Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants

Joe Neubarth

They are pumping more water in.

curious11

Sorry if this subject has already been put to bed. I thought I'd use the latest hi-res images to locate the position of the suspected sf-rods from an earlier video.

So, here they are. Any idea what the feature hi-lighted might be?

Attached Thumbnails

 

artax

No Idea, How much has the pressure increased or how quickly is it rising, and where are they measuring it.... the last I heard (Wiki) they thought 1,2 and 3 had cracks in the containment, or was it the pressure vessel I just read.
Anyone know how high the reactor buildings are...(were!) I want to work out how high that concrete went in the blast at number 3.

jensjakob

TCups, I cant find the "fuelrods" on the new hi-res images....

Can you?

If they are gone, someone knows what they were....

artax

Well we've sort of come to the conclusion that all four buildings have the Spent Fuel Pool at the south side of the building/reactor. So if that's true I don't know what those rods are as they are on the North side.... but they sure look like the way they were described on Radio 4 last week, about as thick as your finger and 4 meters long!
So maybe they had so many they were storing them everywhere in the less robust tanks around the place. It seems the Americans and no doubt many countries are just saving them up for a rainy day!
It's a shame they cant just hand them out to housholds to chuck in the bath when you need some hot water!

Borek

Fits our latest photography competition perfectly.

Looks like a pipe to me. Tons of pipes around.

curious11

Well they certainly aren't near the sfp. Do we have a schematic to overlay on this aerial photo? Maybe they're other elements used to space-out/organise the actual rods; ie benign?

artax

@ Jenskabob, I'm pretty sure curious !! has located the place... they're just too small to see.

artax

I've been searching all day for an overhead plan of one of these reactors with the different floors schematicked. (if that's a word)
I still think it's likely that they had loads of 'FAIRLY COLD' rods that they just thought they'd store in the nearest pool of water, I mean no-one's going to know... unless there's a massive Tsunami next week!
You know what industry is like.

83729780

WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE HIGH Cl-38 RADIOACTIVITY IN THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI REACTOR #1

artax

very interesting link thanks.
Will have to read it tomorrow.

curious11

Or. they;re just control rods.... ?

http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/d...l?id=841700465

gmax137

That looks like a bunch of 3/8 inch stainless tubing to me. There's typically miles of that stuff in a plant, used for instrumentation.

TCups

@Curious

You have indeed located the rod-like objects in the latest areal imagery. This was taken from the first helicopter fly over, and by way of disclosure, "Photoshop'ed" to correct color levels, contrast, and sharpness

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/903a9527.jpg

And here is my best SWAG at the layout of the top floor, see post #2089

http://www.physicsforums.com/attachm...1&d=1301513587

which puts the "rod-like structures west of the location of the equipment pool, I believe. I am not sure of the confirmation of my layout in the second image, however.

Yes, but not anywhere else in a fairly tight cluster that I can see. And in the midst of explosive destruction, they seem awfully rigid -- not bent like lots of the rebar seen in other images.

TCups

Joe:

I draw your attention to Astronuc's earlier post at 1989. At the time, I was not smart enough to understand what Astronuc was telling us. The lateral acceleration recorded at unit 3 exceeded the design maximum for lateral ground motion acceleration in the east-west axis, ie, in the direction of propagation of the energy from the epicenter of the quake.

Quoting in part, from Astronuc's reference source:

"At Daiichi there is still no data for units 1, 2 and 5, but available figures put the maximum acceleration as 507 gal from east to west at unit 3. The design basis for this was 441 gal. Other readings were below design basis, although east-west readings at unit 6 of 431 gal approached the design basis of 448 gal."

I am also informed that 1 gal = 1 cm/sec² and 500 gal = 1 m/sec²

jlduh

Thanks FRED for these excellent quality pictures, taken it seems the 20th and the 24 th of March by a Canon KissX4 (which is in fact the 550D in Japan) and a Canon 5D MarkII (based on the exifs of the pictures... i practice photography so it's an habit to check that).

I guess these are the ones take by the Japanese Air Service in Nigata with the small plane used also for volcanoes. Where did you find them by the way?

As everybody i started to review them in detail. On buiding 3, i have something which ressembles to the cover of the pressure vessel, on this capture:



extracted from this full res image:



Do you see this big yellow round part which is right behind the pillar n°4, right in the middle of the building from this view taken from the East side?

I've been at first in favor of the theory of the concrete plus being ejected by the huge vertical explosion, but looking at the top and at the way the explosions precisely happened on the video, I rejected this idea. Now i see this picture and I wondering what this part is, right here...

And then, where would have gone the big concrete plug? Just moved sideways maybe?

I'm in the position of really saying that there hasn't been big ejections at the vertical of this point above the reactor well. But maybe displacement?

Could it be that there may be a second cover that was on the top floor for maintenance reasons for example?

Joe Neubarth

Some time ago I brought up the issue of injecting sea water into the reactor for cooling sake. At that time all of the articles that I read (perhaps fifty or sixty) mentioned injection of sea water into the core and never mentioned boron treatment. Our moderator was kind enough to copy several that were available to him. Obviously, he was reading the right articles. Then I noticed a post with the boron information struck through and then an article that said they injected the boron AFTER the sea water.

If so I am quite certain they managed to flush enough boron from the reactor so as to ensure an increase in the thermal neutrons available for fission, and probably created a temporary (transient) criticality in the high energy pulsating blob that used to be the reactor core.

There is no way of knowing, of course, short of data telemetry that would have recorded the increase in all types of radiation at the scene near the time they were injecting sea water that was not already mixed with boron. That most certainly will account for the oddities associated with Reactor One.