Japanese nuclear plant may only have a few hours....

Carson said:
The Red grapefruit, starting with the Ruby Red, has even become a symbolic fruit of Texas, where white "inferior" grapefruit were eliminated and only red grapefruit were grown for decades[citation needed]. Using radiation to trigger mutations, new varieties were developed to retain the red tones which typically faded to pink,[15] the Rio Red variety is the current (2007) Texas grapefruit with registered trademarks Rio Star and Ruby-Sweet, also sometimes promoted as "Reddest" and "Texas Choice".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit
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For those who are not Wikipedia-worshiping acolytes, the original article by Dr Hensz can be found starting on page 54 here:
http://www.subplantsci.org/SPSJ/v25%201971/v25%201971.pdf

As you can see, the process used thermal neutrons produced by the accelerator at Brookhaven National Lab. A process as different from Fukushima as your dental X-rays.

XNN
 
devil21 said:
Yum!
f5d5d95bcb95ca0d5c1e5dfc301abc66.600x
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This appears to depict a tomato. One thing is for certain - if it is not photoshopped, it is not a normal tomato as their leaves look nothing like this. Been growing them for 30+ years. These leaves look more like something from celery or Italian parsley. Therefore, something is up here, though not sure what.

That said, we do not know the truth and therefore coming to any conclusions either way is by necessity hazardous business to knowledge.

angelatc said:
Absolutely amazing how fast bullshit goes viral on the internet. Make a note - people will lie to get blog traffic. I can almost guarantee that the fear-mongering got 100 times more traffic than the sites that debunked it.
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angelatc said:
Seriously? Who cares if blatant propaganda isn't true? Uh, I do!
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devil21 said:
Way to miss the big picture but ok. Now that we know a few of the pictures may not be Fukushima related we can rest easy.
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I would say that the truth here resides somewhere between your opposing positions. Angela is correct about bullshit, but she goes too far in her implications. Devil is correct about the hazards, generally speaking, but goes too far in his implications. You each have valid points and you both reach a bit too far.

To say that fear mongering is not happening would be naive at best. To say there is no significant radiation hazard would be the same. In the coming few years people will likely start dropping like flies in Japan. I may be wrong about it, but the reactor presents a clear and present danger to the world at large.

An interesting revelation that comes from this, however, rests in the fact that the words of Rahm Emmanuel are not being heeded: never let a good crisis go to waste. This is a preeminent crisis, in visage if not substance. I do wonder why Theye have not seized upon this as a major step toward world government. Could Theye have been this careless? Perhaps Theye are sitting on it until it becomes SO bad that the world will cave in from sheer terror from the thought of the invisible killer making it to their doorsteps?

Honestly, this perplexes me a bit. If Theye are actually bent on global dominion, why would they allow so golden an opportunity to go unseized? I see the possibilities as follow:


  1. The disaster is not really as bad as we currently think in terms of the threats posed and Theye are not sure they could sustain the credibility of a blown-out-of-proportion story for long enough to get anything useful done. (unlikely)
  2. Theye are not nearly as smart as we give credit and simply have failed to recognize the opportunity for what it is.
  3. Theye are keeping it on the back burner for a later date - after all, it is not as if the hazard is going to be resolved any time soon by Japan alone.
  4. Theye feel the issue carries with it potential threats to Theire authority - therefore, focusing on it could backfire on them and turn people against "government"
  5. Theye feel they do not need the assistance of another disaster - the war on terror is enough.
  6. Theye actually mean us well and would never do such a thing, preferring to go about this honestly and do the best we can. (right)

Points 3 and 4 are the only ones that make strong sense to me, 4 being the stronger.

To point 3 I can only imagine Theye would hold off perhaps until something far worse happens, like the spent fuel pool blowing itself to kingdom come, so that the fear would be SO utter and complete that they would be able to suspend governance as we know it and nary a soul would squeeze out the merest peep in protest.

