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Conditions of Fukushima Dai‐ichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 4 ( As of 12:00 May 15, 2011 ) In periodic inspection outage when the earthquake occurred
Spent Fuel Pool Water Temperature - °C Condition: Indicator failure
March 14th March 15th March 15th March 16th
04:08 Water temperature in the Spent Fuel Pool (SFP), 84°C 06:14 Confirmed the partial damage of wall in the 4th floor.
09:38 Fire occurred in the 3rd floor. (12:25 extinguished) 05:45 Fire occurred. TEPCO couldn’t confirm any fire on the ground.
(06:15) March 20th March 20th March 21st March 21st around 15:00 Work for laying cable to Power Center was completed. March 22nd 10:35 Power Center received electricity. <Water spray by Concrete Pump Truck (Seawater)>
08:21~09:40 Water spray over SFP by Self‐Defense Force around 18:30~19:46 Water spray over SFP by Self‐Defense Force 06:37~08:41 Water spray over SFP by Self‐Defense Force
No fuel inside the Reactor Core
March 22nd 17:17~20:32, March 23rd 10:00~13:02, March 24th 14:36~17:30, March 25th 19:05~22:07, March 27th 16:55~19:25
March 25th 06:05~10:20 Sea water injection to SFP via the Fuel Pool Cooling Line (FPC)
March 29th 11:50 Lighting in the Central Control Room was recovered. April 11th around 17:16 An earthquake occurred (at Hamadori in Fukushima
Prefecture). April 12th 12:00~13:04 Sampled the water in SFP. April 19th 10:23 Completed the work of strengthening connection of the power
supplies between Units 1‐2 and Units 3‐4. April 22nd Measured the water level of SFP by a gauge hung on Concrete Pump
Truck (62m class). April 30th 11:34 Completed reinforcement work of the power supply both Units 3,
4. (Increasing the voltage from 6.6kv to 66kv) May 9th Started installation work of the supporting structure for the floor of SFP
< Water spray by Concrete Pump Truck (Fresh water)> ... May 9th 16:05~19:05 (16:11 ~18:38 Hydrazine was also injected) , May 13th 16:04~19:04 (16:20 ~18:41 Hydrazine was also injected) www.nisa.meti.go.jp **This reports a fire in reactor #4 on March 15th and another fire on the 16th. On the 16th, TEPCO states, no fire on the GROUND ?

Unit 4. March 15. 2011 '...a fire at about 5:45 a.m. Wednesday in the northeast corner of the building that contains the unit 4 reactor....A fire burned for two hours Tuesday in the pool containing spent nuclear fuel rods at the unit 4 reactor. News services quoted a government official as saying the pool could still be near the boiling point ... a risky plan to spray water from a helicopter to prevent new fires in a pool of spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.' www.washingtonpost.com

Mr. Jaczko’s most startling assertion was that there was now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere.
...The spent fuel pools can be even more dangerous than the active fuel rods, as they are not contained in thick steel containers like the reactor core. U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High;’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening. March 16.2011. www.nytimes.com

TV9 - FOURTH NUCLEAR EXPLOSION AT THE FUKUSHIMA - JAPAN EARTHQUAKE ........!

Japan is now in a state of panic as the nuclear threat continues to spread across Japan. The radiation levels have reportedly risen four-fold after a fresh explosion at nuclear reactor No4 at the Fukushima Nuclear plant. However, there is no confirmation on whether the nuclear reactor vessel has been damaged. Refresh this page for live updates. www.youtube.com

@MaryW, they've got the order of Units 1 through 4 backwards.

@Ian viewing from a different angle than what's been shown to us before

@MaryW That's not satellite footage. It seems to be a stationary camera.

Some of what we're seeing is confusion in early media reports, they clearly believe Unit 1 is Unit 4 in that last video below. But there is the crude video of Unit-4 blast that was flagged down by a media (c) holder. I have a copy of that as do others. I'm thinking the odd narrow-emitting smoke in the Indian-news report www.youtube.com may be Unit 3 shortly after it exploded since it was steaming from two narrow points, but the surrounding buildings are difficult to correlate unless perhaps it's a view from the ocean.

@MaryW, wow, did you catch the very closing of that video www.youtube.com ?

@MaryW, check this out, this fellow who posted this on Mar 14 comments that they're not showing the Unit-4 'fire' : www.youtube.com

bump

I have been lurking here since the beginning, and have a couple of questions I have never seen discussed, 1/ #4 blew up one minute after the loud noise in #2, 2/ the loading bay in #4 is blown out at ground level, 3/there is one panel on the south side blown out beside the SFP, where as all the panels on the other reactors are all above the SFP. So to me the explosion has come from below. If it was an H2 explosion with H2 sourced from the #4 SFP then the building would have blown more like #1 and just take out the roof and the top panels. So is there a path from #2 to #4 under ground?. Maybe a path was created by #3 blowing? Any thoughts? And one last point while I am here, why does it look as though the concrete has been dissolved away from the reo bar. The many of the bars look untouched, yet there is not a dusting of concrete left on them. Where as in a "normal" explosion of reinforced concrete, the bars are bent and large lumps of concrete sling to them.

Here's the Tepco update on the leakage www.tepco.co.jp :

At approx. 5:30 pm on January 1, 2012, we observed approx. 240 mm
decrease in the water level of the skimmer surge tank*1 of Unit 4 spent
fuel pool in the three hours between 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm (According to the
operation record so far, there had been an approx. 50 mm decrease.). As a
result of the site investigation later, we did not observe any leakage
around the Unit 4 reactor building, connecting points of primary system
pipes of Unit 4 spent fuel pool alternative cooling system, or its
installation space. The water temperature of Unit 4 spent fuel pool as of
5:00 pm on January 1 is 23°C (22°C as of 5:00 am on January 2). The spent
fuel pool alternative cooling system is still in operation and there is
no problem in cooling the reactor. Though the water level of the spent
fuel pool is kept stable without any problem, the water level in the
skimmer surge tank continues decreasing. Therefore, from 10:27 pm to
11:13 pm on January 1, we filled water in the skimmer surge tank. At
present, the water level in the skimmer surge tank keeps decreasing
approx. 90mm/hour. We will strengthen surveillance on observation of the
water level in the skimmer surge tank, increasing the frequency to once
in an hour from once in three hours. At the same time, we will continue
examination of the causes of the decrease in the water level, such as
site investigations based on such possibilities as the water may flow
into the reactor well*2 from the spent fuel pool.
At present, no leakage is observed outside the building. No significant
change is observed in the water level of the accumulated water in the
building.

*1 The tank installed in order to receive the water overflows from the
spent fuel pool. The water in the spent fuel pool is overflowed into
the skimmer surge tank in order to cool the fuel assembly and remove
impurities in the water. The water returns to the spent fuel pool after
passing through the heat exchanger and the filter.

*2 The reactor well is the space which contains the reactor pressure
vessel and the lid of the reactor containment vessel. During the
periodical inspections, the space filled with water and the fuel is
changed.

@lillymunster, I just sent a query via the WMO's online contact form. Seems reasonable to assume an error on their part.

@dicko, unbelievable! I found the link to the seismic explosion analysis: Analysis result of Fukushima Daiichi NPS reactor building explosion
www.tepco.co.jp