Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Plants at Fukushima Daiichi

[MadderDoc]

@TCups

This is a fortunate frame from one of the early helicopter overflies (March 16th), I thought you might be interested. It shows in close-up a quite peculiar damage to one of the upper wall pillars to the SE of unit 3, and it is almost like an abstract painting...

It has probably been the most intriguing image I've encountered in relation to unit 3. I couldn't get it off my mind, and it took a long time before I got a handle on what could have produced this damage. It's much better now, but I think, without you, Sir, I might never have figured out what it could possibly be.

 

[SteveElbows]

Can anybody remind me where to look on the net for info about the global spread of contamination?

 

[MadderDoc]

it would seem to me that a generalize hydrogen explosion strong enough to do that to reinforced concrete wall slabs would more likely have first blown the roof upward, not the walls outward, as appears to be the case. But that is only a guess.

I think the roof may well have been shattered by a hydrogen explosion, but not lifted away against gravity, the roof slab must be a very heavy structure. With the walls things seem to be different. Apparently the way they are made, a quick sharp blow from the inside will rattle them loose, and gravity will take over peeling it all off the building.

 

[biffvernon]

Can anybody remind me where to look on the net for info about the global spread of contamination?

http://www.zamg.ac.at/wetter/fukushima/

http://www.woweather.com/weather/news/fukushima

 

[ottomane]

@MadderDoc: Pls. help me, I have difficulties interpreting the pic.

What kind of damage do you see in the left picture?

 

[etudiant]

Can anybody remind me where to look on the net for info about the global spread of contamination?

One good site (in German only, sorry) is here: http://www.zamg.ac.at/wetter/fukushima/

The data is built using the Test Ban Treaty network and global atmospheric circulation, plus estimated decay rates for cesium and iodine, with a guess for initial emission levels. Xenon is not covered.
There are other sites with nice global maps, whether the data is carefully adjusted for decay and dilution is murky.
I believe Berkeley has a decent global map as well, somewhere in their nuclear forum here: http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling

Maps are increasingly iffy, partly because the cesium is gradually drifting all over and has a long enough half life that all 2011 deposits are effectively simultaneous, but also because we do not have solid data on the amount of airborne emissions. Clearly if all three reactors have had comprehensive fuel failure, there will have been massive emissions, much more than initially thought. So there may be a permanent increase in global background radiation as a result of this disaster.

 

[MadderDoc]

http://gyldengrisgaard.dk/fuku_expl1/
http://gyldengrisgaard.dk/fuku_expl3/index.html

talking about "bulging, look closely at the frames -4 to +2 on the N°3 reactor page. To me you can actually see the south wall of the building "bulging" under internal pressure like a Coke can just before ignition and explosion (look at faint shadows, the sun position seems to help to see this)...

When I assembled those pages, I decided to put in 10 frames before something actually 'started happening', to serve as some sort of baseline. (I should perhaps have put in more baseline frames, and made a note of it.)

If you examine the video for a longer baseline you will see that there are in fact a regular pattern of 'bulging' and 'shrinking' of the images of the building between frames over several seconds before the event. So this appearance of bulging would be in the video whether the reactor had blown up or not, it's just noise, possibly from heat shimmer, possibly from the video compression.

 

[MadderDoc]

@MadderDoc: Pls. help me, I have difficulties interpreting the pic.

What kind of damage do you see in the left picture?

Another and better explanation might turn up, until then I see heat damage.

 

[mikefj40]

For instance, there is still no measurement available, afaik, of the overall daily airborne emissions from the site, even though that should be of central concern.

That seems to be the reason that NILU (Norwegian Institute for Air Research) suspended their atmospheric transport modelling. They say "We have discontinued our Flexpart forecast of the atmospheric dispersal of radionucleides from Fukushima. This due to the fact that we do not have access to reliable release rates reflecting the current situation at the plant to be used as input to our simulations. It is likely that the release of radioactive material is significantly reduced compared to the initial period, and that levels no longer pose a health risk at distance from the plant."

http://transport.nilu.no/products/fukushima/index/?searchterm=fukushima

A case of GIGO. Garbage in garbage out.

