Figure 2. DigitalGlobe commercial satellite image taken of the same
site, showing reactor buildings for Units 5 and 6.
http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/new-satellite-image-of-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-site-in-japan-from-march-1/37
Unit 3, plutonium MOX, the worst…
Risk: 21+ Chernobyl s ? – 20 years of Spent Fuel Rods Stored at Daiichi
…
This is just incredible. It turns out, this type of GE reactor is
designed to hold tens of thousands of intensely radioactive spent fuel
rods, not only on site, not only inside the reactor building, but in
pools that are literally right on top of the reactor. There are 3450
fuel rod assemblies (each holding 63 fuel rods) in those pools which is
approximately 20 years worth of fuel rods, and they have no containment
structure around them. Just water to keep them cool and suppress the
gamma radiation. In other words, each of the four reactors at the
Daiichi plant holds the potential for 21 Chernobyls. If those fuel rods
don’t have water covering them, they will catch fire and begin a nuclear
meltdown. According to Congressional testimony today by Gregory Jaczko,
chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there is now little or
no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored
there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. That is
apparently the source of the fire in that reactor – the fuel rods
themselves are burning.
We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which
could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.” Jaczko
told Congress today.
According to the US-based Institute for Science and International
Security, there has been an explosion at reactor 4 in the past 24 hours
that apparently has gone unreported. Here is the satellite pic – you can
see the newly-damaged building of reactor 4 on the left:
Figure 1. DigitalGlobe commercial satellite image of the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear site taken at 9:35AM local time on March 16, 2011.
Next to it you can see massive plumes of intensely radioactive steam
coming from reactor 3 – that’s the one that has the plutonium MOX fuel;
you know – the one that had the big explosion reported yesterday. Oh,
and today Japanese officials admitted the containment vessel in reactor
3 has indeed been breached. It apparently is in full scale meltdown.
Next to reactor 3, you can see steam venting from reactor 2 through a
hole made by workers. Japanese officials admitted that containment
vessel is also cracked.
Apparently there are no workers at the plant now because the radiation
is so intense that the workers would die before being able to accomplish
anything much. It’s so intense they even abandoned a desperate plan to
drop water on the spent fuel rods by helicopter. As near as I can
determine, there is nothing anyone will be able to do to prevent each of
the four reactors (and perhaps all of their spent fuel rods) from
undergoing meltdown, with further explosions and release of ungodly
amounts of radiation.
Then there is an additional, larger spent fuel pool in a separate
building on the site which holds another 6291 spent fuel rod assemblies.
The tsunami blew out the windows of that building, presumably causing
considerable damage.
And there are two additional reactors – 5 and 6 – at the Daiichi
plant. Those don’t appear to be leaking anything at the moment, but they
apparently contain the same amount of spent fuel rods as the other four
reactors on the site.
And don’t forget there is the sister plant Fukushima Dai-ni, where
there are another 4 reactors, three of which have had the cooling water
systems knocked out by the quake/tsunami. So those are in extreme danger
of meltdown also.
A report on the spent fuel at Daiichi from Tokyo Electric last year
showed that at the time of the quake there would have been close to
11,000 spent fuel assemblies stored on site, a total of some 660,000
fuel rods:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
Compare that to the 1700 fuel rods that burned at Chernobyl, releasing
400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb and causing 1 million
deaths world-wide.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/
Nuke engineer: Fuel rod fire at Fukushima reactor “would be like Chernobyl on steroids”
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Monday March 14, 2011 12:14 am
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/explosion-at-fukushima-nuke-smoke-billowing-and-walls-collapsed/
http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/
The Fukushima reactor building that exploded
March 12 is one of a series of identical General Electric reactors
constructed in Japan and the US. In this reactor design, the used
nuclear fuel rods are stored in pools of water at the top of the reactor
building. These spent rods are still highly radioactive:
the radioactivity is so great the rods must be stored in water so they
do not combust. The explosion at Fukushima Daiichi reactor unit 1
apparently destroyed at least one wall and the roof of the building:
some reports stated the roof had collapsed into the building.
Two days later, the nearby building containing the plutonium-uranium
(MOX) fueled Fuksuhima Daichii reactor unit 3 exploded.
So why bother about the rubble of reactor No 1? The WaPo quotes a
nuclear engineer who knows the answer:
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/03/13/japan-nuclear-watch-possible-new-explosion-at-naiichi-3/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/at-two-reactors-a-race-to-contain-meltdowns/2011/03/13/ABtdVDU_story.html
Although Tokyo Electric said it also continued to deal with cooling
system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in
the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the
pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored.
At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion
Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool,
in accordance with General Electrics design, is placed above the
reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain
water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems
there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool
would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom
think that units pool may now be outside.
That would be like Chernobyl on steroids, said Arnie
Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of
the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which
is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.
