Japan Earthquake

Japan Earthquake | Page 897

@dean @dean have a good day
by fitter 4/29/2011 6:12:41 PM

@fitter I wish I could help you with your question re: thermal pics and sludge. I've already used the hot sludge joke so I'm really SOOL here. I have tried to poke around with the thermals and try to spot "hot spots" that seems out of place but the only thing that has struck my attention are those pieces on #3 turbine building roof that I mentioned previously.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:12:51 PM

@General Armchair we have been seeing high readings of rads between the buildings (3&4) and behind #3, i have notheing to base it on other than the damage to the building and debrie, but an now wondering it some of it is the tank residues along with the fuel... but like i said i do't know how to quantifly the "heat" it would contain... on the shroud replacement procedure they talk about the steam/seperator components taking up most of the equipment pool, and when you remove the old shroud it would (in one of the procedures) go into the equipment pool until it was remaoved out of the building..... stuff in the core goes underwater until its ready to be "properly" disposed of from what i can tell...
by fitter 4/29/2011 6:21:03 PM

@General Armchair someone was disscusing a green container shown behind bluilding 4 before the quake and then it dissapered.... I ve nener seenn what they are refering to ... but the "hot trash" they have been loading in the cleanup is put in green containers on the pics I saw... so maybe that what they do with the old mechanical components that come from the reactor/pool
by fitter 4/29/2011 6:23:25 PM

@fitter I think I have seen some mention of the green thingie but haven't seen what was being talked about.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:24:59 PM

@fitter Maybe they were planning on using that for scrap or whatever that came from the shroud replacement (not sure, but suspect the green dumpsterish looking thing [seen, for instance, in the latest Cryptome photoset],c even though it has a fairly hefty-looking lid, would probably not be considered sufficient to safely store the shroud after 30-40 years of living inside reactor core, but maybe suitable for other less irradiated stuff?), but after the earthquake and nuke disaster they repurposed it for dumping debris from the plant grounds (which is what they seem to be using it for now -- though one assumes they must have many of those containers as there's clearly enough junk lying around to fill quite a few of them).
by General Armchair edited by elainekirk 4/29/2011 6:30:50 PM

From elainekirk's dailykos link, below:

"Should such an event occur [problems including LOFA in SFP], however, the authors estimated that the likelihood of a zircaloy fire, and a subsequent release of radiation, was as high as 100%. The authors noted that the old-style low density racks have an adequate ventilation space between fuel assemblies to prevent a zircaloy fire in the event of a loss-of-coolant accident, as long as the fuel stored in the racks has been out of the reactor core for at least 50 days. However, because the high density racks used at the study reactors severely restrict ventilation, the authors stated that a loss-of-coolant at those plants could cause a zircaloy fire among fuel assemblies that have been stored in those racks for well over a year. "

Obviously the fuel in #4 SFP had been out of reactor for over 50 days. So if we do eventually find that there WAS zircalloy fire and fuel damage in #4 SFP, we can likely put at least part of the blame on the re-racking.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:36:08 PM

(sorry, that should be LOCA, meaning loss of coolant accident, in the square brackets in my previous post, not LOFA)
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:36:58 PM

can somebody point me to the greenish thing please
by elainekirk 4/29/2011 6:38:43 PM

@elainekirk You mean as seen before earthquake or the dumpster they are using robot excavator to put stuff in? If the former I can't help, haven't seen it myself.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:39:43 PM

@general qouting your reply to @fitter about a greenish thing??
by elainekirk 4/29/2011 6:41:40 PM

@elainekirk I just checked Cryptome's latest photoset, and see the dumpster thing is actually blue...ooops.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:42:40 PM

(about the 7th pic down there)
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:43:20 PM

@general thanky it does look rather small to catch whatever the crane drops in doesn't it :)
by elainekirk 4/29/2011 6:54:28 PM

@elainekirk They will have trouble getting the lid closed, I thnk :)
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 6:56:47 PM

Who's going to volunteer to go dumpster diving, looking for rods?
by Markfm 4/29/2011 7:03:17 PM

@Markfm LOL I thought they bulldozed the rods :)
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:04:03 PM

@general it does rather to say it looks like what they would call a sealed container at some later stage or am I just being an old cynic
by elainekirk 4/29/2011 7:04:03 PM

Panel to probe nuke accident search.japantimes.co.jp
by Markfm 4/29/2011 7:10:13 PM

@General Armchair @marie rich Sorry to harp on about this but further to my earlier comments re the belated insertion of Unit 4 SFP explosion into the TEPCO record books, I delved back into our archived Scribble discussion and found a ref to the fact that as of 29/03/2011, NISA reports contained no mention of any explosion at #4 - see Jo L'Indien's post, 4th from the bottom on this page: poudreinternetservice.com
by es 4/29/2011 7:11:01 PM

Japanese drop their traditional politeness over nuclear crisis www.latimes.com "Fishermen call the utility's response to the crisis insulting, incompetent and unforgivable,"
by Markfm 4/29/2011 7:17:22 PM

@fitter (and anybody) I am very new here and don't know what's been discussed and/or resolved. But in reviewing the Cryptome #1 photoset (the Air Photo Services ones cryptome.org ) it looks like you can see blast effects on #3 turbine roof that seem to match the now blown out panels.

