Coligny wrote:Yeah... The whole tally problem... You can't inspect what you can't even really see...
Tell that to the highway tunnel inspectors
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Coligny wrote:Yeah... The whole tally problem... You can't inspect what you can't even really see...
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has radioactive water problems at its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that seem uncontainable, as seen in the latest case to beset the utility: tanks used to store highly tainted water that was used to cool its melted reactors but now must be safely stored are leaking.
The plant, part of which was built on filled-in land, also faces the risk of liquefaction if another big temblor hits.
The tank leaks come as Tepco struggles to halt the flow, some 300 tons a day, of highly radioactive groundwater into the Pacific, where it is believed wreaking environmental havoc.
And the groundwater problem will probably dog Tepco over the next four decades or so as it tries to scrap and entomb the spent fuel from reactors 1 to 4 and the melted fuel inside units 1 to 3.
A key to minimizing the exposure of groundwater to the highly radioactive coolant water leaking into the basements of the buildings housing the crippled reactors is to learn the courses the groundwater takes from the landward mountains to the sea under the plant, experts say.
“Figuring out the flow of the groundwater is vital, as it will help spot where the sources of contamination are and stop it from spreading further in the future,” said Atsunao Marui, a groundwater expert and principal senior researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a Tokyo- and Ibaraki-based semi-public research body.
At the moment, Tepco has a rough idea of where the groundwater is flowing.
About 1,000 tons of groundwater flows from the mountains under the complex daily, and about 400 tons of it penetrates the basement walls of the buildings housing reactors 1 to 4 of the six-reactor plant, thus mixing with the highly radioactive coolant water leaking from the containment vessels.
The remaining 600 or so tons apparently flows to the sea and Tepco suspects about half of it gets contaminated somewhere else under the plant.
But the exact paths the groundwater takes have yet to be pinpointed.
Tepco compiled a groundwater flow simulation for an Aug. 12 meeting with experts from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, but the utility said the simulation was inaccurate.
According to Marui, the simulation was not difficult to draw up, but Tepco needs to collect more data from a wider area, even outside the plant, where it doesn’t have monitoring wells to check groundwater flows.
“If the government is really planning (to take a step forward to reducing the tainted groundwater), it needs to (support Tepco in) widening the monitoring points to outside the plant,” including from the source of the groundwater and the mountainside, said Kazunari Yoshimura, an expert in water-related matters, who runs Global Water Japan, a water-consulting company.
To reduce the amount of groundwater flowing under the reactor buildings, Tepco dug a number of wells on the nearby mountains and plans to pump the water up before it has a chance to mix with radioactive water.
Aware of Tepco’s struggles, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said earlier this month that taxpayer money will be pumped into a project to build barriers around the reactor buildings to prevent tainted groundwater from flowing to the sea.
Considering Tepco will have to deal with radioactive groundwater for about 40 years until the reactors are safely neutralized, getting accurate data about the groundwater, including the amount, depth and detailed flow paths, is essential if it is to take effective measures, said Yoshimura, who has advised Tepco on the problem.
Tepco must be aware that more monitoring wells need to be built but it is probably hesitant to do so outside the complex, in part because it lacks manpower, Yoshimura said.
The large volume of groundwater flowing under the plant is creating another problem — the possibility that the land it stands on will liquefy if another major earthquake hits.
The east side of the reactor buildings, in an area close to the sea where land was filled in, appears more vulnerable to liquefaction. Marui said the reclaimed land consists of clay and crushed rocks, through which water can easily pass.
Tepco recently injected liquid glass into the filled land, thereby forming an underground barrier to help prevent groundwater from reaching the sea.
Due to technical reasons, the barrier had to be built 1.8 meters below ground, meaning tainted groundwater can flow to the sea above it. Tepco officials believe that is happening now.
And because the wall is blocking a certain amount of groundwater, the level of groundwater has risen in the fill area, raising the risk of liquefaction if and when another earthquake hits, Tepco said. However, the plant’s turbine buildings are likely to withstand any earthquake because they are built on the bedrock, it said.
Before the nuclear crisis started on March 11, 2011, Tepco pumped up about 850 tons of groundwater per day from sub-drains to prevent it from flowing under the complex.
It recently started pumping groundwater from under the fill area to reduce the accumulation.
