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Nuclear Open Thread

Fukushima Daiichi Open and Update Thread #5

The problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continue to be worked on, with no short-term resolution in sight. Here are eight recent notable happenings, compiled from various sources (see list below):

1. Reports indicate that some fuel melted and fell to the lower containment sections of units 1-3, where it dispersed in a fairly uniform residue — but this does not seem to have breached containment in any of the reactor pressure vessels. Re-criticality of this ‘corium’ seems very unlikely, but no details can of course be confirmed until the reactor cores are finally dismantled — which may be years away.

2. Two automated PackBot robots entered units 1 and 3, took photos, and measured temperature, pressure and radioactivity within the buildings. Peak levels were 40-60 mSv/hr.

3. An anti-scattering agent is being sprayed on the ground around the damaged units (about 1,200 square metres in area) to prevent further spread of radionuclides (see photo above).

4. Excess radioactive cooling water continues to be transferred from unit 2’s basement and tunnels to a waste processing facility.

5. Further surveys are being made of the area surrounding the Fukushima evacuation zone and the exclusion area is being policed more strictly. Highest levels were measured at Itate, at about 4 microsieverts per hour (by comparison, the background level is 0.2 — 0.4  uSv/hr).

6. TEPCO have now released a roadmap plan for the restoration of stable conditions at the site, over a 3 — 6 month timetable, leading to a cold shutdown at units 1-3 and various other stability targets. They also released a 27-slide presentation on the timeline of the accident and current situation, that is definitely worth a look through.

7. This is a really useful summary post describing one of the pressing needs facing engineers at Fukushima Daiichi: Day 42: How is a core cooled? In short, heat exchangers are the key…

8. From NEI Nuclear Notes, Russia’s atomic energy chief (Kiriyenko of Rosatom) sees Fukushima as a strong policy incentive for moving more quickly to current- and next-generation reactor designs (I’ll have more to say on this topic in future BNC posts):

Kiriyenko said the impact from the Fukushima plant disaster would not only increase safety concerns but also quicken demand for new reactors to replace the industry’s ageing plants.

“There will be a need to build new plants more quickly to more swiftly replace previous-generation plants,” he said.

He added that Russia may speed the retirement of its older generation plants in the wake of Japan’s nuclear accident.

————————————-

Please use this post to put any new comments about the Fukushima situation (including technical information, situation updates, analysis, questions, reflections, etc.). As such, I consider the earlier FD Philosophical and Technical threads closed — these strands of discussion can now be carried on here, as the pace of comments has died down to a small fraction of that at the height of the crisis.

Here are some other channels I recommend you check on regularly, for up-to-date situation reports on Fukushima Daiichi:

— World Nuclear News (the two latest posts are Changes to evacuation zones and Dust control steps up at Fukushima)

— ANS Nuclear Cafe news and updates (includes links to official reports like JAIF and TEPCO and news feeds from NHK, NY Times, etc.), see also NEI updates

— International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) update website (last updated on 21 April, has reactor status and radiation monitoring reports)

— Will Davis at Atomic Power Review blog continues to do an excellent job at providing regular updates and interesting technical analysis on the situation

Note that the Open Threads on BraveNewClimate.com are a general discussion forum; please follow the commenting rules, although the ‘stay on topic’ rule obviously does not apply as strictly here.

By Barry Brook

Barry Brook is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He researches global change, ecology and energy.

378 replies on “Fukushima Daiichi Open and Update Thread #5”

While there are substantial efforts being made by TEPCO and its subcontractors, the overall situation is evolving in a manner that profoundly discredits nuclear power.
The contamination that has already forced the people within 20 km of the plant to abandon their homes, with no obvious recourse, is still spreading and a larger evacuation zone has just been announced, with no certainty that that is the end of the problem.
The site situation is characterized by the NRC as ‘static but fragile’, not exactly reassuring. The NRC conspicuously did not use the word ‘stable’.
A month after the accident, there is no coherent recovery plan, just a wish list largely devoid of practical implementation details.
TEPCO is entirely unable to manage the liabilities that are accruing. Their decision to slash employee bonuses and cut pay 5% may be financially correct, but cannot help build morale.
An international nuclear disaster agency that can react fast and mobilize the entire industry’s capabilities for disaster management without causing political heartburn is needed.
Without it, the industry is loosing the public consent it needs for longer term survival.

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Thank you, Barry,

Perhaps I missed something in another thread, but could you point us to the reports you mention on the molten fuel dropping to the lower containment section ? Am I also correct you mean the ‘lower pressure vessel section’, i.e. below the core support structure, but inside the RPV ? Otherwise, the RPV pressure values seem impossible to explain…

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OK, found it, thanks for the clue. The UPS story Barry linked above cites the Atomic Energy Society of Japan. Searching their site I found what appears to be the origin of the claims reported here:
http://www.aesj.or.jp/information/fnpp201103/chousasenmoniinkai_EN.html

It’s dated April 18th. It goes through status of the units; I’ll quote below a big chunk from the Unit 1 portion only; see that link above for the PDF file

“… 1. Unit 1 (1) Core status
•The core is considered to be severely degraded due to insufficient cooling in the initial phase of the accident. There was considerable time delay between the uncovering of fuel from cooling water and the injection of seawater. The core pressure was still high when the seawater injection was started, which prevented efficient injection of water into the core. Core damage fraction is estimated as 70% based on the measurement result of CAMS (Containment Atmospheric Monitoring System). Anther estimation on the core damage fraction would be difficult based on the currently available information.
•Part of fuel debris is deposited on the core support plate and/or the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel.
•If the measured temperature at the feed-water nozzle is correct, generated vapor in the core is superheated by the uncovered fuel, i.e., part of the fuel would have emerged from the water.
•If the measured temperatures at the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel and the measured internal pressure of the reactor vessel are correct, the fuel debris deposited on the bottom of the reactor vessel would be cooled enough and be in the form of a solid.

(2) Reactor pressure vessel
•Injection rate of water (currently borated fresh water) is 6 t/h and generation rate of vapor by decay heat in the core is estimated as approximately 2 t/h. Thus fresh water would be added in the core at the rate of approximately 4 t/h.
•The internal pressure of the reactor vessel shows saturation trend. This trend suggests possibility of water vapor leakage from the safety relief valve and/or vapor/liquid leakage from the reactor vessel.
•Since the reactor vessel holds higher internal pressure than atmospheric pressure, the leakage of the vapor and/or liquid does not seem to be very large. However, the variations of pressure in the reactor vessel and the containment vessel showed similar trends when the inert gas (N2) was injected into the containment vessel in order to prevent hydrogen explosion. These variations of the pressure may suggest the internal pressure of the reactor vessel may be similar that in the containment vessel, i.e., there would be possibility of anomaly on the measurement value of the internal pressure of the reactor pressure vessel. In the latter scenario, the leakage from the reactor pressure vessel may not be small.

(3) Containment vessel
•The internal pressure of the containment vessel is considered to continuously rise when the vent line from the suppression chamber has not been activated. However, the measurement value of the internal pressure is almost constant.
•The internal pressure of the containment vessel was increased when the inert gas (nitrogen) was injected in it. However, the internal pressure showed saturation trend at a later time.
•The above observations suggest that there is small leakage of the vapor.
•There are no measurement data that suggest degradation of the suppression chamber.”

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Also worth quoting from that same report:

“4. Spent fuel storage pool
Continuous cooling is essential for the spent fuel storage pools. Heat generation rate of the spent fuel pool of Unit 4 is large thus needs special attention….”

In the PDF, you can find the current heat generation rates listed for the Core (units 1-3) and the Spent fuel storage pool (units 1-4)

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Last Wednesday a panel discussion here considered electric power generation. I assume it was convened as a response to the Fukushima Dai-ichi situation. From the student newspaper’s article on the session, every panelist seems to have drawn the correct conclusions from the events in Japan.

