Looking really really bad. Reactor meltdown may be under way…
So for less educated people such as myself, whats this mean?
Equivalent of dropping a nuke in that area without the heat or shockwave, just a lot of radiation.
freaking nuts
If the nuclear power plant was a car; the radiator stopped doing its job and the engine is getting hotter in the 90*F Summer sun.
Is this before or after they flooded it with seawater?
:ohnoes
i am thinking of organizing a meet to gather some donations even if we raise a few hundred it helps
Well its official
From an official himself “A meltdown may be occurring” and a “possible small breach”
In other words its all going to hell, they’re just trying not to say anything till half of japan has cocks growing out of their forhead.
Hoping I’ll here from my friend Dave whos over there, havent heard from him since yesterday.
Scary shit…
This is without a doubt bullshit… but wonder if its possible?
On top of it all major mudslides are occurring.
Take notes - don’t live on fault lines or near oceans.
No way that graphic is correct.
750 rads is lethal dosage, there isn’t enough material in that reactor to have a plume at 750 rads move over pacific and cover us west coast.
There has been a lot of confusion regarding the power plant.
The “possible” meltdown if they are actually occurring is within the so called containment, which chernobyl don’t have. So far the radiation that is being detected immediate outside the plant is very low.
http://www2.scnow.com/news/2011/mar/12/fmu-professor-japan-nuclear-danger-over-stated-ar-1572135/
Having said that, any “incident” however small regarding nuclear power plants should not be taken lightly.
For those who want the latest coverage, checkout NHK’s english feed: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/
I think the reactor that is having an issue is one of 4 at that plant and its the smallest reactor.
Although now that I check, it looks like two reactors are having an issue with cooling and it appears there are 6 reactors total.
I highly doubt that we will see a high after effect here in the US if catastrophic failure does occur. Look at how many nuclear weapons were tested at the Nevada Test Site, which today still shows a high level of radioactivity.
Probably one of the better, if not more level headed articles I’ve found so far to explain on this:
Read bold only if you want Cliffs.
“How Bad Could It Get?”
Shortly after Japan was hit with the double disaster of a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, a possible third reared its head: nuclear meltdown. The quake caused 11 of Japan’s nuclear reactors to shut down automatically, including three at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, 170 miles northeast of Tokyo.
But the quake also cut Fukushima off from the power grid, forcing plant operators to switch to emergency diesel generators in order to continue cooling the reactor core, generators that then failed shortly after the tsunami hit. By the end of the day Friday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan had declared a “nuclear emergency,” and 200,000 people near the plant had been told to evacuate.
Then, Saturday afternoon, a building at the plant erupted in a massive explosion, apparently the result of hydrogen from the superheated fuel rods interacting with oxygen as plant operators tried to vent increasing pressure inside the reactor. Officials say the reactor wasn’t damaged in the blast, and that radiation levels have actually been declining since. Nevertheless, they took the extreme step of flooding the reactor with seawater in an attempt to cool it down, and news that the cooling system for a second reactor at the same plant has begun to fail did little to calm worries of a meltdown. As Japan copes with its worst nuclear mishap at least since the leak at Tokaimura, The Daily Beast spoke with MIT Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering Ron Ballinger about worst-case scenarios, iodine tablets, and why he thinks everything is going to be fine.
What’s the worst-case scenario?
Well, first off, we can’t have a Chernobyl-like situation. The system is designed so that as long as we keep water in there to keep it cool, nothing will happen. There are three levels of protection here. One is the fuel cladding, and if that’s damaged then it releases radioactive material into the pressure system, which is a steel container. Then there’s a containment vessel around that. What likely happened is that you had fuel damage, damage to the first barrier, which produced hydrogen in the primary system, and then to keep the pressure down they vented the hydrogen into the building that was destroyed.
What happens if all the water boils off?
Hypothetically, if the water all boils and evaporates, then the fuel will stay molten and eventually melt through the steel vessel. But that’s already beyond a hypothetical worst-case scenario for me. The steel vessel is four inches thick, and they could always put seawater around the vessel, and that would keep it cool, so it can’t melt. If you put a frying pan in water, you could put a blowtorch on the other side and it won’t make any difference. Then you have the other containment vessel, with a concrete faceplate underneath that’s between four and 10 feet thick. But melting through that is hypothetical beyond normal reasoning.
Radiation spiked at 1,015 microsievert per hour before the explosion. Is that dangerous?