“(Tepco) is seeing a danger that the area near the sea might become like mud, so it is pumping up the groundwater,” said Marui.
Yoshimura of GWJ said if a another big quake hits the Fukushima plant, there is a risk that the highly radioactive water that is presently flooding the basements of the reactor buildings could flow out and further contaminate the groundwater.
Coligny wrote:Next up in Tepco's high tech arsenal... Liquid dye to check water path...
Japan will dramatically raise its warning about the severity of a toxic water leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant, its nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday, its most serious action since the plant was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The deepening crisis at the Fukushima plant will be upgraded from a level 1 "anomaly" to a level three "serious incident" on an international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said.
That will mark the first time Japan has issued a warning on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) since three reactor meltdowns after the massive quake in March 2011.
Water still leaking from the plant is so contaminated that a person standing close to it for an hour would receive five times the annual recommended limit for nuclear workers in a year.
A maximum level 7 was declared at the battered plant after explosions led to a loss of power and cooling two years ago, confirming Fukushima as the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Fukushima, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday. The leak was classified as an "anomaly" earlier this week.
The NRA's impending assessment upgrade came in a document posted on the agency's website on Wednesday, with formal adoption to follow a meeting that is being held by the authority's commissioners, the NRA spokesman said by telephone.
"Judging from the amount and the density of the radiation in the contaminated water that leaked ... a level 3 assessment is appropriate," the document said.
The leak, which has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 cm (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.
More
Russell wrote:Breaking: Level 1 Warning Upgraded to Level 3: Serious Incident Now:
Japan nuclear watchdog may raise leak to 'serious'
Associated Press | August 21, 2013
...Japanese nuclear watchdog on Wednesday said they are taking the leakage of highly radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant seriously, and proposed raising the rating to describe it from "an anomaly" to a "serious incident."
m0aR!~
Taro Toporific wrote:Hey child abusers. Don't eat the the fucking "saury" (NHK News)!
Decision [to raise threat level] seen as another sign that engineers are losing control over the leaks
Russell wrote:the world is loosing their confidence in TEPCO
Russell wrote:Time for you to step in, Coligny...
Taro Toporific wrote:[
*RIght now the radiation levels in Tokyo are much less than natural background radiation in my home in Colorado. No worries at all. However, I wonder what (if any) real contingency plans that resident gaijin with children have made to bug-out of Kanto if Fukushima degrades rapidly. (My plans are to drive or sea kayak south of Kanto and catch train/plane/public transport to my Rice Ranch in Shikoku or take a flight back to my place in Bear Creek, Colorado.)
The Register wrote:'Nuclear crisis' - 'disaster' - FIVE TIMES the annual recommended limit? Surely this is it at last? The disaster is finally happening!
Well, no. The situation is this. The melted-down cores at the damaged reactors (the site is not "crippled", two reactors were undamaged and will return to service) are still hot - though much less hot than they were two years ago - and need to be cooled. This is done by pumping water through their buildings, then sucking it out again and putting it into holding tanks before purifying it to remove the radiation it picks up from the cores. Then it gets used again.
What has happened is that one of the holding tanks, containing water that had only been through one stage of purification, has sprung a leak and about 300,000 litres of water has got out. Almost all of this was contained by a backup dam which had been built around the tanks when they were set up (this is the nuclear industry, there is always a backup). However, "two shallow puddles" of the water got out of the dam via a rainwater drain valve which has since been sealed off.
The water is quite radioactive, and dose rates measured next to the puddles were 100 milliSieverts per hour. Nuclear powerplant workers, whose cancer rate is somewhat lower than in the general population (probably because they don't smoke so much) are allowed to sustain 50 millisievert in any one year in normal times and average doses across five years of 20 millisievert/yr.
However what Reuters haven't picked up on is that the high 100 milliSievert reading is for beta radiation only. The reading for gamma rays is only 1.5 milliSieverts per hour.
Japan is more fluid than it has been in years. The end of Japan’s “nejire kokkai” (“divided Diet)” via Abe’s resounding win in the July 21 Upper House elections was hailed in many circles in Japan and internationally as heralding three years of stability in government. But perhaps this sense of stability has very weak foundations.
