Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Plants at Fukushima Daiichi

[Jorge Stolfi]

By connecting corresponding spots of the wall deco on the north wall in post- and pre-explosion photos, taken from SW, it is possible to get some indication of the position of the 'hole' in relation to the pattern of that wall deco. The result of using this method indicates to me that the 'hole' does extend well into the 3rd.

Hey, here is another explanation for the "hole": actually two small holes leaking some dark fluid

[PLAIN]http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/EXPORT/projects/fukushima/povray/blueprint/unit4_position_hole_leak.jpg

 

[rhody]

Lest we forget: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Russian-Ukrainian-Leaders-Remember-Chernobyl-Accident---120688059.html" , the aftermath, 25 years later...

Marking the first visit to Chernobyl by a Russian president, Medvedev called on the international community to work together toward unified nuclear safety guidelines to ensure that disasters like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima are not repeated.

and

The Chernobyl explosion released 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It sent a cloud of radioactive fallout into Russia, Belarus and over a large portion of northern Europe.

The 1986 disaster has left a 30-kilometer area around the Chernobyl plant largely uninhabitable. Environmentalists any crops grown in the surrounding area could pose a threat to human health.

Thousands of sickened workers involved in the cleanup have protested in Kyiv against cuts in the benefits and compensation they receive for their exposure to radiation. They say their monthly pensions recently were cut, leaving them with barely enough money to pay for food and needed medication.

A donors conference in Kyiv last week raised more than $785 million, short of the $1.1 billion goal to build a new containment shell to replace the now-decaying original shell that was built over the damaged reactor.

The human and financial toll of it is still with us today.

Rhody...

 

[mscharisma]

This is tricky. The only way I can think about is to edit the very first post in the thread so that it contains kind of "executive summary" for the current situation/state of knowledge/list of known problems. That has to be done by one of the Mentors, as there is a limit to how long posts can be edited by their own authors.

I have no problems with doing the editing every few days, but the text has to be prepared by someone else. If anyone is ready and willing to do it, please contact me by PM.

I'm wondering (am good at that!) if a spreadsheet-like approach would be more feasible because it would be possible to search and sort if there were categories of issues, for example reactor #/general, date of issue/finding, exact question, possible answers, etc. Since the subject matter is in and of itself way beyond me, I don't know if this makes sense and if so, if it can be done in a way accessible to all of us?

 

[AntonL]

post No 5000 and the thread is in full swing

 

[Bodge]

How many posts will we have by December?

How will the RPVs, piping, drywells, reactor buildings and site personnel look by the end of the year?

 

[mikefj40]

This was posted today from Fairewinds. A 39 slide deck with photos I hadn't seen before. The cutaway of the Torus is impressive. http://fairewinds.com/content/how-did-general-electric-ge-mark-1-bwr-reactors-end-creating-such-world-wide-tragedy

 

[Bandit127]

post No 5000 and the thread is in full swing

That's because the problems we are all trying to understand, and the enlightened are trying to help with, are still in full swing.

It will be 10 or 15 years before we get a BBC Horizon or Discovery Channel documentary that will fill in most of the basic facts for us (along with a lot of 'creative license' for those facts that will always be missing).

I suspect this thread might reach 50,000. Sadly.

Jim

 

[dh87]

I am saying that those readings are mostly beta radiation. It is not really correct to express the readings as a dose rate in sievert per hour.

With such meters it is easy to get readings that are much higher than the numbers given by authorities. That may undermine the confidence that the population has that the authorities are telling them the truth. But these are different instruments, and the official Japanese gamma dose rates can be relied on.

It seems that the conversion from countrate to dose is done for 300 keV gammas. That is also a bit crude, but it is the best that one can do with such a simple device. The real deviations occur when there is also beta radiation.

I am not sure that I understand what you're saying. For Cs-137, roughly half the energy is released as beta, and 100% of that energy would be absorbed if the beta hits a person. The Cs-137 gamma (from Ba) would also be absorbed, I think. For I-131, the energy spectrum is more skewed towards beta (about 2/3 of the released energy). To get the mSv dose, you'll need both the beta and gamma numbers. Either you need a device to do both, or you need to analyze the soil. In any case, as people have pointed out, the airborne material is at least as much of a concern as the material on the ground.

 

[Cainnech]

Regarding the "hole" - which really looks like a shadow.

Have you guys seen the green box at the same spot in this picture: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/pict56.jpg
It's the last picture found at http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm.
In the downloadable http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.zip" (18.7MB) it is labeled 'aerial-2011-3-16-2-50-6'.

