Guardian: “No danger of Chernobyl-style catastrophe”
The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.
The UK’s Guardian reports the grim news in its breaking story whose blunt headline I used above. Here’s more:
The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant. Readings from reactor two at the site have been made public by the Japanese authorities and Tepco, the utility that operates it.
Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian workers at the site appeared to have “lost the race” to save the reactor, but said there was no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe….
At least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel “lower head” of the pressure vessel around reactor two, Lahey said.
“The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell,” Lahey said. “I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards.”
… “The reason we are concerned is that they are detecting water outside the containment area that is highly radioactive and it can only have come from the reactor core,” Lahey added. “It’s not going to be anything like Chernobyl, where it went up with a big fire and steam explosion, but it’s not going to be good news for the environment.”
Nor would it be good news for humans.
Once again, the lesson would seem to be that the worst-case scenario plays out more times than people expect or plan for.
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My heart goes out to all the affected Japanese people, and in fact all people.
It is obvious that our species has built too complex monoculture systems in all areas that don’t have the needed diversity, redundancy and resiliency nature builds into natural ecosystems.
Nuclear Waste Next Door: Japan Crisis Spotlights America’s Radioactive Waste Dilemma
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=174014399314400&id=139434822741700
Sadly I expected this, especially considering the history of “design compromises” that were apparently made.
Fukushima Engineer Says He Helped Cover Up Flaw at Dai-Ichi Reactor No. 4
I kind of have to wonder what other “compromises” were made that we don’t know about (yet) and how many other plants have similar (or maybe worse) examples of cutting corners.
Joe, Did you mention this kind of nuclear hell in Hell and High Water?
Hell From High Water
What ever happened to the idea of lowering spent fuel rods to the bottom of the Marinas Trench or some other subduction zone where they would be carried under the Earth’s crust? That sounds better than losing cooling water in an above ground swimming pool for spent rods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_trench
And now Monbiot is dismissing the dangers of exposure to ‘low levels’ of radiation. Amazing! Moreover this will be balm to coal interests as the Right is still absolutely fanatically determined to obstruct renewables. In other words another step into the abyss.
How far does the radioactive water molecules travel? My guess is they spread around the entire global ocean. How much plutonium(or radioactive long term contamination) would be required to render the entire earth ocean useless?
Save the nuclear reactor?! Is that what is important?!!! Save a steaming pile of radioactive rubble? Really…what about human life, what about the environment, what about the livelihoods of all those people?
Anyone who thought these reactors can be “saved” is living in some sort of fantasy world. All we can do is try to take care of the enormous mess it has created. We have no idea the magnitude of the mess yet but all you can do with even a partial melt is close down the reactor and eventually clean up the mess. We do not know what to expect because this has never happened before. We have no way to “put out” nuclear fuel that is racing toward meltdown. We are in the ‘let’s wait and see how bad it will get’ phase of this particular nuclear disaster.
It is interesting to notice that at TMI, an accident many are calling very minor, the accident began on March 28, 1979 and it was not until October of 1985 before they were able to even begin to remove the nuclear fuel.
Its a sad state of affairs.
This incident highlights what sort of issues we will be confronting as more rapid sea level rise starts to take effect in the next 30-50yrs.
Its just unreal that we are even still considering nukes with all the toxic bagage and price that comes with it.
@ catman306 #4:
I used to like that idea as a disposal option too, until I learned about some of the risks.
Unfortunately the subduction zones not only move very slowly (on human time scales) but are very geologically active. Then you also would have to mount a large effort to bury all of the spent rods in such a manner.
IMO that seems to be why many governments are focusing on long term burial in geologically stable areas instead.
I agree though that on site storage on the third floor of the same building as the reactor core doesn’t seem very well thought out in terms of “risk management”.
“How much plutonium(or radioactive long term contamination) would be required to render the entire earth ocean useless?”
The amount released here is peanuts compared to the amount dumped in the environment by above-ground nuclear weapons tests in the past. In fact, they’re using isotope signatures to sift out that which appears to be from the plant from that which has contaminated the ground from past tests (Japan, of course, has never tested any nuclear weapons herself, it’s general pollution from tests by the US, USSR, China, France, Britain …)
another possible side effect to the japanese quake…
Japanese Quake May Cause Volcanic Eruption
A volcano on the border of North Korea and China could erupt in the next few years after being agitated by the recent Japanese earthquake. http://www.newslook.com/videos/300808-japanese-quake-may-cause-volcanic-eruption?autoplay=true
It’s going to be a mad race to move nuclear material away from dangerous coast lines in the near future.