Geopolitics and the economy certainly could deliver significant shocks to the regime. But if there is one thing that has immense, latent potential to disrupt the confident assumptions that the next three years will be smooth sailing, so long as the swollen multitude of officers and crew is kept compliant with rum and the lash, it is the worsening Fukushima Daiichi crisis. As Aaron Sheldrick and Antoni Slodkowski detail in an excellent overview in the August 13 Reuters dispatch, among other deeply unsettling risks, removing spent fuel rods from above reactor number 4 is slated to begin in November.
It is worth summarizing the sobering evidence that Sheldrick and Slodkowski present to their readers, before turning to what they inadvertently left out.
First the essential details. The roughly 1300 used fuel rod assemblies in the pool weigh in the neighbourhood of 300 kilograms and contain “radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago.” Being spent fuel, they contain cesium 137 and Strontium 90, with half-lives of about 30 years. They also contain plutonium 239, with a half-life of 24,000 years. Sheldrick and Slodkowski rightly describe the latter as “one of the most toxic substances in the universe.” The assemblies are to be removed from a concrete fuel pool 10 metres by 12 metres in area, and from within water 7 metres deep. The structure’s base is 18 meters above ground level. Removing fuel assemblies is delicate enough at the best of times, but the pool itself may have been “damaged by the quake, the explosion or corrosion from salt water that was poured into the pool when fresh supplies ran out during the crisis.”
Sheldrick and Slodkowski cite respected independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt, whose World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013 tells us that "Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date." The Reuters article also quotes Arnie Gundersen, former U.S. nuclear engineer who used to build fuel assemblies and is now director of Fairewinds Energy Education, who warns that Tepco is "going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods."
Last year, Tepco test-ran removal by extracting two unused fuel assemblies from the pool, but Gundersen states that "To jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine for the rest of them is quite a leap of logic." Like Schneider and Frogatt, Gundersen and other nuclear experts caution that there is serious risk “of a large release of radiation if a fuel assembly breaks, gets stuck or gets too close to an adjacent bundle.”
Gundersen points out the nature of the risk includes "an inadvertent criticality if the bundles are distorted and get too close to each other." He adds that, "The problem with fuel pool criticality is that you can't stop it. There are no control rods to control it…The spent fuel pool cooling system is designed only to remove decay heat, not heat from an ongoing nuclear reaction." He also notes that the rods are vulnerable to fire in the event that they are exposed to air.
Sheldrick and Slodkowski’s investigation reveals that should the pool topple or be punctured during the removal - a process slated to require a year but likely to be rather more protracted - “a spent fuel fire releasing more radiation than during the initial disaster is possible.” They add that this poses a threat to Tokyo only 200 kilometres away.
Tepco is of course quick to assure observers that they have shored up the building and that it can withstand a quake on the scale of the 2011 disaster. But as Sheldrick and Slodkowski point out - in what has to be the charitable understatement of the year - the company has a “credibility problem.” Indeed, given the litany of mishaps at Fukushima Daiichi over the past 29 months, it would be better to hear Tepco voicing grave concern rather than bold assurances. Not only is there debris in the fuel pool, further complicating matters, but Kimura Toshio – a technician who worked at Fukushima Daiichi for 11 years, cautions that the normally “delicate task” of removing spend fuel is normally done with the aid of computers, but won’t be in this case: "Previously it was a computer-controlled process that memorized the exact locations of the rods down to the millimeter and now they don't have that. It has to be done manually so there is a high risk that they will drop and break one of the fuel rods."
All of this is worrisome enough. But perhaps because there are just so many distressing forces at play in this crisis, Sheldrick and Slodkowski left out the water problem we reviewed in last week’s article. Expert commentary, including from the METI Nuclear Accident Response Director, has warned that the constant flow of water may lead to further structural instability of the buildings. Keep in mind that the risky fuel-rod removal is likely to take a good deal longer than the year projected by Tepco. And recall that the Abe Government’s declared intent to intervene in the crisis is at present largely limited to debating the budget for a radical “freeze” of ground water. The measure will not be funded until at least the start of the next fiscal year, April 1, and is not likely to be in place before sometime in 2015. In the meantime, 1000 tonnes of water per day runs down from the surrounding hills, further softening the ground under the facilities (which sits over an aquifer), sending more contamination (including Strontium 90) out to sea, and distracting Tepco and its ostensible overseers in the Nuclear Regulation Agency.
