Recent content by duccio

Isn't it where the hard vent pipe connects to the stack?

Many thanks to both of you, now it is much clearer. They vented through the hard vent line, the exhaust stack wasn't big enough to release all that pressure, and so it "backfired" into the buildings via the SGTS.

The picture you show is after explosion of R3&4. I was curious about the dynamic of the various explosions, because unless it escaped back to the reactor building, the pipe should have been filled with hydrogen (the R3 part has a downward curve just before connecting to the exhaust tube). So...

Jim, I'm not familiar with those instruments. Is it possible to tell if the probes are interted just from the videos? ( such as this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_dvf-Qg-IqI )

The sky on Fuku was quite crowded in those days... very interesting pics! Doubt: is the exhaust stack pipe of R3 missing? It is still there on the pic in which reactor 4 is still intact. Do you believe Tepco removed it, or it was blown away during the explosion of R4?

Didn't tepco find evidence that the explosion happened on the upper floors? It looks like a thick metal door definitely bended outward. Maybe from heat? (btw, the video of the ride. Unit 2 http://tepco.webcdn.stream.ne.jp/www11/tepco/download/120315_01j.zip and unit 3...

And a special thank goes to... tsutsuji! :) Along with the SDF measuring high radiation dose on top of reactor, it makes me wonder if reactor 3 concrete plug is still in place (BTW, why in the hell would they want to move spent fuel from a cooled SFP to the RPV? The only reason I can think of...

4 Sv/hr 100 meters above reactor 3, should we take this reading seriously? Maybe right on top of exhaust stack during dry venting, but it's two orders of magnitude higher than the other readings taken 100 meters from the building

Maybe I'm getting it completely wrong, but 500 Joules/gr should be around 120 calories... or +120 degrees C. At atmospheric pressure, water would evaporate well before taking away all the heat. Besides, if water would evaporate at such high rate, where does the water accumulating in the basement...

Are you sure about the 1MW? They're keeping the reactors cool with 6 or 9 t/hour of water, I don't believe that would be enough if the core was still emitting that much energy...

As they have released also the unedited video, I doubt there is a big conspiracy plan behind. What I'd bet had happened, is the PR guy/webmaster/poor young engineer responsible for drafting press releases and hand-outs, was told to get 3-4 shots out of the video, clean them up as best as he...

Indeed. But the more we add, the more there is to mantain and to take into account in case of failure. I'm not sure that those bolts could be unbolted by hand, or that putting explosive inside a reactor is a good idea (even if it is impressive the degree of control they can achieve on...

Astronuc, you got my point. More modern designs are better, but BWR + Mark I is still the most common. The actual best practice is to contain the core as much as possible, which works fine when there's nothing else to do as it limits the damages. But I don't remember on which report, I read that...

It came to my mind that containment is great for protecting from radiations and from the "banging" of water into steam in case of loss of pressure, but it gets on the way of cooling the fuel once it's at atmospheric pressure. On top of RPV there is a pool full of water that - considering the...

If you take a ruler, the other support structure or pipe, more dark, is curved as well, but in the opposite direction, so either it's the lens as you said, or we are watching the side of the RPV and so it is really curved (I'm no expert to say that), or (but I believe less) they deformed...