50-50 chance of catastrophic radiation leak?

#1
lawgator1

lawgator1

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#1
Japan | Fukushima | Health Risks | Nuclear Meltdown


Curious as to our resident experts' take on this fellow's commentary.



GlobalPost: You mentioned that the containment vessels have already been damaged. It appears that officials are reporting the opposite. How do you know you’re right?
Gundersen: We’re seeing iodine and cesium in the environment. That’s an indication that the containments are leaking. Exactly how much they’re leaking it’s hard to say.
I can’t understand how officials can say that the releases are low, when they don’t have any instruments that are working. Their batteries have failed, and when the batteries fail, all of the instruments stop working. So it’s hard to determine what the radiation levels are, and what the pressure levels are.
The Japanese and the nuclear industry are heavily, heavily financially invested in this. My experience is that, after Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl, everybody said there wasn’t a problem, until there was a problem. So I really don’t put much faith in official pronouncements the first week of an accident.
GlobalPost: So the people who have access to information have a self interest in making that information look as benign as possible?
Gundersen: Yes. On top of that, the officials don’t want to provoke a panic. So there’s a financial long term interest to try to minimize the impact. The flip side of that is that in the process you lose transparency. There is no transparency right now. We’re dealing with second hand information.
I understand from one source that the second unit cannot be vented, because the vent is jammed. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have one source, and I like to have two. But this accident hasn’t played out yet. It could clearly get worse before it gets better.
GlobalPost: When you say the venting system is jammed, does that mean that pressure will keep building up until something catastrophic happens?
Gundersen: Yes.
 
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unless the outside contaiment melts it's not going to be chernobyl. or at least that's what i've read.
 
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droski said:
unless the outside contaiment melts it's not going to be chernobyl. or at least that's what i've read.
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This guy is claiming that presence of cessium and something else means it is leaking at least somewhat, and that it could get worse.

I was hoping specifically for comment from our forum experts on that nugget.

Also, found the commentary about the iodine dwindling in 6 months, but the cessium around for 300 years, as very interesting.
 
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He is wrong on the iodine and cesium indicating a (primary) containment breach, IMO. I've outlined a likely pathway for their release that doesn't involve a primary breach - venting can release these. I'm not sure if iodine can be released without a partial meltdown, but cesium can. The detection of certain species should be able to give us an indication of the extent of core meltdown (though figuring out which reactor it came from would be tough).

When was this q&a? Was it before last night? I think that it probably was, because IMO it was this sticking valve that led to last night's explosion at reactor 2.
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TennTradition said:
He is wrong on the iodine and cesium indicating a (primary) containment breach, IMO. I've outlined a likely pathway for their release that doesn't involve a primary breach - venting can release these. I'm not sure if iodine can be released without a partial meltdown, but cesium can. The detection of certain species should be able to give us an indication of the extent of core meltdown (though figuring out which reactor it came from would be tough).

When was this q&a? Was it before last night? I think that it probably was, because IMO it was this sticking valve that led to last night's explosion at reactor 2.
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Says it was posted at 21:21 on March 14, so evidently so, yes.
 
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#8
FWIW, I believe that the integrity of the primary containment at reactor 2 has been compromised to some extent, but not because cesium/iodine have been detected.
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TennTradition said:
FWIW, I believe that the integrity of the primary containment at reactor 2 has been compromised to some extent, but not because cesium/iodine have been detected.
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When you say primary, do you mean the one actually containing the reactor? And what leads you to conclude that if its not because of the cesium and iodine that have been detected?
 
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lawgator1 said:
When you say primary, do you mean the one actually containing the reactor? And what leads you to conclude that if its not because of the cesium and iodine that have been detected?
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I have a long post in NEOCON's thread at about 11:00 or so last night that details the venting procedure to secondary containment. It was this venting, IMO, that led to the hydrogen explosions at reactors 1 and 3. The operators vent the reactor gases (which can contain cesium even without a partial meltdown, only the steel rods have to melt) to the primary containment if they are suffering loss of cooling. If they cannot restore cooling and the primary containment begins to overpressure, they can vent the gases to the secondary containment. These gases are then filtered before they leave secondary containment. Horner, after the hydrogen explosion, there was no longer secondary containment. This means that as they work to keep pressures below critical levels in the reactors, they are venting done radioactive gas into the environment.

At reactor 2, operator error as well as potentially some mechanical failure led one of the venting valves to be closed. This prevented the operators from being able to relieve the pressure in reactor 2. My thought is that this ultimately led to an explosive failure of reactor vessel 2, which damaged the primary containment structure, leading to a significant spike in radioactivity at the site. The leaks must be small, because levels have dropped, but they gave a strong potential to get bigger if the reactor cannot be cooled (which us made all the more difficult by the failed containment).
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TennTradition said:
He is wrong on the iodine and cesium indicating a (primary) containment breach, IMO. I've outlined a likely pathway for their release that doesn't involve a primary breach - venting can release these. I'm not sure if iodine can be released without a partial meltdown, but cesium can. The detection of certain species should be able to give us an indication of the extent of core meltdown (though figuring out which reactor it came from would be tough).