These conslusions are so similar to Barry Brook’s [as I understand his views] that it is pointless to abstract the panelists’s remarks. However, I did find this heartening, especially as one of the panelists was associated with the environmental studies group.

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While the 5% pay cut and bonus-cut is fairly minor compared to what has happened to some American workers in the past few years, it can nevertheless hardly build morale.

People who see a declining standard of living simply WON”T put out their 110% like when standards are rising.

Of course, the only ones who realize that are the workers themselves —– not the corner-cutting corporations.

I actually sympathize with TEPCO, as the tsunami was NOT of their doing. Nevertheless, the last place TEPCO should cut right now is nuclear workers’ pay. If TEPCO’s situation is dire, lay off unrelated IT or administrative or management personnel…..

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> the tsunami was NOT of their doing

Not an excuse. It was an external event that needs to be dealt with. After prevention comes reaction, and that hasn’t been stellar either. Besides, similar plants at similar locations north by other operators (Tohoku Electric) withstood the event without major impact (according to German media, due to voluntary increase of safety standards that Tepco chose not to take [sorry, no reference]).

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i am surprised that people on this blog completely ignore the unnecessary hardship that the workers at the plant are exposed to:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110421a1.html

“Workers other than senior officials work in shifts of four days on and two days off, but cannot even take a bath during the four workdays despite sweating heavily in impervious radiation-protective gear, Tanigawa said.

“Being unable to feel refreshed, they are not only vulnerable to various diseases and skin disorders but also may commit errors in their work,” Tanigawa warned.”

without washing, there is no decontamination. Why can something like that happen, weeks after the accident?

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IAEA says: Unless something significant develops …

“IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (21 April 2011, 16:25 UTC) … (Note: Unless there are significant developments, no further written brief will be issued until Tuesday 26 April.) ”
———–

According to this news story, the Unit 4 fuel pool has beenheating up. I wonder if that’s related to the plan — mentioned in the slideshow Barry links above — to shore the Unit 4 fuel pool up by adding supports from underneath to keep it from collapsing.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gSJZjzIeiI_F5Ov8fRIjjyn-F2lg?docId=CNG.1b9b35fd989073a6ca436895c36a65d3.5a1

“the temperature at reactor four’s fuel pool had risen to 91 degrees Celsius (196 degrees Fahrenheit), forcing workers to add more water to prevent the rods from being exposed and releasing radiation, TEPCO said Saturday.

“The company is considering sending a waterproof CCD camera into the pool, but the temperature is now at 91 degrees C, which is too high,” … to check on the condition of the fuel rods and see if any had melted.” Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

Still no news on the “smoke” plumes that I’ve found.
Anyone heard anything about what that material is or whether it’s been sampled?

I’d think they could have stuck a vacuum hose on the end of the concrete pump boom and sampled the material, if they can’t fly the drone through it.

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Watcher, what about the 25000 people that died in the tsunami and earthquake?

Does the government of Japan have no excuse there?

Can we blame the government of Japan, or any other organisation for that matter, for not building a 20 meter concrete wall all around Japan’s eastern coast?

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“Can we blame the government of Japan, or any other organisation for that matter, for not building a 20 meter concrete wall all around Japan’s eastern coast?”

Not sure if you are serious here or not. Of course the answer is no.

An earthquake and tsunami are natural disasters. A serious nuclear accident is a man-made disaster, in this case triggered by a natural disaster. Saying otherwise would be an excuse. In fact, you could even argue that the main damage to the plant and resulting releases of radiation cannot be fully attributed to the quake and tsunami, but to the hydrogen explosions (triggered by the natural disasters, of course).

You cannot claim that a nuclear facility is safe if it cannot resist such an external event. It is immaterial whether the event was predictable or not. Any operaional risk professional worth his salt knows that that residual risk results from events, or a chain of events, that are unforeseeable. Then you have to decide whether that’s acceptable. That is subjective and we have to see what the Japanese population will think (not the politicians, see Germany).

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There has been a lot of focus on how the nuclear accident has not killed anybody. There needs to be some more focus on the financial and economic cost of the nuclear accident. Anecdotally the costs are huge but it would be good if somebody could present some actual financial data and perspective.

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Watcher, if you ‘watched’ closely you will see a zero radiation death toll for this nuclear ‘disaster’. That’s impressive in a natural disaster with a total death toll over 20,000.

I can easily claim nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/lifetime-deaths-per-twh-from-energy.html

Nothing is safe. Stairs for example are very dangerous. Alas, it turns out making electricity is dangerous business. Nuclear is the least dangerous of the options. Its not perfect, but its the best we’ve got, and thats what matters in the real world where choices have to be made on energy supply. That said new plants especially the ones with passive cooling features can do much better.

The real disaster would be if countries build less nuclear capacity so more deadly fossil fuels are used. This could easily kill millions.

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Cyril, you can t be serious about that link. 104 deaths by nuclear?

and using chinese coal deaths?

how about we imagine that China will run its nuclear power plants like they run their coal mines? did you factor this into your calculation in any way?

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I have already said in a previous comment that a death toll to measure incident severity is both unethical and not a precise enough scale for severity. Besides even the possibly attributable deaths will be debatable (see tobacco). Also a fatality is the most extreme and most unlikely outcome. Psychological impact (often neglected, not dramatic or visible enough?), homelessness, environmental impact, illness, economic etc. just to name a few, aren’t they “good enough” as measurable consequences?

“Nothing’s safe” or “not perfect” just isn’t good enough for something like this. It’s got to be safe, it’s got to be perfect but we know it can’t be. Is that good enough? Ask the people in Fukushima, who have to live in a sports gym and will be fined or arrested if they tried to return to their homes. Tell them also that nobody has died yet, so it can’t be so bad. See what they say.

[Unsubstantiated personal opinion deleted]

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“An earthquake and tsunami are natural disasters. A serious nuclear accident is a man-made disaster, in this case triggered by a natural disaster.”

And building and living in cities in a tsunami zone is also a man-made disaster, in this case triggered by a natural disaster. In spite of that, I haven’t seen much written saying that the Japanese should never have put tens of thousands of lives at risk by building and living in a tsunami zone. Apparently, that was an acceptable risk compared with the risk imposed by nuclear power stations.

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Question to the experts: What do you think about the evacuation efforts?
4 microsieverts per hour equals 0.1 mSv per day. That means that after 100 days at this level the dose would be equivalent to a CT-scan.

Evacuation is quite a drastic measure with many negative (unhealthy) consequences . So why did the authorities choose this measure? How is it justifiable?

Greets

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Watcher, on 23 April 2011 at 2:44 PM said:

Besides, similar plants at similar locations north by other operators (Tohoku Electric) withstood the event without major impact (according to German media

A map of March 11th, Tsuanami energy from USGS

Click to access EG_Tsunami.pdf

In addition runup height can vary widely based on local offshore geology.

Unfortunately, our understanding of Tsunami’s is currently less then perfect. The city of Long Beach Washington evacuated in the middle of the night. The Tsunami runup in Long Beach Washington ended up being less then 12 inches. The ‘error bars’ on the prediction models are quite large.

The largest ever Tsunami runup height was 1,720 feet.
http://geology.com/records/biggest-tsunami.shtml

We can take a ‘simplist view’ and decide that since the largest recorded Tsunami was 1,720 feet we should build nothing at an altitude of less then 1,720 feet which would mean relocation of entire countries. (Tsunami’s occur in the Atlantic basin as well as the Paicific basin)

Or we can try with our less then perfect knowledge to make reasonable estimates of what the Tsunami height might be in a specific location given a specific event.

Since our knowledge is less then perfect we are going to end up over protecting some places and under protecting others.

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@Watcher:
>“Nothing’s safe” or “not perfect” just isn’t good enough for something like this. It’s got to be safe, it’s got to be perfect but we know it can’t be. Is that good enough?

The usual strategy of raising the bar as high as necessary to have nuclear power fail meeting it, I see. Sorry but that is a line of argument that asks to be dismissed out of hand.

