Fukishima: Melted core may be moving out of building

From Energy News site:

Report: Workers say ground under Fukushima plant is cracking and radioactive steam is coming up —
Melted core may be moving out of building.

from the video at link:
"if the radiation level is going down, where it’s been monitored inside the buildings,
and if the water pressure is going down,
and the temperature is going down,
it’s not that the radiation is just suddenly going away,
it means that the radioactive material, the melted core, is simply moving further away from where it’s been measured. And it may have — as a result of these aftershocks — be moving down out of the building itself.”

http://enenews.com/very-serious-and-alarming-development-workers-say-ground-under-fukushima-plant-is-cracking-and-radioactive-steam-is-coming-through-melted-cores-may-be-moving-out-of-buildings-video

:cry:

but there was no mention of the implications of that.
Than I found this story.

shudder

a really important fact that should be included? This whole nuke plant catastrophe has been nothing but a cover-up since the beginning.

If that pile of toxic crap hits the ground water, it's over with and once that toxic pile begins it's descent, nothing short of a miracle will be able to stop it.

Gah!!

...don't you think?

I spent about three months reading about Fukushima and worrying about these eventualities--which seemed inevitable
back in May! They appear to be on their way to happening.

What in the world are we supposed to do? Radioactive isotopes, are no doubt, in our rainwater and most likely
in our drinking water and food supply. However, there is a media blackout like nothing we've ever seen.

I wish there was more information on what we're being exposed to and how we can protect ourselves.

I'm all out of ideas on this one. We're all just lambs to the slaughter.

For someone who understands the science of the situation, reading that statement is like hearing someone say that because it gets dark every night, the sun must be turning off.

The radiation is going down because the short-lived isotopes that are byproducts of nuclear fission are decaying and becoming less radioactive. The core is no longer fissioning, so it "cools down," the same way a stove burner cools down after you turn it off. The core is not magically moving or digging an escape tunnel, any more than the burner would have to move away from you for it to stop feeling warm.

That is pretty ridiculous dude. Heat up a Metal ball red-hot, place it on a piece of flat plastic, and watch what happens. It BURNS its way through the material. Digs, good God man, get a grip!!

on everything.

If anyone spamming this board with misinformation were, in fact, working for "the man", I'd like to tell "the man" that spamming this board with misinformation isn't shutting anyone up. Instead, it's creating further interest in the OPs (due to the volume of posts) and causing more people to read the threads.

Since we're not zombie Republicans, many of us have critical thinking skills and can make up our own minds about what we believe may be true and what is total crap - even when blinded with pseudo-scientific facts and a raft of bullshit.

The "fact" that we don't know what happens next because this has never fucking happened before, that's the "fact" that needs to be discussed.

For a person who claims to understand "the science" of this event, your analogy was rather equivocated.

your "facts" anymore? You have no credibility.

...since the initial disaster, which was about 5 months ago. Those nuclear reactions have not stopped.

They tried to stop it by cooling it with staggering amounts of water for prolonged periods of time. It didn't help--at all.

It appears that they have given up trying to stop the reactions. A meltdown is still happening, and the fissioning has not
stopped--so continued meltdown into the ground is not only feasible, but probable. Again, this has been ongoing for five months.

It's not out of the question. In fact, it's the next logical step.

I have not heard that those reactions/fission have stopped. From anyone. Except you.

How far can it 'move'? What happens if it hits the water table?

it will cause electrolysis (Water separating into Hydrogen and Oxygen)... and that is an explosive situation, no pun

It's hard to know how to respond to that information . . .

'Crap' just doesn't suffice.

I've been catching his videocasts here and there, but I keep forgetting to look him up. He's seems very credible and knowledgeable.

radioactive? The aquifer is ruined? And a 6.8 today.

on his show... the civilian understanding... China Syndrome... and no, it is not good.

The silence on the world media though makes me want to reach for this.