When was this q&a? Was it before last night? I think that it probably was, because IMO it was this sticking valve that led to last night's explosion at reactor 2.
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Did I hear them right when it was explained that they kept spent fuel stored outside the reactor but within the larger containment structure? If so would this not explain the cesium and other contaminents?
 
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KB5252 said:
Did I hear them right when it was explained that they kept spent fuel stored outside the reactor but within the larger containment structure? If so would this not explain the cesium and other contaminents?
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Yes, this is another potential pathway. However, to my knowledge, no spent fuel pools were experiencing release until yesterday's fire at reactor 4. The spent fuel rods would have to melt away, exposing the cesium to the atmosphere for it to be released. To melt, the rods would have to get to over 1500 C. The only way this happens is if they become uncovered. That didn't happen until yesterdays fire at number 4, to my understanding. Cesium was detected as early as Saturday, IIRC.
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Anybody wanting to comment on this matter really ought to go read Tenn Trad and NEOCON's conversation from last night... All sorts of good info there, and not terribly long to read.
 
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TennTradition said:
Yes, this us another potential pathway. However, too my knowledge, no spent fuel pools were experiencing release until yesterday's fire at reactor 4. The spent fuel rods would have to melt away, exposing the cesium to the atmosphere fir it to be released. To melt, the rods would have to get to over 1500 C. The only way this happens is if they become uncovered. That didn't happen until yesterdays fire at number 4, to my understanding. Cesium was detected as early as Saturday, IIRC.
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The problem as I have been able to grasp it, and the reason for so much confusion and unceertainty in much of the reporting and info coming out is the background of the outfit running the power plant and in particular this specific facility.

Do you trust the info coming out of Japan with their knowledge of these reactors or nuclear specialists from outside the country? Their seems to be more confusion than can be explained by the average person being ignorant of nuclear power processes.
 
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milohimself said:
Anybody wanting to comment on this matter really ought to go read Tenn Trad and NEOCON's conversation from last night... All sorts of good info there, and not terribly long to read.
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Will be leaving the house soon but I'll check it out later this evening.
 
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KB5252 said:
The problem as I have been able to grasp it, and the reason for so much confusion and unceertainty in much of the reporting and info coming out is the background of the outfit running the power plant and in particular this specific facility.

Do you trust the info coming out of Japan with their knowledge of these reactors or nuclear specialists from outside the country? Their seems to be more confusion than can be explained by the average person being ignorant of nuclear power processes.
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The biggest sources of confusion have been

1) Irregular or incomplete updates by the operator
2) mixing of terms (secondary containment has been used to describe different things) depending on who is talking.
3) a general lack of understanding by those reporting
4) No good method for tracking events by time/number. When someone reports there has been an explosion, is this a new one or did we already know about it.
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TennTradition said:
The biggest sources of confusion have been

1) Irregular or incomplete updates by the operator
2) mixing of terms (secondary containment has been used to describe different things) depending on who is talking.
3) a general lack if understanding by this reporting
4) No good method for tracking events by time/number. When someone reports there has been an explosion, is this a new one or did we already know about it.
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What did you think of the comment by that nuclear scientist in my other thread -- that the radiation level mechanisms may not be accurate or even working at all if they have lost power or otherwise been damaged?
 
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lawgator1 said:
What did you think of the comment by that nuclear scientist in my other thread -- that the radiation level mechanisms may not be accurate or even working at all if they have lost power or otherwise been damaged?
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I think that is certainly possible for the plant itself, but there is also a good chance that they have mobile backup units that weren't damaged and have their own batteries. They were probably also brought in. There probably isn't a good ability to remote monitor, but I think handheld readings ate occurring. That's all speculation, though.
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My friend just said that they are so far beyond doing anything within normal operations that it is not even funny. He says they are currently working outside of anything they are taught to handle and are playing it second by second moment at this point.

My friend says it is already worse than 3 mile island.

I normally down play everything but this is serious. You may want to pray for these people if your a believer.

They are in a catch 22 right now. They either keep venting to the atmospher which could possibly spread low levels of radiation across all of japan or they stop venting and it blows up.

All they're trying to do right now is keep it close to 2200F and venting by any way possible.

He's going to email me a document that shows indepth procedures on how this plant should handle this problem. I will post it on here once I get it.
 
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That is definitely what it seems like is going on. Did you get a chance to run my thoughts on the venting by him?

He does know that you plan on posting this, right? I just want to make sure that it is something that is OK to be posted on a public forum. Sometimes the procedures of how an organization responds to an emergency is protected from general public release. If he isn't OK with that, see if is is OK with sharing it through PM instead.
 
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