Nuclear energy is all about how much risk you are willing to take. Given that no plant has catastropically failed here in Germany, nor in neighboring countries, through the decades, nuclear energy is a risk I am willing to take.

>Ask the people in Fukushima, who have to live in a sports gym and will be fined or arrested if they tried to return to their homes. Tell them also that nobody has died yet, so it can’t be so bad. See what they say.

I wouldn’t say that. I would say that Japan has been benefitting from nuclear energy over the last decades and that they will have to endure now because TEPCO and their government have been letting them down. They failed to take the necessary precaution to avert a 15m tsunami. In fact the standards should be so high that a seaside npp should be able to withstand a 25m tsunami.

And if there is ever a tsunami higher than that too, that’s an acceptable risk they and their society can take.

Won’t help them in their situation though.

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Sod, don’t be rediculous. You’ve not even read the link completely – it shows a total cumulative death toll of 15,000 for nuclear, being 0.07 per TWh. Including Chernobyl, and no-one is building RBMKs anyomore. Compare to coal in the US at 15 deaths per TWh, extremely dangerous, even in a modern country.

The 104 death toll is for one year. Please read the links provided better, thank you.

For comparison, PV is several times the nuclear death per TWh as nuclear including Chernobyl. Working on roofs isn’t safe, nor is using 10x the materials per kWh that solar PV does compared to old nuclear plants. It turns out mining for materials is quite dangerous business and not very environmentally friendly. Nuclear has the lowest mining even with uranium lifecycle included.

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As an ordinary reader, my guess is the evacuation is because they’re in a bind.

They are cooling the three reactor cores and four fuel pools by pumping water into them — and that water isn’t under control after it runs through the hot spots and exits carrying radioactive material into the groundwater around the plant, which is pretty waterlogged already.

How long before the foundations on which the buildings are built start to sink into the wet ground?
Anyone seen any information on this idea of building a dike in the ground around the site to contain the water?

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110420-707150.html

“… Progress in repairing the heavily damaged plant continues to move at a slow pace.

A day after workers began removing highly radioactive water from parts of the No. 2 reactor complex, the level of contaminated water …. in a trench holding pipes and electric cables running to the No. 2 reactor complex was only one centimeter (about 0.4 inch) lower after 24 hours of pumping, according to the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The trench is 81 cm away from overflowing with radioactive water that is 100 million times the legal limit….

The water is believed to have come from Reactor No. 2’s pressure vessel, leaking through the bottom of the reactor’s suppression pool and causing flooding in the turbine building as well as in the trench…..”

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Hmmmmm …. can you create liquefaction by saturating the ground with water, or does it require also having an earthquake shake it up? I know the aftershocks are predicted to include a large number of large quakes, proportionate to the size of the main quake.

http://www.realclearscience.com/2011/04/19/liquefaction_key_to_japan_earthquake_damage_240755.html
“… April 19, 2011
Liquefaction Key to Japan Earthquake Damage
Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The massive subduction zone earthquake in Japan caused a significant level of soil “liquefaction” that has surprised researchers with its widespread severity, a new analysis shows.

The findings also raise questions about whether existing building codes and engineering technologies are adequately accounting for this phenomenon in other vulnerable locations …..”

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“The 104 death toll is for one year. Please read the links provided better, thank you.”

your link is not really clearly written, but if the 104 deaths for nuclear is n annual number, then so are the 1000000 for coal…

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/lifetime-deaths-per-twh-from-energy.html

and here is a quote from the second part:

“A concern about the original analysis is about the fact that there are predictions that many more will die from Chernobyl. The credible studies indicate that very few people have died so far (50-200 people). ”

(sorry but any report that claims less than 200 dead from chernobyl is complete garbage. we found a serious number of helicopter crew killed alone in that last post!

—————————-

i also get a little angry about the constant comparison with people dying in Chinese coal mines.

why not compare, let us say, death in coal mining in Germany over the last decade, with nuclear deaths in the Ukraine in the 80s?

how can anybody think that “Chinese are really careless in their coal mines, they should run nuclear power plants instead” is an argument that will win the hearts and minds for nuclear power?

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Some volume numbers:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/23/2182117/japanese-government-considers.html

This news story is cited to “The Yomiuri Shimbun”

“…. According to Tepco, it has poured about 7,000 tons of water into the No. 1 reactor’s pressure vessel. The company said it believes almost all of that water is still inside the pressure vessel and the containment vessel. However, the firm said it has injected about 14,000 tons of water into the No. 2 reactor and 9,600 tons of water into the No. 3 reactor since cooling operations began. In both cases, the amount injected exceeds the about-7,000-ton capacity of the reactors’ containment vessels. …”

That followed this:

“The Yomiuri Shimbun

TOKYO — The Japanese government is considering building an underground barrier near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to prevent radioactive material from spreading far from the plant via soil and groundwater, a senior government official said.

Sumio Mabuchi, a special adviser to the prime minister, revealed the plan Friday at the Japan National Press Club building in Tokyo. The plan is the first attempt to address the risk of contaminated water spreading far from the plant through soil.

According to Mabuchi, the barrier would extend so far underground that it would reach a layer that does not absorb water. The wall would entirely surround the land on which reactors No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 stand.

Mabuchi is a member of the unified command headquarters set up by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to deal with the nuclear crisis. He serves as the head of government representatives on a team dealing with medium- and long-term issues, including how to contain the spread of radioactive materials from the plant.

The process of filling the containment vessel of the Fukushima power plant’s No. 1 reactor with water is progressing steadily, according to Tepco.

Tepco plans to continue injecting water into the containment vessel until the fuel rods inside are fully submerged in what the power company has called a “water coffin.”

At a press conference held Friday, Tepco said it believed pressure suppression pools at the bottom of the No. 1 reactor’s containment vessel were full of water, and that the top section of the containment vessel was about half full. Under normal circumstances, the pressure suppression pools are about 50 percent full with water….”
————-

This option of filling the containment with water adds some risk:

“… • mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site….”

(That’s from the leaked report discussed here previously) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html

Containments intended to eventually be full of water, ground already full of water, talk of a cofferdam being built around the whole site to _keep_ the water under the plant where it is, and more quakes.

“Aftershocks Threaten More Damage to Crippled Japan Nuclear Plant
April 14 (Bloomberg) -April 23, 2011 –
Aftershocks…. as big as magnitude-7 are likely to continue hitting in eastern and northern Japan for at least six months,’ said Teruyuki Kato, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute…..
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LJMINB0YHQ0X01-2R1UEMOVPKU6Q87PH2Q0EINCTO

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“Including Chernobyl, and no-one is building RBMKs anyomore”

The full deathtoll of Chernobyl is not even set yet (ie terminal cancers not terminal yet).

Celebrating the 0 deathtoll is premature in Fukushima.

Fukushima will have a similar deathtoll to Chernobyl and it was not RBMKs. Favorable wind conditions is probably offset by having a higher population density.

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One more thing I think 5 workers were killed in Fukushima nobody talks about, a PV farm has no cranes or infrastructure that could be dangerous in a tsunami/earthquake.

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A bit more from Businessweek, pertinent and useful article (click the link to read the whole thing)

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LJMINB0YHQ0X01-2R1UEMOVPKU6Q87PH2Q0EINCTO

“… Hundreds of aftershocks, including three stronger than magnitude-7, have struck the region….

Reactor containment vessels at the nuclear plant that have been flooded with tons of water to keep fuel rods cool are at risk in the event of another big quake, said Kazuya Idemitsu, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University.

‘One of my concerns is that the containment chambers may have been compromised to some extent,’ he said. Another strong aftershock might damage parts such as ‘pipe joints and cause more radioactive water to leak.’

Still, the pressure vessels inside the containment chambers that surround the cores shouldn’t be at risk, said Idemitsu. ‘The pressure vessels can withstand another magnitude-8 earthquake,’ he said.

