Fukushima Update – May 11 – Moon of Alabama

May 11, 2011

Fukushima Update – May 11

The big mess at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues as the damaged reactors there are still releasing radioactive substances into the environment. A new leak through a cable shaft and to the cooling water intake of the no 3 reactor to the sea was found only today. UPDATE: It was briefed today (Thursday) that reactor no 1 had a full core meltdown (see below).

At the no 1 plant the reactor vessel continues to be fed with cooling water but can not be filled up above the level of the exposed nuclear fuel likely because of leaking pipe connections at a certain height. UPDATE: As was learned today (Thursday) a welded pipe failure near the bottom of reactor vessel has been leaking large amounts of water, likely since the quake/tsunami incident. This caused all the cooling water in reactor 1 to leak into the primary containment vessel. The fuel elements in the core were totally exposed with little cooling and have melted. They and the also melted structures holding them now form a Corium mass at the bottom of the reactor vessel and it seems likely that some Corium dropped further from there into the primary containment vessel. This would probably through the control rod tubes as the control rods in this particular reactor type are actuated from the below the reactor vessel. END-UPDATE

Now the primary containment vessel around the reactor vessel will get filled with water. This creates a “water sarcophagus” to cool the reactor vessel from the outside. So far over 9,900 tons of water have been pumped into it. Eventually water will be filled high enough to submerge the reactor vessel and thereby refill it through the leaking pipe connection.

Yesterday workers could access the inner no 1 reactor building for the very first time and they tried to install some new monitoring systems as the old ones are broken. Before the access door was opened and the workers could enter air was pushed through the building and through filters to reduce the radiation in the building. This was not very successful. Tepco had hoped to reduce radiation there to 1 millisievert per hour, but some areas inside the building that eventually need to be entered still have radiation levels between 600 and 700 millisieverts per hour, much higher than the maximum 250 millisievert lifetime(!) radiation limit that nuclear workers can be exposed to in emergency cases. Those areas will need to get shielded off before work around them can continue.

The spent fuel pool in no 1 continues to get refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. Hydrazine was added to the water as corrosion inhibitor.

The number no 2 reactor vessel and primary containment are still leaking water into the basement of the machine hall of no 2 and 3 and from there through various ways into the environment. Work has started to pump the water out for decontamination and to block all ways from the basement into the environment. Eventually the leak in the containment vessel (likely at the damaged torus outside the primary containment which holds condensation water) will have to be repaired to allow for restoring a permanent cooling loop or to attempt to create a “water sarcophagus” around it. This will be very difficult to achieve as the water coming from the leak is radioactive.

The no 2 spent fuel pool seems for now to be fine as an improvised cooling loops has been established for it.

The no 3 reactor shows increasing reactor vessel temperature. Over the last 10 days the temperature temperature at the feedwater nozzle increased from below 100 degree centigrade to over 221 degrees now. As the reactor vessel and primary containment is also likely damaged this also increases evaporation and releases into the environment.

The spent fuel pool in no 3 continues to get intermittently refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. A camera view (see May 10 entry) into the water filled pool showed only tons of heavy debris from the collapsed roof.

The heavily damaged no 4 building had no active reactor at the time of the quake but a full spent fuel pool. A few days ago a camera view (see entry at May 8) into the pool showed no visible damage to the fuel elements but some rubble on top of them. Some gas bubbles were coming up from the fuel elements which points to some damaged fuel rods and continued hydrate release.

According to this Russia News report there is some speculation (starting at 3:10) that the building of reactor no 4 began to lean to one side. NISA, the Japanese regulator had ordered Tepco to check the statics of that building some weeks ago. Maybe they had good reason to do so?

In the general surrounding of the plants rubble gets removed with remote operated machines and synthetic resin gets sprayed on all surfaces to prevent radioactive dust to come up.

Some people where allowed to visit the evacuated areas to remove stuff from their homes. The government seems to finally adopt the evacuated area to a real assessment of the radiation. It had at first created a 20 kilometers and then a 30 kilometer circular evacuation zone. But the days after the explosions at the plant the wind blew over land towards north-northwest before turning back to the sea and that area has of course now higher radiation levels even beyond the 30 kilometer zone than areas more near to but south of the reactors. (I remember seeing saw a German radiation prediction chart just a few days after the reactor explosions that showed just that. What took the Japanese government so long to come to this conclusion?) Higher levels of radiation have been found in wastewater facilities beyond the current evacuation area. This will likely be from runoff water that went into the sewage. The sludge that the wastewater facilities create is used to produce cement which will now be slightly radiated.

The prime minister of Japan has ordered another nuclear site with six reactors, Hamaoka, to shut down as it stands above a tectonic fault which is suspected to create a big quake and probably soon. This will increase the electricity deficit this summer, which will lead to blackouts and further economic damage.

Additional resources:
Update from Dr. Saji former Secretariat of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission <— NEW!
AllThingsNuclear Union of Concerned Scientists
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Atomic power review blog
Digital Globe Sat Pictures
IAEA Newscenter
NISA Japanese Nuclear Regulator
Japan Atomic Industry Forum (regular updates)
Japanese government press releases in English
Kyodo News Agency
Asahi Shimbun leading Japanese newspaper in English
NHK World TV via Ustream
Status reports for the German Federal Government by the Gesellschaft für Reaktorsicherheit in German language

Posted by b on May 11, 2011 at 18:54 UTC | Permalink

Comments

these reactors are awesome, they seem alive, always a step ahead of the emergency planners
I don’t want to sound cynical to Japanese, I just want to point out the epic dimension of this unfolding event; actually I see Japanese, in this struggle of Man against Nature’s hidden powers recklessly awakened, as top representatives of Western civilization, reinforced by their own traditional values

Posted by: claudio | May 11 2011 21:11 utc | 1

Japan to abandon nuclear power expansions, focus on green technology (RawStory link)

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | May 11 2011 22:04 utc | 2

There is one real mystery that Yomiuri has now also concluded it should point out. The #4 reactor building “explosion”, not clearly witnessed by camera, now upon closer inspection of the relatively clean pool of spent rods may not be due to hydrogen generated in the #4 structure. We have sort of a WTC #7 situation here. This must be bothering a lot of people and is a major irritant to getting one’s head around the otherwise logical unfolding of the disaster.

