News Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, & Nuclear Disaster

[David413]

Decay heat as a function of time

Here is a graph showing the decay heat as a percentage of full thermal power:


This is found in:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/w...Decay Heat generation in Fission Reactors.pdf

 

[Urwumpe]

Oh, didn't know it decays so fast. I knew that most decay there is nitrogen, which will be practically gone after a few minutes, but I didn't expect such a rapid drop.

well, then it is down to 100 liters per second after an hour. Should be higher on unit 3 though, since this is partially powered by MOX.

German reactors have mandatory emergency plugs outside for connecting standard emergency generators, but these are only existing for the later generations, the German failure prone BWRs of the same generation as Fukushima are without them. But honestly, these are so full of problems today, I wouldn't expect a pump to work when you rely on it.

 

[Belisarius]

Extremely bad news: tsunami alert AND explosion simultaneously at Fukushima (BBC log)

0224: "Hydrogen blast occurs at Fukushima nuke plant's No 3 reactor" - Kyodo.
0221: Urgent: Explosion at Reactor 3 - AFP.
0220: Sea level has dropped five metres off Fukushima, confirming imminent arrival of tsunami - Japanese TV.
0218: Column of smoke escaping from Reactor 3 at the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant - Japanese TV.

Strange: I was sleeping but I woke up suddenly about 3.10 my time and had to check the news. Had a dream that this was happening now.

More:

0227: There were two explosions at Reactor 3, the operator Tepco says - AFP.

 

[steph]

Latest post from BBC quotes Japanese news agency Jiji as saying that the reactor withstood the blast. I wonder what the second blast was... this is very bad anyway.

 

[jinglesassy]

BBC now reporting that the tsunami was false

 

[tblaxland]

0224: "Hydrogen blast occurs at Fukushima nuke plant's No 3 reactor" - Kyodo.

ABC:

Update: A blast at the number 3 reactor at the Fukushima No.1 plant is believed to have been caused by hydrogen.

Japan's nuclear safety agency spokesman Ryo Miyake said:

We believe it was a hydrogen explosion. It is not immediately known if it affected the reactor.

The agency could not confirm whether or not the explosion had led to an uncontrolled leak of radioactivity.

I'm not sure if the link has been posted already in this thread, but I am watching NHK through this link: http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/r0/high.asx

Before and after comparison:


EDIT: BTW, ABC has got their before/after sliders up for the tsunami, like they had for the Queensland floods: http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm (includes Fukushima nuclear plant)

 

[Belisarius]

In my judgement NHK is one of the worst sources, despite being the ones with the most news resources at the scene.

On Saturday they were still reporting as "breaking news" that an explosion was heard at the no. 1 plant more than 6 hours after the rest of us had seen it occur on a video (not released by them)

By contrast, the best source seems to be Russia Today

http://www.youtube.com/user/russiatoday?blend=1&ob=4#p/u

If you'd told me 25 years ago - the year of Chernobyl - that in 2011 I'd be relying on Russian news services for good information, I would have laughed. Just shows how times have changed (though I doubt that RT would be as transparent and reliable in the case of a Russian emergency).

 

[fsci123]

Some random explosion reactor pics

Hahaha 100th post

 

[tblaxland]

By contrast, the best source seems to be Russia Today

Oh, those female Russian accents...

ABC has a nice infographic on the nuclear situation:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/japan-quake-2011/nuclear-plants.htm

 

[Belisarius]

Here's the video of the latest explosion, which occurred around 0200 GMT

Looks much bigger than the one on Saturday at no. 1 - explosive blast seems to go laterally southwards, debris thrown about 800m upwards. No fire observed after the explosion.

 

[Cairan]

Pure speculation on my part, but maybe this time the reactor vessel actually split open... I remember reading somewhere that if can happen if superheated corium makes it way to the lower plenum of the reactor vessel while it is filled with much cooler water (say 250 Celcius versus 1800 Celcius for the corium), the contact of the two masses results in flash vaporisation of the water which exerts way too much pressure for the valves to cope with and either the top or bottom part of the vessel part ways and results in a huge propulsive force which can wreck the roof of the containment building by transforming the reactor vessel to a huge nuclear-heated bottle rocket.

