Fukushima melting down?

[LockH]

High radiation levels at Fukushima reactor is bad, bad news
("The fatal levels will keep officials from stabilizing the area as we approach the 6th anniversary of the nuclear plant's disaster."):
https://www.cnet.com/news/deathly-h...at-fukushima-nuclear-reactor-is-bad-bad-news/

A containment vessel at the destroyed Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached off-the-chart radiation levels, reported the Japan Times.

The reading of 530 sieverts per hour represents the highest level of radiation the reactor site has seen since three nuclear meltdowns hit the power plant in March 2011 almost six years ago -- and also among the most deadly.

 

[Hummina Shadeeba]

I imagine all the hot spent fuel has had enough time to cool by now, and even though the whole area might be unapproachable by humans or robots to help clean it, the worst that could happen won't be uncovered hot fuel rods burning into the air. that's the worst nightmare scenario. the problem will be much more localized and slow to spread therefore. so I believe. if the amount of radiation being released was this bad back when this whole thing started...then we wouldn't have been able to move the spent fuel or cover it with water and then it would've likely burned up. that would've put every human attempt to kill each other to shame I think.

 

[LockH]

Fukushima Radiation: Japan Declares State Of Emergency, Reactor Leaks Into Ocean:
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/20...te-of-emergency-reactor-leaks-into-ocean.html

A record high amount of radiation levels has been recorded at Fukushima resulting in a state of emergency at the Japan Power plant. Scientists say that the record amount of radiation comes from the hole caused my melted nuclear fuel which is now on the verge of leaking into the ocean.

Hello California! ... and British Columbia...

 

[e-beach]

WORLD NEWS 07/23/2017 12:27 pm ET
In Fukushima Milestone, Underwater Robot Likely Finds Melted Nuclear Fuel
This discovery could mark a turning point in the complicated cleanup of the nuclear facility.
By Dominique Mosbergen

In a potentially major milestone in the cleanup effort of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, an underwater robot has captured what’s believed to be the first images of melted nuclear fuel inside one of the plant’s three damaged reactors.

The remote-controlled robot, nicknamed “Little Sunfish,” found “large amounts of solidified lava-like rocks and lumps” at the bottom of Fukushima’s Unit 3 reactor over the course of a three-day investigation that ended Saturday, reported the Associated Press.

The debris still needs to be analyzed, but the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), seemed confident that the objects were fuel. A spokesperson said Friday there was a “high possibility that the solidified objects are mixtures of melted metal and fuel,” according to the BBC.

If true, the discovery could mark a watershed moment for the complex and costly cleanup of the Fukushima plant — an effort that could cost more than $70 billion and up to 40 years to complete, the Japan Times reported.

Finding, analyzing and removing the melted fuel in Fukushima’s damaged reactors is one of the most critical steps in the cleanup and decommissioning of the plant, the AP noted. The melted fuel has rendered the reactors so radioactive that a human being could be killed within minutes of nearing one.

The search for the molten fuel had long been stymied, however, as extensive damage and staggering levels of radiation have proven insurmountable even for some of the robots invented to probe Fukushima ― some of which have “died” while attempting to approach the facility’s reactors.

TEPCO’s Naohiro Masuda, the head of the Fukushima decommissioning effort, said that radiation had destroyed the wiring on many robots, leaving them incapacitated.

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant. The biggest obstacle is the radiation,” Masuda told Reuters last year.

Little Sunfish, a submersible robot developed by Toshiba and a team of researchers, was “designed to tolerate radiation of up to 200 sieverts, a level that can kill humans instantly,” reported the AP.

Little Sunfish, created by the Japanese company Toshiba and a team of nuclear researchers, was not just able to survive the reactor but emerged with the potentially critical images.

The robot’s expedition “might be evidence that the robots used by TEPCO can now deal with the higher radiation levels, at least for periods of time that allow them to search parts of the reactor that are more likely to contain fuel debris,” M.V. Ramana, a physicist and Fukushima expert, told Japan Times. “If some of these fragments can be brought out of the reactor and studied, it would allow nuclear engineers and scientists to better model what happened during the accident.”

The Fukushima disaster, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March of 2011, was one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.