 

[AntonL]

Forgive me if this was done before, after having found the location of the camera by aligning the HV line tower with the left most stack and reactor unit 1 (https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3296107&postcount=6694") and the heading of the sight line being 36.04 degrees to the centre of unit 4 south wall, and taken that wall as 34 metres. We then can scale the photo of the explosion quite accurately (34 Cos 36.04 = 27.5)

As the building top is OP+55 metres making the stacks about 90 metres high from ground level.

The speed of the column rising is about 50 m/s or 180km/hour

I also added some further dimensions, showing that the roof sheets got carried up to around 150 metres above the roof top of the reactor buildings and tried to size the black object, the two white objects are about half the size.
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/inBoDM.jpg

 

[zapperzero]

I also added some further dimensions, showing that the roof sheets got carried up to around 150 metres above the roof top of the reactor buildings and tried to size the black object, the to white objects are about half the size.
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/inBoDM.jpg[/QUOTE]

Such neat work. Thanks a bunch.

I think it's safe to say that the big black thing is roof. Nothing else that I can think of is that big and flat.

 

[TCups]

@TCups

This is a fortunate frame from one of the early helicopter overflies (March 16th), I thought you might be interested. It shows in close-up a quite peculiar damage to one of the upper wall pillars to the SE of unit 3, and it is almost like an abstract painting...

http://www.gyldengrisgaard.dk/fuku_docs/unit3_concrete_pillar_heatdamage.jpg

It has probably been the most intriguing image I've encountered in relation to unit 3. I couldn't get it off my mind, and it took a long time before I got a handle on what could have produced this damage. It's much better now, but I think, without you, Sir, I might never have figured out what it could possibly be.

I can't quite match the two images and I don't recall the video, but . . . do you mean that the close up of the pillar looks like Salvador Dali took a giant blow torch to it?

 

[SteveElbows]

That seems to be the reason that NILU (Norwegian Institute for Air Research) suspended their atmospheric transport modelling. They say "We have discontinued our Flexpart forecast of the atmospheric dispersal of radionucleides from Fukushima. This due to the fact that we do not have access to reliable release rates reflecting the current situation at the plant to be used as input to our simulations. It is likely that the release of radioactive material is significantly reduced compared to the initial period, and that levels no longer pose a health risk at distance from the plant."

http://transport.nilu.no/products/fukushima/index/?searchterm=fukushima

A case of GIGO. Garbage in garbage out.

Thanks to you and the others who have helped me out with this subject.

Yes, I noted that the suspension of modelling caused some internet babbling via youtube video this week that was paying more attention to a Sean Connery film than the scale used on the graphics, so I thought I would have a proper look at the subject.

Given that even if proper release rate data was available they may show levels so low that such modelling lacks purpose now, I am moving on to actual data from monitoring sites around the world. That German site is certainly good for that, are there any other sources or is that the only one? I seem to recall some internet concern about various levels in the USA, is there a good site for that?

 

[TheMundun]

Hi,
This is my first post, having been a long time lurker here as I tried to catch up with the thousands of posts and absorb the information and knowledge posted here.
Having just seen that people are asking for slow motion video of the Unit 3 explosion, I should first explain that in Arnie's recent video about the Unit 3 prompt criticality event, he used some stills of that flame sent in by a viewer. I am that "viewer" and since I sent those to Arnie, I have developed a way which we can all use to do slow-motion analysis of the Unit 1 and Unit 3 explosions.
The procedure is in the linked document but to get everything to work you will need AVI format videos, converted from YouTube videos of the explosions. I have prepared the AVI videos but am struggling to upload them to a site from where you can then download them. If you have any suggestions as to where I can best post them for Physics Forum users to download, then please let me know. Alternatively you can use the method I used to prepare the AVI videos as outlined in section 9 of the document.
I will be putting more posts up shortly detailing some of the observations that I have made but first please follow this link to the document explaining how to use VLC Media player.

