New images show what is likely to be melted nuclear fuel hanging from inside one of Japan's wrecked Fukushima reactors, a potential milestone in the cleanup of one of the worst atomic disasters in history.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan's biggest utility, released images on Friday showing a hardened black, grey and orange substance that dripped from the bottom of the No. 3 reactor pressure vessel at Fukushima, which is likely to contain melted fuel, according to Takahiro Kimoto, an official at the company. The company sent a Toshiba-designed robot, which can swim and resembles a submarine, to explore the inside of the reactor for the first time on July 19.
"Never before have we taken such clear pictures of what could be melted fuel," Kimoto said at a press briefing that began at 9 p.m. Friday in Tokyo, noting that it would take time to analyze and confirm whether it is actually fuel. "We believe that the fuel melted and mixed with the metal directly underneath it. And it is highly likely that we have filmed that on Friday."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:59AM
My snowy bald head is so Fukushi sexy even the lesbians want me.
--
we have a ... crazy person (MDC), that regularly posts more coherent and interesting things than do these racist trolls
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:03AM (40 children)
Who in their right mind builds a fucking nuclear power station next to the sea in a geologically unstable region?
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:07AM (20 children)
The people who fucking live there. Where the fuck else are they going to build it? Last time the Japanese tried to expand beyond their geologically unstable island region, Americans nuked the shit out of them to stay where they belong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:35AM
No wonder Japan is an entire country of xenophobic agoraphobic hikikomori.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 23 2017, @03:26PM (18 children)
Modded touche? FFS, people, Japan as MOUNTAINS on their islands. The original AC's question is pertinent: WTF build a reactor within areas which have been flooded by tsunamis within recorded history? Some arrogant asses thought they had all the bases covered, right? Prudent policy makers would have required that these things be located at least 100 feet higher in elevation than ANY recorded tsunami. The *most* convincing argument that I have heard for building so close to the sea, is that cooling water is readily available. But, again, WTF? The plant generates electricity, which can be used to pump sea water a few extra miles, and another 100 ft elevation, right?
For the record, reality has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was stupid, stupid, criminally stupid, to build so close to the sea.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kaszz on Sunday July 23 2017, @05:38PM (12 children)
Even better build the reactor facilities to handle complete submerging. After all if nuclear submarines can handle this. Then on land power stations surely can be built to do the same.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 23 2017, @06:29PM (9 children)
Interesting idea. I wonder if it's possible, and if it's feasible. Of course, it's not enough just to make it submergible - it has to withstand the impact of tens of thousands of tons of moving water. Submarines generally don't suffer such an impact. Offhand, I'll say it's probably possible. But, I think it's probably more feasible to build further from the water, than to build a structure strong enough to remain water tight after impact.
Someone might have fun doing a computer simulation to see how your idea could be made to work!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 23 2017, @07:18PM (7 children)
Submarines have batteries and snorkels. Concrete can be made watertight. Water ramming can be handled using concrete blocks or rocks.
The risk with far away facilities is pipe maintenance and rupture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 24 2017, @01:45AM (6 children)
In Winter Harbor, Main, there is a road built out to the point. It goes through the park, past the gates to the Navy installation, and out onto the point. The point has no "beach", as most people think of it. Instead, the shore is littered with huge rocks, ranging from some small enough to fit into a dump truck, up to thousands of tons. It's an awesome place to be, during a storm. You can hear the rocks moving from far off, you can feel the vibrations as they hammer against each other. Of course, you can't sit there and watch during the worst storms, because your car is likely to be thrown into the hillside behind the turnaround, or even sucked into the sea by receding water.
It isn't unheard of for a few of those huge rocks to be thrown up onto the parking area, after a bad storm. Unusual, yes, but not unheard of.
I wonder, Kaszz, if you have ever witnessed just how powerful the water is. Personally, I can't trust concrete or rocks to turn a hammerblow from the ocean.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 24 2017, @06:33AM (5 children)
If this is a problem. Then anchor any protection as far deep down into the ground as needed. Or simply bury the facility such that a flat plane is presented horizontally towards the sea. Besides this application is mainly about tsunami and not so much wave hammering.
Btw, regarding Winter Harbor, Main. How high are the wave maximum? how fast is the wind speed?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 24 2017, @08:16AM (4 children)
The highest waves I ever saw coming in to the point were about 15 feet high. There was evidence of higher waves than that. Wind? I can't even guess, but local wind conditions have little effect on the sea conditions. I sat here for a minute, trying to figure how to convey how it feels to stand on that shoreline during a storm. Let's try this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Perfect_Storm [wikipedia.org] More specifically, down the page, you'll find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Perfect_Storm#New_England_and_Atlantic_Canada [wikipedia.org]
Elsewhere in New England, waves up to 30 ft (9.1 m) reached as far north as Maine,[1] along with tides that were 3 ft (0.91 m) above normal.[20] Significant flooding was reported in that state, along with high winds that left areas without power. A total of 49 houses were severely damaged, 2 were destroyed,[1] and overall more than 100 were affected.[25] In Kennebunkport, the storm blew out windows and flooded the vacation home of then-President George H. W. Bush.[2] The home sustained significant damage to its first floor.[26] In Portland, tides were 3 ft (0.91 m) above normal, among the ten highest tides since record-keeping began in 1914. Along the coast, damage was worse than that caused by Hurricane Bob two months prior.[25] Across Maine, the storm left $7.9 million (1991 USD) in damage,[1] mostly in York County.[25] More than half of the damage total was from property damage, with the remainder to transportation, seawalls, and public facilities.[25] Although there were no deaths, there were two injuries in the state.