Specifically if you go to third through fifth ones down you can see two somewhat separate (though close together) blasts of debris on the #3 turbine roof. The southern edge of the first is almost aligned with with the south edge of #3 reactor building. Whatever blasts across the roof (assume it's the wall panel?) just misses the white edge of the roof, but then blasts the roof and removes a section of the opposite (east) white roof edge. The next blast over (to the north) is a little lower so it stirkes the white edge of the roof and then, I THINK, goes THROUGH the roof into that big hole, and mostly does not penetrate the east white roof edge.

I remember discussion about that hole (not here) -- was it a big chunk that dropped from the sky? Some thought yes but then others pointed out the girder smack in the middle of the hole probably precluded that. But a piece of relatively flimsy wall panel could maybe do the trick -- make the hole but not destroy the girder. The hole is just about the right width for it to have been caused by a wall panel.

The roof is perfectly level. So while both "blasts" seem to be angling down slightly, the one on the north coming in a bit lower.

To my eyes, these blasts seem to point straight at #3 SFP.

That said, the "blasts" to the north of these are less easy to make out and to be honest, do not necessarily point at the SFP.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:22:13 PM

@General Armchair #4 sfp has fresh still active rods in it. They pulled the core to do maintenance so those are in there plus equipment out of the reactor that may not be as highly radioactive but certainly complicates things.
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:27:19 PM

@Nancy B-b-b-but I don't see that equipment in the TEPCO video. Is it possible they didn't show us the whole pool? I'm shocked!
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:29:39 PM

This is in regards to multiple people's previous comments on getting power hooked back up after a weather incident, calling the NRC on the overstocked sfp etc.

We can go not just days but WEEKS before power can be restored after a blizzard. It is worse in the Dakotas than in MN but even MN and NE where there are NPPs can get this kind of triple whammy weather. Ice storms, sustained high winds, deeply cold temps and have it not subside for days. Usually the power companies will try to get out if there is a break and get critical main lines back running but the weather has to cooperate and sometimes it does not. Having a 5 day power outage is not unexpected and those incidents are not being planned for. What if the generator doesn't work? What if it runs out of gas and batteries?
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:32:41 PM

@General Armchair oh that was not the whole pool, it was just a corner. I don't know if the equipment is in the other corner, blown all over the plant or was elsewhere at the moment of the quake.
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:33:28 PM

@all. Looks like Dean took off for a bit. Did he have time to look at the still images of the sfp? I am curious if he noticed anything like damage or had an idea about the way it looks vs. the pre-quake images of 3's sfp.
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:35:49 PM

@Nancy : can you please link me to those images ?
by Edano 4/29/2011 7:36:45 PM

@Nancy I don't think he did.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:37:07 PM

@Nancy I know it was just a bit of the pool, my comment was kind of a reference to Tenzing's earlier comment about how if TEPCO thinks six seconds of video is sufficient to prove there was minimal fuel damage in #4 SFP, they must think we're idiots.
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:38:35 PM

@General Armchair Yep, always edited for the worst possible view and the most degraded visual possible. You can't tell me they didn't turn the camera around if they had the ability. Now I am wondering what kind of set up they used to dip the camera? with the boom maybe they did just dip it in with a rope?
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:40:22 PM

I get frustrated knowing they have better quality video of that but they put out youtube quality and I can't do much with it.
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:41:03 PM

New images top link on the main page here www.houseoffoust.com
by Nancy edited by elainekirk 4/29/2011 7:41:30 PM

Anything major happen in the last 5 hours while I was gone?
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:41:57 PM

@Nancy We were trying to figure out if #4 had DOUBLE-STACKED fuel rods....?
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:42:31 PM

Put you a nice #4 pic further down mailed you original but not confirmed it #4 pretty reliable media source though
by elainekirk 4/29/2011 7:45:08 PM

@General Armchair Not double stacked as in on top of each other vertically. It would be "double stacked" as in rearranged to jam them in together. I can not remember if the Japanese were double packing like the US or not. A quick way to figure would be to find the capacity of a Mark 1 pool and then see what the last storage count for #4 was. I think radioguy or someone else may have a newer count that the 2003 one I had
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:50:32 PM

@elainekirk It looks like some sort of fuel move, they have the gate open to the SFP
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:50:53 PM

@Nancy That was what I figured. I am pretty sure they were reracked at Fukushima Daiichi, but didn't think they had been double-stacked (on top of each other).
by General Armchair 4/29/2011 7:52:29 PM

@General Armchair If you have a clue when they might have re-racked we might be able to figure that out. BTW @all: I have been trying to grab data to put in a spreadsheet about the reactors but don't have much. Things like how many rods each reactor holds, sfp capacity and current load, how much unused mox and regular rods are there etc. so we have those numbers somewhere easy to reference. I have seen all of that data fly by before and regret not saving it.
by Nancy 4/29/2011 7:54:45 PM