Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Plants at Fukushima Daiichi

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The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is facing significant challenges following the earthquake, with reports indicating that reactor pressure has reached dangerous levels, potentially 2.1 times capacity. TEPCO has lost control of pressure at a second unit, raising concerns about safety and management accountability. The reactor is currently off but continues to produce decay heat, necessitating cooling to prevent a meltdown. There are conflicting reports about an explosion, with indications that it may have originated from a buildup of hydrogen around the containment vessel. The situation remains serious, and TEPCO plans to flood the containment vessel with seawater as a cooling measure.
  • #5,821
zapperzero said:
I promised to refrain from speculation so, just facts. Among past posts in this thread you will find some linking to pictures of the Dai-ichi emergency centre. The people there are sleeping/resting/eating while dressed in their tyvek suits.

An article describing the situation, and a picture of what you describe (they eat with their suits...). No more a plant but a "battlefield" as one worker describes it...

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/04/20/2357627/doctor-warns-japan-nuke-workers.html

"They have struggled for a month. But they haven't gotten any rest," he said.
"TEPCO and the government don't think about them. The workers must do a good job, but they do not have any support," he said.
Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/04/20/2357627/doctor-warns-japan-nuke-workers.html#ixzz1LQjG0NFE

http://www.netimago.com/image_196912.html
 
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  • #5,822
gmax137 said:
Don't you hate it when that happens? I now usually do crtl-a and then crtl-c before I press 'submit.' That way, if I have timed out, the reply is saved to my clipboard.

Yes, thanks, I will do that from now on.
 
  • #5,824
If this is a live feed - then what is burning?

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/youtube_live/
 

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  • #5,825
Dmytry said:
Ohh my god. radioactive contamination and no showers. Guys, this is officially far, far more messed up than Chernobyl. This is just terrible.
(It is hard to imagine how terrible it is, though, and easy to understate)

They have showers but not enough of them and they are not being used in frequency they are supposed to. More are going to be built in May. "Messed up" is putting it mildly.

"Workers other than senior TEPCO officials work four days on and take two days off. During the four-day work period, they are unable to take showers or bathe although they sweat heavily in radiation-protective gear, the doctor said. ---Kyodo news
 
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  • #5,826
RealWing said:
If this is a live feed - then what is burning?

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/youtube_live/

Full Live Feed:

http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi?feature=feedlss#p/l/-ZPYlazljME"

Has full sound as well (nice waves crashing on shoreline and birds squawking as they fly by)

But - whenever something interesting occurs the live feed fails! Oh, and don't confuse failure with poor visibility - a problem I have seen with some commentators on some sites.
 
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  • #5,827
MiceAndMen said:
The circled thing on that photo looks like a piece of steel framework.

I think the poster was referring to the yellow thing that is barely visible behind the twisted steel framework.

The damage to that building does suggest that something small but heavy smashed obliquely through the roof and south wall, and came to rest right where that hypothetical yellowish thing seems to be.
 
  • #5,828
jlduh said:
Does somebody has an idea of what Tepco means when they consider the use of these "existing tubes" to try to cool the reactor N°1? Which tubes are these?

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/04_18.html

Apologies if this has already been posted but here is TEPCO's plan to get reactor number one under control, with timeline and diagrams showing how they plan to recalibrate the sensors and jury-rig a closed loop cooling line.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110504e13.pdf"
 
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  • #5,829
In the TBS/JNN webcam feed
http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi?feature=feedlss#p/l/-ZPYlazljME
the right-most building appears to me to be leaning towards the right side. I added guidelines to a cropped screen cap to illustrate. The building next to it seems reasonably straight.

Was it always like this (post-explosion)? Am I seeing things?
 

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  • #5,830
zapperzero said:
In the TBS/JNN webcam feed
http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi?feature=feedlss#p/l/-ZPYlazljME
the right-most building appears to me to be leaning towards the right side. I added guidelines to a cropped screen cap to illustrate. The building next to it seems reasonably straight.

