NRC Chair: Spent Fuel Pool at Reactor 4 Has No Water, Radiation Levels "Extremely High"

Source: Reuters

More comments from the NRC chair, says spent fuel pool at Reactor 4 has no water, radiation levels are "extremely high"
by Stephanie Ditta at 2:13 PM

Read more: http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2

not sure but could be a lot more.

600,000 spent rods at the entire site.

http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/

The spent fuel rod pool at reactor 4 is one of seven pools for spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daichii. These pools are designed to store the intensively radioactive fuel rods that were already used in nuclear reactors. These “used” fuel rods still contain uranium (or in the case of fuel rods from reactor 3, they contain both uranium and plutonium from the MOX fuel used in that reactor). In addition to the uranium and plutonium, the rods also contain other radioactive elements. These radioactive elements are created in the rods by the intense radiation around the rods when they are in the reactor core (before they are moved to the spent fuel pools).

Six of the spent fuel rod pools are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds up to 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds up to 6291 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods. The fuel rods once stored atop reactor 3 may no longer be there: one of the several explosions at the Fukushima reactors may have damaged that pool.

So was the #3 spent fuel rod pool blown up into the air and ocean? The entire top of the building is missing. Can't someone see if the fuel rod pool is still in tact or not? How come nobody is talking about his? #3 is the most dangerous because it has plutonium rods!! #3 had the largest explosion with a mushroom cloud and 11 workers killed!

Where is the NRC chair's comment?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-nuclear-nrc-idUSTRE72F7KO20110316

It's a link down the page a bit for Reuters.

The spent fuel isn't as hot, but there's more of it and it's not so well-contained.

Last night I read a 1983 NRC assessment of the risks of spent fuel pools and some simulations they did then of a spent fuel pool loss of cooling water resulted in truly frightening radiation dose estimates to the general population. Assuming a certain local population density typical of the US Midwest their exposure estimates for such an accident ranged from 1-10 million person-rem, which would results in several thousand cancer deaths.

U.S. Drone May Be Used To Scout Damaged Reactors

TOKYO (Nikkei)--The U.S. military is considering sending its advanced Global Hawk unmanned aircraft to help Japan assess damage at a stricken nuclear power plant that has been rendered inaccessible by high levels of radiation.

The remotely piloted airplane has high-performance infrared sensors and surveillance equipment. Japan has requested U.S. assistance in collecting data at the reactors in order to draw up plans to contain the crisis.

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110317D16JFA19.htm



Yuli Andreyev, former head of the agency tasked with cleaning up after Chernobyl, told the Guardian that the Japanese had failed to grasp the scale of the disaster. He also said the authorities had to be willing to sacrifice nuclear response workers for the good of the greater public, and should not only be deploying a skeleton staff. "They don't know what to do," he said. "The personnel have been removed and those that remain are stretched."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/japan-nuclear-crisis-escalates

Maybe the Soviet model wasn't so bad at all....