People familiar with the plant said there are seven spent fuel pools
at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed.
Gundersen said the unit 1 pool could have as much as 20 years of spent
fuel rods, which are still radioactive.
Wed be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods
from a single holding pool. Were not that lucky. The Fukushima
Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top
of six reactor buildings. One common pool is at ground
level in a separate building. Each reactor top pool holds
3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod
assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost
certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds
sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over
600,000 spent fuel rods.
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446
The fuel rods must be kept submerged in water. Why? Outside of the
water bath, the radioactivity in the used rods can cause them to become
so hot they begin to catch fire. These fires can burn so hot the
radioactive rod contents are carried into the atmosphere as vaporized
material or as very small particles. Reactor no 3 burns MOX fuel that
contains a mix of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium generates more heat
than uranium, which means these rods have the greatest risk of
burning. Thats bad news, because plutonium scattered into the
atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods
without plutonium.
Chernobyl on steroids. When the nuclear engineer from an identical
plant states theres any possibility of such a catastrophe,
Washington, we have a problem. Chernobyls contamination settled
upon people and nations thousands of miles from that reactors
location. How far would Chernobyl on steroids travel? And
where are the up to 20 years of reactor no 1 spent fuel rods that could
cause such a problem, and the spent fuel rods held until the
building exploded in in the spent fuel rod pool atop reactor no 3?
Along with the rest of the planet, Washingtons looking at the
risk of a potential catastrophe. At least when it comes to finding the
fuel rods from reactor 1, Washington possesses some unique assets. One
asset the secretive
National Reconassiance Office runs the spy satellites
remote sensing devices that enable US national security to spy on planet
Earth. The NROs slightly less secretive cousin over at the the Pentagon is
the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA, in turn, controls MASINT measures
and signatures technologies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/07/nro_2010.html
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/gov-orgs/dia/
What is MASINT? FDLs recent guest Tim Shorrock answered that
question a few years ago for CorpWatch:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14821
MASINT is a highly classified form of intelligence that uses
infrared sensors and other technologies to sniff the atmosphere for certain
chemicals and electro-magnetic activity and see beneath
bridges and forest canopies. Using its tools, analysts can detect signs
that a nuclear power plant is producing plutonium, determine from truck
exhaust what types of vehicles are in a convoy, and detect people and
weapons hidden from the view of satellites or photoreconnaissance aircraft.
With assets like the NRO and the DIAs MASINT capacity, even an
Obama administration that couldnt find out millions of of
barrels of Corexit and crude oil would poison the Gulf should be able to
help Japans Fukushima plant locate their missing fuel rods. And
do so before the missing rods or any of the other pools of fuel
rods in Japans stricken reactors ignite Chernobyl on steroids.
Once Obama and his generals have found the fuel rods, lets
hope theyll time out from Gridion dinners and collateral damage
and let the Americans who pay for all the fancy spy technology know
whats happening. Because now that Americans are hearing
CNNs Dr. Gupta talking about potassium iodide (KI) to prevent
radiation toxicity, theyre going to be wondering if they need to
take KI. As long as we dont see massive uncontrolled radiation
releases from the stricken reactors, they probably wont. Should
we see Chernobyl on steroids, Americans may need a whole lot more than
KI. And until the spent fuel rods are located, there wont be
enough information to let Americans plan how to protect their loved
ones. Unless we all learn the fuel rods have caught fire.
[Note: revised at 3:15 PM Pacific on 3/14/11]
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/
Why Fukushima’s “spent” fuel rods will continue to catch fire
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Tuesday March 15, 2011 4:26 pm
http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/
Yesterday the spent fuel rod pool at Fukushima Daiichi reactor 4
caught fire. About that time instruments at the plant showed an
exponential increase in radiation levels. After the fire was quenched,
radiation levels fell. In the hour before I sat down to write this,
there was an explosion at the same spent fuel rod pool. As I write,
another fire is burning there. NHK reports the radiation level –
300 to 400 milliSieverts – is so high that firefighters cannot
approach the area.
>
>NHK reports that by Monday March 14 the temperature in the spent fuel
rod pool was 84 degrees C: nearly double the usual temperature. NHK
reports that there aren’t temperature readings for today:
technical failure. We do know the pool temperature increased by roughly
twenty degrees C per day after loss of power on Friday. And we know that
water boils at 100 degrees C.
>
>The spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 is one of
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439>seven
pools for spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daichii. These pools are designed
to store the intensively radioactive fuel rods that were already used in
nuclear reactors. These “used� fuel rods still contain
uranium (or in the case of fuel rods from reactor 3, they contain both
uranium and plutonium from the MOX fuel used in that reactor). In
addition to the uranium and plutonium, the rods also contain other
radioactive elements. These radioactive elements are created in the rods
by the intense radiation around the rods when they are in the reactor
core (before they are moved to the spent fuel pools).