Posted by: YY | May 12 2011 1:30 utc | 3

Gotta nitpick a little on the assertion that the Prime Minister has ordered to close Hamaoka. He didn’t. He only asked the Chubu electric co. to shut the active reactor down temporarily and improve the quake/tsunami resistance. He can’t order anything like that, except in an emergency situation. The plant operator followed through, though, after some initial foot dragging (think of the shareholders…).
There are some reports that the US has been pressuring the Jpn gov to do so (think only of them little soldiers in their huge bases downwind) (me thinks that those reports came out to allow the plant operator to shut down the plant without being afraid of shareholders who would sue for loss of income – us hedge funds ?).
As for the reports that the Jpn Gov will drop nuclear energy (comment 2), again, that is stretching the story a little. A decision has been made to review the whole energy policy, and the prime minister, the METI minister and some parliamentarians have expresses the view that the nuclear part of the mix should be reduced.

Posted by: philippe | May 12 2011 2:49 utc | 4

In absence of any evidence of better nuclear safety consciousness by US authorities (excluding political posturing by various actors), the notion that protection of Yokosuka navy base (who after all can sail at moments notice) figuring into temporary closure of Hamaoka is laughable. All indications, particularly negative reaction by Keidanren and also by the surprised reaction of Shizuoka governor (who was in fact on the record was concerned about Hamaoka), seem to show that it was in fact a decision made by the Kan government, rather unilaterally, to use the bully pulpit to stop Hamaoka until they build better protection against larger tsunami. While one can argue as to whether Hamaoka will be safer with a higher sea wall, it is a stoppage of 2 to 3 years, time which may make the facility not entirely so crucial to the energy needs of the region. It would appear that Kan is making some decisions that make sense and forcing them opportunistically.
It now appears that the drowning of unit 1 isn’t going according to plan. It also appears that the fuel cluster is no longer at the height in the reactor that it was assumed to be. Sort of indicating that successful cooling has been achieved mostly because the fuel fell down to level where the water could reach it. They’re just getting by by the skin of their teeth, meanwhile the water just keeps going in, filling the available spaces and leaking out.

Posted by: YY | May 12 2011 3:51 utc | 5

Japan Junks New Nuclear Plants, Harvey Wasserman at Counterpunch, mostly an editorial, so no revelations really.
He makes an odd comment within, about actual heat release into the atmosphere being a problem. Wouldn’t this be less heat than, say, a new volcanic vent opening at Kilauea? Anyone have any info on how much actual heat is coming out of these things? (Yes, I’m being lazy right now…sorry! Work everyday with many uncooperative computers, so evening is ‘time off’ usually.)
Thanks, b, for keeping this visible.

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | May 12 2011 4:52 utc | 6

As YY said, no 1 appears to have a new problems: Water leaking from No.1 reactor

Tokyo Electric Power Company says water may be leaking from a hole in the No.1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing a sharp drop in the water level inside the reactor.
Tokyo Electric sent workers inside the building to adjust the water gauge of the reactor.
The utility suspected the gauge wasn’t working properly because the water level hasn’t been rising despite the pumping in of 150 tons of water daily to cool the reactor.
On Thursday morning, it was found that the water level was more than one meter below the bottom of the fuel rods. The water is believed to be leaking into the containment vessel.
Tokyo Electric says temperatures at the bottom of the reactor are between 100 and 120 degrees Celsius, suggesting that the fuel rods have slipped downward and are being cooled in the water below.
The utility says it will continue to monitor the situation by increasing the volume of water being injected.
…
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that if the latest data is accurate, it seems parts of the fuel rods have melted and accumulated at the bottom of the reactor. But it added that it believes the fuel rods are being cooled.

Then again, this may not be new, but the fuel melting to the bottom may have occurred weeks ago. A nice clump of Corium in there. Who knows what ractions happened inside of that? We may know in 20 years …

Posted by: b | May 12 2011 5:10 utc | 7

Some 70 fresh pictures from the grounds of Daiichi – LOTS of damage.

Posted by: b | May 12 2011 9:26 utc | 8

Thanks for the update. It is hard to get any news of this “minor” event in the USA. Good to have this site for a little news on this once in a while.