Since the disaster, some sections of the facility were restored and thousands of employees now work on the site, conducting cleanup work, according to a Los Angeles Times report last year. In 2014, one of these employees was diagnosed with cancer ― a diagnosis that officials recognized as being linked to his work at Fukushima.

TEPCO said this week it is working on a plan to remove the melted fuel from the facility’s reactors. The company hopes to begin the removal process in 2021.

 

[nutnspecial]

frock it. All that p32 came from the ground to begin with. Let it go back. Let it all go back :wink:

 

[Voltron]

Except it came from the ground as widespread particles... now that it had been condensed and concentrated and enriched into one of the most toxic substances known to man, you can't just leave a big lump of it laying around for 250,000 years to cool off naturally.

 

[billvon]

Except it came from the ground as widespread particles... now that it had been condensed and concentrated and enriched into one of the most toxic substances known to man, you can't just leave a big lump of it laying around for 250,000 years to cool off naturally.

Why not?

 

[Voltron]

Prob you just left off the sarcasm smiley face... but if you're serous about why not, groundwater is flowing thru the area, getting contaminated and coming out the other side and heading for the ocean. Then there is also the possibility that it could shift as the structure corrodes, and get enough in one spot to go critical again, with no control rods to moderate it or a pressure vessel to contain it.

 

[The fingers]

Send the all the nuclear weapons and waste in a one way disposable rocket to our sun, to never be heard from again.

 

[e-beach]

Send the all the nuclear weapons and waste in a one way disposable rocket to our sun, to never be heard from again.

Don't need to send it to the sun. Outer space is fine. However......

Snip......A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year.

Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced 76,430 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about eight yards deep.......snip
https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/On-Site-Storage-of-Nuclear-Waste

So what is the cost of sending it into space?

Snip.....In 2008, NASA signed contracts with SpaceX and its rival aerospace company Orbital Sciences, to the tune of $1.6 billion for 12 launches and $1.9 billion for eight rocket launches, respectively.

While these new missions cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars less than a space shuttle launch, the price of sending cargo into space didn't go down.

"My cost per pound went up with these rockets," Margasahayam told Tech Insider. "On the shuttle, it would be much less." (Margasahayam spoke to Tech Insider as a private citizen and engineer, rather than as a representative of NASA.)

Margasahayam points out that, while the space shuttles were more expensive — a whopping $500 million per launch (or possibly $1.5 billion, according to one analysis we've seen) — each mission carried about 50,000 lbs. (plus seven astronauts!). That means each pound of cargo used to cost about $10,000 to ship on a shuttle.

Orbital Science's Cygnus spacecraft costs about $43,180 per pound to send things up, dividing the $1.9 billion contract by the maximum 20 metric tons of cargo the company is supposed to supply.

For SpaceX — the cheapest of NASA's new carriers — dividing the cost of each launch ($133 million) by the cargo weight of its most recent resupply mission (5,000 lbs.) gives you about $27,000 per pound.

But that's a high estimate. SpaceX told Tech Insider that its Dragon cargo spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket can carry up to 7,300 lbs. — and that you could bring just as much cargo back to Earth, too (something Cygnus can't do). So if a Dragon is full of supplies at launch and on landing, the cost dips to $9,100 per pound.....http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by-weight-2016-6

So, one metric ton is 2204.62 pounds. So if launching can be brought down to $9,100 per pound that would make launching 1 metric ton into space a mere $20,062,042. That, of course excludes the cost of containment, storage and transportation prior to loading and launching the radio active waist.

So at 20 metric tons per year then one nuclear plant would generate a space waist bill of at least $401,240,840.00 per year.

Talk about the price of your electric bill going up. Unless the rocket explodes in flight, then you only have to worry about having a radio active roof, yard, and every thing else that was outside.

 

[Punx0r]

You would not want to try to send hundreds of rockets laden with nuclear waste into space because a significant number of space launches explode at altitude. If you thought your nuclear waste was a problem when it was in a repository on the ground then you'd be in for a shock when it's atomised and spread around the globe.

 

[amberwolf]

We could always bury it on the far side of the moon. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

 

[fechter]

Eventually they might develop an electromagnetic mass launcher that could send that stuff to the sun at a lower cost. Resembles a big rail gun. High G forces on takeoff are no problem for a block of nuclear waste.