>
>Six of the spent fuel rod pools are (or were) located at the top of
six reactor buildings. One “common pool� is at ground level
in a separate building. Each “reactor top� pool holds up to
3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds up to 6291 fuel rod
assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost
certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446>sixty-three
fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over
600,000 spent fuel rods. The fuel rods once stored atop reactor 3 may no
longer be there: one of the several explosions at the Fukushima reactors
may have damaged that pool.
>
>Now that we have partial meltdown in the reactor vessels – the part
of the reactor where nuclear reactions are supposed to happen – in at
least three of the Daiichi palnt’s six reactors, why bother with
swimming pools for fuel rods? Simple. Even after they are no longer
usable to drive nuclear fission in the reactor vessels, the
“spent� fuel rods are still highly radioactive. Part of
that radioactive energy is emitted as heat. That’s no surprise:
heat from radioactivity is the how the reactor core vessels generate the
heat that drives the nuclear plant’s turbines to generate
electricity. The fuel rods don’t know whether they are in the
core or in the pools: they keep emitting heat and radioactivity until
the radioactive material decays into non-radioactive elements. That
process can take years, which is why spent fuel rods are still dangerous
years after they leave the reactor core.
>
>How can we prevent the spent fuel rods from bursting into flame
once they’re out of the reactor core? The Fukushima plant –“
like many other reactors – keeps the rods in water, which absorbs the
heat energy. But the pools – like the water in a teakettle – will
boil il away unless new water is added. After the Fukushima plant lost
power in Friday’s 9.0 earthquake and got hit by the tsunami, the
plant was no longer able to keep the pools topped up.
>
>How long does it take the water in spent fuel rod pools to boil down
to dangerously low levels? Yesterday FDL reader MtnWoman – who worked
at TMI for twelve years –
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229443>told
us about the
<http://www.rogerwitherspoon.com/docs/nrctechstudyosfprrisks-10-2000.pdf>2000
Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that looked at this very question.
For boiling water reactors (BWR) such as the Fukushima reactors, the
time required for spent fuel rod pool water levels to drop to
dangerouslyy low levels is about 140 hours. The NRC study only looked at
rods that had been out of reactors for six months or more: I
don’t have data about how long the rods at the seven Fukushima
pools have been out of reactors. Fortunately for the NRC, they
weren’t studying fuel rod poos on the upper floors of reactor
buildings housing reactor core vessels that had lost adequate cooling
and were in partial meltdown. This may explain why the spent fuel rod
pool at reactor 4 ignited on Monday, roughly 100 hours after the quake
and power loss, but before the 140 hours the NRC calculated.
>
>Why did the spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 catch fire again today?
Yesterday the <http://www.ieer.org/>Institute for Energy and
Enviromental Research‘s Arjun Makhijani wrote a very detailed
<http://www.ieer.org/comments/Daiichi-Fukushima-reactors_IEERstatement.pdf>report
that answers this question. In his report he quoted extensively from the
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11263>2006 study perfomed by
the National Research Council of the National Academies. Their report
tells us:
>“The ability to remove decay heat from the spent fuel also would
be reduced as the water level drops, especially when it drops below the
tops of the fuel assemblies. This would cause temperatures in the fuel
assemblies to rise, accelerating the oxidation of the zirconium alloy
(zircaloy) cladding that encases the uranium oxide pellets. This
oxidation reaction can occur in the presence of both air and steam and
is strongly exothermic—that is, the reaction releases large quantities
of heat, which can further raise cladding temperatures. The steam
reaction also generates large quantities of hydrogen….
>These oxidation reactions [with a loss of coolant] can become locally
self-sustaining … at high temperatures (i.e., about a factor of 10
higher than the boiling point of water) if a supply of oxygen and/or
steam is available to sustain the reactions…. The result could be a
runaway oxidation reaction — referred to in this report as a zirconium
cladding fire — that proceeds as a burn front (e.g., as seen in a
forest fire or a fireworks sparkler) along the axis of the fuel rod
toward the source of oxidant (i.e., air or steam)….
>As fuel rod temperatures increase, the gas pressure inside the fuel
rod increases and eventually can cause the cladding to balloon out and
rupture. At higher temperatures (around 1800°C [approximately
3300°F]), zirconium cladding reacts with the uranium oxide fuel to
form a complex molten phase containing zirconium-uranium oxide.
>Beginning with the cladding rupture, these events would result in the
release of radioactive fission gases and some of the fuel’s
radioactive material in the form of aerosols into the building that
houses the spent fuel pool and possibly into the environment. If the
heat from one burning assembly is not dissipated, the fire could spread
to other spent fuel assemblies in the pool, producing a propagating
zirconium cladding fire.
