in Japan. They also have yet to explain why they had Plutonium Oxide in their fuel mix, supposedly they were not supposed to use anything bu Uranium... Not being a nuclear expert (I only sailed with them for 20 years, but saw how you can reasonably expect them to be safe if you just don't mess with them, and have appropriate fallback safeties), can you illuminate on this? Thanks.
Criticality is very simply a balance of neutrons like an accounting equation. If the number of neutrons produced by fission are balanced with those absorbed by things that can fission, things that can fission but don't, things that are neutron poisons (control rods, burnable absorbers, fission products like Xenon), and those that escape the vicinity, then you have a critical reactor running at a rate of fission that produces a specific amount of power. Supercritical reactor means more neutrons produced than absorbed for that power level, meaning fission and therefore power will increase, which is how you get any reactor up to power, by slowing increasing the balance of reactivity. You do the opposite (absorb more and more neutrons) to drop power to near zero fissions, and no power. Prompt critical means that the balance equation is held up entirely by neutrons immediately released from fission (most fissions are from slowed down neutrons interacting with U235), and are more probable (though still difficult) with plutonium 239 that Uranium. I bring up the later because they were running MOX fuel.
Critical structures are not easy to create, much less supercritical ones. Reactors are designed to avoid high levels of supercriticality, you have to massively change the structure of fuel and moderator to pack them into a mass that has a high enough density of fissile material to achieve it. A bomb uses a heiny-load of high explosives to shove "fuel" in metal form and a neutron source into such a small volume that the resulting stuff is ridiculously supercritical.
So, in the reactor, lack of cooling leads to steam generation, possibly enough to pop piping, and uncovering of the fuel rods. The superhot steam begins to degrade the cladding slightly forming hydrogen in the process. The excess heat eventually melts cladding and drops chunks of fuel ceramic (UO2, PU Oxide) to the bottom of the reactor vessel. Excess heat possibly melts the fuel ceramic, and now you have a big pile of fuel, fission products (many of which are neutron poisons), control rod (neutron poison) junk, maybe bits of other structure strewn across the bottom of the vessel. The shape of the vessels bottom will spread melty things out into a subcritical cowpie. If the crap that both melted and didn't hits the bottom of the vessel in just the right pattern to form that melted fuel into just the right configuration to create a supercritical blob, it still will NOT be big enough go boom by itself. Steam explosion sure, which will spread things into a subcritical situation.
So, I won't say that Fukashima 3 was not a prompt criticality event, but that the chances are equivalent to winning the lottery with the ticket you bought 2 seconds before being struck by lightning. :-)
As for the other examples, yes, Chernobyl was likely a prompt criticality event, and a massive milliseconds long power spike (estimates of 30GW vice 3GW thermal power max) that heated water to the point of a steam explosion that disrupted cooling tubes and blew the vessel lid up on its edges. But, that reactor was designed to have a slight positive reactivity to it with all that graphite for moderation. Semi-stupid high k design, that could be run safely if it wasn't for those pesky communists pulling party rank.
It seems GE, Tepco, the Japanese government and the US NRA were criminally negligent, and there is still no clear assessment I have found of the exact conditions, it always seems it's "everything is fine, nothing to see", yet there is no robot made yet that can withstand the huge radioactivity of the pressure vessels, so how can it be fine? And what of the spent fuel rods? In the air? Pulverized?
And, radiation is a natural part of the environment so getting excited over measuring a trace radioactive signature is inappropriate.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12...
"Of course, the idea that radiation was reaching California and the West Coast, and that fish were being contaminated by Fukushima radiation from thousands of miles across the Pacific was considered – yep – “fake news” at the time. The alarmist cries of conspiracy theorists and hypochondriacs were just non-sense, jibberish, delusions and paranoia. Typical hyperbolic non-sense from people caught up in an echo chamber.
But now, it is an admitted fact that Fukushima radiation is impacting U.S. shores.
Sorry to ignore and deride your claims, above group of deplorables. Turns out you were right, or at least on to something."
Labeling is the effective tool used when confronting Governments unethical behavior.
Shhhsh it is all a secret can't let the panicking public know .....lets have them sacrifice a bit more freedom to solve this dilemma.
http://www.whoi.edu/CMER/news-and-eve...
Fox report:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/08...
Some more disturbing news regarding salmon runs and others:
http://enenews.com/category/west-coast