Posted by: Joseph | May 12 2011 10:39 utc | 9

Part of this post is based on an article in Le Temps, paywall, and in Fr. see link.
The rest is from what I have heard.
Who carries out the maintenance of nuclear plants?
This question is very difficult to answer.
Certainly not, in the main, full time, fixed employees, in Europe. (Don’t know about Japan.)
In CH, the workers who do it are called nuclear nomads.
They are almost all sub-contractors employees, temps of various kinds (reduces costs.)
They work in the summer on the whole, and turn around in Europe from one place to another. The sub contractors are on paper, for many of them, very respectable, e.g. Westinghouse (mentioned as it a recognizable name.) In principle, sub- sub- contracting in this area is forbidden, only one intermediary allowed.
In CH, the basic pay (all in roughly today’s dollars) is 46 an hour. Added to that is a ‘danger’ bonus which can vary, but is considerable. Add on extra for night/ weekend work, always by law time and a half, and the hourly wage can be very high.
For ex. a Moroccan who has no qualification and languages and works only in the grounds gets 46 – but the diver, who, according to article is most often a ex US soldier, can get up to say 120 or more (that is my estimate from CH practice), close on to a thousand dollars a day, similar to contractors in Iraq. (The agencies take a slice but not extravagant around here.)
All employees in CH are equipped, clothed (all clothes), fed and housed, medically checked, 100%. (In France, the same.) So it is very lucrative, and 3 months or even less work will set one up for a year living extremely well in a non-EU place. (Visas and work permits and that kind of thing are not relevant.)
The nuclear industry parades its experts but what goes on in the soft underbelly of who works, who does what, is not generally made public. It is a very close-knit, secretive industry, with underground and buddy-buddy contacts, or if one prefers, a tight circuit, running the show, which is comprehensible in a way.
Who is going to dive into murky pools to replace spent fuel rods (or whatever)?
The workers are all young men and after a while they quit, so new blood has to be found.
Do accidents happen? You bet. Are these reported in the MSM? Never. Are workers in CH compensated properly? Yes. (I guess in France and Germany also.) Is that hush hush? Yes.
http://tinyurl.com/5t3r8hd

Posted by: Noirette | May 12 2011 16:39 utc | 10

@Noirette – the nuclear nomads can make a lot of money, but not for long. The lifetime radiation limit for them in normal operations is 20 millisievert. When that is exceed they loose their job. One or two “dives” can be enough for that.
France has some 30,000 nuclear nomads. Germany far less and the structure is a bit different and less mafia type too (not saying it is not a problem here too.)

Posted by: b | May 12 2011 16:55 utc | 11

Japanese TV report with a graphic explaining the new issue ate no 1.
Funny how the TEPCO spokesperson at 2:20 says “China Syndrome” ….

Posted by: b | May 12 2011 19:02 utc | 12

TEPCO reporting meltdown in #1, worried about unstoppable water leaks.
Greenpeace monitoring radioactive contamination of seaweed.
Thousands of farm animals being slaughtered (culled). Attempt to rescue pets, abandoned for 2 months.
Long time evil on the loose.

Posted by: catlady | May 12 2011 19:15 utc | 13

Thanks for putting it all together. It’s clear that we need to stop building new plants, and make responsible plans for de-commissioning old ones when their useful life is done.

Posted by: Nancy Green | May 12 2011 20:43 utc | 14

YY @ comment 5 – I’m referring to leaking that info (of US pressure) to help tip the balance and put additional pressure on the Chubu Electric Co board. Pol. power games etc.
24 hours before that ‘leak’ on sunday AM TV, the Chubu board held an inconclusive board meeting on the subject. I’m fairly sure that the US did ‘express concern’ on the subject – pro forma stuff. But no, I don’t believe that Kan took this particular decision under pressure of the US.
Noirette @ comment 10 – the bulk of workers in the nuclear industry in Jpn come from / through subcontractors (and many are ‘day labourers’, temp workers on very short time contracts). See e.g. this article on Japan Focus.

Posted by: philippe | May 13 2011 0:43 utc | 15

For those seeking substantive discussion, The Oil Drum is still periodically revisiting the Fukushima story.
There is nothing good to tell. It’s all bad, except for the occasional reflection that “It could be worse.”
Of course, “It could be worse” is ambiguous. It might be about the present vs how things might be, but thankfully are not — it might also be about the future and how things are not yet, but frighteningly could be.

Posted by: DeAnander | May 13 2011 4:42 utc | 16

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110509p2a00m0na017000c.html

Posted by: denk | May 13 2011 5:35 utc | 17

5/12/2011 — URGENT !! NILU – Norsk Institute = ZARDOZ = radiation @ VERY HIGH levels

save these NILU forecast files NOW.. backup .. mirror and share IMMEDIATELY.. before they take it all down with the rest of the information!!!
http://zardoz.nilu.no/~flexpart/fpinteractive/plots/?C=M;O=D
what is zardoz?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGVIdA3dx0&feature=related
and here is the information on ZARDOZ .. the post apocolyptic NUCLEAR FALLOUT world where Sean Connery plays a “mutant” .. and human reproduction is considered bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
high levels of radiation have been released from fukushima!
http://enenews.com/email-from-japanese-govt-officials-says-high-density-radia…
prophetic seer will be mirroring the content soon:
http://www.liveleak.com/c/propheticseer
so will mike from patrioticspace:
http://www.youtube.com/patrioticspace
and I will have copies up over at http://www.dutchsinse.com
this WILL NOT disappear like the last high forecasts showing EXTREMELY HIGH levels of Cesium, Xenon, and Iodine over the USA and Canada.
thanks to youtube user : JouleNinja
“>http://www.youtube.com/user/JouleNinj

Funny, it’s become futile, as everyone I talk to has simply forgotten or doesn’t want to believe this has even happened or I should say, is happening. It’s so denied that it sends me into a sense of acknowledged blissful ignorance.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 13 2011 13:28 utc | 18

Continuing coverage from GreenAction Japan.
And still the pro-nuke cheerleaders infest the discussion boards. One coolly stated in the last 24 hours that Fukushima was a perfectly acceptable risk when compared to the comforts and conveniences of 24×7 electric power and consumer society.
Jaw on floor, as well as core on floor.

Posted by: DeAnander | May 13 2011 14:41 utc | 19

@ 18
re/: Zardoz, this might be of some use: http://www.downthemall.net/

Posted by: hu bris | May 13 2011 16:18 utc | 20

Who actually does the work inside nuclear plants in Japan? Stoneleigh (Nicole Foss) discusses this in her article
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/05/may-10-2011-welcome-to-atomic-village.html
How many disasters did it take to discontinue transAtlantic dirigible traffic? One – but it was extremely visible, graphic, fast, easily dispensed with, etc. So it may take a number of disasters to discontinue electricity generation by nuclear fission, with constant effort to overcome attempts to conceal or minimize the damage.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | May 13 2011 16:20 utc | 21

@Uncle – those links are high quality of scare mongering without any physical background. It is so stupid that it is funny.
The scale on the simulations they show goes up to 400 Becquerel per square meter for that scary purple color. Of course depending of where you live 200-600 Becquerel/square meter is the natural background dose.
But then this is supposed to be a simulation of aerial radioactivity which anyone would measure in Becquerel per cubic meter not square meter as the scale says.
Very funny, thanks!