>The high-temperature reaction of zirconium and steam has been
described quantitatively since at least the early 1960s….â€�
>Translation for laypeople: Without enough water to cover the, the fuel
rods will keep on igniting, just like trick birthday candles keep
re-igniting after we blow them out. Just like trick birthday candles,
the only way to put out the fuel rods is to put them under water.
That’s why even after Monday’s reactor 4 spent fuel rod
fire was quenched, the spent fuel rod pool caught fire again this afternoon.
>
>Unlike trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods burn hot (3300
degrees F) enough so that the radioactive material in the rods is
aerosolized: carried into the atmosphere in clouds of hot smoke. And
unlike our trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods in reactor
building 4 are four stories off the ground – just like the other five
reactor spent fuel pools at Fukushima. And unlike our trick birthday
candles, right now the radioactivity around the spent fuel rods is so
high that no one can approach them to put out the fire.
>
>I’m a slow typist: by the time I completed this the fire
burning at reactor 4’s spent fuel rod pool had gone out – €“
apparently spontaneously. Fortunately, we’re not yet at the 140
hour mark by which the NRC calculated spent fuel rods in ideal
conditions would be at risk of combustion. That’s a good thing,
because there’s one other big difference between trick birthday
candles and spent fuel rods. Trick birthday candles merely drip more wax
on the cake. Uncontrolled spent fuel rod fires could pour enough
radioactive waste into the atmosphere to cause what a nuclear engineer
(at a Vermont plant identical to Fukushima reactors) calls
“Chernobyl on steroids�.
>
>Let’s hope the spent fuel rods at Fukushima are put back under
water before we have the opportunity to test her hypothesis.
>
>
><http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html
>
>Doomsday Scenario at Fukushima
>
>Marvin Resnikoff
>Senior Associate, Radioactive Waste Management Associates
>Posted: March 15, 2011 11:03 AM
>
>The slow motion events occurring at Japan’s (or GE’s) Fukushima
reactor cannot be sugar-coated. It is a doomsday scenario unfolding.
>
>Nuclear reactors are not the same as coal/oil/gas electricity plants.
Unlike conventional plants, they cannot be turned off. So while brave
workers were tending to Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors, attempting against
all odds to keep the reactor from overheating, the fuel pool at Unit 4
was left untended; without makeup water to cool them, the fuel rods
overheated. Above 1800 oF, an exothermic reaction, a fire, took place
with the zirconium cladding around the uranium pellets. Zirconium
burned, forming zirconium oxide and hydrogen gas, which then exploded
and released radioactive cesium, a semi-volatile metal, to the atmosphere.
>
>Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400
milliseiverts/hour (or 40 rems/hour in U.S. parlance). Considering
background is on the order of 1 milliseivert per YEAR, this means a
yearly background dose every 9 seconds. Put plainly, workers at the
Fukushima reactors are putting their lives in immediate jeopardy.
>
>What is a fuel pool?
>
>Each year a commercial reactor operates, approximately 30 tons of fuel
are irradiated. Every year or year and a half, this fuel is moved to a
fuel pool for safe storage. Under 20 feet of circulating and replenished
water, the fuel is stored. Water shields the radioactivity and cools the
fuel, which still gives off heat. If water is not resupplied, which
apparently was the case at unit 4, the water levels decline, the fuel is
uncovered and it overheats, leading to a hydrogen explosion.
>
>How much cesium-137 is contained in a fuel pool?
>
>The amount of cesium contained in the fuel pool is typically measured
in curies or becquerels, but these assessments are meaningless unless
you are a physicist. An easier way to look at it is in relation to the
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, where
100,000 Japanese where killed. Cesium is a semi-volatile material that
has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How
many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool?
>
>In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of
irradiated (what the industry calls “spent”) nuclear fuel was equivalent
to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb.
Ten tons is the amount of irradiated fuel that would be contained in a
shipping container or cask used to transport the fuel. Why so much more
cesium than the Hiroshima bomb? Because an atomic explosion occurs in
milliseconds, but a nuclear reactor operates continuously for years.
Many more fissions means much more fission products, including cesium
You do the math. If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of
irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the
amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool
could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137
produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel
remains in the fuel pool..
>
>This is not to say all this material will be released to the
atmosphere or ocean. This is the maximum cesium-137 possible inventory
at each Fukushima reactor. Each fuel pool at each Fukushima reactor also
contains approximately the same amount of strontium-90 and other cancer
causing materials. In addition to the fuel pools at each Fukushima
reactor, a larger common fuel pool sits at ground level between two
reactors in a building with windows. The damage the tsunami caused to
this independent fuel pool has not been discussed by the media.