:tinfoilhat:

..like the Kardashian wedding and what the Jersey Shore cast is up to.

although not a surprise, given we knew this was going to happen eventually.

The melted core will move in the direction of gravity until it can melt no more.

this could not happen in a Mark I GE reactor, because the design was that much better than oh Chernobyl?

Given how many mark 1 are deployed the media will not cover this either. Oh and MSNBC not covering it. I get it. they are a division of GE.

:puke:

I got a really pious and exceeding patient lecture right here on DU about how a core breach and uncontained meltdown was physically impossible and doubting that "fact" made me ignorant.

It's kind of funny that some people treat science as a religion and along the way forget that real science is about further questioning.

When they cover up this mess--they deny us information that is necessary to keep ourselves and our children safe.

We are being exposed to radioactive isotopes from Fukushima. These isotopes have been streaming over here for months
now and accumulating in the food and water supply. But how much are we being exposed to?

The EPA released numbers back in April--that showed dangerous levels of cesium and iodine-131 in water and food growing
in the United States. Then...NOTHING. The EPA discontinued the frequent radiation readings that normally happen during disasters--
and then we heard nothing. The isotope levels in many of areas of the country were at or above EPA accepted standards--and
that was months ago.

We are literally being kept in a dark space--that is harming all of us.

It's very sick and frustrating.

Since this is the first time such a thing has happened, everything we've heard is just opinion and supposition. However, what happens if all the uranium and plutonium were somehow to coalesce together?

No matter what happens, I hope this is the end of fission-based nuclear power.

and carefully explained why he thought there was on ongoing meltdown.
in MARCH !!!

And people here piled onto those threads pooh pooing any danger, trying to shut down discussion.

Now, this article reports what Gunderson warned about.
And if there is another explosion, it will be bigger, do more damage to existing reactors, thus adding to more problems.

It is very clear that TEPCO is extremely unable to manage this disaster.
It is even clear the disaster may be beyond any management.
Radiation levels in Tokyo are reported to be increasing, doctors are speaking out,
and government is hiding behind a wall of silence,
including USA government concerning Americans in Japan and in Tokyo.

I've noticed that those thread poopers haven't been here lately.

Guess the cat is out of the bag and they've been laid off.

as recently as yesterday, but I think credibility is shredded at this point.
Facts usually trump pompous hot air.

I was sooooo ready to jump all over your shit.

Good one.

Some things you really just don't want to know.

But thanks for finding a great animated map of how screwn we are.

pretty colors. I think I'll sign up for the cancer insurance next time around. I've mocked it for years, but.....

And Thanks in advance for the link.

:patriot:

Not a current map. For heaven's sakes, that's a map of the iodine 131 isotope plume from the 19th to the 26th of March.

Look at the dates at the top. ZAMG hasn't been producing these maps for months. Here's their own website to prove it:
http://www.zamg.ac.at/aktuell/index.php?seite=1&artikel=ZAMG_2011-08-05GMT07:01


I realize the site is in German, but if you go here and use the side bar you can see these updates as they were published. Remember the dates are in reverse format (DD-MM-YYYY)
http://www.zamg.ac.at/aktuell/index.php?seite=7&artikel=ZAMG_2011-04-03GMT10:11

However, the core is flooded with borated water, plus pre loaded core poisons and the control rods themselves (which in a BWR are inserted from the bottom of the core and have a decent chance to tag along). If it were to become a critical pile thermal expansion would likely drive the reactive elements apart while increasing the residual decay heat levels due to new fission product generation. Assuming it hits the deck, it would then have to melt through several feet of concrete, then through the plant sublevels, before it actually started to burn into the bedrock. Given the amount of time the core has been shutdown and the amount of concrete it would need to destroy, I don't see it breaching the drywell. This assumes that it's actually out of the primary, it's possible that if they've re-established the recirculation pumps that the fuel cell meat (which has a sand like consistency) is actually recirculating inside the primary coolant system and heavily contaminating the primary coolant with core fission products. But I'm not there to actually assess the situation and they haven't really been forthcoming with specifics as to plant pressure and pump flow rates or CDFPA readings, or anything else that an arm chair expert would need.

