[Scape]

djakeydd djakeydd:

This catastrophe is not going away - my question: why is the world community, IAEA et al, not demanding they start (with all assistance possible) entombing this whole place as was done with Chernobyl? They are fiddling around trying to determine exactly what is taking place in the core, what does it matter, its a write off - entomb the thing NOW.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/rad ... story.html

A few things:

1) There are 4 reactors here in danger, Chernobyl was one.

2) One of those reactors is using MOX. Much more dangerious. This needs to be made safe before we can bury it 1st.

3) It will takes months for the reactors to cool to a point that burying them will be an option and 5 years before the spent fuel cools to a point that they will not boil off water. If we bury them then they will melt and then recriticality or reignition will happen. That will be a dirty bomb and even buried it will erupt becuase we are talking huge quanities here.

In short we need to keep them cool for a long time before we can properly store and deactivate them.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Aw, gawwd.

[Brenda]

Can't they recycle the water that's stored in the tanks tho? Or is that a very stupid question?

[Bruce_the_vii]

I am pro-nuclear, at least pro-Candu, but I knew reactors are dangerous and it was only a matter of time before one melted down. Then, pow, four at once. Gawwd.

[DerbyX]

Why aren't we using liquid N2 or O2? Flash cool them then encase them in something that can handle the rads and allow us to cool them as well.

[DrCaleb]

DerbyX DerbyX:

Why aren't we using liquid N2 or O2? Flash cool them then encase them in something that can handle the rads and allow us to cool them as well.

How would that be delivered, and used without cracking the concrete holding the cores?

There are smarter people than us working on the problem.

[djakeydd]

Guy_Fawkes Guy_Fawkes:

If reactions are still going on, entombing it will only increase the pressure.

You are correct:

When The Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater
By Dr. Tom Burnett
3-27-11

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won't admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won't simply cool down. It will explode ­ not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense ­ it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different ­ a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That's probably a bad solution.

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

Fukushima was waiting to happen because of the placement of the emergency generators. If they had not all failed at once by being inundated by a tsunami, Fukushima would not have happened as it did ­ although it WOULD still have been a nuclear disaster. Every containment in the world is built to withstand a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake; the Japanese chose to ignore the fact that a similar earthquake had hit that same general area in 1896.

Anyway, here is the information that the US doesn't seem to want released. And here is a chart that might help with perspective.

Making matters worse is the MOX in reactor 3. MOX is the street name for 'mixed oxide fuel' which uses ~9% plutonium along with a uranium compound to fuel reactors. This is why it can be used.

The problem is that you don't want to play with this stuff. A nuclear reactor means bring fissile material to a point at which it is hot enough to boil water (in a light-water reactor) and not enough to melt and go supercritical (China syndrome or a Chernobyl incident). You simply cannot let it get away from you because if it does, you can't stop it.

The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That's not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

[DrCaleb]

djakeydd djakeydd:

A nuclear meltdown is a self-sustaining reaction. Nothing can stop it except stopping the reaction. And that would require a nuclear weapon. In fact, it would require one in each containment to merely stop what is going on now. But it will be messy.

roflmao. Good to see you are still posting such well researched articles! The rest, of course is just as good.

To quote another poster; "If you look at about 10 seconds in, you'll see the telltale sign of squibs proving it was Bush's fault".

[djakeydd]

Well, have you got a better solution einstein?? I love you monday am qb's. Also, he was obviously talking theoretically, who is going to plant a 10 Kiloton bomb inside a reactor core thats out of control??

[Scape]

DerbyX DerbyX:

Why aren't we using liquid N2 or O2? Flash cool them then encase them in something that can handle the rads and allow us to cool them as well.

Dr Caleb has already answered that but let's say I were to throw you into a microwave with a box of dry ice. Before you explode you could use the dry ice to try and cool down but a chemical reaction will not mitigate the effects of radioactivity only defer them. So the flash freezing may get the reactors cool for a moment after the freezing is done they will go right back to being hot. Also, the reactors are now surrounded by hydrogen (explosive) and encrusted in tons of salt from the evaporated sea water so the fresh water will be less effective at cooling as the rods will now be insulated by the salt.

Hope that clears things up.

[ShepherdsDog]

hmmm..... heat + an abundance of O2.

[DrCaleb]

djakeydd djakeydd:

Well, have you got a better solution einstein?? I love you monday am qb's. Also, he was obviously talking theoretically, who is going to plant a 10 Kiloton bomb inside a reactor core thats out of control??

Do I look like a nuclear engineer working in Japan? Well, yes, I sort of do judging from the handsome representation to the left, but I'm not.

There are many ways to cool the reaction, without resorting to nukes. One of them being, letting the cores melt on to the floor, and thereby reducing the density and increasing the surface area of the uranium.

As they were designed to do.

Like I said several pages ago.

That was but one under researched overreaction presented by your cut and paste article.

[martin14]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

djakeydd djakeydd:

Well, have you got a better solution einstein?? I love you monday am qb's. Also, he was obviously talking theoretically, who is going to plant a 10 Kiloton bomb inside a reactor core thats out of control??

Do I look like a nuclear engineer working in Japan? Well, yes, I sort of do judging from the handsome representation to the left, but I'm not.

There are many ways to cool the reaction, without resorting to nukes. One of them being, letting the cores melt on to the floor, and thereby reducing the density and increasing the surface area of the uranium.

As they were designed to do.

Like I said several pages ago.

That was but one under researched overreaction presented by your cut and paste article.

Chances are that has already happened in at least one reactor.

[DrCaleb]

martin14 martin14:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

djakeydd djakeydd:

Well, have you got a better solution einstein?? I love you monday am qb's. Also, he was obviously talking theoretically, who is going to plant a 10 Kiloton bomb inside a reactor core thats out of control??

Do I look like a nuclear engineer working in Japan? Well, yes, I sort of do judging from the handsome representation to the left, but I'm not.

There are many ways to cool the reaction, without resorting to nukes. One of them being, letting the cores melt on to the floor, and thereby reducing the density and increasing the surface area of the uranium.

As they were designed to do.

Like I said several pages ago.

That was but one under researched overreaction presented by your cut and paste article.

Chances are that has already happened in at least one reactor.

Yea, I read bits around too that it's a possibility. That's good. At least it will cool now, and stop spewing all the isotopes everywhere.

[Scape]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Do I look like a nuclear engineer working in Japan?

I wasn't going to say anything but you were looking a little thin:

Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor

$1:

Because deliveries of supplies are limited, they get by on very little food: Breakfast is packages of high-calorie emergency crackers and a small carton of vegetable juice; dinner consists of a small bag of "magic rice" (just add bottled water) and a can of chicken, mackerel or curry. There is no lunch — handing out a noontime meal would be too complicated in the crowded two-story building.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

There are many ways to cool the reaction, without resorting to nukes. One of them being, letting the cores melt on to the floor, and thereby reducing the density and increasing the surface area of the uranium.

That ship seems to have sailed:

Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor

$1:

The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.