“In 2003, there were nearly 50,000 metric tons of nuclear waste stored at United States plants, according to the National Research Council report, and 85 percent of the waste was stored in pools. At the current growth rate, that inventory of radioactive waste will double in less than 25 years.
“Spent fuel is going to stay at these reactors and accumulate for decades to come, and we should have a much better policy to ensure the safety and security of that fuel over time,” said Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar on nuclear policy at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former advisor in the Department of Energy.
“Let’s assume we have the ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning. It’s still going to take 25 to 30 years to transport and place the current inventory of spent fuel,” Alvarez said, noting that the managing the transportation of all of the different waste stockpiles to a single site would be a herculean effort.”
Logically an energy imbalance (climate change) affects geological activity. A climateprogress post from last year cited the UK Royal society predicting as much, and a recent commentator made a vey compelling argument for it based on thermal expansion of the plates alone. The observations we have available also suggest this may be happening.
So how long until the average person even contemplates this connection? 20 years? 2 more earthquakes 2 tsunamis?
No need to comment on what the ideologically committed would have to say about this “alarmist” science, but isn’t this just another element of eaarth poised to reep massive human casualties?
“How much plutonium(or radioactive long term contamination) would be required to render the entire earth ocean useless?”
The danger is that radioactivity is concentrated in the food chain, so some fish may become unsafe to eat.
I can’t decide if this situation is more terrifying or sad.
And you just know that no matter what happens in Fukushima (and yes, I’m including some truly awful scenarios in that “no matter what”), the nuclear industry will have PowerPoint decks ready to go quoting the numbers of fatalities and injuries and comparing them to the statistics for coal mining, smelting copper that goes into wind turbines, installing solar panels, and who knows what else over the last 50 years.
I take back my opening comment. I’m convinced “sad” wins this round…
Lahey is peddling “Happy Horse Shit”.
If the fuel has breached containment and is hot, then for all practical purposes, we have a big pot of fuel that is boiling a radioactive soup with no lid on it. (i.e., Bad stuff dispersing everywhere! I say “we” because we live downwind. It is our problem.) Lahey is doing public relations, not science or engineering.
When a stream of corium falls into a pool of water, the steam formed tends to insulate the corium from the cooling effects of the water. (Unless the pool is very deep. And again, that steam carries bad stuff!)
Then, it is very difficult to get cooling water to the bottom of the corium without having the water under high pressure to keep it from boiling off. And, it is very difficult to achieve such high pressures without an intact containment vessel. Any which way I look at it, we are likely to have corium sitting on concrete, and hot corium tends to decompose concrete. The bottom of our soup pot is about to decompose. That will be an issue as folks try to clean up the rest of the reactor complex.
There was a time when I spent my life worrying about this kind of stuff. I wrote manuals on how to remediate radioactive sites better, faster, and cheaper. Today, I see it as just a reactor meltdown (maybe more than one). Everybody will get a dose of radioactivity, and there will be a significant number of excess deaths. However, compared to the excess deaths from AGW, the radioactivity from a few reactor meltdowns is nothing.
What this reactor meltdown really shows is the inability of leaders, companies, political organizations and governments to understand risk management. They all seem to be more interested in preventing panic than in devising a workable “Plan B”. Perhaps the price tag for cleaning up a real reactor meltdown will get their attention.
According to Japanese news service NHK reports at the time, the fuel rods in No. 2 were fully exposed for a period of six and one half hours on Mon the 13, which is over two weeks ago, following an explosion which is reported to have damaged below ground parts of the containment. Two weeks later it requires a third party expert to tell us that the fuel melted, then softened the bottom of the thick reactor pressure vessel, then fell out, something which TEPCO may have been aware of for the past two weeks.
The reactor was wrecked two weeks ago, but there was the hope that the radioactive fuel was still inside the six inch thick stainless steel pressure vessel. It is possible that the inside of building No. 2 is becoming steadily more contaminated as the days go by, with radioactive materials seeping into concrete walls floor and ceiling, moved around by steam. This in turn will make it ever more difficult to maintain the spent fuel in the pool at No. 2.
Containment at No. 2 has failed. If this was happening upwind of a populated area, on a nice river somewhere, there would be mass panic.
Aaron – thanks for your well-informed overview.
One point I wish you’d clarify is just what is likely to happen when the molten ex-fuel+detritus exits the concrete floor and meets groundwater – I’d understood that a steam explosion would then distibute the material very widely, lofting particles to a very high altitude. As you don’t mention it, I wonder if this is indeed likely, or not ?
Regards,
Lewis
> Once again, the lesson would seem to be that the worst-case scenario plays out more times than people expect or plan for.
I wonder how bad it will need to get before Monbiot (and the Guardian) start to grasp how terribly wrong their advocacy of nuclear energy is.