http://tinyurl.com/6fxdr63

More soon

Geoff

 

[MadderDoc]

Heat energy continues to be stored in water undergoing heating at 100ºC even though the temperature does not appear to change. There can be a huge difference in the total energy stored in two pools of water, each at 100ºC and each under the same pressure, unless I misunderstand the concept of the heat of transition and phase change.

I think you do misunderstand it. I can well dream up a special scenario in which your statement is strictly speaking true (say one pool elevated in relation to the other giving it a higher potential energy) but I don't think that is what you mean at all.

Ideally, if you heat water at 100C and atmospheric pressure, the heat will not be storable in the water as molecular kinetic energy, the heat will be used to completely overcome the forces between molecules, i.e. water vapor will be produced carrying away with it the heat you have supplied, as latent heat of condensation, until all water has evaporated. So, in the sense I think you mean it, two equal pools of water, each at 100ºC and each under the same pressure cannot store different amounts of energy. In effect the temperature of water _is_ a measure of its (heat) energy content.

<..>but tiny droplets of water require less total thermal energy (although not per unit volume) than a massive pool of water requires in order to undergo the phase change. Is it not possible that atomized water droplets intermixed with burning hydrogen + oxygen might be efficiently heated and turned into additional steam during the hydrogen explosion itself?

Certainly, but no matter the size of droplets, to make the transition it still takes 2257 kJ/kg, which in this case could be well served by the heat from the exothermic combustion.

<..>

Potential sources of thermal energy I can see are these:
1) thermal energy stored in the water of SFP3 transferred from decay heat of spent fuel rods in the pool,
2) thermal energy transferred from burning hydrogen in the building above SFP3,
3) thermal energy from the RPV transferred by explosive venting of steam and hot (radioactive) gasses from the drywell or upper "wet well" or both,
4) thermonuclear energy from sudden criticality occurring in the unspent fuel in SFP.

<..>
Are there any other substantial sources of thermal energy that I have not considered?

I think you have been well around it. For major sources that could be available to produce steam fast it boils down to (no pun intended) energy
in 'excessively hot' water (either unstably superheated water at atmospheric pressure in the pool, or superheated water under pressure within the containment), heat from the hydrogen combustion, and thermonuclear energy from the fuel in the pool (I understand it would be somewhat taboo to suggest that it could theoretically involve the fuel in the RPV, so I'll leave it there)

Perhaps useful, the heat of combustion of hydrogen is 120.1 MJ/kg, so the heat produced by the burning of appr. 20 kg hydrogen in air is equivalent to the amount of heat needed to evaporate 1 ton of water that has been preheated to 100C.

 

[mikefj40]

I seem to recall some internet concern about various levels in the USA, is there a good site for that?

The EPA's RADNET site recently spiffed up their user interface, but they provide no guidance on interpreting the gamma graph's energy ranges. If anyone on the forum can associate isotopes with energy ranges that would shed some light. http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/radnet-data-map.html

For those of us in the SF Bay Area, a tip of the hat to UC Berkeley's Nuclear Engineering Dept. They've been monitoring air, rainwater, tap water, grass, soil, milk and food since mid March. They're running on student labor so the reports are updated only a few times a week http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling

 

[MadderDoc]

I can't quite match the two images and I don't recall the video, but . . . do you mean that the close up of the pillar looks like Salvador Dali took a giant blow torch to it?

Yeah :-) I thought of Salvador Dali too, when I first saw it. The frame is from the Tepco helicopter video no 2, shot on March 16th. It is in a short sequence where the camera sees nothing but steam, passing along the east wall of unit 3. Suddenly this motive appears on a couple of frames, blurred, shaken, not clear what it is, if anything at all. Then this single frame stands out sharply and intriguingly before the helicopter rushes on to unit 4.