Posted by: b | May 13 2011 17:28 utc | 22

Point is, it doesn’t matter as no one even remembers it is happening..
Had this been a REAL emergency… ..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 13 2011 18:09 utc | 23

@ mistah C
Very, very interesting comparison, one I had not thought of and now cannot stop thinking of.
How many instances have there been of a technology being “un-adopted” after a spectacular disaster?
Technologies or practises have been culturally disowned after a long period, historical distance, etc — for example, no one today (that I know of anyway) swallows tapeworms to stay slender, or powders his/her face with white arsenic. Such folly is the butt of mild drollery — people back then were so ignorant, weren’t they? But the shift in attitude didn’t take place overnight, it was a gradual process afaik.
How many technologies/practises have been suddenly dumped or resisted? Japan’s long resistance to firearms is not quite the same thing: that was an Amish-style resistance, to a technology that was perceived as a threat to the social order and cultural conventions. I think — from what I hear and see around me — that there’s a dumping of certain plastics technologies going on right now in response to the public health statistics on phthalates etc. I have heard of more than one person replacing all their nonstick frying pans, water bottles, etc. to eliminate the now-understood-to-be-harmful plastics.
Would dirigible travel have been re-attempted if the foil-wing aircraft had not proven so successful?
Why did early aircraft crashes (some of which were fairly spectacular) not lead the airplane to be rejected as was the dirigible? Was it the fireball effect of the Hindenberg prang that was so dramatic and unforgettable? Or was it the military attachment to foil-wing aircraft — due to their nimbleness and speed — that made them irresistible at any risk level?
What causes a culture to adopt one technology and refuse another? How many technologies have ever actually been refused and for how long? Does the arms-race dilemma preclude ever refusing a technology? That is, would any nation-state today refuse to use nuclear power generation if it suspected that others would use it and thereby gain an advantage (“I have to own a gun because my neighbour is buying a gun”)?
What if a nuclear plant collection were seen as a big burden/liability for a nation-state, rather than an asset? Then those who owned them would be seeking to get rid of them (like people trying to get rid of cars identified in the public mind as “lemons”) and those who didn’t would be glad they had none.
What if one nation had persisted in dirigible deployment when everyone else gave up? Opportunity cost would have set them back compared to those who went for the “superior” technology of airplanes, I guess.
How much of the decision making over technology adoption is driven by warfare and militarism? Airplanes were “popularised” after WWII because the aircraft industry didn’t want to ramp down production when the war effort wound down (there’s a good book about all the political shenanigans surrounding this moment, btw). Civilian air travel was a way to keep the industry humming, and people liked it (who wouldn’t). Nuke plants grow out of the A-bomb effort and nuclear weapons. If it were not for the military application, would nuclear powered electricity generation ever have been attempted?
Isn’t Chernobyl or Fukushima an adequate Hindenberg moment? Or is there no Hindenberg moment for a technology sufficiently entwined with warfare and weaponry?

Posted by: DeAnander | May 14 2011 6:18 utc | 24

TEPCO concealed radiation data before explosion at No. 3 reactor

Tokyo Electric Power Co. concealed data showing spikes in radiation levels at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March, one day before a hydrogen explosion injured seven workers.
The Asahi Shimbun obtained a 100-page internal TEPCO report containing minute-to-minute data on radiation levels at the plant as well as pressure and water levels inside the No. 3 reactor from March 11 to April 30.
The data has never been released by the company that operates the stricken plant.
The unpublished information shows that at 1:17 p.m. on March 13, 300 millisieverts of radiation per hour was detected inside a double-entry door at the No. 3 reactor building. At 2:31 p.m., the radiation level was measured at 300 millisieverts or higher per hour to the north of the door.
Both levels were well above the upper limit of 250 millisieverts for an entire year under the plant’s safety standards for workers. But the workers who were trying to bring the situation under control at the plant were not informed of the levels.
…

Posted by: b | May 14 2011 9:12 utc | 25

M of A – Fukushima Update – May 11

Or is there no Hindenberg moment for a technology sufficiently entwined with warfare and weaponry?

In short: Yes.
Long answer: From what I have gathered from the subject of technological history the single most important factor in if a technology is adapted or abandoned is the social status of those that are involved in it. There are indicators that arabs invented typing seperately from the chinese and then abandoned it before the europeans started using it. Among the indicators are a verse that mentions thiefs, printers and prostitutes. And technology sufficiently entwined with warfare and weaponry will give high social standing on those around it as long as warfare and weaponry has high social standing.
Thinking about it, the whole subject of modern history of technology started with Hughes Networks of Power that described the elecrification of USA and Germany including the connections to military efforts. US waterpower was apparently stepped up a big notch during the first world war in order to be able to make nitrate for fertilizers and explosives even if cut off from the mines in Chile.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 14 2011 20:28 utc | 26

TEPCO to review cooling operation

Tokyo Electric Power Company will have to review its plan for stabilizing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility after a large amount of radioactive water was found in the basement of one of its reactor buildings.
The utility says it discovered an estimated 3,000 tons of contaminated water in the basement of the damaged Number 1 reactor building.
TEPCO says fuel rods in the Number 1 reactor melted down and created a hole in the bottom of the pressure vessel. It says the containment vessel also appears to be damaged and highly radioactive water has leaked into the basement of the building.