No Damage

Tepco spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said the company hasn’t found damage to the site after the aftershocks. A magnitude-6.1 quake struck off Japan at 5:57 a.m. today, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

‘The worst-case scenario is for a 10-meter tsunami to swamp the Pacific Ocean coast in northeastern Japan if a magnitude-8 aftershock strikes offshore,’ Kato said.
…
‘The integrity of the core facilities at Fukushima Dai- Ichi will probably be maintained because they are designed to withstand earthquakes,’ said Tomoko Murakami, a nuclear researcher at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. ‘The big problem is the radioactive water that is hampering efforts to bring the cooling system on line.’….”

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I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it recently, and in light if Fukushima, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather live next to any nuclear power station than any coal power station. If I lived next to any nuclear station, including an RBMK (Chernobyl type) the worst that could happen is that I’d have to evacuate in case of an emergency. I’d keep some iodine pills in my cabinet and my car filled with fuel. Living next to a coal power station, risks to my health are still remote, but my worst case scenario is that I will develop some kind of respiratory disease due to the plant.

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If you’re looking for information, try this site, it’s pretty consistent. Doesn’t cite sources but Google finds them consistently and the blogger is getting the information right, for everything I’ve followed up so far:

http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2011/04/saturday-afternoon-update.html

“…there are now multiple reports that NISA is questioning the quake resistance of the reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi if the dry wells are filled to the level of active fuel. This would be a considerable mass of water; we haven’t seen any figures quoted yet, but that much mass that high up in reactor buildings already very seriously damaged is surely something worth thinking about.

TEPCO is clearly thinking about getting the still possibly semi-molten fuel masses covered in the reactors, and with the known leakage in the recirc pump loops the only way to get water level inside the pressure vessel above the level of the inlets of the jet pumps is to raise the level OUTSIDE the pressure vessel above them. Yes, there will be some contact cooling at the lowest radii of the lower pressure vessel head and maybe some along the pressure vessel barrel itself but the primary goal is to raise water level INSIDE the pressure vessel, all the way through and not just in the outer annulus. As we mentioned before, there is probably no direct flow through the cores at all if only the normal feed lines are in use; TEPCO either needs to send water through the spray nozzles / spargers or else fill the dry wells; it’s that simple.

This presents a very ugly catch 22 situation. Further, there are structural integrity questions now about the spent fuel pool in No. 4 plant, already mentioned on this blog, and so we find the situation now that in order to do what it must — cool the reactor cores, and cool the spent fuel pool in No. 4 plant — TEPCO must risk structural failure in one building and seriously reduced earthquake resistance due to higher level, or altitude if you will, water mass in the others.

Perhaps the biggest news of the day is the discovery on-site of a chunk of building material that is reading 90 R/Hr. This is a pretty hot piece of building material; it’s been taken away and stored. One wonders just how this chunk got this hot .. where did the contamination come from, and where inside the reactor buildings will they find the area where it used to be? Will that area be just as bad, as a whole zone or rad field? This piece was found by No. 3 reactor building. Surely TEPCO will try to quickly analyze this thing to find out what’s on/in it.

More details as they come out.. but it’s Saturday, and news is fairly quiet in Japan on weekends, it seems….”

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Environmentalist
What you seem unable to comprehend is that, without nuclear power fossil fuels will continue to be burned to produce electricity to run a modern civilization. That means climate change will continue unabated and that means millions will die, that is as well as those who have already died due to increasing natural disasters. Your totally unproven extrapolations of how many have/might die because of Chernobyl and how many might suffer the same fate because of Fukushima, pales into insignificance when set against these figures.

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Environmentalist, 5 deaths due to tsunami and quake, none of them due to radiation!!

25,000 deaths total due to the tsunami and quake, 5 of which in nuclear plants, zero due to radiation.

The deaths for US coal are included in the link, not just Chinese coal deaths. The link is clearly written for someone who actually tries to read the entire thing before coming back here to respond about some nitpick.

Saying things like ‘fukushima will kill as many as Chernobyl’ makes me wonder why Barry lets you guys post here. Please stop this trolling.

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@Gerald:

It’s an interesting question. Suppose the contamination were from Cesium-137,
having a half-life of 30.17 years.

Cesium-137 decays 95% by a 0.51 MeV beta to Barium-137m, which then emits a
0.662 MeV gamma, 2.55 minutes later.

The other 5% of the decays are betas of 1.174 MeV to the ground state of
stable Barium-137.

The activity of Cesium-137 is 3.22 TBq/gram, based on its half-life.

So how much energy is contained in the decays from 1 gram of Cesium-137?

Let’s assume the average energy of the betas is half their endpoint energy:
then they’re not very penetrating (at most a few mm into the skin). So we can
neglect betas in the calculation of the energy of the decays and only worry
about the gammas.

Then we have E/decay = 0.667 MeV.

So the integrated energy flux, over 4*pi solid angle, for the gammas emitted
from one gram of Cs-137 is 3.22 x 10^12 Bq * 0.667 MeV * 1.6 x 10^(-13) J =
0.34 J /s.

Unfortunately, we are missing a key element here: at what distance from the
piece of concrete was the measurement of 0.9 Sv/hr taken? The dose rate drops
rapidly with distance. Leave that aside for a moment, though.

From one gram of Cs-137 we have potentially 1237 J/hr of energy released in
gamma decays. If this energy is completely deposited in a 70 kg human being
in the form of ionisation, that amounts to 17 Gray/hr, or 17 Sievert/hr, since
the quality factor is 1 for gamma radiation.

At 2m from such a source, if it is a point source, the flux would be about
0.35 Sv/hr/m^2.

A human being has a frontal surface area of something like 0.6 m^2 (height
180cm, waist 102cm around). So at 2 m, you could expect to get 0.175 Sv/hr
from 1 gram of Cesium-137. At 1 m, that might be 0.7 Sv/hr (ignoring the fact
that this is a distributed source of about 30cm x 30cm).

The measured dose rate doesn’t seem very wildly inconsistent, then, with
contamination by about 1 gram of Cs-137.

Remembering that the total atmospheric release of Cs-137 was estimated at
about 12 PBq, or 3 kg, and that Cs-137 is also highly water soluble, and
remembering that there are also other possible contaminants, some with higher
activities, I suppose that it’s just possible that this is a piece of concrete
that was in contact with some very highly contaminated coolant water that then
evaporated and deposited all of its contamination on the concrete …

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Barry,
I would really like to see some kind of clue as to how many people are going to permanently lose their homes as a result of the Fukushima accident.
I doubt there will be many extra deaths from it, but people having to stay permanently out of the evacuation zone is also part of the cost.
For example, what are the levels of radiocesium that have been detected in various places within the evacuation zone? How high of a level would render a place uninhabitable? Is radiocesium the main reason people might have to stay out of there, or maybe other radioactive elements?
What is the biological half-life of radiocesium? It’s shorter than the radioactive half-life because the radiocesium goes out of the food chain after a while.
How many people have been evacuated?
I don’t think anyone can make a definitive prediction, but we could have some facts that would give us an idea of how many people might have to stay out of there permanently.

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Biological half life of radiocesium is around 2 to 3 months. It doesn’t accumulate in any particular organ, either. Its excreted out of the body with other dead cell matter.

The Japanese will probably chose to clean things up rather than permanently closing large areas. Its expensive because of the large area, though not particularly hard.

Currently there appears to be over 100 square kilometers of area that needs investigation for cleanup. All of it northwest of Fukushima Daiichi.

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“Saying things like ‘fukushima will kill as many as Chernobyl’ makes me wonder why Barry lets you guys post here. Please stop this trolling.”

You think I am trolling BECAUSE YOU DO NOT READ MY POSTS!!!

“Environmentalist, 5 deaths due to tsunami and quake, none of them due to radiation!!”

Read it again, when compared to a PV farm 5 people died in a nuclear plant. there are no cranes in a PV farm nor infrastructure that can collapse on you.

And if you do not believe there will be a similar deathtoll to Chernobyl then you are in denial, Liquidators are much safer but the bulk of the casualties will be civilians in the long run.