I wasn't there in '91, it's hard to say how the storms I witnessed compared to the Perfect Storm. Thirty foot seas on top of an especially high tide, and 75 mph winds hitting the shoreline have got to be pretty damned awe inspiring. People probably heard the noise, and felt the vibrations pretty far inland. Five to ten miles? Much less severe storms could be felt through the ground about two to three miles inland. At some point, of course, the sounds and vibrations of a distant shoreline phenomena is going to be drowned out by more immediate weather conditions.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 24 2017, @10:27AM (3 children)
15 feet high = 4.6 m
Assuming a sine wave 0..pi and a attack surface at half height that would mean something like 39 kPa on the half ballpark with a fighter jet engine running full throttle. Surely a structure can be built to handle that?
A 1 meter width wave would have the mass of circa 9200 kg, that is a lot but impossible to handle?
The load case would be pushing a specific pressure upon a structure and then relying on that the foundation would not fracture due to opposite forces horizontally. Don't recall the math for this. Maybe someone else have the ballpark for concrete.
75 mph = 33 m/s
That is something like 694 Pa (71 kg on one square meter). Possible to handle too?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 24 2017, @12:23PM (1 child)
Maybe the structure can handle it. But, something that needs to be factored in, is the entire front will be hit. If you have half a mile of bulwarks, all of that half mile will come under the same pressure, and probably all at the same time. If there is any difference in timing, it will be slight.
And, I have to bring up the canal that failed in New Orleans, after Katrina. The wall didn't have to withstand a frontal assault, and there should have been no reason for it to fail. Except, water and sewer department crews had performed maintenance some years earlier. They lifted some sections of retaining wall out of the canal, then replaced them, without removing the soil and repacking that soil. The wall was undermined by the pressure going under the wall.
If concrete is the solution, then that wall must be dug in deep, and the earth stabilized around the wall after it is poured. I suspect that the structure should look something like a buttress dam, when finished - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttress_dam [wikipedia.org]
Personally, I don't have the formulas or the math skills to figure out just what is needed here. All I can do, is bear witness that water can, and does, defeat some of man's best laid plans. As often as not, those defeats are the responsibility of bean counters, rather than the engineers. If accountants tell you that you CANNOT build to the specs you want, then what? If you don't build to the specs approved by the money-counters, then someone else will.
One thing I know for sure is, the further from the shore, the less force the water will carry when it finally reaches the structure. And, the higher you build, the less likely that the water will even reach your structure. Distance and elevation are almost free - I would take advantage of them, as much as possible.
TheLink supplied this link in his comment: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/08/how_tenacity_a_wall_saved_a_ja.html [oregonlive.com] You are correct, in that walls work. But, the article is all about the fight to have the wall built RIGHT, rather than cheaply.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 25 2017, @04:39PM
It won't matter if the entire front is hammered. As long as each surface of it is supported by a proper anchor. It should preferably have some wave break ahead which can have slightly less horizontal load bearing capacity.
The walls in New Orleans (re Katrina) had insufficient foundation due to insufficient maintenance.. ie bean counters in high government.
Concrete or rock, structural integrity and anchoring as per strict calculation is everything more or less.
Bean counters can be exposed to the public to make them do the right thing. Not that the public is that bright..
The Japanese tsunami made it obvious that distance is not much of a protection. But elevation on solid foundation is. The alternative being solid foundation and water tight compartment.
Onagawa plant proves that stubborn engineering is the way ;)
The hard thing is to repeat that feat.
Anyway Yasuzaemon Matsunaga [ndl.go.jp] (1875 - 1971) trained Yanosuke Hirai (1902 - 1986), that trained Tatsuji Oshima (1930 - ).
So true!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 24 2017, @12:28PM
Also, scroll down to the links supplied by requerdanos. Elevation and distance played a role at Fukishima, in that the generators were placed in the basements.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheLink on Monday July 24 2017, @06:39AM
There was another plant where they spent more and built it right: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/08/how_tenacity_a_wall_saved_a_ja.html [oregonlive.com]
Thing is, it cost a president's job to do so:
(Score: 1) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
Even better even better, go with gas coolant reactors [wikipedia.org] that don't need any water cooling at all.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:43PM
The schematics include a gas blower directly attached to the reactor..