Did I say Corium?

Posted by: b | May 15 2011 7:13 utc | 27

You said corium, I said corium, sometimes it’s not fun to be right. I think this will be bigger than Chernobyl when all is said and done, and I think Monbiot will be really sorry he wrote that silly article.
Back to technology and status and warfare… US highway system, built out as a means of moving armaments and troops across such a big country very fast (in imitation I think of the Hitler-era Autobahn built out for same reason). Ummm — mag tape audio recording, developed iiirc by the Nazi regime for automated radio broadcasts of propaganda speeches? Then there are weird feedback loops, like pesticides that were civilian retreads of WWI nerve gases, then the flourishing pesticide companies made new chemical agents for WWII… back and forth. Airplanes were first seriously developed for warfare I think (ditto dirigibles).
The Hindenberg Moment is very much on my mind and I’m starting to think of the pro-nuke crowd as Dirigible Engineers. They just haven’t realised that the moment is passed, that train has left the station. Or am I thinking too wishfully here?

Posted by: DeAnander | May 15 2011 8:20 utc | 28

Going back further trains and telegraphs were also built for purposes of moving troops and knowing where to move them.
Hm, the decline in trains status – I think I saw somewhere that Ayn Rand’s high and mighty owned trains, they would hardly do so today – might be an effect of the military planning mainly to use roads. In a war-zone the wasteful practise of giving each car an engine of itself and paving half the land with asphalt becomes an advantage in that it is harder to stop the whole system dead in its tracks.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 15 2011 8:31 utc | 29

Writing about the cooling cycle and contaminated water problems on March 29 I came up with this idea:

An alternative could be to just refeed the contaminated water from the basements into the reactor vessels and thereby establish an improvised “closed” cooling cycle. Currently tons of additional water are added per hour and will need to be removed. A closed cycle would reduce the waste that needs to be taken care of.

NHK News: today:

The company had planned to fill the containment vessel with water and set up a cooling system.
But it now says that it will study a plan to circulate water directly from the basement, through a decontamination filter and heat exchanger, and then back into the reactor.

Posted by: b | May 15 2011 13:21 utc | 30

It was probably the quake, NOT the Tsunami, that killed no 1.
Meltdown occurred at Fukushima No. 1 reactor 16 hrs after March 11 quake

A nuclear fuel meltdown at the No. 1 reactor of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant is believed to have occurred around 16 hours after the March 11 quake and tsunami crippled the complex in northeastern Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday.

The first water leakage was through a broken welding at a pipe at the lower reactor vessel. Water ran off, no, cooling, core melt.
Now how deep did the core melt?

Posted by: b | May 15 2011 13:26 utc | 31

And more trouble at unit 3:

At 2:33 pm on May 15, we started injecting boric acid through the fire
extinction system.

That only makes sense if they fear re-criticality in no 3.

Posted by: b | May 15 2011 13:45 utc | 32

Cores Damaged at Three Reactors

Substantial damage to the fuel cores at two additional reactors of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex has taken place, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, ..
…
The operator, known as Tepco, said the No. 1 unit lost its reactor core 16 hours after the plant was struck by a magnitude-9 earthquake and a giant tsunami on the afternoon of March 11.
The pressure vessel a cylindrical steel container that holds nuclear fuel, “is likely to be damaged and leaking water at units Nos. 2 and 3,” said Junichi Matsumoto, Tepco spokesman on nuclear issues, in a news briefing Sunday.
He also said there could be far less cooling water in the pressure vessels of Nos. 2 and 3, indicating there are holes at the bottom of these vessels, with thousands of tons of water pumped into these reactors mostly leaking out.
Tepco found the basement of the unit No. 1 reactor building flooded with 4.2 meters of water. It isn’t clear where the water came from, but leaks are suspected in pipes running in and out of the containment vessel, a beaker-shaped steel structure that holds the pressure vessel.
The water flooding the basement is believed to be highly radioactive.
…
A survey conducted by an unmanned robot Friday found radiation levels of 1,000 to 2,000 millisieverts per hour in some parts of the ground level of unit No. 1, a level that would be highly dangerous for any worker nearby. Japan has placed an annual allowable dosage limit of 250 millisieverts for workers.
…
Tepco also released its analysis of a hydrogen explosion that occurred at unit No. 4, despite the fact that the unit was in maintenance and that nuclear fuel stored in the storage pool was largely intact.
According to Tepco, hyrogen produced in the overheating of the reactor core at unit 3 flowed through a gas-treatment line and entered unit No. 4 because of a breakdown of valves. Hydrogen leaked from ducts in the second, third and fourth floors of the reactor building at unit No. 4 and ignited a massive explosion.

Posted by: b | May 16 2011 10:21 utc | 33

How far indeed?
If a ball of hot corium gets through the basement floor, how far does it tunnel downwards? does it slow as it encounters denser rock? Is the “China Syndrome” (corium tunnelling down until it meets planetary core magma) a cartoonish scare-story? Is the corium depleted as it sinks, using up its heat and fissile capacity?
It’s interesting that most Google hits on China Syndrome refer either to the movie, or to the catch phrase as a title on some article or other about China as an economic power (that people in other countries are afraid of). I haven’t yet found a plain-spoken article describing how far escaped corium would drill before stopping.
The “consensus” as represented by Wikipedia seems to be that it wouldn’t drill far, but the consequences of the corium/slag getting into the topsoil (hence the watershed) are severe. How do you stop a leak like that? You’d have to demolish the building, then excavate to recover the departed core (under impossible conditions). If Elvis has left the building, you got trouble.
Supposing a corium ball (or two? or three?) have quietly tunnelled through the basement floor at Fukushima, how much of Japan will have to be evacuated? What remediation measures are possible? Will the dirigible engineers finally admit that this is the Hindenberg Moment?
I’m starting to feel kind of sorry that seppukku is no longer in fashion. TEPCO has much shame and guilt to bear. I am trying to imagine the current state of mind of the execs at GE and TEPCO; but human nature being what it is, they are probably not tossing and turning all night in agonies of guilt. They’re probably wondering how this will affect next quarter’s reports and whether they can turn the cleanup effort into a profitable contract. (Sigh)