>
>Iodine, cesium and other radionuclides can be carried downwind and
inhaled. Radionuclides that land in the sea may be taken up by fish and
eaten. When these cancer-causing materials are taken into the body by
inhalation or ingestion, they concentrate in different organs. Cesium
concentrates in muscle, strontium (like calcium) in bones, iodine in the
thyroid. Once in the body, these radioactive materials continue to
decay, releasing harmful gamma and beta radiation. Plutonium, also
present, gives off alpha radiation. Rearranging the DNA in the human
body leads to cancer. To put this in another way, a BWR reactor boils
water to produce electricity by generating cancer-causing materials.
>
>Take this out of the nuclear realm. Imagine another harmful poison,
botulism. Imagine a botulism reactor, reproducing botuli fast enough to
produce heat and steam to turn turbines. Then imagine having to contain
these billions of botuli so the public is not harmed. This is
essentially the friendly atom that has now come full circle in Japan and
that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will relicense for an additional
20 years at Vermont Yankee and at 30 other Fukushima-type reactors in
the United States. Fortunately, the State of Vermont has taken matters
into its own hands and has decided not to allow Vermont Yankee to run
past 2012..
><http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?ref=world>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html?ref=world
This is just incredible. It turns out, this type of GE reactor is
designed to hold tens of thousands of intensely radioactive spent fuel
rods, not only on site, not only inside the reactor building, but in
pools that are literally right on top of the reactor. There are 3450
fuel rod assemblies (each holding 63 fuel rods) in those pools which is
approximately 20 years worth of fuel rods, and they have no containment
structure around them. Just water to keep them cool and suppress the
gamma radiation. In other words, each of the four reactors at the
Daiichi plant holds the potential for 21 Chernobyls. If those fuel rods
don’t have water covering them, they will catch fire and begin a nuclear
meltdown. According to Congressional testimony today by Gregory Jaczko,
chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there is now little or
no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored
there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere. That is
apparently the source of the fire in that reactor – the fuel rods
themselves are burning.
could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.” Jaczko
told Congress today.
Security, there has been an explosion at reactor 4 in the past 24 hours
that apparently has gone unreported. Here is the satellite pic – you can
see the newly-damaged building of reactor 4 on the left:
Daiichi nuclear site taken at 9:35AM local time on March 16, 2011.
coming from reactor 3 – that’s the one that has the plutonium MOX fuel;
you know – the one that had the big explosion reported yesterday. Oh,
and today Japanese officials admitted the containment vessel in reactor
3 has indeed been breached. It apparently is in full scale meltdown.
Next to reactor 3, you can see steam venting from reactor 2 through a
hole made by workers. Japanese officials admitted that containment
vessel is also cracked.
is so intense that the workers would die before being able to accomplish
anything much. It’s so intense they even abandoned a desperate plan to
drop water on the spent fuel rods by helicopter. As near as I can
determine, there is nothing anyone will be able to do to prevent each of
the four reactors (and perhaps all of their spent fuel rods) from
undergoing meltdown, with further explosions and release of ungodly
amounts of radiation.
building on the site which holds another 6291 spent fuel rod assemblies.
The tsunami blew out the windows of that building, presumably causing
considerable damage.
plant. Those don’t appear to be leaking anything at the moment, but they
apparently contain the same amount of spent fuel rods as the other four
reactors on the site.
there are another 4 reactors, three of which have had the cooling water
systems knocked out by the quake/tsunami. So those are in extreme danger
of meltdown also.
showed that at the time of the quake there would have been close to
11,000 spent fuel assemblies stored on site, a total of some 660,000
fuel rods:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb and causing 1 million
deaths world-wide.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Monday March 14, 2011 12:14 am
http://firedoglake.com/2011/03/12/explosion-at-fukushima-nuke-smoke-billowing-and-walls-collapsed/
http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/
March 12 is one of a series of identical General Electric reactors
constructed in Japan and the US. In this reactor design, the used
nuclear fuel rods are stored in pools of water at the top of the reactor
building. These spent rods are still highly radioactive:
the radioactivity is so great the rods must be stored in water so they
do not combust. The explosion at Fukushima Daiichi reactor unit 1
apparently destroyed at least one wall and the roof of the building:
some reports stated the roof had collapsed into the building.
(MOX) fueled Fuksuhima Daichii reactor unit 3 exploded.
So why bother about the rubble of reactor No 1? The WaPo quotes a
nuclear engineer who knows the answer:
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/03/13/japan-nuclear-watch-possible-new-explosion-at-naiichi-3/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/at-two-reactors-a-race-to-contain-meltdowns/2011/03/13/ABtdVDU_story.html
system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in
the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the
pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored.
Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool,
in accordance with General Electrics design, is placed above the
reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain
water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems
there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool
would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom
think that units pool may now be outside.
Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of
the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which
is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.
at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed.
Gundersen said the unit 1 pool could have as much as 20 years of spent
fuel rods, which are still radioactive.
from a single holding pool. Were not that lucky. The Fukushima
Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top
of six reactor buildings. One common pool is at ground
level in a separate building. Each reactor top pool holds
3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod
assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost
certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds
sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over
600,000 spent fuel rods.