Although, that wouldn’t excuse why they don’t get the economics and nuclear’s inability to contribute to climate mitigation.
Joe, the worst-case scenario always happens eventually with any technology. You cannot idiot-proof any human technology. No matter how firm a barrier we put up, human stupidity and greed will always find a way to break through. A cheapskate reactor design long known to be inadequate in the face of coolant loss, a utility company falsifying safety records, and engineering design that put vital back-up systems in a tsunami zone. Human error and shortsightedness. Just like TMI. Just like Chernobyl. That is the best argument against nuclear power. Humans will screw up, and with nuclear the consequences of the inevitable are simply too great to bear.
Oh, how sad.
What’s even sadder, though, is that nuclear disasters are like a walk in the park, compared to runaway global warming.
Worse is coming, unless we turn AGW around.
http://www.economist.com/node/18441163
Good article on balance of nukes
One feature about the likelihood of a “worse case scenario” is a time interval that extends longer and longer, allowing more opportunity for an event to occur within its frame.
The Fukushima reactors were designed for a life of 25 years (1971-1996).
That working life was extended to 40 years (1971-2011).
In early 2011, a new time extension was allowed.
Sadly, forty years plus a few days proved too wide a time interval to be able “slip between the raindrops” of earthquakes, tsunamis and design flaws.
This is a lesson about the merit of not gambling on a supposed infrequency of occurrence. Poor design can go down immediately like the Titanic on its first voyage, or like the Fukushima reactors, when approaching retirement.
A while back, David Roberts at Grist wrote a piece on “ruggedness” about designing materials and strategies that can function in more severe, less predictable conditions. That is a consideration.
Designers also tend to underestimate magnitude, such as unconsciously designing for a previous event (a 7.0 earthquake) rather than a future that one that is not fully appreciated.
Steels used in reactor Pressure Vessels are low alloy types, not stainless. This is good as ordinary stainless is very susceptible to stress corrosion cracking, especially on exposure to seawater. The design of Boiling Water Reactors, like the 6 at the damaged plant, is more conducive to life extension analysis than Pressurized Water Reactors. The PWR was initially designed for submarines and to fit in a small space. The PVs in PWRs are thus close to the core and subject to degradation by radiation. In BWRs the PV wall is further away, far enough to greatly reduce radiation embrittlement. The neutron flux can cause knock-on damage in the PV steels. In general, engineers are less concerned with tensile strength than with fracture toughness, which is a measure of the metal’s ability to absorb energy without cracking.
Auz is direct talk…
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/03/29/fukushima-and-rational-thinking-versus-populist-panic/
First, locating the plant right on the coast, in a geologically unstable zone, was nothing short of stupid.
Experts had warned about this for more than a decade. The placing of the plant right on the coast was mainly about maximising profits for a privately owned and operated corporation, with little regard for public safety and community well-being. To put this kind of operation where it is vulnerable to a post-quake tsunami is evidence of appalling negligence.
Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels
24 March 2011 by Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist
Japan’s damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
The Chernobyl accident emitted much more radioactivity and a wider diversity of radioactive elements than Fukushima Daiichi has so far, but it was iodine and caesium that caused most of the health risk – especially outside the immediate area of the Chernobyl plant, says Malcolm Crick, secretary of a United Nations body that has just reviewed the health effects of Chernobyl. Unlike other elements, he says, they were carried far and wide by the wind.
Moreover the human body absorbs iodine and caesium readily. “Essentially all the iodine or caesium inhaled or swallowed crosses into the blood,” says Keith Baverstock, former head of radiation protection for the World Health Organization’s European office, who has studied Chernobyl’s health effects. Iodine is rapidly absorbed by the thyroid, and leaves only as it decays radioactively, with a half-life of eight days. Caesium is absorbed by muscles, where its half-life of 30 years means that it remains until it is excreted by the body. It takes between 10 and 100 days to excrete half of what has been consumed.
While in the body the isotopes’ radioactive emissions can do significant damage, mainly to DNA. Children who ingest iodine-131 can develop thyroid cancer 10 or more years later; adults seem relatively resistant. A study published in the US last week found that iodine-131 from Chernobyl is still causing new cases of thyroid cancer to appear at an undiminished rate in the most heavily affected regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20285-fukushima-radioactive-fallout-nears-chernobyl-levels.html
___________________________________________
The above data on emissions to date is doubtless well known to the IAEA. Yet such is the degree of its current institutional corruption that it still claims that all 4 rogue units (with 1,760 tonnes of fresh and spent fuel in total) only warrant an accident rating of 5; back in ’86 Chernobyl (with just 180 tonnes in a single rogue unit) was given the maximum rating of 7. The global regulator has plainly been captured, and should face liquidation and replacement.
