Posted on 06/14/2011 7:41:13 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
TEPCO to cover reactor with polyester sheets
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will begin to cover the No.1 reactor building with polyester sheets this month to prevent the dispersal of radioactive substances.
The buildings of the No.1, 3, and 4 reactors were severely damaged by explosions and radioactive elements are still being released into the atmosphere. There are fears that heavy rain may hamper the workers' activities and that the rainwater may become contaminated with radioactive materials.
To prevent these situations, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, plans to enclose the reactor buildings with polyester sheets. The covering of the No.1 reactor building will begin later this month.
The roughly one-millimeter-thick sheets will be attached to the steel frames of the 54-meter-high building.
To minimize workers' exposure to radiation, TEPCO will use a special method with very few personnel. A large crane designed to ward off radiation will set up 62 pre-assembled parts at the reactor building. TEPCO aims to complete the covering operation in late September.
The utility plans to carry out similar work at the No.3 and 4 reactor buildings.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 07:26 +0900 (JST)
P!
Well, I figured out back in the 70s that polyester didn’t breathe very well, but who knew it could stop radiation?
We're all GOING TO DIIIEIEI!!!!!!
</irrational-hysterical-freeper-mode>
They are going to shrink wrap it.
When reinforced concrete fails, bring in the 1mm thick blue plastic sheet...
They found a use for all those leisure suites left over from the 70’s.
O-k everybody, dig into your closets and find your old leisure suits from the 70’s and ‘80’s.
(Finally, a useful purpose for that horrible material.)
Dang! Ya beat me to it!
Of course 70s era reactors would choose polyester shirts, Disco lives in Fukushima!
Something like a nuclear leisure suit? :-)
Quote from ZeroHege writer Tyler Durden:
“And since the polyester tent idea is doomed to failure, it is only a matter of time before the Simpsons dome is firmly in place over a region with a radius of about 20 kilometers. Impossible you say? Just wait. “
The writer calls it a circus tent and there’s a colorful tent graphic at the bottom of the page.
So, a polyester umbrella is gonna keep all the cesium and strontium inside?
Dream on, you funny little Japanese fellows.
Notice the blackout on this right here in the US.
Arnie Gundersen - Nebraska Nuclear Plant: Emergency Level 4 & About to Get Worse - June 14, 2011 (part one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sTmzUzruu8
Maybe when this happens(as it did) then the whole building will float up into the sky and blow away.
Especially watch starting at the 2 minute mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sE6050Vhh0&feature=player_embedded
You can’t see it, taste it or feel it and it kills you 20 years later, why bother?
Remember what the little yapping hipsters on ZeroHedge thought was going to happen as a result of the oil spill int the Gulf last summer? Oh, they were thinking that we’d have massive die-offs in the ocean and on land as a result of gaseous emissions from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The Gulf spill was going to kill wildlife clear out into the north Atlantic, etc.
Yea, that didn’t happen. The hysterical rantings of most posters at ZH won’t happen this time, either.
The “tent” is being put in place in an attempt to contain the radiation being carried in the steam generated by the plant. This structure might not contain all of it, but they can reduce the overall emissions. And contrary to what snarky idiots think, those of us who work with real industrial materials know that what they’re going to put over those buildings won’t be the same disposable films that you buy down at Home Depot. I’ve worked with poly films that were so thick, you needed multiple men to move a sheet 100’ square. TEPCO doesn’t say how heavy a “film” they’re using, but they’re likely using polyester because as a plastic fabric/sheet, polyester has low permeability, a pretty high tensile strength (ie, it will take a pretty good tension load) and it absorbs less water than most other films.
Here’s a quick comparison:
http://www.ampef.com/chart.html
And here’s TEPCO’s actual proposal, in brief, of what they’re doing:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110614e17.pdf
Think they need cranes that can pick 750 tons for something that’s going to be made from painting drop cloths?
ZH has, sadly, degenerated from a pretty high good source of financial info into a cluster of morons who pollute every thread there with their juvenile “I’m more of a hip, sardonic slacker than you are” contests. When I read ZH and see some of their snarky little twaddle on these topics, I’m moved to say “I’ve taken dumps with higher IQ’s that you twerps.” Where engineering is concerned, they’re almost dumber than liberal arts majors.
“Yea, that didn’t happen.”
Depends on who you talk to. A lot more has happened in the gulf than we know, Thanks to government influence on the media. And only God knows what people have been ingesting.
Yes, there’s more to the situation than we’re being commonly told.
But the hysteria on ZH as to what they thought would happen was absurd. Utterly absurd.
As with the nuke disaster in Japan, when I said we’ve had nuke disasters before, we’ve had oil wells blow out before. There was a huge blowout near Bakersfield, CA in 1910, the Lakeview blowout. This blowout dwarfs the Deepwater Horizon blowout by a fair bit. There was literally a lake of crude oil on top of the ground. Today, you can find a bit of asphalt on top of the sand if you know what you’re looking for/at. Weeds and plant life grow quite in the area, when there is enough precip to foster plant growth.
http://www.sjvgeology.org/history/lakeview.html
There was another huge oil well blow-out in Spindletop, TX in 1901. Here’s what a nine-day gusher site looks like today:
http://www.geoexpro.com/sfiles/33/34/1/file/historyofoil.pdf
Crude oil isn’t the huge catastrophe that some people think it is. Sure, it makes a mess for awhile. But crude oil has been washing up on shorelines for eons before we got here, and will be doing so after we’re gone. Oil is came out of the earth, and there are plenty of microbes in nature that eat it. To some people, crude oil is thought of as some alien other-worldly substance that the earth cannot deal with, and the release of same will just cause death and destruction everywhere it goes.
Again, this is just hysterical nonsense. Messy, yes. Expensive to clean up, yes. The end of the world? Hardly.
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