Was it always like this (post-explosion)? Am I seeing things?
This livecam is some 13 km away from fukushima, very strong telephoto lens is used and these do tend to showhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(optics)" . You have just re-discovered the pin-cushion phenomena. Once you factor away the distortion of the lens then you can make a judgement on the verticality of the building,
 
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  • #5,831
Greetings all. I've been following this forum for a couple of weeks, and now that I've signed up I'd first like to thank all of you who are devoting time and sharing your expertise with us non-scientists. This seems to be about the only active forum keeping up to date on developments. Even theoildrum.com has dropped the subject.

I have little technical expertise but do have many years experience living in Japan, so I hope to be able to raise some awareness on the cultural/social side of things. That will mean more criticism than praise, for though I love many things about Japan this crisis is exposing--as it would anywhere--the weaknesses and faults of Japanese society.
My motivation isn't to bash Japan but to--I hope--clarify misunderstandings, since, IMO, few if any countries in the world are more "familiar" yet less understood than Japan. It's a continually perplexing place so those of you with actual experience living here (sorry to delineate but so many outsiders have huge misconceptions about Japan) feel free to correct my assumptions/observations.

To begin with the issue of the workers. Yes, it's deplorable how they're being treated, but not a surprise. Japanese society is so hierarchical that worker bees are expected to be pretty much just that--work their stingers off, and not complain regardless of what they have to deal with. The group is everything, so people raised like this put themselves last; but at a certain point, the instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and then finally they'll resist further exploitation. In this sense, there's a kind of brutality, a lack of compassion for individuals, that Westerners can find hard to comprehend.

Speaking to the bigger picture, my opinion after watching this unfold over the last two months is that this is a gigantic mess that's being mostly papered over. IMO leaving it up to the Japanese government and TEPCO to take care of is a huge mistake; their no. 1 goal is managing damage not to the plant but to their reptutations, political futures, and bottom line. So far no one on the international stage is willing or able to make a call for international intervention, but this is exactly what's necessary IMO (and I know that opinion is worth about .0000001 yen).

And most of the Japanese populace (also long-term foreign residents) seem too drugged up on hi-tech toys to realize or perhaps care about the scary potentialities at play right now. I see that around me this very moment as I type (though I will be leaving soon, better to be labelled a "flyjin" than be a down-winder if things go south--or south west as the case may be).

It's good to see other Japanese speakers/readers helping out with translations, as time permits I'll contribute there what i can.

Though this is a science-oriented forum, IMO the social/cultural aspects of this or any science "project" are inseparable from the technical aspects, and so my hope is that by some of us contributing what insights we can about the former we might speed progress towards the necessary technical solutions. I hope the scientists here and elsewhere will get active politically---in the sense of making their voices heard--because without a better political response to this I hope for the best but fear the worst.

Pardon my long rambling first post, I will try make subsequent ones more concise and coherent.
 
  • #5,832
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  • #5,833
Jim Lagerfeld said:
Apologies if this has already been posted but here is TEPCO's plan to get reactor number one under control, with timeline and diagrams showing how they plan to recalibrate the sensors and jury-rig a closed loop cooling line.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110504e13.pdf"

The one thing I do not understand why men are put at risk to install a close loop air scrubbing system into unit 1. Surely the additional radiation released to the environment by venting and purging unit 1 to atmosphere is minimal compared to that what is released by units 2, 3 and 4 on a continues basis. Is this a case of the regulators and overseers being too zealous and not practical?
 
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  • #5,834
Jorge Stolfi said:
I think the poster was referring to the yellow thing that is barely visible behind the twisted steel framework.

The damage to that building does suggest that something small but heavy smashed obliquely through the roof and south wall, and came to rest right where that hypothetical yellowish thing seems to be.

found video of a fire truck spraying unit 3, that little building is right next to the car they filmed from. Yellow object looks like a concrete wall inside the tin roofed building.
i think it's same video where another post showed u3 refueling crane , in rubble on north side of unit and it's pretty clear.

sorry for the board clutter.
 