Tepco is of course trying to pump up some of the flow of water and store it in tanks, but its capacity to handle the flow as well as construct and put it in storage tanks is not infinite. It is also trying to do this as cheaply as possible, because even though it is a nationalized entity (as of July 25 of last year), any financial assistance it receives from public coffers is deemed a loan that it has to pay back. So it is doing everything with an eye on costs, including constructing the storage tanks for contaminated water out of the cheapest materials possible. Apparently, some of these containers have already begun leaking (according to statements from former workers at the site). And it is almost certain that there will be significant leakage as the months go by due to the rusting of bolts and other parts of the tanks, which are in contact with highly contaminated and thus corrosive water.
More: What, Me Govern?
Taro Toporific wrote:I wonder what (if any) real contingency plans that resident gaijin with children have made to bug-out of Kanto if Fukushima degrades rapidly. (My plans are to drive or sea kayak south of Kanto and catch train/plane/public transport to my Rice Ranch in Shikoku or take a flight back to my place in Beak Creek, Colorado.)
Russell wrote:Taro Toporific wrote:I wonder what (if any) real contingency plans that resident gaijin with children have made to bug-out of Kanto if Fukushima degrades rapidly. (My plans are to drive or sea kayak south of Kanto and catch train/plane/public transport to my Rice Ranch in Shikoku or take a flight back to my place in Beak Creek, Colorado.)
Taro, did you ever consider that a rapid degrade of Fukushima may be caused by a Typhoon? In such circumstances a sea kayak may not be the safest option.
Coligny wrote:I honestly, didn't need to picture these clown playing nukular jenga...
Coligny wrote:Bu bu but... I was told that radioactive water is perfectly safe... Somewhere...
Isle of View wrote:Coligny wrote:Bu bu but... I was told that radioactive water is perfectly safe... Somewhere...
No. Just a fail at basic reading comprehension and critical thinking on your part.
Coligny wrote:Isle of View wrote:Coligny wrote:Bu bu but... I was told that radioactive water is perfectly safe... Somewhere...
No. Just a fail at basic reading comprehension and critical thinking on your part.
Bitch please, the critical thinking part is just a tad over the top. Even by clown car standards...
Despite reverting to use clearwind for some argumentation, nearly all my points are based on the experience from the political and media reaction after Tchernobyl correlated with what was revealed after and long after.
Pretty sure you were not even that fatefull spermatozoid in your father's balls at that time... The only improvment being now the volonteers false prophet claiming with an obscene insistance that if you worry the problem is with you, not with daiichi... Recycling over and over argument that might stand on their own, but lose any weight or value in context and with the increasing timespan. Yes, banana, yes XKCD, yes nobody was officially killed, yes you have more chance to die in a car accident. But you can't run a plant on banana power, xkcd graph don't factor the random extent of the released pollution since the start, no death will be recognized if scapegoats can be found and car accident are multiple independant events with an extremly limited extend an no cumulative effect.
And we are looping round and round on this for month.
At first there was mostly 3 camps:
The bug out crowd(1)
The not this shit again/carefull crowd
And the technical micro argumentative crowd
Back then you were an idiot because:
-It's not like tchernobyl because it's not the same kind of reactor (technically true, totally irrelevant)
-It was not a nuclear explosion, people are panicking idiots because they don't like nuclear weapons.
(Technically true, in case of nuclear explosion most radioactive material is used to produce the energy of the explosion, leaving much less to become fallout. Would have been better but not perfect since it would have been the equivalent of a dirtyer ground burst. So in our case quite disserving in trying to minimize the impact)
-Gundersen is a quack, he's only licensed to run smal nuclear reactor (as opposed to you with your glorious driver license and corndog eating champion trophy...)
-Gundersen is a chill with an agenda. Sure, the guy just love being paid in problems. That's the only currency he enjoys. So he decided to call the bullshit instead of staying in the industry and being fatly paid in regular currency like Barbara Judge who is highly qualified since she learned everything aboot powerplant in one of her kid highschool science manual. Sure she got some cheerleading position for UKAEA and others... But always on the business and financial side never anything even remotely technical. She the nuclear equivalent of a used car salesman.
And on and on...
-people can't read their chronically uncalibrated geiger counters and will panick, because they are idiots.
Today we can also add these 2 new trends:
-the newscience one, setting us back to around 1932 were any radioactivity was in fact benefical. Because... Something something...