It's pretty disturbing that the radiation levels at Fukushima rose so suddenly without human intervention. It's not over by any stretch. And it's headed in my general direction.

 

[billvon]

Eventually they might develop an electromagnetic mass launcher that could send that stuff to the sun at a lower cost. Resembles a big rail gun. High G forces on takeoff are no problem for a block of nuclear waste.

But have just one of those blocks fracture during the launch . . . . keep in mind that launching it at those accelerations will be like detonating several tons of TNT next to the block, and the "blocks" will require guidance, massive heat shields and some very robust structural members.

And if you can make something that complex and indestructible, then just drop it in the ocean over a subduction zone. Much easier and cheaper.

It's not over by any stretch. And it's headed in my general direction.

That's a map of wave heights after the earthquake, not anything to do with radiation.

 

[The fingers]

Eventually they might develop an electromagnetic mass launcher that could send that stuff to the sun at a lower cost. Resembles a big rail gun. High G forces on takeoff are no problem for a block of nuclear waste.

It's pretty disturbing that the radiation levels at Fukushima rose so suddenly without human intervention. It's not over by any stretch. And it's headed in my general direction.

Makes the recent epic El Niño and La Niña episodes look like non-events.

 

[fechter]

That's a map of wave heights after the earthquake, not anything to do with radiation.

You're absolutely right! Funny how so many web sites have this labeled as a radiation map.




This is probably closer to what I was looking for:



And there are lots of pictures of mutated fish with cancerous tumors. Next thing you know we might have a real Godzilla!

 

[billvon]

This is probably closer to what I was looking for:

Another hoax map. An exposure of 75 rem is equivalent to 75 rads per hour (gamma) or 750 rads per hour (neutron.) That ranges from immediate onset radiation sickness to death from a few hours exposure. Did I miss half the West Coast dying horrible deaths?

In reality, highest exposure measured at the actual border of the power plant (i.e. in Japan) was .19 rads per hour. You will experience about .62 rads from natural and non-nuclear manmade sources this year (radioactivity in the dirt, UV from the sun, cinderblocks etc.) So if you got as close as you could to the plant, in the worst, dirtiest, most irradiated location, and stayed there for three hours, you'd see as much radiation as you'd see from nature in a year.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/japan-nuclear-fallout/

And there are lots of pictures of mutated fish with cancerous tumors.

Yep. And those tumors happened both before and after Fukushima.

 

[nutnspecial]

Has anyone seen that dude that was associated with some of the first power plants that supposedly (video) would put uranium in his mouth, eat it, and take swims in the storage pools?

?

 

[Hummina Shadeeba]

If all the hot fuel that were there at the time of the tsunami were to have not been covered with water and burnt up, I imagine once it starts there's no one who will be coming to stop it, how much hot material could be emitted into the air in such a scenario in any of the plants still going? It seems an easy way to get screwed big time if there were an international disaster that would cause a couple burning spent fuel pools and that thought keeps reminding me to get a gas mask. What kind u recommend?

 

[Dauntless]

Has anyone seen that dude that was associated with some of the first power plants that supposedly (video) would put uranium in his mouth, eat it, and take swims in the storage pools?

?

He's on a date. Talk to him tomorrow.

 

[nutnspecial]

Heheheh. Nah I meant that more figuratively since he died about 15 years ago from natural causes. He seemed cool.

I like how we use radiation to treat/remove cancer, but it's also a suspect cause. Everything is connected, at levels no one has likely fathomed. Everything. Also, cancer, most disease in fact, is not fully understood. But dying is probably cool anyway, if you're not seeking it. Catch 22 and paradoxal, everything.


I thank GE and the master ruling class for the mess, not limited to fukishima. It wasn't my idea to refine a bunch of stuff from the ground that takes forever to equalize back again, and just litter it, burn it, or run it in stupid dangerous powerplants. The damn nuclear things should at least be self contained to the point that some of the power from the reaction can be used directly to cool/control itself. Lol.

 

[e-beach]

.............The damn nuclear things should at least be self contained to the point that some of the power from the reaction can be used directly to cool/control itself. Lol.

Well, a lot of people seek ways to poison the planet with their own agenda at heart. Like this guy for instance.

