[dynoman]

There’s got to be more to this, I can’t see how basically metal fuel rods burn, and if they did how they could be extinguished so easily. They would most likely melt and end up like the elephant’s foot under Chernobyl.

[Mouton]

Why is the world waiting so long for the one action that would stop these reactors cold. Given his ability to shut down the US free economy so well, why not just drop (.)bama into the reactor site. Instant shut down.

[justa-hairyape]

In one reactor the rods were completely out of water for 2 1/2 hours due to a rapid fall in water level. Not exactly sure which # that was. Right now the rods are reported to be only 1/2 submerged. So they assume it has at least suffered partial meltdown.

[justa-hairyape]

Sorry. Miss read your post. Gonna get some rest after this. Basically in Reactor #4 the temperature of the rod storage pool water got to 84 C which was twice normal. Apparently the cooling had been slowed or shut down. A rod got to hot, exploded and had a small fire. Then as you pointed out, they put the fire out within an hour or two. But you do not just put that fire out. And a couple of reports claimed the fire just put its self out. Well, those fires just do not leave that easy. And new reports are that a spent fuel pool in #4 is currently boiling.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

“There’s got to be more to this, I can’t see how basically metal fuel rods burn, and if they did how they could be extinguished so easily. They would most likely melt and end up like the elephant’s foot under Chernobyl.”

Let’s just say that this is an example of “just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it cannot happen”. Some metals, like depleted uranium, will spontaneously combust when they are sufficiently finely divided, eg; powdered. That’s in air. If the temps are high enough at the point where these metals are exposed, including the zirconium cladding, water can dissasociate into hydrogen & oxygen, just as with electrolysis. That’s a potent explosive mixture right there. But in any event the process supplies free oxygen. And generally speaking, almost anything that can oxidize can, under the right conditions, oxidize fast enough to catch fire or catch fire to what’s next to it.

[backwoods-engineer]

There’s got to be more to this, I can’t see how basically metal fuel rods burn, and if they did how they could be extinguished so easily. Many metals burn. Magnesium, aluminum, iron, steel (too bad Rosie O), lead, copper, etc. Uranium and plutonium also burn. Radioactive decay, without a means to remove the heat, can easily elevate the temperature of the rods high enough to burn.

[raybbr]

Years ago I worked in a steel mill. One thing we did to cut steel spills was to use an 1/8" steel tube attached to an oxygen line. We'd heat the tube to the melting point and release some oxygen into the tube. It would literally catch on "fire" and start to burn. We'd take that burning tube, apply it to the steel spill and start cutting. No acetylene or other flammable gas.

It would cut a lot faster than acetylene torches. Could burn through a foot thick slab of steel in less than a minute under full oxygen cutting.