Meanwhile, as the multiple meltdowns continue, what are the odds of a stiff northerly breeze blowing over Fukushima ?
Those are the odds of a 6-hour-old scarcely diluted plume of contamination spreading down the coast to reach Tokyo and the land around it, which hold about 35 million people, including around 5 million children.
Regards,
Lewis
Is it okay to say reactor 2 has experienced a “full meltdown”? Nuclear apologists have been so careful to point out the difference between a “partial meltdown” and “full meltdown”, as if the former is okay.
If reactor 2 has experienced full meltdown, is it safe to say we’ve only seen the beginning of radioactive contamination effects? Nuclear apologists have been so careful to insist the contamination so far is at levels that will not affect human health.
Can we all start being more honest with ourselves?
Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/
“Regards,
Lewis”
thanks for the information.
this and the gulf within the space of less than one year.
when will our “leaders” wake up?
GAME OVER JAPAN?
Power company says smoke spotted at another Japanese nuclear plant http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/30/japan.daini/?hpt=T2
Which nation(s) are next with meltdown and great fallout?
re # 18 Lewis,
An excellent question – that a senior manager should have asked years ago. He would have been stonewalled by the design engineers, but he should have demanded an answer.
The answer depends on the details of the reactor design, fuel rod assembly, the extent of melt/slumping, and the geology under the facility. “They” have not been been sharing this information, and I am not going to guess. The 64 dollar question is whether the corium can regain criticality. That would be the difference between a big mess and a very big mess.
More interesting is how they have been spreading the mess around. If a baby poops a bit of phew, you can wipe it up cloth diaper, and toss the diaper in the washing machine, and everything is “clean”. If a reactor poops a bit of Pu, and you wipe it up with a rag, then toss the rag into the washing machine — Now the washing machine is contaminated, the sewer pipes are contaminated, the waste water treatment plant is contaminated, and the the river below the waste water treatment plant is contaminated.
I am not seeing a lot of smarts in their approaches to controlling the dispersal of radioactivity. Cleaning up radioactive contamination sites is very expensive.
“No danger of Chernobyl style catastrophe”
Really? Then I have a question for you.
BBC has reported that it’s now released 10% as much radiation as Chernobyl. When does it become “Chernobyl-style”? At 20%? At 30%? He’s not saying “not equal to Chernobyl” he said it’s not even of the same “type” or rather, not of the same “style”
Well I guess with vague language it could eventually release 100% as much radiation as Chernobyl and still have people claim it’s not the same “style”.
But really.
On the one hand, it’s not responsible and is a bad idea to scream “Chernobyl!” in reflex anytime anything goes wrong with nuclear. At the same time, there is a small INDUSTRY (and I mean in talking heads and media circles, on top of the actual industry) whose motto is not merely “don’t scare the horses” but to constantly push in the direction of “everything’s under control, everything’s fine, and nuclear is (and always will be according to these) viable” etc.
If one needs any more proof, consider 12 days ago.
Today this is bigger than Three Mile Island but back then it was just announced that the Japanese nuclear disaster was “on par” with Three Mile Island. Only they (“liberal” NPR) described it at the time as, get this, “on part with the Three Mile Island mishap”
I kid you not. Here is A, here is B. The situation in Japan, A, is very grave and dangerous and extremely serious, even a ‘disaster’ and A is “on par” with B, but B is “a mishap.” So one is “on part with” or “equals” two then?
Now they had to their credit used much stronger language, like grave, dangerous, crisis or disaster, etc, about Japan today, but USA in 1970s, which this disaster was “on par with” was a “mishap”
Ok, our Betters are telling us not to worry out little heads too much..
Another 30+ years of nuclear power, much less expanded nuclear power, is to hugely increase the likelihood not only of disasters, excuse us, mishaps, but also to vastly increase the likelihood of nuclear terrorism, and nuclear proliferation to more and more states. The fact we haven’t had another Hiroshima for 65 years is a bit like the person who jumped from the 100th floor and at the 35th floor said, “well, so far, this isn’t so bad”
A useful collection of links relating to the Fukushima disaster:
http://adropofrain.net/2011/03/before-and-after-pictures-of-japanese-tsunami-earthquake-areas/
Weather forecast for Fukushima winds shifting to ESE, E, ENE and showers.
Re-criticality questions re-emerge with this analysis of salt water from number 1 reactor: http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/files/2011/03/Cause_of_the_high_Cl38_Radioactivity.pdf
Risk of airplane attack could keep German nuclear plants shut http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1629910.php/Risk-of-airplane-attack-could-keep-German-nuclear-plants-shut