Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants

SteveElbows

I'll let you know if I find the older documentary. Hope its better than the one you detailed, I watched it a week or two ago as I was interested in the worker interviews, oh what a dreadful program it turned out to be. It was interesting but not for the right reasons, very bad dramatisation and quite a mess of facts, some misleading details and loads of important detail about problems missing. Not even sure why they bothered mentioning reactor 3 as they failed to tell its story, and the story of reactor 2 seemed rather mangled in some respects.

The one thing they managed to achieve via bad drama and the mess of facts was a sense of the urgency felt on site when struggling to open valves of one sort or another. But those seeking to get clear in their minds the complex set of successful and failed attempts at venting, especially at reactor 2, will not be so well served by that program.

The theory about SR valve problems was interesting but again was not very well served by the format of the program. And by focussing on it for a while and not even mentioning a range of other problems, a rather distorted impression of what might have happened at reactor 2 was given.

tsutsuji

1) Previous related topics:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthr...54#post3934954 6th meeting (25 May 2012) Execution of internal survey into unit 1 primary containment vessel (PCV)

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/genpatsu-...901/index.html The same problem occurred 5 times again from 00:00 AM to 03:00 PM on 31 August. The cause has still not been found [as of 1 September]

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushi...20903_01-e.pdf Decrease in the Reactor Injection Water Amounts at Unit 1-3 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

zapperzero

Happy thousandth post!

tsutsuji

Thanks. I had not noticed it was the thousandth.

Astronuc

It was the secondary containment, the steel and masonary [super]structure above primary containment that had the fire and damage. It is surmised that hydrogen from unit 3 came through the shared duct work that caused the fire. Initially, there was concern that the spent fuel pool went dry and core (reinsert fuel) severely oxidized and produced substantial hydrogen. Later pictures seemed to show that the spent fuel and reinsert fuel was intact, but there might be damage, especially after the introduction of saltwater.

Of course, all primary containments were subject to seismic vibration and possible damage.

I have not followed the details for several months, so I'm not familiar with the current understanding of unit 4's situation.

tsutsuji

2) Translation:

01/11

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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tsutsuji

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etudiant

We all owe a vote of thanks to Tsutsuji-san for his extraordinary work.
Without his efforts, there would be essentially no ongoing english language coverage of this unprecedented engineering effort. Instead, we are getting almost real time updates on the clean up as it progresses.
I am impressed by the effort put forth, even though we can deplore that this huge investment will at best be a dead weight loss to the Japanese economy.

Astronuc

Those four units were a loss to the Japanese economy as soon as the tsunami hit and took out the ECCSs followed by flooding with seawater. The recovery (and decontamination and decomissinoning) adds more to the loss column. They also lost the infrastructure and housing that was destroyed by the tsunami - not to mention the loss of life.

The cost to replace the power plants on the order of $billions.