Point 4 could be the real culprit. Were the MSM to focus on this it would likely come to general light an examination of the political circumstances that lead to the eternally brilliant decision to place a nuclear facility of questionable design quality on the eastern coast of a well known earthquake- and tsunami-prone area. This could put GE in the spotlight, as well as government. In the end, it was government that allowed this to occur - they alone hold the gun-backed power to grant or deny permission to engage in such projects and it is clear Theye gave the green light. It would seem the possibilities to expose corruption and the general invalidity of government might be too great in this case. Therefore, sweep it under the rug... perhaps until the disaster blooms to such monumentality that we will no longer be able to safely ignore it. Then point 3 comes into play - the danger is so high and immediate that we can no longer afford to allow people to be free. Case closed and good night Irene.

Seriously folks, this is something over which some thought is worthy. A fly farts in the middleast and the MSM are on it like stink on rice and keep at it often for weeks. Miley Cyrus shoves her ass atop the nose of someone in her audience (how does a thing like that get an audience in the first place, one must wonder) and it is endlessly paraded before the glazed- and cow-eyed American meaner to his endless focus, and yet here we have a real disaster afoot and not word one. Point 4 stands out here as the likeliest reason for the silence. Anyone have an alternate?
 
Looks like the readings have been confirmed.

Health officials respond to beach radiation scare
http://www.hmbreview.com/news/healt...0-74de-11e3-9c9d-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=story
County health officials first learned of the radiation levels last week, and they sent their own inspector on Dec. 28 to Pacifica with a Geiger counter. Using a different unit, the county inspector measured the beach to have a radiation level of about 100 micro-REM per hour, or about five times the normal amount.
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My response to osan's question: They know it's bad and have no idea what to do except keep a lid on it, because (a) most people don't know the whole story and therefore are not very concerned anyway, and (b) if it does get really bad, they've got safe places to go and that's all they care about.
 
A Japan-US commission is set to meet in Washington, DC on Monday to exchange opinions on Fukushima emergency response and regulatory issues.

TEPCO’s president said he has “high hopes” that Japan will “benefit from US to experience and expertise at Fukushima Daiichi."

"We will work together to tackle many challenges toward decommissioning," Hirose said in an interview with Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

On Friday, US Energy Secretary Moniz visited the crippled Fukushima plant to inspect preparations to remove fuel rods from a storage pool at Unit 4.

Escorted by Hirose, the US official also visited other facilities at the plant, including storage tanks for contaminated water and radioactive water treatment units.

"It appears that spent nuclear fuel will begin to be removed from Unit 4 as scheduled in mid-November," said Moniz, the highest ranking US official to visit Fukushima since a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused a series of nuclear meltdowns at the plant.

The fuel removal at Unit 4 is said to be the toughest and most dangerous operation for TEPCO; one wrong move could result in horrific quantities of radiation being released into the atmosphere or cause an explosion many times worse than the original disaster.

Reactor 4 contains 10 times more Cesium-137 than Chernobyl did. Scientists have warned that another nuclear disaster could be the beginning of an ultimate catastrophe for the planet. The mid-November fuel removal operation will be just the first step in a decommissioning process that is expected to take decades.

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-tepco-us-aid-139/
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Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’

Published time: August 17, 2013 13:15
Edited time: August 18, 2013 13:41
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598/
 
HOLLYWOOD said:
Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’

Published time: August 17, 2013 13:15
Edited time: August 18, 2013 13:41
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598/
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Russian media article discussing possible worst case scenarios- not actual status.
Reactor 4 contains 10 times more Cesium-137 than Chernobyl did.
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Contains more- but hasn't released more than Chernobyl. And naturally Russia would be the only ones who can fix it.