However, seems to me the OP is saying the drywell has already been breached and the mass is below the reactor... thus the dangerously radioactive steam coming out of the surrounding ground.

…and is not being cooled or moderated by anything now. The control rods are back in the reactor, nowhere near the blob of melted reactor core.

Nothing is cooling or moderating this mess now, and nothing can.

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :hide:

and is now on it's way to bedrock. There is more, IT SEEMS we now have an old fashioned PILE reactor for all functional discussion.

The steam coming out from cracks in the ground is outside MAIN buildings.

I mean really, the core is going to burn through 10-20 feet of concrete in the drywell after having been shutdown for 4 months, then burn through the sublevel floor without anyone noticing? OR it's some foundation damage and some busted piping? Not saying it couldn't happen, but it would have made a hell of a lot more sense when the event first occurred than it would to suddenly have happened now. Also RT seems to like to sensationalize this story, and their evidence is a bunch of random unattributed tweets and anonymous 'government' sources. That's just not good enough for me. They also said a lot of stuff that began with if. If the radiation level is going down... Well is it or isn't it, and by how much, because over time it WILL go down. Where are these measurements taken, using core instrumentation? Then it's in the drywell and we've got another 10-20 feet of concrete plus a much greater surface area to diffuse that decay heat. There isn't any actual data here, just a bunch of conjecture. You see steam coming out of the ground, is it radioactive? How radioactive? It's 'sporadic', why is it sporadic? Does it correspond to any plant evolutions? This is why I have hated media reporting on this event, because they aren't actually reporting any actual data and are using fear to drive ratings. But what else is new.

we can GET honest, up-to-date, accurate information from TEPCO, the Japanese Govt, the U.S. news media and/or our own government.

Surely you know enough about this to know that's not the case, right?

Surely you know enough about this to know that TEPCO and the Japanese govt have engaged in active cover-up and obfuscation from the start about what they DID Know, and there's been scads of stuff TEPCO didn't even know anyway, later found out, then hid, then finally admitted.

It's not all that helpful when apparently technically-proficient people, like yourself (or at least that's how you present yourself), haven't kept abreast enough of the situation so that the comments they make are even moderately well-informed.

Here's just ONE example:
{i}Japan will for the first time report to the UN nuclear watchdog that fuel in its crippled Fukushima plant may have melted through the bottoms of three reactor core vessels, a news report said Tuesday.

The Yomiuri Shimbun daily report came a day after Japan more than doubled its estimate of the radiation released into the air from the plant in about the first week after it was hit by the March 11 seabed quake and tsunami.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) now says it believes 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere in the first six days — compared to its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels. ...{/i}
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x29812

If you'd like to BE helpful, start checking out the ENENEWS http://enenews.com/ with some regularity, so you don't have to post your doubts about the validity of things already well known to be factual.

Oh, and btw, for the most part they can't get close enough to TELL about most of the details you're asking about. The radiation is so bad in some places it can kill within 1 week after a 1-hour exposure. It's so bad (way worse than Chernobyl http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/05/epa-halts-daily-reporting-of-radaition.html ) that they don't think the geiger counters are capable of measuring it )http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-02/tepco-reports-second-deadly-radiation-reading-at-fukushima-plant.html ).

It will come out one day as surely as this radioactive pile is escaping the vessels at Fukushima...

:thumbsup:

But, having read it three times, I can only say, "Due Diligence".

that at some point the mass of corium dilutes with all the stuff it is melting to the point that the reaction slows and temps drop below the melt point of surrounding material. It will still be very hot and dangerous, just not hot enough to keep moving.

http://fukushima-diary.com/

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/08/news-8152011/

8/15/2011,Tepco confessed there is a huge pool on the basement floor of Fukushima,which is shared by units 1~4. They stock 6400 nuclear spent fuel rods in it, and groundwater is flowing into the pool through broken duct.
Now the massively contaminated water is in it at least 9.0t.