I HOPE NOT in this case!

 

[Belisarius]

On an unrelated note: I find it astonishing that they opened the Tokyo Stock Market for a normal business day just the day after the PM describes this crisis as the most dramatic and serious since WWII, and with the prospect of a worsening nuclear situation.
Naturally shares are tumbling on the Nikkei, down 6.12% so far.

 

[Cairan]

:facepalm: :dry:

---------- Post added at 01:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:20 AM ----------

Geez, what kind of morons have they back there as far as leadership goes... Opening the markets today is only going to cost them even more as far as damages goes... and that was the one part they could have controlled.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14plume.html?_r=1

Military Crew Said to Be Exposed to Radiation, but Officials Call Risk in U.S. Slight The Pentagon was expected to announce that the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which is sailing in the Pacific, passed through a radioactive cloud from stricken nuclear reactors in Japan, causing crew members on deck to receive a month’s worth of radiation in about an hour, government officials said Sunday. The officials added that American helicopters flying missions about 60 miles north of the damaged reactors became coated with particulate radiation that had to be washed off. There was no indication that any of the military personnel had experienced ill effects from the exposure. (Everyone is exposed to a small amount of natural background radiation.) But the episodes showed that the prevailing winds were picking up radioactive material from crippled reactors in northeastern Japan. Ever since an earthquake struck Japan on Friday, the authorities worldwide have been laying plans to map where radioactive plumes might blow and determine what, if any, danger they could pose to people.

Oh... And this pillar of black smoke looks very, very evil! [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfhP7s-u61M[/ame]

 

[Belisarius]

Photo of the aftermath in NYT

Reactor 1 is on the left, Reactor 3 is on the right. The steel gridwork structure of 3 seems damaged, unlike the no.1 which remained intact.

 

[River Crab]

Google maps has an interactive map (actually, they've had it for a while, but here it is in English if you haven't seen).

On a personal note, my relatives in Kanazawa said they felt the earthquake, and that's all the way on the west coast! My uncle living in Tokyo had to borrow a bike to get home because the trains aren't running. His house has cracks in the ceiling, but he's otherwise okay (a relief). There's power shortages due to the sudden shutdown of nuclear power plants in the East, and there's plans for scheduled blackouts in regions of eastern Japan to conserve power. Those farther north are far less fortunate; my prayers go out to them.

For anyone else with relatives in Japan, there's the person finder on Google Crisis Response. There's lots of information, you can also donate to the Japanese Red Cross from there, and download map data of post-event satellite imagery for Google Earth.

@Wishbone: My Japanese is quite bad, but if you want specific information from here, I can do that much. I can't really discern meaningful information from reading the whole thing; I can't even fully understand the English press releases.

At any rate, seawater injection at units 1 and 3 had stopped at 1:10 JST due to low water levels, and was resumed for unit 3 at 3:20. There's no news from NISA concerning the explosion at unit 3; the as-of-yet untranslated news for 3/14 mostly concerns the evacuation.

 

[Belisarius]

Now there is very big trouble at Fukushima (BBC log)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

0629 Urgent news: Cooling functions have stopped and water levels are falling in Reactor 2 at the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant - Jiji news agency, quoted by Reuters.

First unit 1, then 3 and now 2 are all without cooling systems. How much can they do to stop three reactors without coolant?

 

[N_Molson]

BBC news

0643: Reactor 3's primary containment vessel was not damaged in today's explosion, the UN's nuclear watchdog says.

---------- Post added at 06:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:44 AM ----------

Hours after, a white plume of (vapor/smoke ?) is still rising from reactor n°3.

 

[Cairan]

I'm not buying a single word coming out of japaneese officials anymore... Not after reading the piece on USS Ronnie, mark my words: Unit 3 has reached full meltdown.

 

[N_Molson]

A 3-meters tsunami is incoming...

Maybe, at this point, the sea is the only power able to cool down the reactors ?