'Unfortunately there is no one better qualified to deal with this than the Russians,
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I don't like how threads like this devolve. I posted the veggie thing mostly to remind of what radiation does to living things. It doesn't get media coverage and osan is right that it's curious why. We've all seen the vids of the EQ, the tsunamis, Fuku blowing it's dome multiple times, and it gets fuzzy after that. I honestly didn't care if the veggies really were Fuku examples. The real freaks will be pics of Japanese kids instead of some lettuce in a store. Imagery captures the mind more than words. Do I just bump and say "hey, some japanese kids are gonna be fucked up soon?"

Sue me for using propaganda to remind of present and ostensibly real dangers.
 
Suzu said:
My response to osan's question: They know it's bad and have no idea what to do except keep a lid on it, because (a) most people don't know the whole story and therefore are not very concerned anyway, and (b) if it does get really bad, they've got safe places to go and that's all they care about.
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This is certainly plausible, but somehow not terribly satisfying largely due to the departure from normal character that it suggests.

Theye "always" know what to do, even when what they know is wrong. Theye always act positively where opportunity for further cultivation of authority presents itself.

To slink away from this got my attention.
 
osan said:
This is certainly plausible, but somehow not terribly satisfying largely due to the departure from normal character that it suggests.

Theye "always" know what to do, even when what they know is wrong. Theye always act positively where opportunity for further cultivation of authority presents itself.

To slink away from this got my attention.
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What I'm wondering is, where did this idea come from that the government is hiding something about Fukushima? Maybe it really isn't a big deal.

Think about it. Most of these conspiracy theories involve the government covering up something that they did. Now, for some reason, we're freaking out about the government's non-reaction to something that they couldn't possibly have caused. Why is it that we're suddenly so suspicious of this? Is it that you just assumed radiation was a big deal and that releasing it into the atmosphere would cause untold damage to nature?

Remember the Gulf Oil Spill? Everyone said that was a disaster that could have earth-shattering consequences for the global ecosystem, and yet nobody thought that was a conspiracy simply because the government seemed to be paying attention. Now they're not, and we automatically assume it's because they're covering something up? This was not part of their plan. They could not have planned a tsunami followed by a nuclear disaster, so why are we suddenly so suspicious of them on the Fukushima incident?

Maybe it's not a big deal and they're not concerned because of that.
 
osan said:
So, um... is the spent-fuel operation under weigh?

I've not seen anything about it. One would think this front page news. Huh...
Click to expand...
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
Foreign experts to advise Fukushima dismantling
A Japanese research institute on nuclear decommissioning will ask 3 non-Japanese experts for advice on scrapping reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It's been nearly 3 years since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear meltdowns.

The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning was set up last year to support the government in dismantling the crippled reactors.

It is comprised of Tokyo Electric Power Company, which is the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi, and other utilities, as well as makers of nuclear plant equipment.

The organization has been soliciting technological assistance in Japan and abroad.

The 3 foreign advisers include Luis Echavarri, the Director-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency.

Echavarri says a clear plan should be drawn up and that the decommissioning process should be transparent.


NHK WORLD English

The OECD official proposed a multi-year budget for the work, given the amount of time required for technological development. He says a single-year budgeting framework would be extremely difficult.

Under the present plan, removing nuclear fuel debris from the reactors will start as early as in the first half of 2020.

How that will be done is yet to be decided as not much is known about the exact state of the damaged fuel that will require sophisticated technologies to remove.
Jan. 12, 2014 - Updated 15:33 UTC

Severe cold grips Japan

20140113_12_02_v_s2.jpg

A typical winter weather pattern and a powerful cold air mass have driven down temperatures across Japan.

Areas on the northern and central Sea of Japan coast had intermittent snow on Monday morning.

Temperatures dropped below zero degrees Celsius from northern to western Japan. Early on Monday, the temperatures in Nakatonbetsu and Esashi towns in northern Hokkaido were around minus 30 degrees.

Temperatures are likely to remain low across the country.

Up to about 40 centimeters of snow fell in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido and the Hokuriku region on the Sea of Japan coast during a 24-hour period.

By Tuesday morning, up to about 40 centimeters more of snow is expected in northern and central regions facing the Sea of Japan.

