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How likely are those rods to catch on fire?
NRC Chairman - "We don't believe that theres any water in the spent fuel pond in reactor 4"
Would seem to confirm my su ions about why the US recommended an evac radius of 50 miles.
If this is true, the situation just got a lot worse.
A link for those interested:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...czko-says.html
How likely are those rods to catch on fire?
It's only a matter of time without any water......
In their current conditions are they difficult to work with? I guess my question ultimately is how safely can people approach rods in that condition? Obviously they should at least try to airlift water in if nothing else, right?
I hope they can prevent a fire from those rods. That would be a fairly huge disaster.
Any idea as to how much time they have to get those pumps going again before this is likely to happen?
I think the helicopter pilot who took that famous first video above Chernobyl was dead within days. If those catch on fire while the chopper is above, wouldn't we be talking 100% quick and painful death for the pilot and crew?
The rods are extraordinarily difficult to manage under these cir stances. If they're exposed as the US suspects, then we're talking potentially lethal doses which can be delivered within a short timeframe (say 10-30 mins) depending on distance from and shielding near the rods. I'm not sure as to how much or the exact decay status of those rods, so I cant give much more than an estimate here.
As a rough guideline, a 5 gray dose over 5 hours is considered to be lethal. This translates to an exposure rate of roughly .016 Sv/min. Note that we've dropped the "milli" from the front of the Sieverts now. A whole different ballgame here.
Well, it depends on what the US inspectors mean by "dry". It should be straightforward, but this is an ambiguous term. They shoud have used a number for this....10% left...etc. It would also depend on how much spent fuel is up there and it's decay status. Given that we've seen two flareups already, I'd say not long. Hours perhaps?
Understand that when these rods catch fire, it's not the actual fuel that burns, but rather the cladding which is made of Zirconium. One has to consider the flash point of Zr in relation to the energy density being emitted by those exposed rods. The resulting oxidation and smoke would then carry away the radioactive isotopes a la Chernobyl.
They could exhibit what we call "prodromal" symptomology (vomiting, diarreha, etc.) even if they leave the scene quickly. Depends on whether or not they are cuaght in the cloud, if they are in direct line of sight with the rods, etc. I'm not sure what the time required would we to drop water, maybe 2-3 minutes in the danger zone? Crews would most definitely need to be rotated out. That would give a dose of about .5 Sv.....quite significant.
Something I'm confused about though is that the crews are said o be back in there working again. I'll keep looking for some more info on the local dose rates there.
Just some more context, I've found that the dose rates in the plant are on the order of 10-40 rem/hr (as of last night).
For comparison, we usually allow radiation workers about 5 rem/yr.
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/
Dose rates can be found under "Environmental Effects".
For clarification, the dose rates I point out above can be found in the remarks section of "Reactor Update #3" on the JAIF website.
Quote:
"Fire broke on the 4th floor of the Unit-4 Reactor Building around 6AM and the radiation monitor readings increased outside of the building:30mSv between Unit-2 and Unit-3, 400mSv beside Unit-3, 100mSv beside Unit-4 at 10:22.It is estimated that the spent fuels stored in the spent fuel pit heated and hydrogen was generated from these fuels, resulting in the explosion.TEPCO later announced the fire had been extinguished.Other staff and workers than 50 TEPCO employees, who are engaged in water injection operation, have been evacuated"
So for the units we are interested in (3 and 4), the dose rates were 400 mSv and 100 mSv respectively.
For reference: 1 rem = 10 mSv
Manny...You can do this!!!!
An article on Radnet, the US radiation measurement network, in case you're interested:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...,1431467.story
Um, no. I mean our President. I come to that conclusion cuz we have our idiotic surgeon general scaring people in California to buy iodide pills which in turn is making the pills fly off the shelves and completely selling out. Which in turn will make the people that haven't bought any iodide pills to freak out even more cuz they might get radiation poisoning cuz they have no pills. I know I may be entertaining to you and your crowd of dumb, I mean, one but I think if you want to put your own people at ease, their leader should do so. Yes, Obama is POTUS but I think he or one of his staff could pick up a ing phone and get some kind of straight answers and let us know what exactly is going. But, yeah, I know. He's a busy man. Is it really that hard to ing understand how I got to that conclusion Manny?
Last edited by Viva Las Espuelas; 03-17-2011 at 10:28 AM.
give the Man a break. It's march madness
It's not hard to understand how after 13 pages you've finally found a way to blame Obama for this.
"let us know what exactly is going"
do you have TV or Internet access?
Depending on any WH or Congres for direction and leadership is like trusting the Repug WH when starting wars, exposes one as a child with daddy problems.
Big Government, please take care of me.
You right-wing assholes hate the govt fire department until your house is on fire.
It seems like the obsession with torturing unconvicted, hyper-dangerous Manning and focusing on Assange (which is exactly what the establishment wants) has caused you to miss the key message of WikiLeaks:
The democratic peoples' governments of total secrecy are lying to us, all the time, about everything, which is also exactly what the corps do.
so unless Obama gets one of his staff out there to clear things up you won't be satisfied. Is that correct?
How sad would it be that these power plants are right by the damn ocean and they can't get enough water to them, considering the backups were destroyed in the first place by a wall of way too much water...
True.
The photographer Igor Kostin who took the pictures was lucky and he survived.
But they used more helicopters after this.
The fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping over 5,000 metric tons of sand, lead, clay, and boron onto the burning reactor and injection of liquid nitrogen. Ukrainian filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko captured film footage of an Mi-8 helicopter as it collided with a nearby construction crane, causing the helicopter to fall near the damaged reactor building and kill its four-man crew.[32]
From eyewitness accounts of the firefighters involved before they died (as reported on the CBC television series Witness), one described his experience of the radiation as "tasting like metal," and feeling a sensation similar to that of pins and needles all over his face
You insensitive bas !
Um, in 30 words, no. Maybe get your brilliant girlfriend to break down what I said. She may know how blame is spelled.
"They're intentionally obfuscating information from their own people, but surely they'll be forthcoming with their neighbors across the ing Atlantic Ocean who won't be affected in any conceivable way from this! All we have to do is pick up a phone and ask them and the details they won't share with their own who may be in danger or dying will come tumbling out of their mouths! It's bulletproof!"
I really could care less if he did or didn't. He's super busy so I understand if he doesn't address what his Surgeon General told californians to do. If he's ok with her fearmongering and people scrambling for these pills then so am I. Seems fair. And I slept well last night, and without a doubt, tonight as well.
So, Agloco. Is that just regular water that they're dumping on the reactors?
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