-random statistics and irrelevant correlation of number. 'These threats have higher happenstance possibility, so you have to ignore this one because we say so and we can't be wrong, see the number is totally smaller and numbers don't lie' (people do though...)
Meanwhile, the whole Tchernobyl parts are getting more and more disavowed, because, after all... Tchernobyl (the plant) was a stable and done deal 6 month after.
(1) no matter what you say on the "now they regreat it" there was not much wrong at the time of their action to be held against them. The french "Protection civile" flyer listing recomended line of action by type of crisis recommend to pick your kids from school, and either bug out or lock yourself at home waiting for either all green or evacuation busses. (I know, "derp derp, the french surrender derpity derp")
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to the world his government will play a greater role in stopping leaks of highly radioactive water at Fukushima.
Wrapping up a tour of Africa and the Middle East, Abe said in Qatar Wednesday that the issue at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant cannot be dealt with by operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) alone.
“The accident in Fukushima cannot be left entirely to Tokyo Electric Power. There is a need for the government to play a role with a sense of urgency, including taking measures to deal with the waste water,” Abe told a news conference.
His industry minister and Japan’s head nuclear regulator have been tasked with finding the cause of the leaks and drafting steps to counter the problem, Abe said.
“The government will make responsible efforts to address the matter, and clearly and promptly inform the domestic and international communities,” he added.
Abe’s pledge came as the world’s nuclear watchdog urged Japan to explain more clearly what is happening at Fukushima and avoid sending “confusing messages” about the disaster.
The International Atomic Energy Agency questioned why the leak last week of 300 tons of highly radioactive water merited a rating on its International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), when no other incident since the March 2011 meltdowns had.
The IAEA cautioned against the frequent use of INES evaluations in the future, saying this risked clouding the issue in the public mind.
Local regulators on Wednesday rubber-stamped their earlier assessment of the huge spill, in which one of around 1,000 tanks at the site was found to be holed, as being INES Level 3.
That made it the single most serious incident since three reactors went into meltdown after being swamped by the earthquake-sparked tsunami.
TEPCO has long struggled to deal with growing volume of now contaminated water it has used to cool the broken reactors.
It said last week that some of the 300 tons that leaked from the tank could have made its way through drainage systems into the Pacific Ocean.
That came on top of the admission that groundwater contaminated by water from the plant was flowing into the sea at a rate of 300 tons a day, taking its low-level radioactive load with it.
AFP
Mike Oxlong wrote:Don't worry, it's all good now.
Abe pledges greater government role at FukushimaPrime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to the world his government will play a greater role in stopping leaks of highly radioactive water at Fukushima.
Wrapping up a tour of Africa and the Middle East, Abe said in Qatar Wednesday that the issue at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant cannot be dealt with by operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) alone.
“The accident in Fukushima cannot be left entirely to Tokyo Electric Power. There is a need for the government to play a role with a sense of urgency, including taking measures to deal with the waste water,” Abe told a news conference.
His industry minister and Japan’s head nuclear regulator have been tasked with finding the cause of the leaks and drafting steps to counter the problem, Abe said.
“The government will make responsible efforts to address the matter, and clearly and promptly inform the domestic and international communities,” he added.
Abe’s pledge came as the world’s nuclear watchdog urged Japan to explain more clearly what is happening at Fukushima and avoid sending “confusing messages” about the disaster.
The International Atomic Energy Agency questioned why the leak last week of 300 tons of highly radioactive water merited a rating on its International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), when no other incident since the March 2011 meltdowns had.
The IAEA cautioned against the frequent use of INES evaluations in the future, saying this risked clouding the issue in the public mind.
Local regulators on Wednesday rubber-stamped their earlier assessment of the huge spill, in which one of around 1,000 tanks at the site was found to be holed, as being INES Level 3.
That made it the single most serious incident since three reactors went into meltdown after being swamped by the earthquake-sparked tsunami.
TEPCO has long struggled to deal with growing volume of now contaminated water it has used to cool the broken reactors.
It said last week that some of the 300 tons that leaked from the tank could have made its way through drainage systems into the Pacific Ocean.
That came on top of the admission that groundwater contaminated by water from the plant was flowing into the sea at a rate of 300 tons a day, taking its low-level radioactive load with it.
AFP
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