Jan. 13, 2014 - Updated 01:16 UTC
 
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PaulConventionWV said:
What I'm wondering is, where did this idea come from that the government is hiding something about Fukushima? Maybe it really isn't a big deal.
Click to expand...

This is certainly plausible, but if it is so then I would suggest that the fact that such conspiracies are so widely suspected would seem to indicate the tremendous depths to which the general mistrust of government runs.

Think about it. Most of these conspiracy theories involve the government covering up something that they did.
Click to expand...

The reason is because governments have been caught so many times doing just that. Ours, theirs... in this they are all mostly the same, Iceland sticking out as the sore-thumb exception in recent memory. The list of such activities is nearly endless.

Now, for some reason, we're freaking out about the government's non-reaction to something that they couldn't possibly have caused.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean here. Firstly, government DID cause this, albeit indirectly, through inept or corrupt decision making regarding the granting of permission to put a nuclear power plant on the coast of a tsunami-prone area. On top of that, the reactor design was of cut-rate quality, which is a characteristic that is not terribly attractive in terms of safety when horrific poisons are being bred therein. It would not do even with a LFTR, much less a uranium reactor.

Why is it that we're suddenly so suspicious of this?
Click to expand...

Because the TEPCO and the Japanese government have been caught in lies and the bending of the truth? Call me crazy, but when something like this happens, absolute, complete, and unvarnished truth is the only thing that stands the least chance of not being taken as indicative of conspiracy to conceal. People have been put over the wood so many times, they are becoming a wee bit suspicious.

I would turn the question back to you: Why is it you are NOT suspicious, given what is known?

One should also note that a fair number of credible sources - people in the industry and physicists, for example - are all pretty well saying the same thing: this is a disaster of epic proportions. Granted, they could all be wrong - we have seen this in the past - flat earth theory, burning witches at the stake, and so forth - but until they are proven wrong we should at least be taking what they say into some account.

Also: what leads you to believe that the release of many tons of tremendously poisonous substances into the environment is not a "big deal"? Some cite the fact that several thousands of nuclear weapons have been lit off and the world has not come to an end. How does one define "end"? Cancer used to be nearly unknown to the world. Now it is everywhere and there are those in the field who say the day is soon upon us where it will not become a quesiton of whether you ever get cancer, but how many times. Just because we did not all evaporate at once in the wakes of the first nuclear tests it does not follow that those events are not now wreaking havoc with us. I do not think it requires the least rocket surgery to figure out that these things are not at all good for us.

Is it that you just assumed radiation was a big deal and that releasing it into the atmosphere would cause untold damage to nature?
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Are you assuming that it is not? The effects of ionizing radiation are well enough known such that no rational person in possession of the most basic knowledge on the matter would want to be exposed.

EDIT: I'd written that Pu is very toxic - that based on readings. This may actually not be quite so true, lending credibility to your position. I got to thinking about it last night and went seeking. Of all places, I ended up at wikipedia (oops) and the article says "not so", citing one Albert Stevens as having been injected with plutonium and surviving into old age. I must therefore retract what I wrote and get back to skepticism on the matter. No doubt it is toxic, it is a heavy metal after all, but to what degree... I am not longer confident. My bad and am sorry if I have served to spread bullshit, which is never my intention. It seems Pu was not the right candidate for the example. 90Sr, OTOH, appears to be a pretty good one. :)

Remember the Gulf Oil Spill? Everyone said that was a disaster that could have earth-shattering consequences for the global ecosystem, and yet nobody thought that was a conspiracy simply because the government seemed to be paying attention. Now they're not, and we automatically assume it's because they're covering something up? This was not part of their plan. They could not have planned a tsunami followed by a nuclear disaster, so why are we suddenly so suspicious of them on the Fukushima incident?
Click to expand...


I am not sure how you have come to infer that the Japanese government is believed to have cause the tsunami.