 

[Jorge Stolfi]

Regarding the "hole" - which really looks like a shadow.
Have you guys seen the green box at the same spot in this picture: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/pict56.jpg

Hey, improving the previous theory: the green box is some external tank/radiator/pump. The earthquake (or the explosion from #3) knocked it off the wall. Some fluid oozing from the broken pipes created a stain that looks like a door with Mickey Mouse ears.

 

[SteveElbows]

this map might give some explosion clues?

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110425003601.htm

Wowzers, 160 millisieverts per hour at one point of the hose between reactor 2 dodgy water and the waste treatment plant.

As for all this discussion about the dark area of reactor 4's east wall, if I look at the Oyster Creek reactor drawings that were linked to ages ago, there does seem to be a personnel airlock in that sort of area of the building. Granted the reactor buildings are not likely to be identical to Fukushima, but they seem similar in many respects. However from what I saw it seems quite possible that this personnel airlock is one level lower than the black mark, ie is got to through the 'office building' below, but I'm not 100% sure. But given ladders which I presume give access to the service floor also seem to be in the same corner of the building, it does seem reasonable to think this might be an access point to the building, especially given the external staircase leading up to this part of the building. I am not sure why I care that much about this though, given that it still looks a bit like a shadow to me, and that even if we do confirm it as being something, so what, what does it tell us?

Do we have any idea when humans last entered the service floor of reactor 2? We hear that humans arent going inside the main reactor buildings, but I am not sure if they count the service floor as slightly different? Would they have had to remove the blast panel from the inside? And how did they obtain the spent fuel pool/skimmer surge pool water sample from unit 2 without entering some part of the building? This leads me to wonder if humans still have access to that area.

 

[Jorge Stolfi]

Before someone blows away my neat explanation for the "hole", let me build further castles on top of it:

With the recent re-racking, the unloading of the reactor, and the arrival of new fuel, the heat generated in the #4 SFP overoloaded the existing coolers. So TEPCO installed a temporary extra SFP cooler outside the building (the green box). The earthquake knocked loose the cooler, and the water from the SFP started leaking out through the broken pipes. That is the "missing leak" in #4's SFP.

 

[|Fred]

...

Well from what I could see Japanese population was better informed a lot more efficiently informed in the first days, weeks. Than we have been or had ever be when it happened to us.
I can no longer follow Japanese TV so Rowmag, really is the one to ask about the quality of information as far as general public health is concerned..

I would make sens to warn people against the things they usually do that became dangerous, or to teach them how to apprehend the danger.
if those information are missing there is of course an issue, are they ? I do not know do you?

anyhow I think that "do not play with drain pipes" is a better conclusion to the documentary that they should evacuate the city and they don't

 

[PietKuip]

I am not sure that I understand what you're saying.

With a GM tube, one cannot convert countrates to sievert per hour using the same conversion factor for both gamma and beta radiation. When using a conversion factor for gammas (at some average energy), the results will not be reliable for beta radiation. Do not take those high readings at face value, do not get too alarmed by those numbers.

To get the mSv dose, you'll need both the beta and gamma numbers. Either you need a device to do both, or you need to analyze the soil.

I agree with that. But one knows approximately what is in this mix. The gamma data collected by the US air plane give a good indication, because one expects that the beta intensity is about proportional to it.

 

[MadderDoc]

Regarding the "hole" - which really looks like a shadow.

Have you guys seen the green box at the same spot in this picture: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/pict56.jpg
It's the last picture found at http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.htm.
In the downloadable http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp2/daiichi-photos2.zip" (18.7MB) it is labeled 'aerial-2011-3-16-2-50-6'.

Yes it has been posted, but thanks anyway. Several url has it, either unattributed, or attributed to AP Photo/Yomiuri Shimbun, Masamine Kawaguchi. When a date for the photo is given, the date is Sep 18 2010.

If there is something I've learned from this nuclear forensics exercise it is that looking at just one photo of a thing easily leads you astray. In this case however we are so fortunate that another photo from the same session is available and features this green 'box' (photo attached, and link to source below)

-- and it has been taken from a an angle shifted about 90 degrees from the one carried by cryptome. Apart from having even more photos, higher resolution etcetera :-) , that couldn't be better.

The source of this other photo is the article at:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/idINIndia-55538720110313
The article has it unattributed.

 

[fluutekies]

Before someone blows away my neat explanation for the "hole", let me build further castles on top of it:

With the recent re-racking, the unloading of the reactor, and the arrival of new fuel, the heat generated in the #4 SFP overloaded the existing coolers. So TEPCO installed a temporary extra SFP cooler outside the building (the green box). The earthquake knocked loose the cooler, and the water from the SFP started leaking out through the broken pipes. That is the "missing leak" in #4's SFP.