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Haha, oh wow. So we now have people that oppose nuclear because there could be cranes on site that could kill you in case of a tsunami? Really, are you serious? Considering the death toll in the region, the nuclear plant was most likely the safest place to be along the coast. Do you have any idea how ridiculous (not to mention morally reprehensible) it is to blame nuclear power for five deaths not inherent to nuclear energy generation during a disaster that killed over twenty thousand?

Does it make you feel good that you can use this disaster that affected millions for your personal political agenda?

But okay, let’s do a little thought experiment here. Replace the Fukushima plant with coastal wind farms. The nuclear plant generated 4000 MW so it would take 2000 wind turbines at 2 MW a piece to replace it. How high do you estimate the odds that there would be at least five people on site performing maintenance on some of them that could be killed if a similar quake struck that area?

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There are more people working in a PV farm so you get more casualties easily. PV requires more mined materials so more casualties there. Rooftop working is also dangerous. Hence, the higher death toll number for PV compared to nuclear:

Nuclear: 0.07 deaths per TWh
PV: 0.44 deaths per TWh.

More importantly:

Coal: 15 deaths per TWh even with pollution control. Without pollution controls, 160 or higher.

You’re clearly not much of an environmentalist, nitpicking nuclear death toll over PV when the big killer is coal. Penny wise, pound foolish.

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TEPCO is clearly thinking about getting the still possibly semi-molten fuel masses covered in the reactors, and with the known leakage in the recirc pump loops the only way to get water level inside the pressure vessel above the level of the inlets of the jet pumps is to raise the level OUTSIDE the pressure vessel above them.

If I am reading the above correctly, this means there are reactor vessel nozzel(s) below the top of the fuel. I did not think ANYONE allowed ANYBODY to build such installations. One of the fundamental design criteria is that if you put water into a loop via any path it will fall on to the top of the fuel and if there is a leak in a loop it cannot uncover the fuel.

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Cyril,
Biological half-life isn’t the right term, rather ecological half-life, that is how long till half as much radiocesium is in the food chain. Cesium in the soil apparently migrates to deeper levels, see http://www.environmental-studies.de/Radioecology/Radiocesium/Cs_E7/Cs_E8/Cs_E8-1/cs_e8-1.html
and I read elsewhere that it gets bound to minerals in the soil or something. So the effective half life of radiocesium is shorter than 30 years. But certainly not as short as a few months.
How long there’s a danger from radiocesium would depend on a lot of things. I read that in Sweden after Chernobyl, the radiocesium got concentrated in lichens, which reindeer ate, so they were limiting the sale of reindeer meat. But perhaps non-lichenivorous :) animals were less contaminated with radiocesium.

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Firstly, thank you Barry for continuing your hosting on this Blog. I have found the discussions useful in clarifying my own views about what we need to do about energy sources and the problem of climate change. Let me add fuel to the fire on two points:

1/ There has been quite a bit of discussion about nuclear and PV as enegry sources and I think it is useful to point out that neither source will likely dominant worldwide energy production in the time frame that climate change requires. Nuclear won’t becasue we can’t build enough plants in 20 years to occupy that big a slice of the energy pie, and PV won’t because even if the price is right, the grid integration and storage technologies are also 10 to 20 year projects. I do believe our path should be sustainable on a multi-generation basis and that it should not require government to assume liabilities for the what ifs of either construction cost overuns or failure scenarios. These requirements to me mean that renewable energy needs to be taken very seriously to solve long term issues surrounding climate change, energy production, and sustainability. Cost will be what they need to be to meet the multiple requirements demande by society, that may mean higher costs.

2/ A problem I see coming up at Fukushima that has not been addressed anywhere in the world is the decison of what radiation level people will be asked to move back to, rather than TEPCO or the Japanese government buying them out. Obviously TEPCO and the Japanese government will want to reduce costs of of compensating people for lost property, so there will be pressure to legalize exposure levels that minimize overall compenastion costs. So, my question to the knowledgeable people here is – what radiation level will be acceptable to require people to move back into – given that their option might be to either move back, or not be compensated for their property? How this is dealt with at Fukushima will have a significant positive or negative affect on the public view of the end result of a significant nuclear accident.

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@Mike Keefer:

The jet pump inlets are in the downcomer, about 2/3 of the
way down the fuel I think. But the jet pumps draw water from
the downcomer, inside the RPV and outside the plenum. They
push some of the feedwater first back up, and then drive it
down to below the bottom of the core where it makes a 180
degree turn and comes back up through the core. in normal
operation. So the jet pump circuit is internal to the
RPV.

The recirc pump inlets are a bit higher than the jet pump
inlets; above the top of the fuel, I think, but I’m not
completely sure. The main feedwater inlets and steam outlets
are way up at the top of the RPV, far above the core.

There are nice diagrams on Will Davis site explaining and
diagramming this if you look back through his old posts
since Fukushima hit the news.

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A boiling water reactor vessel has lots of holes below the top of the fuel because the control rods are inserted from the bottom of the reactor vessel. The new pressurized water reactors feature having no holes in the reactor vessel below the level of the fuel.

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Yes, indeed … only I think the BWRs were newer: some people didn’t think that a reactor with boiling water would be stable, at first.

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Ms Perps,
While I support the idea of building as many NPPs as we can, it is unrealistic to think that this can have a noticeable effect on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Even if you could wave a magic wand and convert every fossil fuel power plant to nuclear over night, CO2 levels would keep on rising owing to motor vehicles, industrial processes, domestic heating, aeroplanes etc.

Electric power generation is not the major source of man made CO2.

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@Mike Keefer

An actual diagram of a BWR/3 doesn’t agree with what I said above. Both the recirc pump inlet and the outlet appear to be below the level of the core. So Will Davis’ argument makes sense if the core has melted through it’s bottom support plate, I suppose. There are systems above the core for injecting water, but if there’s a leak in the recirc lines, then it would be hard to raise the level much unless valves can be closed …

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Regarding the question raised by Steve Lapp and maybe others regarding safe dose limits and the time requirement for return of the evacuees : although I’m more of a specialist in materials than in source terms, cleanup and radiobiology, I believe there are a few important things to consider.

The radiation dose in the evacuated towns around the Daiichi power plant are governed to a large degree by the ground contamination from the deposits of iodine and cesium (and maybe some strontium). In Tchernobyl, the dose rates were also governed by so-called ‘hot particles’, which are aerosols created by the explosion of the reactor and which contain a lot of insoluble elements (explained to some degree in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Radioactive_release). The aerosols ‘mature’ as they are spread by the wind and air streams and therefore deposit at distances as far away as Europe (contamination of deer meat in Sweden, Finland and Norway after Chernobyl : http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/28/041/28041597.pdf).

In the case of Fukushima, we have at worst a very mimimal spread of fuel material (a little may have been dispersed by the spent fuel pool fire at reactor 4 or maybe even the wet well breach in reactor 2, but never as much as 6t of fuel in Tchernobyl by a core explosion and fire without containment). The released radionuclides will therefore be volatile and probably mostly in a water soluble form. That means rain may go a long way in cleaning the land and diluting the radioelements in the soil layers and the ground water down to safe contamination levels and quickly reduce the background radiation. I’m inclined to therefore believe that, as soon as releases from the plant are fully stopped and we have had a few days of rain in the neighbourhood, one may expect levels to drop rapidly. I believe some human efforts will be required to clean up around Iidate, though. Are there any specialist around that can comment on these assumptions ?

As far as safe dose limits are concerned, I would only like to offer this link (was given by others before) to put things in perspective : http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-Monfared-HLR-06.ppt

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Ms Perps, David, Barry,
One simply can’t get away with much here. Any sloppy stuff is pounced on! That is one of the main things I like about this site; one can learn from people who present reasoned arguments.

Thank you also for being patient and not simply writing me off as a hopeless case.

The links David provided were interesting but lumped things together that I want to separate. Barry’s link was was a glimpse of an energy future to 2060.