Maybe it's not a big deal and they're not concerned because of that.
Click to expand...

Possibly so, but doubtful. Would you salt your dinner with 90strontium?
 
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That's a shitty vid, but yes, others saying Fukushima is on fire... again.

Timeline Photos
Live now @ 11 AM ET/8 AM PT, Post Ignorance with Kevin Blanch...tune in NOW!! Reactor 4 is on fire again, radiation levels are highest they've ever been. http://UCY.TV/KevinDBlanch

devil21 said:
Fukushima on fire?
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c36_bor.jpg


Japan Times: “Radiation has spiked to all-time highs” in ocean off Fukushima plant — Jiji: “Record-high radiation levels have been observed” Tepco says — Officials: “Cause of seawater spike is unknown”

http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates.html[h=1]Fukushima Accident Updates[/h]
F%20Daiichi%20February%2017_2014.jpg
The internet's top source of objective Fukushima News. No "spins"...just summaries of the news reports in the Japanese Press. Often called the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Fukushima accident is a major topic around the world. (Updates are posted twice weekly; Monday and Thursday)NEW E-BOOK - "Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People" - the untold story of Japan's 300,000 tsunami refugees, ignored by the world's news media. Now available at Amazon/Kindle. http://www.amazon.com/Kimin-Forgotten-Leslie-E-Corrice-ebook/dp/B00GMPBSTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384733832&sr=8-1&keywords=Kimin%3A+Japan%27s+Forgotten+People and Barnes & Noble (Nook) http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Kimin--Japan-s-Forgotten-People?keyword=Kimin%3A+Japan%27s+Forgotten+People&store=book ​
Fukushima: The First Five Days... a book taken from the staff records at Fukushima Daiichi the first five days of the crisis. Fukushima : The First Five Days is available at E-book stores, including Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Koble. Click here for more...​
​
​
May 19, 2014​
​
​
  • As of May 19[SUP]th[/SUP], 880 fuel bundles have been safely transferred out of the unit #4 storage pool. This marks a 57.4% completion point with the project. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommision/index-e.html
  • A Health Ministry group wants a lifelong analysis of all Fukushima workers. The panel says this will show if any of the 19,000 people who have worker at F. Daiichi have impaired health due to radiation exposure. The panel also says those who have received exposures above government limits should have blood tests with every checkup. Panel chief Toshiteru Okubo says the results could serve as a guideline for the health impact on local resident exposures. The group says they will submit a full report later this month and hope it will be approved so the testing program can begin later this year. NHK World; Panel urges lifelong survey for Fukushima workers; May 19, 2014.
  • The manga (comics) story about radiation-induced nosebleeds continues in the news. Comics are popular reading fare for adults in Japan, providing a break from reality much the same as western soap operas. The recent issue of a manga depicting repeated nosebleeds for its main character being exposed to ambient radiation by a one-time visit to the Fukushima has caused a furor. Areas outside of the exclusion zone in Fukushima are on par with – and in some cases lower than – background radiation levels in the world where healthy life continues. Objections from Fukushima officials have dominated the news reports. The Fukushima Prefecture’s government filed a formal complaint which says (in part), “The feelings of the Fukushima people were totally ignored and deeply hurt.” Now, Prime Minister Abe is involved. He said there is not a single case of someone's health being damaged due to Fukushima exposure and, "There is no confirmation that someone's health has been directly affected by radioactive substances. There is a need for the state to make all-out efforts to deal with baseless rumors." http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/nosebleeds-food-and-fear-how-a-manga-became-center-of-a-debate-on-fukushima?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2014-05-18_AM -- http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140518p2g00m0fp005000c.html The final episode of the comic series was issued today, May 19[SUP]th[/SUP]. The publisher announced that the series will be suspended and a special story will highlight the many criticisms of the manga. The publisher said the uproar caused by the story is not the reason for the suspension. Rather, it says the cessation of the comic had been planned from the start. The last issue includes the views of 13 “experts” from both the positive and negative camps. Chief editor Hiroshi Murayama said, "We take criticisms and the severe dressing-down seriously, and we will review the depictions in the series." http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2014051900483