  • #5,835
|Fred said:
Tcup might be able to explain that. There is a weight factor of (0.05) (might have change) for the Thyroids. but it still does not do the math

Not aware of a specific conversion factor for infants vs. adults. In the fetus and infants, before complete development of the nervous system, the biological effects of hypothyroidism are much more severe than in adults. If thyroid hormone is not present, neurological and physiological development is severely retarded, resulting in cretinism.

(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretinism )

Also, the volume of thyroid tissue at risk in the fetus or infant would be much less than in an adult, so, the amount of absorbed radiation (ie, I-131) needed to induce significant hypothyroidism would be, relative to an adult, much less.
 
  • #5,837
Greetings all. I have a very simple question that is yet to be addressed: Is all the smoke, steam or whatever the composition of the discharge we are viewing on the live feed normal as of late? Seems like it may simply be a product of ongoing and recently increased water injection efforts.
 
  • #5,838
AntonL said:
The one thing I do not understand why men are put at risk to install a close loop air scrubbing system into unit 1. Surely the additional radiation released to the environment by venting and purging unit 1 to atmosphere is minimal compared to that what is released by units 2, 3 and 4 on a continues basis. Is this a case of the regulators and overseers being too zealous and not practical?

Presumably the effort on reactor 1 is expected to be a template for the next two.
So it may make sense to do some unnecessary work to debug the process under less hazardous conditions.

More surprising to me is the serial nature of this effort. The site has 7 problem elements, yet there is no simultaneous work going on. Just some desultory debris clearance and some SFP water injections, with the work focused on putting up water tanks and a water decontamination facility.
The actual problems are left to themselves. TEPCO now has this plan to set up recirculating cooling for reactor 1, hopefully completed about six week from now, three months after the tsunami.
At this pace, the site will still be emitting a year from now. It does not seem there is that much determination to halt the radioactive poisoning of Japan as a matter of highest priority.
 
  • #5,839
rowmag said:
Welcome aboard, Susudake. (Though I'm a relative newbie here myself.)
Glad to see more local residents signing up.

Just as a note, so you don't get your posts get pulled, this thread is for technical discussions. There are a couple of other threads devoted to political and management aspects:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=486089
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=493101

Looking forward to your input!

Dear moderators. I share Susudake's general assessment of the situation (I am Japanese but fortunately live in a place that is usually not downwind from the power plant). Although you may not find much about the matter Susudake mentioned in our media, there are many of us who are well-aware of the negative political dimension of the situation in Fukusima, and it is on our minds always.

May I ask the moderators for their understanding? If a post is considered out of line in this thread but fits the other related threads, may I ask the moderators to move it there rather than delete it? There was a Japanese contributor before who withdrew from the discussion because some of his posts were deleted, and although I should never exaggerate the importance of our participation, I have the impression that more than once people were calling for Japanese voices.

I appreciate the moderators' difficult work (volunteer work to boot), and hope to be able to contribute one day.
 
  • #5,840
Rive said:
<..> Can somebody please confirm, that this video is about U4?


It appears to me to be a jumbled mix. Like if someone has visited the showroom in one unit, looking in monitors of perhaps other units plus hand out material. There are bits here and there which to me looks like something from unit 5. Somewhere in the middle there is a sequence showing what does appear to be the refueling bridge/fhm of unit 4, apparently during its installation or overhaul.
 
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  • #5,841
TCups said:
Not aware of a specific conversion factor for infants vs. adults. In the fetus and infants, before complete development of the nervous system, the biological effects of hypothyroidism are much more severe than in adults. If thyroid hormone is not present, neurological and physiological development is severely retarded, resulting in cretinism.

(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretinism )

Also, the volume of thyroid tissue at risk in the fetus or infant would be much less than in an adult, so, the amount of absorbed radiation (ie, I-131) needed to induce significant hypothyroidism would be, relative to an adult, much less.