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446
water bath, the radioactivity in the used rods can cause them to become
so hot they begin to catch fire. These fires can burn so hot the
radioactive rod contents are carried into the atmosphere as vaporized
material or as very small particles. Reactor no 3 burns MOX fuel that
contains a mix of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium generates more heat
than uranium, which means these rods have the greatest risk of
burning. Thats bad news, because plutonium scattered into the
atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods
without plutonium.
plant states theres any possibility of such a catastrophe,
Washington, we have a problem. Chernobyls contamination settled
upon people and nations thousands of miles from that reactors
location. How far would Chernobyl on steroids travel? And
where are the up to 20 years of reactor no 1 spent fuel rods that could
cause such a problem, and the spent fuel rods held until the
building exploded in in the spent fuel rod pool atop reactor no 3?
risk of a potential catastrophe. At least when it comes to finding the
fuel rods from reactor 1, Washington possesses some unique assets. One
asset the secretive
remote sensing devices that enable US national security to spy on planet
Earth. The NROs slightly less secretive cousin over at the the Pentagon is
the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA, in turn, controls MASINT measures
and signatures technologies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/07/nro_2010.html
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/gov-orgs/dia/
question a few years ago for CorpWatch:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14821
infrared sensors and other technologies to sniff the atmosphere for certain
chemicals and electro-magnetic activity and see beneath
bridges and forest canopies. Using its tools, analysts can detect signs
that a nuclear power plant is producing plutonium, determine from truck
exhaust what types of vehicles are in a convoy, and detect people and
weapons hidden from the view of satellites or photoreconnaissance aircraft.
Obama administration that couldnt find out millions of of
barrels of Corexit and crude oil would poison the Gulf should be able to
help Japans Fukushima plant locate their missing fuel rods. And
do so before the missing rods or any of the other pools of fuel
rods in Japans stricken reactors ignite Chernobyl on steroids.
hope theyll time out from Gridion dinners and collateral damage
and let the Americans who pay for all the fancy spy technology know
whats happening. Because now that Americans are hearing
CNNs Dr. Gupta talking about potassium iodide (KI) to prevent
radiation toxicity, theyre going to be wondering if they need to
take KI. As long as we dont see massive uncontrolled radiation
releases from the stricken reactors, they probably wont. Should
we see Chernobyl on steroids, Americans may need a whole lot more than
KI. And until the spent fuel rods are located, there wont be
enough information to let Americans plan how to protect their loved
ones. Unless we all learn the fuel rods have caught fire.
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/
By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D. Tuesday March 15, 2011 4:26 pm
http://my.firedoglake.com/members/kirkmurphy/
caught fire. About that time instruments at the plant showed an
exponential increase in radiation levels. After the fire was quenched,
radiation levels fell. In the hour before I sat down to write this,
there was an explosion at the same spent fuel rod pool. As I write,
another fire is burning there. NHK reports the radiation level –
300 to 400 milliSieverts – is so high that firefighters cannot
approach the area.
>
>NHK reports that by Monday March 14 the temperature in the spent fuel
rod pool was 84 degrees C: nearly double the usual temperature. NHK
reports that there aren’t temperature readings for today:
technical failure. We do know the pool temperature increased by roughly
twenty degrees C per day after loss of power on Friday. And we know that
water boils at 100 degrees C.
>
>The spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 is one of
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229439>seven
pools for spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daichii. These pools are designed
to store the intensively radioactive fuel rods that were already used in
nuclear reactors. These “used� fuel rods still contain
uranium (or in the case of fuel rods from reactor 3, they contain both
uranium and plutonium from the MOX fuel used in that reactor). In
addition to the uranium and plutonium, the rods also contain other
radioactive elements. These radioactive elements are created in the rods
by the intense radiation around the rods when they are in the reactor
core (before they are moved to the spent fuel pools).
>
>Six of the spent fuel rod pools are (or were) located at the top of
six reactor buildings. One “common pool� is at ground level
in a separate building. Each “reactor top� pool holds up to
3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds up to 6291 fuel rod
assemblies. [The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost
certainly destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/2011/03/14/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229446>sixty-three
fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over
600,000 spent fuel rods. The fuel rods once stored atop reactor 3 may no
longer be there: one of the several explosions at the Fukushima reactors
may have damaged that pool.
>
>Now that we have partial meltdown in the reactor vessels – the part
of the reactor where nuclear reactions are supposed to happen – in at
least three of the Daiichi palnt’s six reactors, why bother with
swimming pools for fuel rods? Simple. Even after they are no longer
usable to drive nuclear fission in the reactor vessels, the
“spent� fuel rods are still highly radioactive. Part of
that radioactive energy is emitted as heat. That’s no surprise:
heat from radioactivity is the how the reactor core vessels generate the
heat that drives the nuclear plant’s turbines to generate
electricity. The fuel rods don’t know whether they are in the
core or in the pools: they keep emitting heat and radioactivity until
the radioactive material decays into non-radioactive elements. That
process can take years, which is why spent fuel rods are still dangerous
years after they leave the reactor core.