No, that’s about 100 milirem. It’s high, but you get about 35 milirems on a trans-Atlantic flight. And if you live in Denver, you get about 50 milirems per year.
What is the dangerous level, and what happens when that level is reached?
The LD50—that is to say, the point when 50 percent of the people exposed will meet Jesus—is in the order of 250 rem, or maybe 400. A big number. Keep in mind, what they’ve been exposed to is 0.1 rem, and about 50 percent fatality is on the order of 400 rem. What would happen with that kind of exposure is that they would get sick. Radiation damage destroys the immune system. Most people who die of radiation sickness die of pneumonia or a cold, they die of some disease which they have but their immune system can’t fight off.
Why is Japan distributing iodine tablets?
One of the isotopes of fission products, when fuel melts, is an iodine isotope, and it goes in your body through your thyroid. So if you take iodine tablets, the non-radioactive iodine goes to your thyroid, you bulk up your thyroid with iodine and it prevents absorption of the radioactive iodine.
What failsafes are there to prevent a meltdown?
A lot. First there’s the SCRAM system, it automatically ejects the control rods into the core and shuts the plant down. That happened right after the earthquake. Then there’s a number of core spray systems, which inject water to keep things cool. Then, if the system needs to depressurize, there’s something called a suppression pool that it vents steam into. Then, when the system is depressurized there are other systems that inject water at low pressure. And then, worst comes to worst, there are pumps that can take water from the local cooling water supply, in this case the ocean, and just pump water in there. As long as there’s water in there, it might be expensive for the utility to get it cleaned up, but everything is going to be fine.
If they’re pumping in seawater, does that mean all the other failsafes failed?
The earthquake plus the tsunami destroyed all the power sources to run pumps and things like that. There are diesel generators on the site that are supposed to run for that purpose, but for some reason they ran for a while and then stopped, maybe because of the tsunami. Then they hauled a bunch of portable generators to run the pumps.
How good a failsafe is pumping in seawater?
The ocean’s pretty big. But it’s salt water, so from an operational point of view you’re pretty screwed. If you get saltwater into the primary system, it’s very hard to get it cleaned up. Salt water’s not good for the materials, it requires pure water. So if they have to put saltwater into the primary system, it would keep it cool, but it would damage a lot of things and there will have to be extensive cleanup.
How will we know when the crisis is over?
The fuel has to cool down to the point where the water that’s cooling it is below the boiling point. Usually when they shut one of these plants down to refuel they have to open it up. It takes a couple days to get the plant shut down to the point where they can take the lid off and replace the fuel. It might be a financial disaster, but no member of the public has been hurt, and I doubt anybody will be.
It has been reported that all energy commodity prices will likely jumped as soon as Monday, because of the even higher demand by Japan due to damages to power plants and the extra energy required for rescue and rebuilt effort.
Might wanna consider filling up your tank today…
Energy markets braced for shock
By Javier Blas, Commodities Editor
Published: March 13 2011 16:56 | Last updated: March 13 2011 16:56
The global energy market is bracing for a shock as Japan seeks to replace large amounts of the country’s nuclear power capacity devastated by Friday’s earthquake.
Japan is the world’s third largest oil importer, after the US and China, and the top importer of thermal coal and liquefied natural gas, so any abrupt change in energy production could have a major impact in global commodities markets, analysts warned on Sunday.
Although they cautioned that the surge in demand could be cushioned by lower consumption due to widespread factory closures.
The final impact of Friday’s earthquake on Japan’s energy needs will also depend on the extent of damage to the country’s economy and whether Tokyo orders the precautionary stoppage of other reactors for safety checks, analysts added.
Japan has shut down 9,700 megawatts of nuclear capacity which equals about a fifth of the total. It no longer has the impact on energy markets it once did due to the country’s shift away from oil but the loss of nuclear power will force Tokyo’s utilities to scramble for crude, thermal coal and LNG as replacement.
“The need now for reconstruction as well as alternative electricity generation fuels to augment shuttered nuclear units will boost Japanese demand of diesel and fuel oil”, said David Kirsch, director of oil market intelligence at consultants PFC Energy.
The International Energy Agency, the western countries’ oil watchdog, estimates that it takes about 38.8 barrels of crude oil to replace one megawatt of idled nuclear power generation capacity in Japan. If the country were to replace all its shut down nuclear capacity entirely with oil, it would have to import 375,000 barrels a day more on top of Japan’s expected purchases this year of around 4.25m b/d.