Thanks, TCups. I guess what has me puzzled is that in areas on the NSC map which show an estimated cumulative external dose for adults of 1mSv, the estimated internal thyroid dose for 1yr olds is estimated at 100mSv. Most of what I have read suggests however that, despite bioaccumulation and possibly higher relative health risk, internal doses themselves will almost always be significantly less than external doses. The NSC estimates are based on constant outdoor exposure between 3/12 and 3/24, reduced to 1/4 -1/10 if the person remained indoors. I wish the statements referenced the relevant standards (i.e. BEIR VII, ICRP, etc) on which the estimations were made. Do you think these estimates are reasonable, in a ball-park way at least?
 
  • #5,842
intric8 said:
Greetings all. I have a very simple question that is yet to be addressed: Is all the smoke, steam or whatever the composition of the discharge we are viewing on the live feed normal as of late? Seems like it may simply be a product of ongoing and recently increased water injection efforts.

Over the last many days it has become 'normal' for units 3-4 to give off in varying amounts what appears to be mainly steam. Unit 4 from the sfp, unit 3 from the reactor top, and unit 2 mainly from the blowout window facing east. There is nothing I've seen that would indicate drastic untoward changes i.e. those fires people have been talking about. I think the observations of fires are more an effect of inexperience with a newly encountered stream and lack of knowledge of what one is looking at than anything else.
 
  • #5,843
jim hardy said:
found video of a fire truck spraying unit 3, that little building is right next to the car they filmed from. Yellow object looks like a concrete wall inside the tin roofed building.
i think it's same video where another post showed u3 refueling crane , in rubble on north side of unit and it's pretty clear.

sorry for the board clutter.
The link of the Video, please.

I only found a Video that little building is LEFT to the car
 
  • #5,844
zapperzero said:
In the TBS/JNN webcam feed
http://www.youtube.com/user/tbsnewsi?feature=feedlss#p/l/-ZPYlazljME
the right-most building appears to me to be leaning towards the right side.

To me it seems that the camera is not level, so everyting in the image is rotated a couple of degrees clockwise. The tops of the buildings too are tilted.

PS. I've finally updated my plots of Fukushima reactor variables, up to NISA release 125 (04/may 12:00)
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/EXPORT/projects/fukushima/plots/cur/Main.html

The temperature in the drywell of #3 went up 50 degrees, to nearly 200C, on may 2. Then there were two eleases without temperature data. Then on may 5 its is still 200C.
 
  • #5,845
Jorge Stolfi said:
I think the poster was referring to the yellow thing that is barely visible behind the twisted steel framework.

The damage to that building does suggest that something small but heavy smashed obliquely through the roof and south wall, and came to rest right where that hypothetical yellowish thing seems to be.

A lot of yellow "things" are seen on pictures. I have marked them. Please zoom and scroll.
 

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  • #5,846
Great thread!
I've read the last 800 posts and I've also gone back and read from the begining, I'm up to 2500 posts there.
What a talented cast of characters here.

I learn from you guys, I usually have no need to add my untrained inexperienced viewpoints to this dialogue. But now maybe I do have something worth chiming in with.


Japan is overwhelmed at the moment.
They would have to take resources away from others in order to properly take care of the plant workers.

The plant workers also need a pre-emptive preventative medicine program.
These guys should be following a regimen which cleans them thoroughly and keeps them clean; they need hot baths to clense in,
it's part of their culture anyway, this is a downhill push.

It's a matter of resources, and the US has the resources to take this burden off the Japanese with a flick of the wrist.

We have multiple copies of fully trained fully equipped reserve units who have the resources necessary for providing water and shelter
to thousand man units.

If they made older veterans elgible to voulinteer for the mission they would not likely have any manpower problems.

The small amounts of radiation they would expose themselves to would be meaningless to a 58 or a 68 year old veteran.

An engineering battalion could build the workers a first class, designed from the ground up, facility for decontaminating themselves.

The site has to be cleaned up, this is a long term effort.