 

[AntonL]

To the left of the explosion column we observed 3 pieces of debris crahing down. If you observe the video carefully you will note that they crash behind the middle stack, that is right back onto Unit 3, actually they just missed I marked them and you will also note that they are lying on top the large one on the part roof and the two smaller ones, on what seems to be blown out wall panels. Considering the column spacing (N-S) is about 7.5 metres then the larger piece is about 20 metres long as I measured earlier
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/inAAjE.jpg

Also to the right of the explosion column we also note a huge piece come crashing down, but this time behind the right most part of Unit 4. [STRIKE]Drawing a sight line from the observation point in google Earth I think I can also identify this to be a roof panel.[/STRIKE] No I could not MadderDoc pointed that out

 

[MadderDoc]

To the left of the explosion column we observed 3 pieces of debris crahing down. If you observe the video carefully you will note that they crash behind the middle stack, that is right back onto Unit 3, actually they just missed I marked them and you will also note that they are lying on top the large one on the part roof and the two smaller ones, on what seems to be blown out wall panels. Considering the column spacing (N-S) is about 7.5 metres then the larger piece is about 20 metres long as I measured earlier
http://k.min.us/inAAjE.jpg

The big part you identify as a ballistic object, I'd say with no hesitation is just the somewhat hammered original roof of that part of the annexed building, the two smaller pieces you identify I've previously had trouble understanding until I looked at a pre-explosion photo and saw there used to be a raised part of the annexed building in this position before things came crashing down from the sky. I believe they are both remains of the original wall or roof construction of this raised part.

Also to the right of the explosion column we also note a huge piece come crashing down, but this time behind the right most part of Unit 4. Drawing a sight line from the observation point in google Earth I think I can also identify this to be a roof panel.
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/jn6tTE.jpg[/QUOTE]

It is true that several pieces fell down very close to a sight line towards the SE corner of unit 4, but this piece is not one of them, it was there before the explosion.

Here are a few items which i have tentatively identified as ballistic objects at this end of unit 3.

 

[AntonL]

The big part you identify as a ballistic object, I'd say with no hesitation is just the somewhat hammered original roof of that part of the annexed building, the two smaller pieces you identify I've previously had trouble understanding until I looked at a pre-explosion photo and saw there used to be a raised part of the annexed building in this position before things came crashing down from the sky. I believe they are both remains of the original wall or roof construction of this raised part.

but it is lying on top

It is true that several pieces fell down very close to a sight line towards the SE corner of unit 4, but this piece is not one of them, it was there before the explosion.

I should have first looked at the post tsunami satellite photes - I withdray that claim and edit the post accordingly

 

[Jorge Stolfi]

Careful with these frames, they only show an integral over what happened within 1/25 s, faster dynamics will appear washed out.]

Also note that MPEG/JPEG encoding creates complicated artifacts. The shape of any detail that is smaller than 8x8 pixels is usually mangled beyond recognition. (If the detail persists unchanged over several frames you may recover some of the lost information by aligning and averaging, but that is not the case here.)

Moreover, color information is lost for objects that are too bright: the camera will just record white.

All you can tell from that pair of frames is that there was an orange or orange-white flash on the south side of the building, probably at the SE corner, about level with or above the service floor --- which is the location of the SFP. I believe it is not possible to extract further details of the flash shape and dynamics from that video.

 

[pdObq]

similar train of thought explored on this thread, on May 7 i think, its page 314 viewed in Firefox don't know about explorer. Look for two long posts by Analog, and don't miss the videos on Borax. http://tickerforum.org/akcs-www?post=182121&page=314#new

Very interesting, thanks for that cross-link, Jim! Seems like other forums might be ahead of this one in terms of brain-storming (or speculation if one wants)...

