Column of the Day: What’s happening in Fukushima?

9/20,Japanese government declared Fukushima nuclear plants can be settled (kept under 100C) (“cold shutdown”) by the end of this year.

Link

However,Koide from Kyoto university warns it is too unrealistic.

As he says,we do not know where the fuel rods in the reactors.We do not even know how the vessels are right now.

They managed to fix the water measurement is reactor 1,but the measurements are broken in reactor 2 and 3. We do not even know where the water is which they keep giving in.

9/20,Tepco admitted hundreds of tons of water flow into the basement floor of each reactor on the daily basis.

Tokyo newspaper reported there were 100,000 tons of water.It must be reduced to 51,600 tons after pumping by 9/13.However,there is estimated at least 81,300 tons water still.

Tepco has been explaining it is because of water,but still it’s too much.

Tokyo newspaper reports there is possibility that groundwater is flowing into the basement floor from the cracks.

From the view of a civil engineer (me),another possibility is that water is coming from “the sea”.It sounds more rational that there is a crack / cracks to connect the basement floor and sea,and sea water comes into the basement floor.

If so,no matter how much they pump up the water,water keeps coming in by siphon effect until the surface is as high as sea water level.(the same mechanism of toilet)

Koide estimates nuclear fuel rods may be now 12m deep under ground at reactor 1-3. Only God knows about reactor 4.

Melted rods can not be taken out for 1~2 years. One piece of the fuel rods is estimated to sink into the ground at a rate of 17m per year. Therefore, 2 years from now,they may be 34m underground.

Yesterday,they detected 1.38 uSv/h in Tokyo University.

http://kipuka.blog70.fc2.com/blog-entry-423.html

Also,in Fukushima city,they detected 400,000 Bq/kg from the dust in the street ditch.

It’s 30 uSv/h in front of Fukushima station.

http://ameblo.jp/pochifx/entry-11023324387.html

As seeing people live as if nothing is going on,I can’t help calling it madness.

Now typhoon 15th is coming north in Japan.They assume it will hit Fukushima.

Living cost is too much in Japan.

Image link

  1. “Children In Japan Purposely Killed by Japanese Govt- Nuclear Radiation Fallout Fukushima Chernobyl” ?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRjiYpo7WXs

    Professor Busby has a foundation for children of Fukushima, please stand with him as he is being attacked well organized blogs in Japan that are strangely pro industry and Gov over children-Japans Future

  2. Japan has no business with uranium.It has too many earthquakes,tsunamis,etc.No one should be allowed to sell them atomic equipment or fuel.Bad idea.Germany has gone clean as well.USA should also.

  3. Why should the reactor molten mass ,also called the corium, melt through the thick concrete slab like a china syndrome accident?
    That is very unlikely, The slab is 2 meters thick, it is saturated with water and there is plenty water over the corium to remove heat. The moment the corium comes into contact with water it solidifies. Just the initial heat in the days after the reactor scram is problematic, after some time there is no heatremoval problem , with even moderate cooling water flow. Deep inside the corium there can be spots where the heat must travel large distance to the water removed with somewhat higher temperature. Do not forget that even a corium has a lot of neutron absorbent’s in it, even reinforced with the calcium from the concrete which is a good neutron absorber, but the aditional molten controlrods and neutron absorbents in the coolingwater make nuclear fission impossible, so there is only waste element halflife heat generation and no fission-reaction as a lot of people think. After a half year, the total heat production in this corium ,which drops every day and is in the order of tens of kilowatt and not in the megawatt order like in the first days, can be dealt with with the emergency cooling circuits.
    That the corium woould sink in the soil is a Hollywood story theory but no engineering fact. so 17 meters? no way …zero meters. And the opinion from most experts is that most of the corium is still in the reactor vessels although some leakage via weak spots in the vessel near controlrods boreholes, dropping in the room underneath it and solidifying there, in the leaked cooling water. Ultra sound and Xray measurements will give answer , in what form and how distributed, the corium is now. But it is still to early to do that( specialised equipment must be designed and manufactured) , anyway there is little chance that the reactors get more dangerous than they are now, and the future of this Nuclear-powerplant becomes boring: there will be cooling like this, the next years, until there is conviction that the corium mass can be recovered in a safe and economic way. In the mean time there is an effort to get all steam production of the cooling water to zero so dropping the cooling water temperature everywhere in the open reactor circuit, below 100 degrees C ,is a must,Evaporation of this cooling-water is the way that dissolved waste elements in this cooling-water get into the atmosphere and give radioactive caesium pollution, some, but very little compared with the initial radioactive emission in march 2011. There will be made a polyester cover over al the reactors to catch al emissions of the reactor, particular like steam and noblegasses, to absorb it, in carbonfilters , zeolites and with chemicals and store it safely .After that, the total emission of Fukoshima NPP will be zero .
    It can take up to 30 or even more, years until it could be economic to dismantle the plant. In the mean time, some small cooling pump and cooling water decontamination will go on, with small crews . In the near future clean-up people will work there and the turbine hall could be scrapped. In fact the disaster is already over.

    1. Wow, who would have thought it. Just when we were getting worried you go and explain how fine and dandy things really are and there is definately nothing at all to see here folks, Thanks wise and helpful person.

      1. This guy is a retard by assumming he knows what the mass is doing in thoes basements. For all he knows it could be in the ground already and probably is.

  4. I think all those claiming that there is no problem should go and live there.

    What! no takers?

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About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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