Right! This finally explains also the hot spot in the thermal images outside of building 4 at the corner, corresponding with the "dark fluid" on the ground between the debris (you marked it in a previous image). Do we have dose rates of this spot?
@2:00

 

[razzz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39e9UvNm-r0&feature=related"

 

[ascot317]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39e9UvNm-r0&feature=related"

"Must be a nuclear fission explosion", comparing #1 to #3, not mentioning the different containment etc, comparing the hot, rising gases to a nuke. Facepalm.

That "expert" should go write novels.

 

[NUCENG]

This is tricky. The only way I can think about is to edit the very first post in the thread so that it contains kind of "executive summary" for the current situation/state of knowledge/list of known problems. That has to be done by one of the Mentors, as there is a limit to how long posts can be edited by their own authors.

I have no problems with doing the editing every few days, but the text has to be prepared by someone else. If anyone is ready and willing to do it, please contact me by PM.

Astronuc posted a reply to MSCHARISMA with a list of questions that makes a good starting point.

 

[MadderDoc]

Right! This finally explains also the hot spot in the thermal images outside of building 4 at the corner, corresponding with the "dark fluid" on the ground between the debris (you marked it in a previous image). Do we have dose rates of this spot?

Indeed on some of the thermal images, there appears to be unexplained heat originating from about that location. Thanks to THawk we can see two objects of appr. fuel rod assembly size lying there, caught in the rebar in the "window-sill" . (see attachment)

 

[razzz]

"Must be a nuclear fission explosion", comparing #1 to #3, not mentioning the different containment etc, comparing the hot, rising gases to a nuke. Facepalm.

That "expert" should go write novels.

The only conformation to such an event is the readings from the blast which have not been forthcoming, only hints, such as from the harden bunker control room, of course ignoring all the other fallout in the no-go zone, worldwide and the seawater. I think it was Washington State University reported their filters picked up fallout days after the Unit 1 explosion and they analyzed the contaminates after sorting out background noise and Chernobyl signatures and concluded the Unit 1 was in a state of shutdown at the time of the blast...Haven't heard much from them lately. Also, never heard the conclusion why a reactor in Virgina shut itself down, shades of Sweden's sensor alarm going off after the Chernobyl event where the Russian's failed to give notice.

We'll just throw that "expert" under the bus.

 

[MadderDoc]

"Must be a nuclear fission explosion", comparing #1 to #3, not mentioning the different containment etc, comparing the hot, rising gases to a nuke. Facepalm.

That "expert" should go write novels.

Yes, thanks for the laugh :-) Ignoring the different building technique of unit 1 and 2, comparing them as if they were equal. Ignoring that a mushrooming cloud, is indicator for high buoyancy airmasses, but is not a hallmark of nuclear fission. Seeking evidence to support his hypothesis, rather than trying to weaken it.. And the last thing I heard him say was so pitiful so I had to let him go: (paraphrasing) 'Unfortunately Tepco sits on the evidence that could prove me right'.

 

[NUCENG]

Yes, thanks for the laugh :-) Ignoring the different building technique of unit 1 and 2, comparing them as if they were equal. Ignoring that a mushrooming cloud, is indicator for high buoyancy airmasses, but is not a hallmark of nuclear fission. Seeking evidence to support his hypothesis, rather than trying to weaken it.. And the last thing I heard him say was so pitiful so I had to let him go: (paraphrasing) 'Unfortunately Tepco sits on the evidence that could prove me right'.

The truth will come out, The Japanese in collusion with the United States and the Aliens planted four missuing suitcase nucs stolen from Russia. There is a massive coverup including Bigfoot, Godzilla and a Yeti for good measure. The man with the umbrella on the grassy knoll is somehow involved. Bush lied and people died. It is the oil companies who are behind it all and the bankers are aiding and abetting. But Elvis will return in December of 2012 to release his new Album Armageddon, chapter 1). There is nothing we can do except head for the nearest crop circle and sing Kumbaya.

 

[NUCENG]

The truth will come out, The Japanese in collusion with the United States and the Aliens planted four missuing suitcase nucs stolen from Russia. There is a massive coverup including Bigfoot, Godzilla and a Yeti for good measure. The man with the umbrella on the grassy knoll is somehow involved. Bush lied and people died. It is the oil companies who are behind it all and the bankers are aiding and abetting. But Elvis will return in December of 2012 to release his new Album Armageddon, chapter 1). There is nothing we can do except head for the nearest crop circle and sing Kumbaya.

I shouldn't have said that, Now they will quote me as proof!

 

[Uagrepus]

Hello at all,

not my language, so I keep it short. My guess is, they opened the wall of No.4 in the past ("the green plug") and removed the staircase later:

http://img717.imageshack.us/i/holestairway.jpg

I have to correct myself, the stairway of No.4 was in place two hours after the earthquake:

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp3/pict53.jpg

found here: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp3/daiichi-photos3.htm

 

[htf]

The only conformation to such an event is the readings from the blast which have not been forthcoming

If the Japanese had disclosed their all their data there wouldn't be so much speculation.