Casting around I could not find the information I wanted for the world as a whole so here is an analysis for the USA based LLRL’s famous diagram for US energy sources and uses in 2008:

Quads %
Hydro2.45
Wind 0.51
Geo 0.35
Solar 0.09

Total
(Whatever happened “Rational Debate”?)

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Ooops!, I must have pressed the “Submit” button by mistake. Here are the numbers summarized from the LLRL diagram for US energy in 2009:

Renewables (Hydro, Geo, Wind &Solar) = 3.9 Quads
Nuclear = 8.5 Quads
Carbon (Petroleum, Natural gas, Coal & Bio) = 82.3
Total energy = 94.6 Quads

Electricity production only (Quads):
Renewables = 3.7
Nuclear = 8.5
Carbon = 26.2
Total electricity = 38.2

My magic wand would replace the 26.2 Quads of carbon based generating plants with nuclear, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the USA by 26.2/82.3 = 32%.

As the USA is an intensive user of electricity I suspect that the world wide reduction would be less than 30%.

Whatever the correct figure, do any of you believe that a reduction of this magnitude would have a significant effect on atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations?

My point is that there are much better reasons for building NPPs than reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

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gallopingcamel, 32% is better than you are going to get from any other single program. And replacing the other non-electrical carbon combustion energy also requires a source of energy; why not nuclear?

Having said which, I agree with you that there are other reasons to go nuclear, but none that penetrate the public consciousness as effectively as reducing carbon emissions.

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Hi GC,

I would agree that the CO2 reduction capacity of nuclear is but one of many very persuasive benefits to nuclear power. That being said, the reason for first attacking the electricity sector of energy generation with nuclear is that electricity is the form of energy that current nuclear design addresses most effectively.

More to your point, I don’t think a straight across comparison between the electricity sector and overall fossil consumption gives an accurate picture of CO2 contributions, due to the carbon intensity of the fuels used. Of the “Big 3” (coal, petro, nat gas), quad for quad, coal by far produces the most CO2.

As to whether the other reasons for NPP’s are “better”, I leave to everyone’s personal sensibilities… the important thing is that they are cumulative and don’t detract from each other,. making the case we all agree on that much stronger… not to mention palatable to a larger and more diverse cohort.

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Gallopingcamel, transportation on land can be almost completely electrified so you get that too. Plus heating of buildings and hot tap water can be mostly passive solar & heat pumps powered by nuclear electric. So you get that as well. Then there are many industries that use fuel oil, natural gas heat etc. that can use high temperature acoustic heat pumps and such, plus replacement of industrial diesel pumps with electrical pumps, that again make society more electric. Getting a 50% fossil fuel reduction with all this on nuclear electric isn’t hard. Add to that some agricultural change and reduction of deforestation and other unsustainable land practices can cut CO2 emissions even further, around 60-70%.

Ships and aircraft are harder. Synthetic fuel is actually easy technically, but economically this will be hard to justify when there are still things to electrify with nuclear electric. Ships could be nuclear, but the economics are kind of dubious so far. Aircraft are really hard. LNG isn’t a bad source for aircraft. We’ll have to make do.

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@gallopingcamel… another point on your post.

You asked,

“Whatever the correct figure, do any of you believe that a reduction of this magnitude would have a significant effect on atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations?”

My response would be, it’s a move in the right direction in any case, and what we are conspicuously lacking is significant progress of any sort! Disregarding temporary historical blips in reduced energy consumption due to economic reversals (with its consequent reduction in CO2 production), the trajectory is clear… fossil fuel consumption has only increased over time. It will continue to do so unless a targeted plan is instituted to specifically reduce it. To start with the biggest producers only makes sense.

Perhaps it wasn’t your intent, but the way you phrase the question conveys a sense of futility in pursuing the effort at all… to wit, does anyone believe this will have any significant effect?

If AGW was the sole reason for supporting a conversion to a NPP dominant electricity sector, and one was not particularly motivated by that issue, then I supppose one could plausibly support a sense of futility, but what about the other equally important reasons you mention (I won’t say “better”)? Here’s one for your consideration…

Global security/economic instability. We have already entered the era of energy resource wars, and contrary to the normal current of conversation on this site, the energy source causing the mayhem is not electricity, it is transportation fuels. Any developed country experiencing electricity scarcity today is in that condition due to choice, bad planning, or both… not inherent global scarcity of a fuel source. Transportation is a different matter entirely.

Maintaining the future of transportation (the largest fraction of the remaining 70% fossil consumption referenced in your comment) can only go two ways… electrification or manufacture of portable fuels. The days of pumping high grade petroleum out of the ground are coming quickly to a close, and as the supply diminishes, mayhem will expand and intensify.

In an electrification scenario, a well developed nuclear infrastructure (ie: implementation of better reactor designs, recent experience in constructing the hundreds of NPP’s necessary to replace coal electric plants, the streamlined regulatory scheme and improved public acceptance such an expansion would require and promote, development of a robust manufacturing base for reactor parts, etc, etc, etc…) would be a perfect compliment.

In a manufactured fuel scenario, due to unaviodable conversion losses, the energy penalty would be immense, and using fossil sources to artificially manufacture hydrocarbons is a “rob Peter to pay Paul” arrangement… AGW aside, the environmental/health consequences would make this scenario untenable. If this approach becomes necessary, only nuclear provides the energy density, at low enough environmental/human cost, to support such inherent inefficiency.

Looking forward, our biggest enemy is Time. We have squandered decades. Urgency is called for, and there is no room for futility. We must make a start, and if the US commited to, and accomplished the task of building the 400 odd NPP’s necessary to replace domestic coal, it would go a long way to laying down the foundation of a sustainable global energy infrastructue.

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@ Cyril R…

I’m not as sanguine as you on the statement, “transportation on land can be almost completely electrified”… barring a revolutionary breakthrough in portable elctricity storage, or a drastic change in lifestyle/quality of life in the estimation of many people, I’m not persuded that the current battery technology is up to the task. (This from a resource availability, cost, and environmental impact perspective, in addition to inadequate capacity).

On the other hand, I fervently hope you’re right… electrification of transportation is the ideal solution in my opinion. However, since I consider it at the root of our current straits, I have a low opinion of wishful thinking.

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Not necessary, use plugin hybrids, 80 to 90% reduction in liquid fuel use with limited battery capacity. Like the Chevrolet Volt. As batteries get better and cheaper, use more battery and even less liquid fuel. At some point you’re almost completely electric vehicle.

More electric trains can be done easily. Century old technology, works well everywhere in the world. Disadvantage is that it requires more infrastructure to be built – more railway – but the advantage is fully electric proven technology.

Trains will be needed for more medium to long distance transport. Remove more from medium to long distance road and plane transport because that’s hard to electrify.

Residual is ships and airplanes, hard to do. LNG will unfurtunately have to be used for this.

Hopefully people will drive and fly less also. I’ve sold my car 3 years ago and its almost never a big problem for me.

Heat pumps are easy and are getting cheaper and more efficient lately. Great for places where passive solar isn’t applicable such as cities.

Future nuclear plants will operate at higher temperature, taking care of the high temp industrial heat market too.

That takes us more than halfway where we need to go. Not a bad start, and there’s perspective for the getting rid of residuals with nuclear.

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The real contribution of nuclear to the CO2 issue is going to be its use by emerging economies. Guaranteeing that they don’t start burning coal and gas is probably more important than the actual reductions that converting Western dirt-burners will realize.

As for electric ground transport, practical storage (or other technology) does exist for much of it to be converted right now. The limiting factors are cost and political will, but there are signs that there is a drift towards that solution occurring anyway. With some luck, a tipping point will come where market forces will kick in, and the rising price of motor fuels is bringing that day closer.

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Could we please have an article on BNC about converting transport, heating, industry to electric/non-fossil sources please? I’m sure there are a couple of good posters here who could write something great.

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Enviromentalist : “Read it again, when compared to a PV farm 5 people died in a nuclear plant. there are no cranes in a PV farm nor infrastructure that can collapse on you.”