>
>How can we prevent the spent fuel rods from bursting into flame
once they’re out of the reactor core? The Fukushima plant –“
like many other reactors – keeps the rods in water, which absorbs the
heat energy. But the pools – like the water in a teakettle – will
boil il away unless new water is added. After the Fukushima plant lost
power in Friday’s 9.0 earthquake and got hit by the tsunami, the
plant was no longer able to keep the pools topped up.
>
>How long does it take the water in spent fuel rod pools to boil down
to dangerously low levels? Yesterday FDL reader MtnWoman – who worked
at TMI for twelve years –
<http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/#comment-229443>told
us about the
<http://www.rogerwitherspoon.com/docs/nrctechstudyosfprrisks-10-2000.pdf>2000
Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that looked at this very question.
For boiling water reactors (BWR) such as the Fukushima reactors, the
time required for spent fuel rod pool water levels to drop to
dangerouslyy low levels is about 140 hours. The NRC study only looked at
rods that had been out of reactors for six months or more: I
don’t have data about how long the rods at the seven Fukushima
pools have been out of reactors. Fortunately for the NRC, they
weren’t studying fuel rod poos on the upper floors of reactor
buildings housing reactor core vessels that had lost adequate cooling
and were in partial meltdown. This may explain why the spent fuel rod
pool at reactor 4 ignited on Monday, roughly 100 hours after the quake
and power loss, but before the 140 hours the NRC calculated.
>
>Why did the spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 catch fire again today?
Yesterday the <http://www.ieer.org/>Institute for Energy and
Enviromental Research‘s Arjun Makhijani wrote a very detailed
<http://www.ieer.org/comments/Daiichi-Fukushima-reactors_IEERstatement.pdf>report
that answers this question. In his report he quoted extensively from the
<http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11263>2006 study perfomed by
the National Research Council of the National Academies. Their report
tells us:
>“The ability to remove decay heat from the spent fuel also would
be reduced as the water level drops, especially when it drops below the
tops of the fuel assemblies. This would cause temperatures in the fuel
assemblies to rise, accelerating the oxidation of the zirconium alloy
(zircaloy) cladding that encases the uranium oxide pellets. This
oxidation reaction can occur in the presence of both air and steam and
is strongly exothermic—that is, the reaction releases large quantities
of heat, which can further raise cladding temperatures. The steam
reaction also generates large quantities of hydrogen….
>These oxidation reactions [with a loss of coolant] can become locally
self-sustaining … at high temperatures (i.e., about a factor of 10
higher than the boiling point of water) if a supply of oxygen and/or
steam is available to sustain the reactions…. The result could be a
runaway oxidation reaction — referred to in this report as a zirconium
cladding fire — that proceeds as a burn front (e.g., as seen in a
forest fire or a fireworks sparkler) along the axis of the fuel rod
toward the source of oxidant (i.e., air or steam)….
>As fuel rod temperatures increase, the gas pressure inside the fuel
rod increases and eventually can cause the cladding to balloon out and
rupture. At higher temperatures (around 1800°C [approximately
3300°F]), zirconium cladding reacts with the uranium oxide fuel to
form a complex molten phase containing zirconium-uranium oxide.
>Beginning with the cladding rupture, these events would result in the
release of radioactive fission gases and some of the fuel’s
radioactive material in the form of aerosols into the building that
houses the spent fuel pool and possibly into the environment. If the
heat from one burning assembly is not dissipated, the fire could spread
to other spent fuel assemblies in the pool, producing a propagating
zirconium cladding fire.
>The high-temperature reaction of zirconium and steam has been
described quantitatively since at least the early 1960s….â€�
>Translation for laypeople: Without enough water to cover the, the fuel
rods will keep on igniting, just like trick birthday candles keep
re-igniting after we blow them out. Just like trick birthday candles,
the only way to put out the fuel rods is to put them under water.
That’s why even after Monday’s reactor 4 spent fuel rod
fire was quenched, the spent fuel rod pool caught fire again this afternoon.
>
>Unlike trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods burn hot (3300
degrees F) enough so that the radioactive material in the rods is
aerosolized: carried into the atmosphere in clouds of hot smoke. And
unlike our trick birthday candles, the spent fuel rods in reactor
building 4 are four stories off the ground – just like the other five
reactor spent fuel pools at Fukushima. And unlike our trick birthday
candles, right now the radioactivity around the spent fuel rods is so
high that no one can approach them to put out the fire.
