Posted on 03/26/2011 8:49:04 PM PDT by winoneforthegipper
So keeping score....From worse to bad it goes like this.
Reactor 2 very bad
Reactor 3 bad
Reactor 1 bad enough
“High levels of caesium and other substances are being detected, which usually should not be found in reactor water. There is a high possibility that fuel rods are being damaged.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110327/wl_afp/japandisasteraccidentnuclear
But 3 is where the supposed big crack is located.
Bad situation over there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2689114/posts?page=1456#1456
The core has either fully or partially melted and is sitting in the bottom of the reactor vessel. Now, understand the term reactor vessel as being a 6 inch steel alloy oblong cylinder enclosure.
There is another level of containment being a huge reinforced concrete containment structure which the reactor vessel sits inside of.
You have seen the outer containment buildings blow apart already so forget that structure.
The contaminated water is running out of the building and into the ocean. The whole site sits on a huge concrete slab so ground water contamination is a moot point.
As more information comes out, keep the above in mind as you read about where the leaks are being reported.
Finally, and most annoyingly, they are now quoting in becquerels. The following link is very good for understanding radiation measurement. One of the best I have seen:
“The becquerel (Bq) is the simplest unit to understand of the three. It is also perhaps the most misleading (of the three) for answering the question, ‘Will this hurt me?’ A becquerel is simply a measure of the number of disintegrations per second a radionuclide undergoes. Thus, a becquerel has base units identical to that of frequency, or 1/s. It is important to notice that the Bq does not measure energy, and does not differentiate between ionising radiation and non-ionising radiation (refer again to the radioactivity article for what this means). Frequently the ‘amount of radiation’ is expressed simply by referring to the overall activity of ‘whatever-the-heck radioactive stuff’ is present. It is in such cases that the unit becquerel is most commonly used. How useful this is depends on what the observer wants to know. Should anyone wish to state how much of any radioactive decay is present, independent on what type of material or what type of decay is present, the becquerel is the correct unit to use.
If we return to the boxing analogy, a becquerel would just be a measure of how many punches are thrown without regard to whether they are roundhouses, hooks, jabs, or even if they connect at all. They also say nothing about how much the punches hurt, once landed. For these answers, we need more units.”
Small but importatn correction. The reactor vessel is 6 inches thick.
More coffee. important. Sigh.
Now the operators are taking back their readings of 10 million times and saying they got their readings wrong.
First of all, how could you make that kind of mistake and publish it worldwide
So either they are pulling the story like the one that was pulled out of the NYTIMES...or they really are incompetent
or both
First of all, using logic and critical thinking skills, publishing it shows they are probably not covering up really bad news.
Of course, the third possibility is the plant worker made a mistake and they corrected it just as they said. The NYT story could be something else entirely and probably unrelated to this news story.
That is not unexpected. All the fuel has been removed from reactor #4 and placed in the used fuel cooling pool. Unfortunately, IMHO, #4's cooling pool apparently has as crack / water leak caused by the earthquake (or, perhaps, hydrogen explosion).
Which reactor vessel supposedly is cracked?
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