I haven't had time to look through all the details and references in those posts by that Analog guy , but if people with hands-on experience who know what they're talking about also came up with that and consider it a possibility, I almost feel a bit like knighted .

And seriously isn't recriticality inside the RPV much much more likely than in the SFP? (If one assumes something actually did go critical.)

 

[MadderDoc]

but it is lying on top

Roofs normally do.

As regards the long ballistic object, I may have a candidate for that. It is something that clearly has come from above, and has sunk deep into the annexed building at the north side of unit 3. It must be very heavy, lots of iron. See attachments.

 

[pdObq]

Another and better explanation might turn up, until then I see heat damage.

How about the rail for the big overhead crane banged against the pillar during the explosion?
(Where is it now? I don't know.)

 

[GJBRKS]

Forgive me if this was done before, after having found the location of the camera by aligning the HV line tower with the left most stack and reactor unit 1 (https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3296107&postcount=6694") and the heading of the sight line being 36.04 degrees to the centre of unit 4 south wall, and taken that wall as 34 metres. We then can scale the photo of the explosion quite accurately (34 Cos 36.04 = 27.5)

As the building top is OP+55 metres making the stacks about 90 metres high from ground level.

The speed of the column rising is about 50 m/s or 1800km/hour

I also added some further dimensions, showing that the roof sheets got carried up to around 150 metres above the roof top of the reactor buildings and tried to size the black object, the two white objects are about half the size.
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/inBoDM.jpg[/QUOTE]

Your speed and height calculation would agree with a ballistic trajectory :

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/2843/ballisticf.jpg


(Though I think you mean 180 km/hour instead of 1800)

 

[Bandit127]

Your speed and height calculation would agree with a ballistic trajectory :

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/2843/ballisticf.jpg


(Though I think you mean 180 km/hour instead of 1800)

So - can we assume it didn't float up on the top of clouds or ballons then? Or do I have to still consider (the equivalent of) a piano soaring atop a cumulus feasible?

 

[AntonL]

(Though I think you mean 180 km/hour instead of 1800)

Yes 180 it is - edited my post accordingly

 

[~kujala~]

TEPCO's thinking is evolving regarding the missing water of unit #1:

The utility says the leaked water is likely in the basement of the reactor building -- still a no-go zone due to concerns over high radiation levels.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_34.html

I bet it's not going to take long until they admit that a leak from the basement of the reactor building into the groundwater is also likely - a scenario that should perhaps not be possible but seems to be happening under #1 and #4.

 

[MadderDoc]

Also note that MPEG/JPEG encoding creates complicated artifacts. The shape of any detail that is smaller than 8x8 pixels is usually mangled beyond recognition. (If the detail persists unchanged over several frames you may recover some of the lost information by aligning and averaging, but that is not the case here.)

As a general remark I totally agree, and there are indeed many very poor videos of these explosions, horribly re-compressed and color-releveled. The details we are looking at in this video is far, far larger than 8x8 pixels. A high quality HD source video was carefully selected for the exposee of the explosion at unit 3. While we should take care not to put too much trust in the images we see, we should also take care not to take them on as less trustworthy than they are.

Moreover, color information is lost for objects that are too bright: the camera will just record white.

True. However when we see a flash of fire first being almost white aka very bright, and the next frames show the flame turning through shades of yellow to red, we can be pretty sure that what we see, is the effect of decreasing temperature of the flame.

 

[jim hardy]

""""I almost feel a bit like knighted .

And seriously isn't recriticality inside the RPV much much more likely than in the SFP? (If one assumes something actually did go critical.) """""

well check the references. It must be deemed possible by somebody in academia.

The idea falls apart if the pressure readings after event are real, unless one can hypothesize either a leak that healed itself or claim they were pressure difference across the leak as steam exited through it.

It will play out and somebody will be right. thanks for looking. i too feel vindicated.