Joe Neubarth said:
Thank you. MY observation was that the top of the fuel modules were visible at the depth in the water where they should have been located, regardless of the debris. If there had been an explosion as Artie Gunderson claimed, those modules should have been blown out of the pool like a shotgun blast. Since they were still visable, I believe Artie's conjecture is wrong.
I haven't kept up with Gunderson's analysis(s) although I have held a similar view that the added boost apparent in the #3 explosion footage came from a steam explosion created when a momentary criticality injected a burst of joules of heat into the pond.
Originally, I assumed that most of the contents of the FP were disgorged into the rising cloud, but after becoming more familiar with the quantity of material around the site (despite Tepco's unwillingness to actually disclose with any clarity what is there) I can see that there probably isn't enough hot material around the site to account for the entire contents of the FP.
But it isn't necessary for a criticality to have happened at the bottom of the pool, it could have occurred at any level of the rods. That something provided an added boost to the #3 explosion is seen beyond a doubt in the video, to my eyes.
That "the boost" came from the fuel pond is obvious from the video of the later wreckage. The pattern of wreckage of the roof joists makes that clear. And with the equipment crane lying directly over the containment vessel we know the blast could not have come from the reactor containment.
When I view the few seconds of the video you indicated which shows the round objects that could possibly be the tops of fuel rods in the pond, I do have to pause and look again to what happened to provide the source of energy for that boost - while the video doesn't actually confirm that there are fuel rods remaining in the position they were originally stored, it does suggest that possibility.
The salient event in the #3 explosion is the very directional blast seen rising up from the #3 building which I can have no doubt was a vectored blast.
In fact, there seems little doubt that it was a vectored steam explosion, as opposed to a more violent detonation. A steam explosion would be expected to cause the "slower" release of energy than what a chemical explosion or a fast criticality would provide and that is what we see in the video.
Thus, the basic premise remains unchanged.
The source of energy for that vertical blast originated in or just above the fuel pond, to say otherwise is akin to saying that there was no 500 meter vertical blast and that the chunks of heavy material seen coming off the column at about the 300 meter level were just some kind of illusion.
But that's not so.
So, how can I justify the criticality theory with the (possible) evidence of intact fuel rods (2) in the pond becomes the question of the day.
Obviously, the first theory would be that those round shapes are not what they appear to be, and that is quite possible.
Another way to approach the problem is to look closer at what a criticality event might have looked like. Would it be possible that a localized criticality created a steam pocket which ejected only some material?
The reason I struggle with these theories is simply because something beyond an explosion of hydrogen/oxygen gasses in open air sent that column of steam and debris skyward.
The original hydrogen blast can be seen to have been vectored southward (and upward) in the first few milliseconds of the event. This was followed by a less visible excursion to the north which was obscurred by smoke. Thus, the original blast was vectored in a south/north direction by the "cattle chute", it also sent some of its energy upward, that is visible in the stop action videos of the explosion.
But I can see no possible way that original blast could have been vectored straight up.
There was a second application of energy which was vectored skyward, that could only have come from the pond.
I am also in a discussion with Jorge Stolfi. Let's see how that develops.