There is not 5 but just 1 worker deceased in a crane accident caused by the earth quake, but at Fukushima 2, where all reactors safely stopped in cool mode. 2 other workers have died at Fukushima 1 because of the tsunami.

Anyway, your accounting doesn’t hold waters so to speak. Many teachers have died in kindergardens because of the earthquake then tsunami. Following your logic, kindergardens would be much more lethal than nuclear plants.

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Where could I find information on the maximum allowances of radiation in drinking water and air? I’ve read about the reccomendations for drinking water in Japan (300Bq/kg of I-131), but what about the US?

there is a lot of discussion (and false claims) on how much radiation there is in rainwater in the US, for example, but I was unable to find any guidelines on this apart from the Japanese ones.

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I believe that vehicles that need longer range than batteries can provide should be bi-fuel, either CNG/petrol or CNG/diesel. That way public or private CNG filling stations can develop slowly as liquid fuels phase out. Methane is quite energy dense on a weight basis, about 40 MJ per kg. The required 220 bar compression is similar to scuba tanks. Something will have to be done about the 3% fugitive emissions.

A problem with a massive shift to CNG for vehicles (recently hinted at by Obama) is that stationary users of gas will lose the price war. That is a major flaw in the uptake of gas fired electrical generation. Some claim fracking will treble world gas reserves but we’ll have to see.

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Joffan, John Rogers, Cyril R et al.,
The last thing I would want to convey is the idea that it is futile to pursue a NPP dominated energy future. That is where we are inevitably headed and what bothers me is that little will be done until fossil fuels are running out.

I support Barry’s vision for a 2060 with electric automobiles in the ascendant and therefore a massive increase in electrical generating capacity. I support the idea of building a “Nuke” per day until the whole world and especially today’s “have nots” can access cheap electricity.

How do we get there from here? Legislation in the USA makes NPPs a dubious investment here. Australia has a flat out prohibition. The Brits have fallen in love with windmills. The French have lost their nerve as evidenced by shutting down advanced projects such as Super-Phenix. The Germans are rushing around like chickens with their heads cut off. Who knows what will happen in Japan following Fukushima?

There is good news. The Russians see Fukushima as a reason to speed up the introduction of new, safer NPP designs. The Chinese are building NPPs faster than anyone. The Czech Republic and India are building Thorium cycle reactors while ORNL talks about them. Canada remains a source of hope.

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@gallopingcamel – Make no mistake about it: the enemy of nuclear energy is fossil-fuels. They are lobbying in the background to keep nuclear expensive, and funding the groups that are whipping the masses up over the supposed dangers of nuclear. The evidence is glaringly obvious if anyone wants to look for it. Big Carbon wants to hold nuclear off because they, and they alone will suffer from a loss of revenue.

Meanwhile we get hung up arguing with windbags, that don’t even know enough about the subjects they are for or against to mount a descent argument, or marshal the available facts. As entertaining as sparing with them might be, it is a sideshow to the real fight.

In the end the only thing that will get nuclear energy moving at the rate that it needs to be to make a difference, is a groundswell of public support. We know that it can be done because we saw it happen to nuclear, when public pressure stopped it in its tracks thirty years ago.

We need leadership, organization, and funds to make a difference, and until these are forthcoming we are spinning our wheels.

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“…. details from the general Japanese press …. TEPCO has shown a map of the rad levels on site. The discovery of a general 300 mSv area (30 R/hr) has been noted and our previously reported finding of a piece of debris reading 900 mSv (90 R/hr) has been repeated. This helps explain why TEPCO is now working so hard on using the remote controlled vehicles …. TEPCO now sees a rising water level in the No. 3 and No. 4 plant turbine buildings… and this water is now much more highly contaminated than it was one week ago. There doesn’t seem to be much use in speculating where the water in each building is coming from; it may be one water mass, essentially, through fissures and voids in the ground / concrete / foundations and there could be water from all the plants in communication….”

http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-brief-details-on-fukushima.html

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Update today on progress (lack thereof) preparing for another similar situation:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110426p2g00m0dm005000c.html

“… TOKYO (Kyodo) — Most nuclear reactors in Japan would fail to achieve a stable condition in the event that all regular power sources are lost, even though plant operators have prepared new backup power sources as well as electric generators following the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Kyodo News found Monday.

… the backup power sources do not have enough capacity to operate all of the devices needed to keep the reactors cool.

Many reactors still effectively have no alternative power source should emergency diesel generators fail to work ….
…
… utility sources said that the power supply can only run measuring gauges and small-scale water injection devices. “They are far from being described as backups to emergency power generators,” one of the sources said.

… onlyTokyo Electric Power Co., … said it can keep cooling four of its operating reactors at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power station in Niigata Prefecture by using one 4,500-kilowatt power-supply vehicle and four 500-kilowatt ones.

Among the operators that have not secured sufficient backups was the Japan Atomic Power Co., which said that it needs about 3,500 kilowatts to safely keep cooling its No.2 reactor at the Tsuruga power station in Fukui Prefecture, but only has deployed a 220-kilowatt and a 800-kilowatt power-supply vehicle.

The company is trying to secure three 1,825-kilowatt power-supply vehicles with the hope of deploying them by around March next year, the sources said.

Chubu Electric Power Co. has installed nine more diesel power generators for its five reactors, including two reactors that are in the process of being scrapped, at its Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. The plant is at risk of being hit by a big earthquake expected in the Tokai region.

But the diesel generators, which have been placed on higher ground so that they would not be affected by tsunami, have only a small power capacity so the utility plans to locate three gas turbine generators at the site, the sources said.

Hokkaido Electric Power Co. has also deployed one 3,200-kilowatt power-supply vehicle at its Tomari power station, but the capacity is not enough to achieve stable shutdown of the reactors and it plans to add a second vehicle within two years, the sources said….”
——

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I’m a bit confused about the radiation in the exclusion zone. On p15 of the slideshow from TEPCO, the highest radiation I can find is 270µSv/h. But the latest update from IAEA says:
“Dose rates are also reported specifically for the eastern part of Fukushima prefecture, for distances beyond 30 km from Fukushima Daiichi. On 19 April the values in this area ranged from 0.1 to 22 µSv/h.”
and:
“For Fukushima on 20 April a gamma dose rate of 1.9 µSv/h was reported”

This are quite differing numbers..

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Hello:

I’m a bit confused about some of the figures we are reading this days regarding reactor 1 water level.
It is announced that, since several days, water is being injected at a rate of 6T/h. That means 6 cubic meters per hour. Hank Roberts has posted that steam generation is in the range of 2t/h, so effective water injection must be 4T/h, or 4 cubic meters/h.
Data from reactor 1 vessel says it’s 20m tall and 4,8m in diameter, so it will have near 362 cubic meters. At that rate, in 90 hours it will have to be completely full… Where am I wrong? Or where is the missing water?
Thanks for any idea! And thanks for your interesting blog!

Manel

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> Manal
> 2t/h

You’re referring to something I quoted, after I found it (it’s the source for something Barry Brook quoted earlier in the thread).

That’s not something of my own knowledge. The original source is:
http://www.aesj.or.jp/information/fnpp201103/chousasenmoniinkai_EN.html

It’s consistent with the ongoing reports, for example at http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-brief-details-on-fukushima.html

I quoted a brief excerpt on the water numbers from atomicpowerreview above:

Fukushima Daiichi Open and Update Thread #5

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> JD, on 26 April 2011 at 8:57 PM said:
> I’m a bit confused … p15 of the slideshow from
> TEPCO, the highest radiation I can find is 270µSv/h.

The labels on that page don’t match the explanation — it explains three of the four numbers shown in each box, but doesn’t explain the number inside the angle brackets. Your example I think is from

Station number [33]
Accumulative dose 10120 microsieverts
Unexplained number 270 in angle brackets
Dose per hour (11.1) microsieverts

Anyone figure that one out?