However, Japan is more likely to opt for a combination of oil, LNG and thermal coal.
The country boosted significantly its purchases of LNG in 2002, after the shutdown of 17 of Japan’s 54 reactors for safety inspections, and in 2007 and 2008 after the shutdown of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa atomic station, the country’s largest.
The increase in LNG demand will push up spot prices globally, hitting gas prices from South Korea to the UK, but the impact will be cushioned by a relatively loose supply and demand balance as producers such as Qatar boost their supplies.
Tokyo is also likely to increase coal imports, as Japan’s utilities negotiate annual supply contracts with Australian miners. The negotiations, which face a deadline on April 1, are likely to settle annual prices in excess of the record $125 a tonne agreed in 2008-09, traders and analysts said.
“Lower nuclear plant utilisation in Japan has proven to be bullish for thermal coal …, which is likely to have to take up the slack from nuclear,” said Hayden Atkins, coal analyst at Macquarie in London, who estimated the country could buy an additional 20-30m tonnes of thermal coal this year on top of the expected 110-120m tonnes.
“This provides upside risk to the ongoing thermal coal contract negotiations,” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Meh, I think its all over-hyped.
Gas will be going up regardless, now they actually have a reason.
Im still wondering what the after effects of this earthquake will be, in my theory, if one plate moves then it has a chain reaction. I bet California gets a significant earthquake within the next 6 - 12 months.
Some really basic nuclear info.
You have yourself some uranium 238. That is the “fuel”. Now 238 is pretty stable and has a half life of 4.468 Billion years. So at that decay rate its pretty safe and does not get hot on its own.
Now if you add in some Neutrons, it will hit the 238 nucleus and convert it to 235 which is highly unstable with a half life of 700million years. This 235 conversion creates tons of heat, following E=mc^2. The conversion also releases 3 more neutrons causing exponential growth of the process.
to control this reaction, special rods called cooling rods are always inserted into the 238, and their purpose is to absorb the neutrons and keep things from growing exponentially. when they want more power from the reactor they pull the rods out slightly and the reaction takes off and things get really hot.
The purpose of “cooling water” in the reactor is dual purpose. Firstly the cooling water gets superheated from the reaction, and powers the steam turbine which makes electricity. that’s how the power plant works.
The second purpose is to keep the actual core from melting as the uranium gets way hotter than any metal can withstand. Without continuous flow of water you will melt down the metal control rods right out of the core, and the reaction will get WAY out of control. The heat and pressure will melt or explode the containment vessel, and then its Chernobyl. Once the vessel is breached you can’t get near it, and you can’t fix it. You pretty much would just write off the island of Japan.
This is why the Japanese have decided to ruin the entire reactor by pumping seawater through the entire vessel just to try to keep the temperature and pressure under control in a desperate attempt to prevent the control rods from melting.
when you saw that building explode in the videos, that was the result of pressure building up as the reaction continues to run even at idle without any cooling water.
The seawater was essentially a Hail Mary move on their part as they had no other options but it would permanately deem the reactor useless.
The information above is solid, and this could be rewriting any typically expected playout of the future if things get out of hand.
Let’s hope they can manage it.
:rofl + 1 stfu with 2012 BSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssss
A guy I grew up with works at knolls atomic… from what he said, a nuclear meltdown is nearly impossible.
Bingo and +1 :thumbup Plus, the fuel rods themselves can take years to cool down to disposal level temps, hence why you see them in chilled containment pools outside the reactor in buildings on site.
I’m on both sides of the fence with this issue. On one side bashing in the skulls of the anti-nuclear activists who are making this out like it’s chernobyl all over again and chanting the “I told you so” bullshit, while on the other side in disgust with the people passing it off as if it’s a cake walk here.
I am an advocate for nuclear power and would love to see more of it in this country. This is just a horrible natural disaster that leveled everything controlling multiple levels of sub systems and safeties set in place to prevent this type of incident. There isn’t a thing in the world that could have prevented this, aside from building the plant so far inland it wasn’t affected.
I guarantee over the next 2-3 years you are going to see massive substructures and even more backup failsafes to combat this from happening again. This kind of incident can happen ANYWHERE, whether it be a massive mainland earthquake or any other form of natural disaster.
Flooding the reactor site is the only logical solution at this point. The costs involved in repairing this facility are already astounding due to the site and reactors age to begin with that the entire site would need to be dismantled and inspected regardless of any flooding set forth to cool the reaction.