Posted by: DeAnander | May 16 2011 21:37 utc | 34

As data become more comprehensive (if not accurate) and there is accumulation of information things get really scary as the situation looks worse looking back than when it was current. It now appears that the initial earthquake damage was more substantial and that the tsunami could not take the full credit for all the problems. One back up cooling circuit in #1 failed prior to tsunami and never recovered.
The shaking probably will be the reason for all the leaks both liquid and gas, though it is disappointing to see that they would design in the possibility of hydrogen generated in unit 3 reactor filling up unit 4 building instead of exhausting in a more straight forward way.
In shutting down Hamaoka, apparently one of the heat exchanger managed to exchange fluids and not just heat resulting in sea water going into one of the reactors. This, in absence of earth quaking and waves crashing over the facility.
Interestingly the word “meltdown” the English terminology is now the preferred characterization of the damage to the core. The 70% damage to #1 recently corrected to 55% upon re-evaluation of “data”, now is a quaint memory as it would appear that at least with #1 the percentage is more like 100. However China Syndrome is still denied (and besides it would more likely be somewhere like Uruguay) and more interestingly things have not gone “critical” in tanks or in reactors though Tepco will not deny occasional fission (as opposed to chain reaction).
Although the issue has gone off the front pages of the news outside Japan, it is not as though the Japanese are not hearing regular updates about current situation at Fukushima. Getting into nuclear power was more or less a consensus decision and certainly not one that can be laid on the feet of the utility monopolies (who do not care one way or another as long as the wattage is there). It would appear that consensus now is to get out of nuclear and the only argument is how quickly.

Posted by: YY | May 17 2011 3:12 utc | 35

It appears that the preferred approach to “core under floor” is to tunnel beneath the corium lump and pour a new concrete floor below it, essentially building a new basement for it to live in (then sarcophagising it from overhead). I suppose this may eventually be attempted at Unit 1. If so…
What a project. What a colossal waste of human ingenuity and limited resources. All that post-tsunami damage to fix, houses to repair, homeless people needing shelter and food… and so much effort, energy, and attention has to be diverted to fighting what appears to be a slowly losing battle (or a barely holding action depending on how cheerful you feel today) against the nuclear genie now escaped from its bottle.

Posted by: DeAnander | May 17 2011 4:54 utc | 36

I read up a bit about Corium and it seems that no one knows how it really behaves. There have been simulations but no one created, for very good reasons, experimental Corium to see what it really does.
In Three Mile Island the Corium was supposed to have gone through the reactor vessel but it was found it only slightly damaged it which is up to today unexplained. In Chernobyl the Corium stopped its reaction when very cold nitrogen was pumped into a tunnel below it. This was unexpected too.
It is thought that Corum makes a crust on the outside (like lava does) which stops moderators to intrude and without neutron moderation the fission reaction dies down. But cooling can rupture the crust, water intrudes and moderates neutron flux and fission can restart. Very weird behavior. Add to that the tons of salt that might be in the reactor vessel (from the seawater cooling) and the physical and chemical behavior of all of this may be total different than anyone imagines.
In 20 years or so when cameras can look inside the reactor and containment we might start to know what really is happening.
Renewed current danger seem to come from reactor 3 which shows some very capricious temperature movements, mostly up. Some assume it has gone recritical on and off. That would fit assumed Corium behavior.
And of course there are some 70 tons of highly radioactive water that gets added to this whole Daiichi mess every hour without any way in sight to get rid of it.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulation Commission just stopped its 24h per day Daiichi watch operation in Japan because “The conditions at the Japanese reactors are slowly stabilizing”. That’s the joke of the day.

Posted by: b | May 17 2011 10:45 utc | 37

New video from Daiichi taken around May 6.
New pictures, also May 5, here

Posted by: b | May 17 2011 12:47 utc | 38

Tepco announced to implement my March 29 idea.
TEPCO revises plan to stabilize reactors

This is due to the recent discovery that fuel rods for the Number 1 reactor had melted, apparently damaging the vessel containing the reactor, and a large amount of water has been found to have leaked out of the vessel. The utility suspects that the Number 2 and 3 reactors are in a similar situation due to apparent meltdowns.
The company now says it will reduce the amount of radioactive materials in the water accumulated in the reactor and turbine buildings. Then it will circulate that water as coolant between the reactors and the turbine buildings.

Next? Tepco announces to use slurry of sand, cement, boron and lead …

Posted by: b | May 17 2011 14:43 utc | 39

b, I don’t need to express my respect towards your competence; and I am convinced that preparation and study enable anyone to have an intelligent say in any matter; but that the Japanese are so slow in coming to your conclusions poses a problem, doesn’t it? could it be that the adoption of the measures you touted would have admitted that the situation was more serious then the authorities were, at any stage, willing to admit? still, it just doesn’t make sense; have they been hoping for miracles, all the way long? or is the emergency machine in the hands of incompetents? I don’t know what to think
if indeed the Japanese will announce in the near future the use that slurry of yours, I’ll be awed beyond any description; if they don’t, then either you were wrong, which means you are only human after all, or they are wrong, which means they are total fools; the second alternative seems slightly less unlikely at the moment

Posted by: claudio | May 17 2011 16:22 utc | 40

could it be that the adoption of the measures you touted would have admitted that the situation was more serious then the authorities were, at any stage, willing to admit? still, it just doesn’t make sense; have they been hoping for miracles, all the way long? or is the emergency machine in the hands of incompetents? I don’t know what to think
Maybe this NYT piece helps to understand the emergency culture in Japan: In Japan Reactor Failings, Danger Signs for the U.S.