I'm a believer in the theory of the fuel in the number three fuel pond going critical.

T Cups has made the case for a vectored hydrogen blast coming out of the "cattle chute."
He nailed that IMO.

Next comes what happens when that blast hits the back wall of the fuel pond at a point just above the tops of the fuel rods.

The hydrogen blast "assembled the package" IMO.

Someday we will learn how deep this in the pond the fision event occurred. The sides of the pond will have the scars.

But no doubt a shockwave or a collision of two shcokwaves jammed the rods, (including some brand new ones) into proximity to each other
in a temporary mass dense enough to fision and boost heat output from 2.4 megawatts to maybe 2 gigawatts in less than a microsecond.

This was certainly the largest cannon ever fired.
Powered by a steam explosion.

The fuel pond held together.

The spray of fuel rod parts and pieces are scattered in a radius of undetermined size with its epicenter at unit 3.

They need to be cleaned up and contained.
The sooner the better, the sooner the easier.

It's a job that can be done without damaging anyone's health.


Meanwhile in the plant, the battle of the fizzles.
That's what were seeing at units 3 and 4.

How can the site managers reduce the number of fizzles?
 
  • #5,847
rowmag said:
Welcome aboard, Susudake. (Though I'm a relative newbie here myself.)
Glad to see more local residents signing up.

Just as a note, so you don't accidentally get your posts pulled, this thread is for technical discussions. There are a couple of other threads devoted to political and management aspects:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=486089
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=493101

Looking forward to your input!


Thanks for that rowmag, my whole post is no doubt redundant (just how redundant I look forward to discovering when I read the whole of those two threads, looking forward to it) and I feel rather stupid--fortunately I have lots of experience at that :-).

I'll keep glued to this thread too--thanks again to all and keep the info coming!
 
  • #5,848
Rive said:
<..>Some pictures attached. The THawk.jpg is from the first THawk-releases, the other two is from the drone flyovers at 03.24. Any ideas?

I remember first time I looked into the green eye of Mount Unit3 and felt at the same time attracted to and abhorred by it. It was an alien, unearthly experience.

It is not easy to get a good view of what is down there. It would seem to me indicated that this part of the service floor after having being initially razed by an outward/upwards blast, suffered a final hit by a substantial amount of roof material coming down from above. Following that, I'd expect if one could dig into the eye aka the sfp3, the first solid material one would encounter would be roof material that has fallen into it and on top of what else was in there. It would follow, that I should think there is water in the pool.

Unfortunately the fallen roof debris makes it very hard to see what equipment might have sticked around the pool at its edges, at the level of the service floor.
There does appear to me some wreckage squeezed up at the southeast corner of the pool at about that level. To the southwest, we see the remains of the 'little building' from which one could once look down on the pool. To the west we may see a short section of uncovered edge of pool. To the north it's a bungled mess of tormented roof structure, there is no visual of where the edge of the pool is. One could probably assess where it is by working from an estimate of the position and size of the interfacing reactor opening.

One more thought. looking for fhm3, one would tend to look for something green, but looking in this portion of the roof, for such parts that have remained here there's the possibility that such parts might have become more rusty than green due to influence of heat and moisture.

And a caveat. There are videos as well as frames in circulation that appear to be showing a pattern of finely drawn greenish fuel racks in the sfp3, but I have had occasion to check those up against less reprocessed video material of same origin, which do not show any such pattern, so I think they must be artefacts of compression and recompression.
 
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  • #5,849
So, at least I am seeing something.

Ok. It is a pincushion efect OR the camera is tilted. To me, pincushion seems a better explanation, as the intact-looking building seems to be straight. I can't see the left-most tower well enough to decide if it looks tilted as well (which would confirm pincushion).

I'll try to come up with a way to verify. Later, all.
 
  • #5,850
#3 temp increasing, now it is 222c, bigger water injection doesn't help, also water level for one of sensor drop, so it look that crack in rpv is bigger, and #2 torus is now 76Sv
 

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