6400 fuel rods is about 140% of the total fuel rods in the reactors.
Actually Fukushima nuc plants are built on underground water vein,they always needed to pomp up groundwater. However,because of the accident,they stopped pomp up the water.This fact has not been published yet.
They say Tepco “found” this trouble on 8/13,but they can’t not know the fact since the very beginning of the accident.

This is a fine freaking radioactive kettle of fish.

"You get more radioactivity from microwaving a bag of popcorn than this will ever cause!" :cry:

Did I forget the concrete or flying transcontinental

"the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs"
and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs."

ALREADY!!!!

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181665921711896.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets

rads from eating bananas.

I just find that the conversation has been subverted, and that the industry accomplished it's goal... squirrel.

Very few of us are still paying attention, sadly

information. We have so moved on here! It makes me want to pull my hair out.

unfortunately presently there is not,

Beautiful Nippon may eventually become uninhabitable,

What can the people do,

reach for the blossom upon another isle,

cry to the heavens for light,

for all, my door will be open,

your head safely lay down tonight

我々の先祖は泣いています

I'll open my door to a Japanese family to come stay with us until they can do better. I've known all along that something like this was very capable of happening and I've taken a lot of flak here for pointing that out but no matter I'm been right and I continue to be right on this.
Shut the sunsabiotches down all of them especially the ones we have here. Other people can make up their own minds concerning this but myself I want to see this fission stopped. We're only getting about 19 to 20 percent of our electric from fission and we've lost our manufacturing base so I think we could do without the electric from nuclear power plants. Might be a little hardship today but it would be for the better for mankind if we were to stop this failed experiment called nuclear power plants. Nuclear is neither safe, cheap or clean. Its been a sham from the get go.

Where's the Japanese asking for international help from experts from the git-go?
They didn't WANT any help from anyone...said they had it handled.
Where's the army of humans who should have been deployed immediately? (Chernobyl had thousands)
Watching their web cam, you occasionally see a person or two.
It's been almost 6 months and it's only gotten WORSE.
Personally, I think it's so fucked up now that nothing CAN be done.

A new book by a former U.S diplomat Kevin Maher reports that the U.S. government knew early on that meltdowns had occurred at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. Maher alleges that the government considered evacuating all Americans, but ultimately decided against the plan for political reasons.
The book, titled, "The Japan That Can't Decide," is written in Japanese.

This news follows admissions by the Japanese government that it withheld information that left millions of people exposed to airborne radiation that spread as far as Tokyo, and exposed even more to long-lived radionuclides spread via the food chain.
Those exposures are a pubic health outrage based on the As Low As Reasonably Achievable principle of radiation protection.

More from Daily KOS:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/18/1008182/-US-government-knew-early-on-that-Fukushima-meltdowns-had-occurred?via=sidebar&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

and who knows were they even are.
Robots will be fried trying to access the hot, twisted, rubble mess and humans.....death sentence for sure.

people were being lied to protect the nuclear industry worldwide. What does it take for people to realize that governments put financial considerations before people?

all over the world. xeolite has shown some ability to absorb rad, but we are in pioneering scientific territory here. I f they can split the atom & nucleus then they can solder it back together, that will be the Millenials main job. Cleaning up all the plastic & various poisons....that Canadian teen-probably an adult now-had found something that "eats" plastic, that should be used on the giant plastic island in the Pacific, it would take a government to override the corporations, who would fight this, of course.

...of course the presstitutes in the M$M over here are too busy chiing Obama very taking a vaction, and shark attacks, and missing blonde women in aruba to cover this minimal story...

Good dog we are so screwn....