Government officials have also suggested that one of the primary causes of the explosions was a several-hour delay in a decision to use the vents, as Tokyo Electric managers agonized over whether to resort to emergency measures that would allow a substantial amount of radioactive materials to escape into the air.
…
Just 12 hours after the quake, the pressure inside Reactor No. 1 had reached roughly twice the maximum pressure the unit had been designed to withstand, raising fears that the vessels that house fuel rods would rupture, setting a possible meltdown in motion. With the pressure high, pumping in additional cooling water also was not possible.
The government became rattled enough that it ordered Tokyo Electric to begin venting. But even then, Tokyo Electric’s executives continued to deliberate, according to a person close to government efforts to bring the reactors under control. The exchanges became so heated, the person said, that the company’s nuclear chief, Vice President Sakae Muto, and the stricken plant’s director, Masao Yoshida, engaged in a “shouting match” — a rarity in reserved Japan.
Mr. Yoshida wanted to vent as soon as possible, but Mr. Muto was skeptical whether venting would work, the person said, requesting anonymity because he is still an adviser to the government and is not permitted to comment publicly. “There was hesitation, arguments and sheer confusion over what to do,” he said.
The executives did not give the order to begin venting until Saturday — more than 17 hours after the tsunami struck and 6 hours after the government order to vent.
As workers scrambled to comply with their new directive, they faced a cascading series of complications.
…

In the end venting failed because of electrical and mechanical troubles and the reactors exploded.
As for DeA’s questions with regard to Corium leaving the reactor vessel a technical description on how this might happen: BWR Reactor Vessel Bottom Head Failure Modes (pdf)
The vessel bottom will fail some 4 hours after a core meltdown, but the core will leave the vessel likely not in just one clump but in strains. Then again we talk of something like 60 tons of molten fuel plus some 40 tons of various other molten metals, a reactor vessel thickness of 7-8 inch but with over 200 penetrations for control rods and instruments and temperatures of 2900+ degree Celsius. All this after quake which was bigger than the design reference. Weird things may have happened in there …

Posted by: b | May 18 2011 6:11 utc | 41

It’s official: looks like core on floor at all 3 units now.
Sigh… I get the impression of a feverish medley of deliberate coverup and headless chickenism. Great combo.

Posted by: DeAnander | May 18 2011 6:11 utc | 42

so, in the course of an emergency the government gives an order (in agreement with the company’s staff in the ground), and the company’s managers delay its execution?
high treason, for me
or is that of a “national emergency” a totally obsolete concept in our post-political, neoliberal world?

Posted by: claudio | May 18 2011 7:05 utc | 43

@claudio – it’s Japan. The government serves the companies, or so the CEO’s think. It actually was so under the LDP government and even though that changed the general bureaucracy and management behavior didn’t.
—
Another paper I’ll just dump here for anyone technical interested: Recriticallity in a BWR following a core damage event (pdf)
This is relevant for reactor 3 where the temperatures increased the beginning of the month and is not coming down significantly despite doubled water injection rate and now boron injection. My hunch is that there is fission going on in no. 3.

Posted by: b | May 18 2011 7:59 utc | 44

Posted by: b | May 18 2011 7:59 utc | 45

b @ comment 44. I seriously doubt that is a Japan only behaviour. The 50year + rule of LDP servitude certainly doesn’t help, local culture, etc — but I can easily imagine similar behaviour in Europe and the US.
At least the current Jpn government is trying hard to do something (with lots of backstabbing, stonewalling and so on form the top bureaucracy and the financial and economical elites).
And aside, yeah, TEPCO is a particularly arrogant and incompetent corporation …

Posted by: philippe | May 18 2011 10:46 utc | 46

At Forsmark in Sweden there was a nuclear incident including loss of power a couple of years ago. Power was restored and nothing bad happened but it was a close call. Vattenfall covered up the internal report on why it happened and it took whistle-blowers and a stubborn journalist to put them to shame. Plant management was fired and now all is well. That the internal report talked about systematic downgrading of safety culture is less talked about.
So no, it is not only Japan, although it might be more obvious to outsiders because we are less in tune with their cultural habits on how to build and maintain hierarchy.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 18 2011 13:09 utc | 47

@phillipe – I believe the lax security is the same as the commercial driven energy companies are greedy. But defying a direct, personal and clear emergency order from the head of the government? I can not imagine any CEO of a utility doing that in my or any other “western” country.

Posted by: b | May 18 2011 13:37 utc | 48

Kan’s “order” or request had no legal backing. Hence Tepco could drag it’s feet. For a more systematic dragging of feet and “insubordinate corporate behavior” I would refer you to BP during the oil spill, in a country where the executive has true executive powers.
Japan is a parliamentary democracy and the government is a weak one with majority in only one the houses. The party itself is not united, and every faction and opposition are using the disaster as a means for political expansion.
Kan government, to its credit, and unnoticed because of press cynics and inattentive public, has been second guessing Tepco throughout this unraveling. The government however has also managed to isolate itself by its distrust of the bureaucracy that deals with nuclear.