David Charles Hahn (October 30, 1976 – September 27, 2016[1]), sometimes called the Radioactive Boy Scout or the Nuclear Boy Scout, was an American man who in 1994, at age 17, attempted to build a homemade breeder reactor. A scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police when he was stopped on another matter and they found material in his vehicle that troubled them, and he warned that it was radioactive. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was dismantled.[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

 

[TheBeastie]

Has anyone seen that dude that was associated with some of the first power plants that supposedly (video) would put uranium in his mouth, eat it, and take swims in the storage pools?

?

Yeah its Galen Winsor, I find it quite interesting that such an unusual man who did such supposedly dangerous things doesn't have a wikipedia page but his videos are on youtube.

https://youtu.be/ROAO1saHEvs?t=8m9s
Having an old white guy talk for over an hour is quite boring for most people so someone has cut the video the more entertaining part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq3BUDw6HIk

https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/06/27/man-eats-uranium-drinks-and-swims-in-reactor-water-ignites-plutonium-in-his-bare-hand/
He shows that fear of radiation has been exaggerated to scare people … so a few powerful people can maintain total control of the world’s most valuable power resource. Filmed by Ben Williams in 1986.

In the video, you can watch Galen lick a pile of highly radioactive uranium off the palm of his hand and ignite a chunk of plutonium into a shower of flaming dust. The guy also drank reactor cooling pool water for fun and liked to go swimming in the pool to relax. He also spiked the basement flooring of his own home with enough radioactive material to send any Geiger counter reading off the scale to disprove the fear mongering surrounding radon at the time.

The thing about Fukushima that surprised me was seeing some of the massive curved sea walls that exist around Japan for decades, while I saw lots of Godzilla type ones on tv I haven't really been able to google search many up. Some of them are so big you could tell a child its there to stop Godzilla and they would have no doubt your telling them the truth.

They knew a big Tsunami could happen and they obviously decided they didnt care when they built nuclear plants in Japans 1960s. Maybe they figured if the worst happened it would create an interesting scientific learning situation and cause the creation of 1000's of new jobs just like how folks claim for the renewables-industry and how great that is.
Construction began on the Fukushima power plant in 1967, so these really were the first model nuclear. Some could argue its like a 1960's Ford car being used till 2011 today, but really I think thats being unfair since the first mass production Ford the model T was 1908 and only from there did designs improve greatly. Fukushima was really more like the Ford Model T from 1908 in terms of evolution design refinement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

If all the hot fuel that were there at the time of the tsunami were to have not been covered with water and burnt up, I imagine once it starts there's no one who will be coming to stop it, how much hot material could be emitted into the air in such a scenario in any of the plants still going? It seems an easy way to get screwed big time if there were an international disaster that would cause a couple burning spent fuel pools and that thought keeps reminding me to get a gas mask. What kind u recommend?

Might want to at least start off with a Geiger Counter, you can get mini sized ones you can carry it around anywhere and attach it onto your smart phone for next to nothing in costs. That way you will know when to get paranoid about radiation rather then trying to protect your self unnecessarily.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Smart-Geiger-Nuclear-Radiation-Detector-Counter-For-iOS-iPhone-Android-Phone/121576250643?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

[nutnspecial]

Galen; yep that's the guy. I watched everything I found on him it was so interesting. There was a boy in my 5th grade class named galen that was an 'oddball' too, but that's besides the point (I sound like markz). . Well put Beastie, agreed - very interesting stuff. My only contradictory thought is why Galen wasn't wiped from the net, but I guess that goes for a lot of stuff. in those instances either it was impossible and is played off as 'crazy cool', or ?


Beastie what's your take on atomic weapons? I saw some facts that make me question they are even 'real' in the sense we've all been lead to believe.

The science behind nuclear 'bombs' is far different than heating up some water, I think.

 

[Hummina Shadeeba]

Beastie with a Geiger counter and no mask if a couple powerplants were to burn up I'll get to know how much radiation could be released and maybe find it's enough to poison me. How much hot material could become airborne if a large plant were to burn up it's hot fuel? At this point for me it seems the most likely possible nuclear disaster. I'm more worried about other radioactive elements with a shorter half-life than what that guy is eating.