I have the growing feeling that TEPCO has a lot to hide. It has been explained with cultural differences that TEPCO has rejected any help by foreign expert. Maybe so. But maybe they have to hide some "special industrial secrets" like the extra cooling system for SFP#4 that Jorge Stolfi may have discovered.

The explosions have been discussed here back and forth - I didn't follow this discussion in detail. Are there any estimations how much energy during explosion of unit #3 has been released?

 

[~kujala~]

When looking at these graphs it is quite clear that there is only a short correlation between the radioactive concentration of the sea water and the outflow of pit water:

http://varasto.kerrostalo.huone.net/leak_1.png
http://varasto.kerrostalo.huone.net/leak_2.png

And the other problem is that we have no data for the radioactive concentration of the sea water between 11th and 20th of March. The first data TEPCO gave was detected on 21st of March, taken around the south discharge canal:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032201-e.html

So their calculations concerning the amount of radioactive leak into the sea are far too low, there is no doubt about it.

The source of the graphs:
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110425-3-2.pdf

 

[clancy688]

The truth will come out, The Japanese in collusion with the United States and the Aliens planted four missuing suitcase nucs stolen from Russia. There is a massive coverup including Bigfoot, Godzilla and a Yeti for good measure. The man with the umbrella on the grassy knoll is somehow involved. Bush lied and people died. It is the oil companies who are behind it all and the bankers are aiding and abetting. But Elvis will return in December of 2012 to release his new Album Armageddon, chapter 1). There is nothing we can do except head for the nearest crop circle and sing Kumbaya.

Interesting: Radioactivity in the air is going up...

[PLAIN]http://www.bfs.de/de/ion/imis/ctbto_aktivitaetskonzentrationen_caesium.gif

[PLAIN]http://www.bfs.de/de/ion/imis/ctbto_aktivitaetskonzentrationen_jod.gif

 

[MiceAndMen]

Here are a few. Say if you want more.

Thanks, rowmag. What about "blueprint", "drawing" and maybe "technical drawing"?

 

[MadderDoc]

<..> I am not sure why I care that much about this though, given that it still looks a bit like a shadow to me, and that even if we do confirm it as being something, so what, what does it tell us?

Er, it would tell us something we didn't know before. Knowledge is good.

Of the possibilities i have pondered to explain this foobar there are two, which I have conclusively excluded.

1) that there isn't really something there.
On the grounds that there are way too many independently taken photos that shows the phenomenon for it to be fluke.

2) that it is a shadow.
On the grounds that we have visuals of the phenomenon under weather conditions that do not allow sunlight to produce a shadow. However much something may look like a shadow, if you can see it on an overcast day then a shadow it is not.

Other possibilities, I have pondered:

4) A stain on the wall.
This appears to be in some conflict with a photo taken right along the east wall. Then we cannot see the wall, but we still see a bright thing hanging a meter or more out from the wall at the spot. Stains are flatter than that.

5) An open door. This is a special case of 'a hole'. This is in some conflict with the apparent irregular shape of the upper boundary of the phenomenon.

6) Some wreckage from the tsunami plastered to the wall. This cannot be excluded, however improbably high this wreckage would have to have been thrown seen in relation to the measured inundation height. Waves of water is quite able to do improbable feats with things when splashing between buildings.

Do we have any idea when humans last entered the service floor of reactor 2? We hear that humans arent going inside the main reactor buildings, but I am not sure if they count the service floor as slightly different?

My idea is that no human has set foot in unit 2 since it blew. The service floor appears to be an inhospitable sauna, filled with radioactive steam.

Would they have had to remove the blast panel from the inside? And how did they obtain the spent fuel pool/skimmer surge pool water sample from unit 2 without entering some part of the building? This leads me to wonder if humans still have access to that area.

Good questions. I am not qualified to do the second question. As to the first, judging from satellite photos, the unit2 blast panel was removed or fell off at some time between 10:38 JST on March the 12th, and 9:52 JST on March 13th. (This can be known from satellite photos). I have looked for but not found any announcement from Tepco saying they removed the panel from unit 2, whereas they did announce the later deliberately made holes in unit 5/6. It might seem a bit strange if they did a precautionary removal of the unit 2 blast panel, after seeing what happened to unit 1, while not giving unit 3 the same treatment at the same occasion. I'd put my money on that it fell, rather than was removed. Within the time-frame in which the blast panel got off the building, unit 1 exploded closeby (15:36 on March the 12th) and a strong aftershock hit (22:15 on March 12th). I think it fell off, rather than was removed, but if it was removed, I think one would need to access the service floor to do it.