Posted by: YY | May 18 2011 15:17 utc | 49

”…This will likely be from runoff water that went into the sewage…”
I think contaminated groundwater is seeping into everything for quite long distances, not just local topical runoff. The Japanese people are in for some rough times.
The government of Japan knew of the meltdowns, at the least for reactor 1, in March. Leakspinner on YouTube recently did a video about this. No praise, only the peoples scorn, is deserving to the Japanese government and Tepco. Even as I write this, people living outside the evacuation zones are receiving radiation from the Fukishima meltdowns in amounts that will cause serious damage to their physical health, especially the children.
The coverups of our generation – just off hand the following come to mind … the Noriega Panama invasion, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the whole war on terror meme in general, the response to the Katrina devastation, the Gulf oil spill, the worldwide banking financial scam and now Fukishima (and give me a few more moments and I’m sure I could name more like the lies/plague by big tobacco companies and insurance companies, etc.) – the words and actions by these various corporate/government entities involved are the greatest lies ever told and the worst plagues ever to challenge the human race. A tinfoil hat is no longer protection for the misinformation and lies – we all need full body armor.
It would be nice to see those in any way responsible for these nuclear plants be held liable, even to the last single shareholder of GE.

Posted by: Rick | May 18 2011 16:40 utc | 50

@YY – The government however has also managed to isolate itself by its distrust of the bureaucracy that deals with nuclear.
That may well be. I suspect that NISA did know all along about the meltdown. A big question is if and when NISA told Kan about it. My guess is they wanted to wait with the announcement until they had some hard evidence to support it.
NISA are supposed to be experts and the relevant simulations like this one, Station Blackout At Browns Ferry Unit One – Accident Sequence Analysis (pdf) pages 72ff, point to a rapid core melt after station blackout and after the batteries run empty. If that simulation and others I have seen by now are correct there were three core melts and reactor bottom head failures with the three cores penetrating the concrete below within 6-8 hours after the station blackout.

Posted by: b | May 18 2011 17:18 utc | 51

Rick

I think contaminated groundwater is seeping into everything for quite long distances, not just local topical runoff.

Depends on geology. And I have no clue as to that areas geology.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 18 2011 19:49 utc | 52

Geological map of northern Honshu – looks like primarily sediment along the coast (sandstone and/or basalt seabed uplift), and is near a subduction zone, hence the long ridge parallel to the coast. Not likely to be a groundwater problem inland except for airborne fallout (rain, particulates) being washed into aquifers. Along the coast, the ‘ripple’ nature of uplifts near subduction zones could produce significant underground ducting parallel to the coast. Also, sandstone is quite porous, so the rock itself could retain ‘hot’ particles the way an osmosis filter works.

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | May 19 2011 0:05 utc | 53

We here in Vermont are fighting Entergy Corporation who is suing the state to continue operation of VT Yankee Nuclear Power Station for 20 years beyond it’s scheduled shutdown in 1012. These psychopathic fuckers have to be stopped in their tracks, NOW!

Best Case
Don’t be confused by the smoke and mirrors: nuclear catastrophe is not simply the result of “Preventable Mistakes.” It wouldn’t matter if the Dalai Lama were the head of the NRC and the executives of Entergy Nuclear, Inc., were not millionaires who have lied on record, but rather the world’s most revered saints. The technology demands perfection, and humans are imperfect.
Indian Point, Fitzpatrick, Nine-Mile Point, Vermont Yankee, Seabrook, Pilgrim, and 98 other nuclear power plants in the United States contain the possibility, every day, of becoming a Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima Daiichi. Even worse, a nuclear plant could be the target of a terrorist attack. Yet, those are only the worst possibilities. The constant and certain one is what we know will unfold: Even if all operating nuclear power plants were shut down tomorrow, an intergenerational project the likes of which humanity has never attempted is just beginning, as our children, and their children and theirs, will struggle to guard each of these sites from leakage, terrorism, and weathering for thousands of years.
Nuclear technology is surely humanity’s most enduring legacy. What of our works will be present on this planet in 5,000 years, in 20,000 years? To think we can manage a lethal material for hundreds of human generations successfully without error defines insanity. There will be more Three Mile Islands, more Fukushimas, more accidents, more design flaws, more cover-ups, more acts of God. The genie is out of the bottle, we must live with it now.

Lead Body Armor Rick, and you didn’t even mention the huge denial of Climate Change (destabilization), and dozens of more. It’s hard to not extrapolate to the extinction of our species.

Posted by: juannie | May 19 2011 1:57 utc | 54

Just watching this morning’s Tepco presser. Remarkably using a Micky Mouse Pointer to show features in the diagram of yesterday’s excursion into unit 2. Irony and humor not recognized, therefore absent, except that it is incredibly incongruous or maybe it’s par for the course.

Posted by: YY | May 19 2011 2:18 utc | 55

It occurs to me that Japan will not be destroyed in the end by runaway nukes or natural disasters. What can happen is that all the cute (kawaii) mascots, characters, toys (plastic and stuffed), real live but furry animals will one day all conspire to no longer be subjugated and will destroy the human overlords.
Why they have not brought in air conditioning units into #2 I do not understand.

Posted by: YY | May 19 2011 2:32 utc | 56

I think the hydrogen bubble holding up the NIKKEI is about to blow.

Posted by: Biklett | May 19 2011 5:45 utc | 57

The genie is out of the bottle, we must live with it now.
It should read, “we must die with it now”……. and we will.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | May 19 2011 16:25 utc | 58

I have just coined a new term.
Ozymandian Engineering

Posted by: DeAnander | May 19 2011 20:56 utc | 59

Deja vu all over again: dumping seawater from helicopters on Unit 3? Umm, didn’t that kind of like, umm, not work the first time?
And isn’t Number 3 the one loaded with MOX fuel, as in Pu239?
Might be an interesting time to revisit the imho underrated movie Pu-239… a very darkly humorous take on the Soviet nuclear industry after the Fall. Failing nuke plants, Mafiya honchos… Let’s hope that in 25 years it reads as intriguingly dated satire rather than documentary.

Posted by: DeAnander | May 21 2011 5:37 utc | 60

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