  • PM Abe says that results of medical surveys with Fukushima residents show no differences compared to other prefectures. During a visit to a Fukushima Medical University on Saturday, he said, "I would like to disseminate this accurate information in a manner that helps people understand easily. [The central government] bears responsibility for ensuring the health of Fukushima Prefecture citizens and children." He also stressed the Tokyo will do its utmost to wipe out unfounded rumors. http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2014051700279
  • The Fukushima government says all local fruits and vegetables were below government limits for fiscal 2013. It is the first such result since they began testing agricultural and marine products for radioactive Cesium in fiscal 2011. All samples of milk, meat and eggs were below the national standard for the second year in a row. In addition, the Health Ministry has reduced the number of items required for pre-marketplace testing from 98 down to 65. An official said, "We are seeing a lot of food in which radioactive cesium is not detected. We determined that a review was necessary to facilitate effective testing." However, the prefecture’s list of 461 items being tested has remained unchanged. Regardless, Fukushima growers are dissatisfied with the health Ministry because "The central government's perception is very different from that in the field. The effects of unfounded rumors are still strongly rooted." An official with the Shin Fukushima chapter of the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) group said, "It is inconceivable to say we have a choice of not conducting the testing just because radioactive substances have not been detected." On the issue of how long will the testing of foodstuffs continue, a Fukushima agricultural union official said, "Sometimes I wonder just how long we have to continue [conducting the monitoring]. We need to carry out the testing at least until the stage in which trouble at the nuclear plant, including the contaminated water issue, does not occur at all." http://www.fukushimaminponews.com/news.html?id=346
  • This past week’s compensation pay-outs to Fukushima evacuees has raised the total, to date, to more than $38 billion spread uniformly among the 85,000 mandated evacuees. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/comp/images/jisseki-e.pdf
  • Numerous lawsuits against Tokyo and Tepco are pending. The common thread is the pain of a “loss of homeland” which money cannot assuage. The first suit was filed in December of 2012, and at least seventeen have been submitted since. All interviewed plaintiffs say the money they receive is not enough. One said, "There is so much sadness and suffering that only someone who has been driven from their homeland can understand.The current compensation system, in which the perpetrators of the damage assess the victims' needs, fails in trying to understand the suffering. That's why I decided to seek a court decision." Tsuguo Hirota, an attorney for some who filed suit, defines the loss of one's homeland as "the destruction of irreplaceable assets, such as nature and communities, as well as unique culture and traditions that people have created and built." He continued that this is a type of damage that has never been seen in pollution and lung disease lawsuits. http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140519p2a00m0na010000c.html (Comment - The news reports continually post the $1,000 per month each evacuee gets for mental anguish, but universally fail to mention the other generous pay-outs each evacuee receives.)​
    ​
To keep this page free for everyone, please consider a donation. Everyone tips restaurant service, why not tip your Fukushima service? (click on the donation button in the left-hand column).
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[h=2]Why Fukushima’s “spent” fuel rods will continue to catch fire[/h] 4:26 pm in Uncategorized by Kirk Murphy
This cutaway diagram shows the central reactor vessel and thick concrete containment in a typical boiling water reactor of the same era as Fukushima Daiichi 1 (image: www.world-nuclear-news.org)

Update: Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, is holding a news conference, just started. (10:15pm ET).
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 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 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 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 – told us about the 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 Institute for Energy and Enviromental Research‘s Arjun Makhijani wrote a very detailed report that answers this question. In his report he quoted extensively from the 2006 study perfomed by the National Research Council of the National Academies. Their report tells us:... continue: http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/tag/daiichi/
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Hey HOLLYWOOD. Chill out on the doom bro. Just say it really sucks and move on. Can't post any propaganda.
 
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