Posted on 03/25/2011 4:01:14 AM PDT by blam
Why so?
EPA: Some West Coast Radiation Monitors Not Working Properly
If the admin gets caught lying about what's making it over here, even if the levels are harmless, God help them.
If a reaction continues uncontrolled the heat and pressure would build and then there would be a serious explosion. In the unlikely event they get enough concrete on top of the reactor to contain such an explosion it would go out the bottom and reach the ground water and or the sea. The reaction has to be shut down with a mediating agent such as graphite and lead. BTW it is my firm belief that the operator(s) significantly underestimated the secondary reaction rates in Unit 3. They thought that when they inserted the rods it would cool in 48 hours like a “normal” reactor. Clearly the MOX fuel caused the secondary reaction to run unabated.
You CAN'T pour concrete on them yet. You have to cool them off first. Concrete is a thermal insulator. If you put concrete around it, the inside will get hotter and hotter.
Much ado about nothing.
This is going to end badly I think. I hope I’m wrong. It seems pretty hopeless though. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Correct.
Pass it on (jest in case) ...
We need to entomb the sun.
Even Chernobyl wasn’t “encased” in concrete, there are boreholes into the core, and they have filtering and cooling; and that one had already blown up.
They still don’t know where the water came from, and they don’t think the water from the reactor itself could have gotten to where they think the workers were; other speculation is that this was contaminated by the spent fuel pool.
Still adds complexity, because they have to collect this water (which from one source has 3.9 million of some measurement I didn’t recognize, compared to 3.1 in the seawater — a million times more). They have to filter it, clean out the radiation, and then handle the radioactive waste. They obviously can’t let open pools of highly contaminated water sit around.
Cue the “radiation is good for you” contingent.
“Japan reactor core may be leaking radioactive material, official says”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/25/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html
When I suggested they just dump concrete on ‘em, like Chernobyl - you said “You CAN’T pour concrete on them yet. You have to cool them off first. Concrete is a thermal insulator. If you put concrete around it, the inside will get hotter and hotter. “
You’d better tell them quick - ;o)
“TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/japan-nuclear-plant-_n_837596.html
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