http://www.digtriad.com/...
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), and the Japanese government gave a joint press conference on Sunday and explained that an unusual amount of smoke that billowed from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor on Saturday night was nothing to be concerned about.
So for all those who wish to be happy please follow this link
For those interested in
Ongoing smoke releases, Units 3 and 4 in need of stabilization, proof of recriticality
in units 2 and 4, high radiation releases at Unit 3, Japanese walking away from
Nuclear Power.
Kyodo News Agency reported that the temperature of No. 3 reactor rose from 163 degrees Celsius to 202 degrees Celsius on Saturday, although this is still lower than the normal operating temperature of 286 degrees Celsius. This has possibly caused the more than usual amount of steam coming out from the nuclear reactors.
Lets call it what it is, Radioactive steam. The water entrains particulates,
Cesium, Strontium, Plutonium, Uranium,,,,, and then condenses somewhere.
Japanese officials said on Sunday they were committed to nuclear power after Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for another plant to close, but that the target of obtaining half of Japan's electricity from nuclear power by 2030 needed to be examined.
In my opinion, that's Kan getting a clue that Nuclear power doesn't work as an energy cycle or financial cycle. Now maybe to the apologists, it's really positive news, but,
from where I sit, i wouldn't invest into japanese nuclear construction.
n the meantime, TEPCO released new video footage of the spent fuel pool of No. 4 reactor on Sunday. It exploded due to hydrogen build-up on March 15, and is said to be in need of structural reinforcement to hold all the water of the spent fuel pool.
I previously Diaried
that Unit 4 was leaning, that appears to be getting some airplay.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/...
hey reported seeing froth near the water intake.
TEPCO says the concentration of radioactive Cesium in water sampled from the pit was 620,000 times higher than the safety limit set by the government. The utility also says it detected 1.5 milli-sieverts per hour of radiation on the surface of water in the pit, which indicates contaminated water may be leaking into the sea.
Now various apologists have denounced anyone who said there was
Recriticality ongoing at Unit 3.
http://www.technologyreview.com/...
Chain Reactions Reignited At Fukushima After Tsunami, Says New Study:
Radioactive byproducts indicate that nuclear chain reactions must have been burning at the damaged nuclear reactors long after the disaster unfolded
The question on many people's minds is whether the hot nuclear fuel then melted allowing a critical mass of molten fuel to form, allowing chain reactions to restart.
Today, Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident.
Matsui says the evidence comes from measurements of the ratio of cesium-137 and iodine-131 at several points around the facility and in the seawater nearby. He has calculated what the starting ratio must have been by assuming the reactors had been operating for between 7 and 12 months.
He says the ratios from drains at reactors 1 and 3 at Fukushima are consistent with the nuclear reactions having terminated at the time of the earthquake.
However, the data from the drain near reactor 2 and from the cooling pond at reactor 4, where spent fuel rods are stored, indicate that the reactions must have been burning much later.
"The data of the water samples from the unit-4 cooling pool and from the sub-drain near the unit-2 reactor show anomaly which may indicate, if they are correct, that some of these fission products were produced by chain nuclear reactions reignited after the earthquake," he says.
These chain reactions must have occurred a significant time after the accident. "It would be difficult to understand the observed anomaly near the unit-2 reactor without assuming that a significant amount of fission products were produced at least 10 - 15 days after X-day," says Matsui.
So things in reactor 2 must have been extremely dangerous right up to the end of March.
Now let's consider what's going on here.
An ATWS is one of the "worst case" accidents, consideration of which frequently motivates the NRC to take regulatory action. Such an accident could happen if the scram system (which provides a highly reliable means of shutting down the reactor) fails to work during a reactor event (anticipated transient). The types of events considered are those used for designing the plant.
So we appear to be getting recritacility in units 2 and 4, Now Unit 4 was
defueled, so it must be occurring in the Fuel Pool.
Unit 2 is fueled, so, it's either ATWSing with the plant workers around, or
it's also in it's fuel pools.
athough this isn't an anticipated transient, so i figure this is really a TWS.
well the TEPCO people can figure out how to shut down a runaway reactor.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Dutch authorities have found traces of radiation on 19 containers originating from Japan, two months after an earthquake and tsunami there caused leaks from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.
Five of the containers, scanned on arrival at the Port of Rotterdam, were quarantined because the level of contamination was above the permissible threshold, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority said on its website today. The other 14 boxes were cleared after further inspection, it said.
well we won't have to worry about this, the EPA has ceased monitoring for
radiation.
http://californiawatch.org/...
With the Japanese nuclear situation still out of control and expected to continue that way for months and with elevated radioactivity continuing to show up in the U.S., it is inexplicable that EPA would shut down its Fukushima radiation monitoring effort,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the watchdog group [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility], in a statement.
He said the agency found high levels of radiation in drinking water, and now was not the time to be pulling their efforts back.