It is progressing slower than I thought it would, but it is progressing nonetheless. Once the radioactive mass gets into the ground, it is going to be but a short trip before it hits groundwater, then lots of people, quite possibly us included, are going to be truly and royally fucked.

This is a direct result of the greed of TEPCO. Instead of trying to save the assets on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the containment breach, they should have immediately implemented the Chernobyl solution, a concrete solution containing boric acid among other ingredients. This would have brought the fuel mass below critical levels, and would have cooled it down to the point where it would have been contained within the vessel.

But instead they were trying to save their assets, and instead are going to lose everything. Idiots.

I knew where the hell this mess was leading almost from the get go, and the folks on the ground at Fukishima should have as well.

But TEPCO wanted to try and save their assets rather than putting the good of their country and the rest of the world first. Now we all might be paying for it.

The sad thing is that this was predictable. I used to work at a nuclear plant, and still have friends in the biz. We were all saying months ago that TEPCO needed to bite the bullet, stop fucking around and shut the whole mess down using the Chernobyl solution.

Frankly, when this mess blows, the whole world should sue TEPCO. This was entirely predictable, and entirely preventable.

I find that part of the culture deeply contemptible and always have. You fuck up, you own up to it and you don't concern yourself with how much you're 'losing face'.

TEPCO officials, right from the get-go, were as concerned with 'saving face' as they were with the actual disaster.

No, strike that. They were MORE concerned with how this disaster was and is making them LOOK than they ever were with actually solving the problem.

made that unworkable

Right?

No, where Japan is, it can't be that -- but it could be a U.S. syndrome.

Rec

I feel sorry for twenty year olds.

May God have mercy on us for falling for that shit, or worse, just standing by and allowing the Nuke industry to flourish.

Ironically, I am one of the early baby..BOOM-ers.

Speeding up to past 65 now.....never thought I would be grateful to be aging.

but I have 2 sons in their 40s.
x(

I was just thinking the other day that I'm glad I won't have to deal with all the sh*t that's coming in the next decades.

Out children are worried about losing their jobs and no others being available, our grandchildren are worried about being able to pay for college and the subsequent student loan debt.

Where did it all go? We should've had such a good future to bequeath to them.

10 years ago the financial schedule would've had the national debt completely paid off with "surpluses as far as the eye could see."

Ah yes, * got elected by the Supreme Court and we let him drive the country into ruin.

Heartbreaking!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1253794

<snip>KING: And we have some video -- this is from TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company and it is of unit one. And I want to show this video and I want to ask you, Arnie Gundersen, when you look at this video -- as someone who understands the design, the engineering in here -- what are you seeing?

GUNDERSEN: It frightened me. What it's showing is that the nuclear reactor core has melted, and it's somewhere down below the floor. And you can just see boiling water and boiling steam coming out of that hole in the floor. It's the closest yet they've come to approaching that radioactive core. So, that was the first thing.

...

And getting to the core would not happen due to the mantle temps. In effect if it became part of lava... it would just go away... serious.

It is what happens in the meantime.

On the bright side, the earth's crust there is a tad thin due to the particular geology.

Wouldn't it be just as likely that if it breaches the surface mantle that there would be massive volcanic eruptions and possible dispersal of radioactivity throughout the worlds atmosphere?

Just asking for your opinion.

now as to the explosion, why yesterday it was mentioned in the TH show... if it is hot enough and it leads to electrolysis of water as it breaks into the water table, THAT could lead to an explosion.

Of all the worst case scenarios that is actually a tad scarier than this going into the mantle. Water and water table has way too many bad things in this.

I would pitch it, if I were you.

I'm not trying to say things aren't awful in this situation - they are about 1000 times as awful as the powers that be would have you believe, but the core isn't a problem.

It's all the places it's going to contaminate on it's way down, or, if it explodes, on it's way up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Syndrome
:kick:

That building has gone downhill straight to Hell.