Photo showing decimated reactor building troubles me

[NonScientist]

...When you compare this technical diagram of the Fukashima reactor to the image in the OP, the reactor containment building should be visibly sticking out of the center of that obliterated reactor building...

The photo you used of the destroyed unit 3 that looks like it's burned to the ground is an optical illusion. The brown ground in the photo is actually a hill that obscures the lower part of the building. (I was fooled by this myself and thought the same as you. I thought the reactor had been blown to hell, judging by that photo.)

[PLAIN]http://news.sirfpaisa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Fukushima-Daiichi-nuclear-power-plant.jpeg Here's a different angle:

[URL]http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/03/16/20110316_fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-complex02_33.jpg[/URL]

Notice the height of Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 appear to be the same accounting for the angle that the photo was taken and such.

It also appears that Units 3 and 4 weren't built exactly like Unit 1 or like the cutaway diagram of a BWR Mark 1. Notice Unit 1 on the left in the photo above. It's got the blowout panels for the top two or three floors sort of like the cutaway diagram. Steel girders and metal panels.

[URL]http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/general-electric-boiling-water-reactor-mark-I.jpg[/URL]

Yet the top floors of Unit 4 have concrete posts:

[URL]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ca-0hEixr4Q/TZfRXsrkq2I/AAAAAAAAAzg/PWaH4D9OFT4/s1600/fukushima.jpg[/URL]

That's definitely the top since the bridge crane would have to be under those roof supports.

So it looks like Unit 3 was built like 4 and the top floors would be where the bridge crane was.

[URL]http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110322/600_fukushima_unit_3_reactor_ap_110322.jpg[/URL]

Still, you look at this next photo and you have to wonder what damage the reactor vessel took:

[PLAIN]http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2011/04/01/81459-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-aerial-view.jpg

Too bad Tepco hasn't released, to my knowledge, any detailed schematics of their plant. It would end speculation such as this.

(Disclaimer: I'm just a layman. All of the above could be a crock.)

 

[jakekazoo]

Yet the top floors of Unit 4 have concrete posts:

That's definitely the top since the bridge crane would have to be under those roof supports.

i agree that is very troubling.

 

[Joe Neubarth]

Have any of the nuclear cores of Fukashima reactors 1-4 melted through the bottom of their reactor vessels?

I believe this has already happened to at least one reactor at the Fukashima NPP, and TEPCO is hiding it.

I hope it doesn't burn it's way through the containment vessel and drywell.

There was no core in Reactor Four so that one is out.

There is enough admission to conclude that there was reactor core damage in Units One, Two and Three. Authorities who are not part of Tepco or the Japanese government have stated that Reactor two has breached the reactor vessel. That has not been confirmed by TEPCO or the Japanese government as far as I know right now. Until that is confirmed, it has not officially happened.