ScribbleLive

yes chernobyl is about as bad as u get, the whole core being blown out and scattered with lots of active fuel. Still the whole core set in spent fuel pool #4 is a big worry, especially after being on fire atleast twice. Its going to be tricky to remove the damaged fuel assemblies withouth them spewing their guts everywhere. I would try a small tank big enough for one fuel assembly and then hoisting them out one at the time moving them from the pool to the temporary tank and never getting dry and then storing them in boron canisters or something to burn up the remaining radiation until they are cold enough to be put in dry casks

Dean was in early, said hi before heading in to work.

Jim, what does that show? The debris field from the tusnami?

@Markfm Supposed to be a before and after, one year apart. Hard to see in this pasted one, but the plant is in the upper right.

Click on the link below and you get the whole thing.

@Kristian from what I know it can take months or years to cool down the fuel rods so that they can be moved – in the meantime they pour 90-120 tons of water every day. I wish some invented an other metod. About possibility for explosion – if high radiation makes it impossible to continue all work – can you out rule if you leave it all to itself?

@Mona Dean was thinking somewhere around two to three years.

@Jim Carver That's what I've heard repeated around.. But SFP 4 is complicated by the fact that it has an entire load of unspent fuel in it that was supposed to be there for temporary storage.

@radioguy I didn't know that. Do you know where it is? Just laying around over there?

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's government called for evacuations Monday from several towns beyond the danger zone already declared around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, warning that residents could receive high doses of radiation over the coming months.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the municipalities are likely to see long-term radiation levels that exceed international safety standards, and he warned that the month-old crisis at Fukushima Daiichi is not yet over.

"Things are relatively more stable, and things are stabilizing," he said. "However, we need to be ready for the possibility that things may turn for the worse." www.cnn.com

@all I'm going over to the simulator and see about running the dispersal pattern program. If I get it running, I may need some data. (Oh, christchurch:() Probably need some advice if I get that far.

Japan may raise nuke accident severity level to highest 7 from 5

TOKYO, April 12, Kyodo

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.

The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. english.kyodonews.jp

TEPCO receives total $24 bil. emergency loans

Tokyo Electric Power Company has received a combined 2 trillion yen, or nearly 24 billion dollars, in emergency loans from major banks.

The Development Bank of Japan on Monday offered the power company about 1.2 billion dollars in loans. The bank says it will consider further loans if the power company needs them.

At the end of last month, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Corporate, Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking and other trust banks lent the utility firm a total of about 22.5 billion dollars.

Tokyo Electric sought the funds to cope with the crisis at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. www3.nhk.or.jp

@Jim The #3 MOX is supposed to be in the reactor only, I believe -- Sept last year was the first time it was certified for use with MOX, got its initial set of MOX rods. (I could be wrong)

The Austrian Central Institute for
Meteorology and Geodynamics has estimated that up to approximately 80 percent of the quantity of the long-lived isotope cesium-137 that was released after the Chernobyl accident was released from the Fukushima site in the first week after the accident. As large as this may sound, it only represents about one-tenth the total amount of cesium-137 in the three damaged reactor cores themselves. Further damage to the fuel, reactor vessel and containment could result in far greater releases. www.ucsusa.org

Pretty sure there's only 1 layer of rods, standing up from the bottom of the SFP. What they did do is get permission to increase the stacking density (more rods per square meter), compared to the base design. I don't know what they needed to do to get that permission (it sounds like others have done so, they have to do things to keep the risk of the SFP going critical down).

So let's see. If so, they'd spread the half-spent ones around in the matrix probably for safety?

What you say makes sense, and/or they may have had to do things like add sheets of boron between the groups of rods.

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS UPDATE ON JAPAN'S NUCLEAR POWER CRISIS TELEPRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 07, 2011 11:00 A.M. P R O C E E D I N G S www.ucsusa.org