>
>I’m a slow typist: by the time I completed this the fire
burning at reactor 4’s spent fuel rod pool had gone out – €“
apparently spontaneously. Fortunately, we’re not yet at the 140
hour mark by which the NRC calculated spent fuel rods in ideal
conditions would be at risk of combustion. That’s a good thing,
because there’s one other big difference between trick birthday
candles and spent fuel rods. Trick birthday candles merely drip more wax
on the cake. Uncontrolled spent fuel rod fires could pour enough
radioactive waste into the atmosphere to cause what a nuclear engineer
(at a Vermont plant identical to Fukushima reactors) calls
“Chernobyl on steroids�.
>
>Let’s hope the spent fuel rods at Fukushima are put back under
water before we have the opportunity to test her hypothesis.
>
>
>
>Doomsday Scenario at Fukushima
>
>Marvin Resnikoff
>Senior Associate, Radioactive Waste Management Associates
>Posted: March 15, 2011 11:03 AM
>
>The slow motion events occurring at Japan’s (or GE’s) Fukushima
reactor cannot be sugar-coated. It is a doomsday scenario unfolding.
>
>Nuclear reactors are not the same as coal/oil/gas electricity plants.
Unlike conventional plants, they cannot be turned off. So while brave
workers were tending to Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors, attempting against
all odds to keep the reactor from overheating, the fuel pool at Unit 4
was left untended; without makeup water to cool them, the fuel rods
overheated. Above 1800 oF, an exothermic reaction, a fire, took place
with the zirconium cladding around the uranium pellets. Zirconium
burned, forming zirconium oxide and hydrogen gas, which then exploded
and released radioactive cesium, a semi-volatile metal, to the atmosphere.
>
>Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400
milliseiverts/hour (or 40 rems/hour in U.S. parlance). Considering
background is on the order of 1 milliseivert per YEAR, this means a
yearly background dose every 9 seconds. Put plainly, workers at the
Fukushima reactors are putting their lives in immediate jeopardy.
>
>What is a fuel pool?
>
>Each year a commercial reactor operates, approximately 30 tons of fuel
are irradiated. Every year or year and a half, this fuel is moved to a
fuel pool for safe storage. Under 20 feet of circulating and replenished
water, the fuel is stored. Water shields the radioactivity and cools the
fuel, which still gives off heat. If water is not resupplied, which
apparently was the case at unit 4, the water levels decline, the fuel is
uncovered and it overheats, leading to a hydrogen explosion.
>
>How much cesium-137 is contained in a fuel pool?
>
>The amount of cesium contained in the fuel pool is typically measured
in curies or becquerels, but these assessments are meaningless unless
you are a physicist. An easier way to look at it is in relation to the
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, where
100,000 Japanese where killed. Cesium is a semi-volatile material that
has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How
many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool?
>
>In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of
irradiated (what the industry calls “spent”) nuclear fuel was equivalent
to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb.
Ten tons is the amount of irradiated fuel that would be contained in a
shipping container or cask used to transport the fuel. Why so much more
cesium than the Hiroshima bomb? Because an atomic explosion occurs in
milliseconds, but a nuclear reactor operates continuously for years.
Many more fissions means much more fission products, including cesium
You do the math. If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of
irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the
amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool
could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137
produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel
remains in the fuel pool..
>
>This is not to say all this material will be released to the
atmosphere or ocean. This is the maximum cesium-137 possible inventory
at each Fukushima reactor. Each fuel pool at each Fukushima reactor also
contains approximately the same amount of strontium-90 and other cancer
causing materials. In addition to the fuel pools at each Fukushima
reactor, a larger common fuel pool sits at ground level between two
reactors in a building with windows. The damage the tsunami caused to
this independent fuel pool has not been discussed by the media.
>
>Iodine, cesium and other radionuclides can be carried downwind and
inhaled. Radionuclides that land in the sea may be taken up by fish and
eaten. When these cancer-causing materials are taken into the body by
inhalation or ingestion, they concentrate in different organs. Cesium
concentrates in muscle, strontium (like calcium) in bones, iodine in the
thyroid. Once in the body, these radioactive materials continue to
decay, releasing harmful gamma and beta radiation. Plutonium, also
present, gives off alpha radiation. Rearranging the DNA in the human
body leads to cancer. To put this in another way, a BWR reactor boils
water to produce electricity by generating cancer-causing materials.
>
>Take this out of the nuclear realm. Imagine another harmful poison,
botulism. Imagine a botulism reactor, reproducing botuli fast enough to
produce heat and steam to turn turbines. Then imagine having to contain
these billions of botuli so the public is not harmed. This is
essentially the friendly atom that has now come full circle in Japan and
that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will relicense for an additional
20 years at Vermont Yankee and at 30 other Fukushima-type reactors in
the United States. Fortunately, the State of Vermont has taken matters
into its own hands and has decided not to allow Vermont Yankee to run
past 2012..