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TerjeP, the article doesn’t really argue that. It asserts “some say” that, in a couple of paragraphs tagged on the end.

The half-argument they make is that Japan is an advanced nation, whereas the Soviet Union – the first nation to orbit a satellite, and a man – was some backward bunch of rock-bashers. They abuse the phrase “out of control” to suggest continuing problems of comparable magnitude, but what is actually happening is that the reactors are being contained in their damaged state and gradually brought back towards a full controlled shutdown state.

Not really news so much as more sensationalism-surfing. Ride that wave of readers!

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The quotes in the CSMonitor article seem to be from UBS. They don’t describe the USSR as “rock bashers” but as having “no tradition of industrial safety” compared to Japan’s engineering. Dunno; Murphy shows up everywhere.

This seems to be the key quote from the CSMonitor piece, and it’s been picked up by going on 50 blogs so far.

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oops, _this_ seems to be the key quote:

““At Fukushima, four reactors have been out of control for weeks – casting doubt on whether even an advanced economy can master nuclear safety,” wrote UBS analysts in the study, released April 4.”

Three reactors and four spent fuel pools, to be precise. Close enough for bank analysts.

One of these three items from UBS might be the source, I didn’t read them, but here’s the search:
http://www.ubs.com/3/e?pg=1&or=r&el=t&lo=t&qt=chernobyl

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Joffan says: They abuse the phrase “out of control” to suggest continuing problems of comparable magnitude, but what is actually happening is that the reactors are being contained in their damaged state and gradually brought back towards a full controlled shutdown state.

I’m afraid I have to take issue with the general attitude of that statement, and particularly with “… are being contained in their damaged state”.

It’s clear just from this thread that the radioactive elements are not contained. Highly radioactive water is leaking from at least two reactors and a spent fuel pool; TEPCO is hoping to shore up the SFP before leaks overwhelm them. A pool of water outside reactor 3 is emitting 300 mSv per hour, and debris has been found at .9 Sv/hour. Highly radioactive water continues to accumulate as water pumped into the cores and SFP leaks out.

The government is making part of the evacuation zone continue indefinitely.

My guess is that the situation will be resolved over the coming months. This is far from assured, however: the worst case is still pretty bad.

This is not what I would characterize as “contained”. Your mileage may vary.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42772893/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

“… In Japan, the web of connections between the nuclear industry and government officials is now popularly referred to as the “nuclear power village.” The expression connotes the nontransparent, collusive interests that underlie the establishment’s push to increase nuclear power despite the discovery of active fault lines under plants, new projections about the size of tsunamis and a long history of cover-ups of safety problems.

Just as in any Japanese village, the likeminded — nuclear industry officials, bureaucrats, politicians and scientists — have prospered by rewarding one another with construction projects, lucrative positions, and political, financial and regulatory support. The few openly skeptical of nuclear power’s safety become village outcasts, losing out on promotions and backing. ….”

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This Union of Concerned Scientists’ article makes it clear that “Murphy” makes appearances at US nuclear plants.

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4950329470/fission-stories-37-befuddled-at-brunswick

While this article from the same source would indicate that there is also a US “nuclear power village.” or at least a serious culture problem that makes it difficult to address safety issues.

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4814761753/susquehanna-spent-fuel-pool-concerns-and-how-i-ended

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> Murphy

I missed when Murphy married Cassandra; clearly they’re working together on this stuff.

From the article Ted links to just above — this is the sort of thing where the most avidly pro-nuclear enthusiast ought to be getting up and howling that yes, it _does_ have to be done _right_.

With great nuclear power comes great nuclear responsibility.

But gad, look at that article. Cassandra warned years ago this would happen. Murphy m

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… Murphy made it happen.

“… The NRC granted our request for a public meeting for us to communicate our concerns to the agency. About 15 minutes into that meeting on October 1, 1993, the NRC project manager for Susquehanna was sound asleep and snoring in the first row.

The issues were resolved at Susquehanna by the owners’ commitment to always operate with the spent fuel pools connected to each other. In case of an accident involving the Unit 1 reactor core, the systems on Unit 2 could be used to cool both spent fuel pools without adversely affecting conditions inside the Unit 1 reactor building, and vice-versa. The owner also took steps to install additional instrumentation to enable operators to monitor spent fuel pool water levels and temperatures and resolve the standby gas treatment system design issues.

However, little to nothing has been done to address the spent fuel pool vulnerabilities at other BWRs in this country.

Following this incident, I authored Nuclear Waste Disposal Crisis, a book about spent fuel storage issues. It was released by PennWell Publishing in January 1996. Chapter 8 outlined spent fuel pool safety issues. Chapter 9 detailed our spent fuel pool concerns at Susquehanna. And Appendix A summarized actual spent fuel pool problems that occurred at U.S. nuclear power reactors…..”

Look at that. Cassandra.
Look at Fukushima. Murphy.

Look at the rest of the industry with this skeptical eye and say — get it right. Get it together. Understand the power requires better management.

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Manel, on 26 April 2011 at 11:13 PM said:

Hello:
>>.Data from reactor 1 vessel says it’s 20m tall and 4,8m in diameter, so it will have near 362 cubic meters. At that rate, in 90 hours it will have to be completely full… Where am I wrong? Or where is >>the missing water?.

4.8m X 20m tall sounds like the reactor vessel. They are flooding the containment vessel which involves flooding the wet well(torus) and the containment building.

To flood the containment building up to the top of the fuel is about 10,000 m3 of water.

Details of the flooding-
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110426D26JF238.htm

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Murphy’s Law? Hank Roberts, I though you were a scientific person ; )

Murphy’s Law might have predicted that the seawater injection cooling didn’t work – but it did. It might have predicted that the containment would fail, because it can, but it didn’t.

The newer plants are consecutively less damaged: 70% fuel damage, 30% fuel damage, 25% fuel damage, newer ones in the area had no fuel damage. That’s the effect of newer, improved technology.

One of the strengths of nuclear power has turned to its demise at Fukushima Daiich: nuclear plants last a long time. If you don’t upgrade old technology (as is done more in the US following TMI) you’re stuck with old technology for a long time.

Still, the invention of the Mark I BWR containment has saved many lives from the dangerous fossil fuels, and Japan’s nuclear financial balance is similarly showing a fat positive cashflow with about 5 trillion kWhs from nuclear in total over all years. And now it’s time to move on with newer ABWRs and ESBWRs, and further out with the IFRs and LFTRs many more can be saved from fossil fuel pollution deaths.

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Cyril, Murphy doesn’t say everything that can go wrong will go wrong all at the same time. If you don’t see Murphy demonstrating what Cassandra warned about, I suggest looking again at the references.

Compare Cassandra
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4814761753/susquehanna-spent-fuel-pool-concerns-and-how-i-ended (warning against the ‘answer’ that if one reactor fails, the one next door will handle cooling)

with Murphy (ongoing, not done yet)
http://www.aesj.or.jp/information/fnpp201103/chousasenmoniinkai_EN.html

Seawater hasn’t worked — yet — for values of “work” better than “disaster”

Containment has failed — for values of containment better than “slow leak rather than hot melted core”

Seriously — if we want to implement the huge rollout of nuclear power needed to displace fossil fuel with the amount of climate change already committed — with sea level rise, temperature and rainfall changes, and the rest — these sorts of warnings need to be taken seriously.

The nuclear industry needs to take itself more seriously — not pretend they weren’t warned or that nothing bad has happened yet.

Murphy would go to some other country and pull some other surprise. Cassandra would say “told you so” — so, who’s listening?

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Lots more news and photos posted over at http://atomicpowerreview.com

“… TEPCO has released the fact that the robots detected a rad field of 112 R/hr inside the No. 1 reactor building, although it is not apparent just where this was.

In another development, TEPCO is becoming sure that the spent fuel pool at No. 4 plant is leaking somewhere, since the rate at which it’s adding water can’t be evaporating fast enough to account for the daily level loss. ….
6:00 AM Eastern Wednesday 4/27”

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