And that will need power.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday July 23 2017, @07:26PM (4 children)
What's been proven is that regardless of where it was built, it was a bad idea to put the generators in a basement. Even atop the world's highest mountain, hundreds or even thousands of meters higher in altitude, the smallest-scale localized spill that can flood *just the basement* renders the generators inoperable, and in a power failure, leads inexorably to loss-of-coolant and meltdown.
This was a concern even before the tsunami [japantimes.co.jp], concerning at any altitude:
Whereas, built in Godzilla territory right on the shore, while being actively shaken by earthquakes and actively inundated by tsunami, having the generators located just a few meters higher up than the basement would have caused the whole event to have been a minor blip on the world's radar, long-forgotten even by Japan.
- Technologyreview.Com [technologyreview.com]
- IEEE, "24 Hours at Fukushima" [ieee.org]
- The Japan Times, July 14th, 2011 [japantimes.co.jp]
It would border on criminal for us as a people to come away with lesson here that it's ok to build it wrong, as long as you build it far away from one or two types of potential threat. And "mountain-not-sea" thinking leans very troublesomely in that direction.
(Score: 2) by snufu on Monday July 24 2017, @01:57AM
All your regulations just kill jobs. You don't want to kill jobs do you? Who cares if we introduced a new form of orange radioactive metal into the sea. Think of it as TEPCO's glowing coral reef. Charge admission for snorkling.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 24 2017, @06:39AM (1 child)
Exactly. The question then becomes why were it designed to be there in the first place? Why didn't management do anything about it?
And have nuclear power facilities even learnt their lesson by now to place backup generators high enough to lower the chance of flooding and made them such that if they are flooded they are located in a water tight building with a snorkel to handle high level flooding like any WWII submarine could?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday July 24 2017, @01:37PM
These reactors were designed in the United States of America by GE. As for why they were designed with backup generators in the basement, that designer, Yukiteru Naka [japantimes.co.jp] opines that it was a Japanese sea vs. American river mindset:
That doesn't mean it was a good design; reactors like that go through a lot of water and if it leaks into the basement, goodbye generators. But that seems to have been the thinking.
And why wasn't the design changed? Because TEPCO didn't feel comfortable changing GE's designs. From that same article:
I suppose the idea was that since GE was more experienced in designing and building nuclear power plants, that safety might be compromised if less-experienced TEPCO or its contractors changed the designs. Sure didn't work out that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @11:04AM
And if the emergency generators where built as dry reservoir of a mini hydro-plant with turbines and generators, tsunami flooding would had provided instant emergency energy to it.
The backup mini hydro could had been even used in constant operation, letting the nuclear plant supply the energy for pumps to keep the reserve full at all times, so that there is never a need for a switch mechanism. If it malfunctions, you immediately know.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday July 23 2017, @12:20PM (9 children)
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx [world-nuclear.org]
compiling...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:15PM (8 children)
What scientific knowledge? I haven't heard of anything before 2001 which would be 10 years not 18. I notice the report says nothing about this research which again is very frustrating given that they're willing to go into great detail about most of the rest of the accident.
And reports like this completely gloss over the fact that these sorts of decisions will always take considerable time due to the highly conservative nature of nuclear power regulation and the indeterminate nature of initial scientific research. Frankly, while 18 years seems a long time, 10 years doesn't. There's a lot of bureaucracy that needs to churn in order to go from research paper to finished sea wall extension. Second, we ignore here that the power plant was planned to be shut down starting in March, 2011. Sorry, there's not much reason to go ahead with a sea wall extension when the whole plant will be turned off in about a decade or two. This plan (later scrapped when the Fukushima plant received an extension to operate for something like a decade longer) probably significantly delayed any response as well.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:15PM (7 children)
They're referring to this report: http://www.olivenews.net/img/20110714.pdf [olivenews.net] as mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#Wednesday.2C_13_July [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 24 2017, @12:25AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday July 24 2017, @07:11AM (5 children)
Tsunamis are part of cascading seismic events. The 1993 report (which deals with Station Blackouts) asses everything should be fine as long as grid power is restored within a few hours since the on-site batteries are good for 4 hours which is enough time to start the emergency diesel generator.
However, as the committee chairman commented on protocol, those weren't reasonable assumptions. Even disregarding direct earthquake damage to the plant, although there weren't any past grid cutoff incidents extending over 30min in Japan, anyone with a lick of sense would know those can, and will happen eventually. They even had multiple separate codes for equipment like the emergency diesel generators that required continuous operation precisely because separate regulatory bodies assessed days and even weeks worth of potential localized power losses. And any power loss is unacceptable when it takes spent fuel rods a decade to cool off in circulating water pools, let alone partially spent rods in standing water...
compiling...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 24 2017, @09:31AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 24 2017, @09:53AM (3 children)
The New York Times wrote a story where they claim that the lessons [nytimes.com] of a western Japan earthquake in 1993 should have been learned (though not why that was supposed to be a lesson - should every nuclear plant in the world near water engineer for 10 meter high tsunami?). Once again, no actual research cited until the above mentioned 2002 paper.
If there really was research from 18 years ago, you'd think the variety of media sources out there would have cited it by now.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday July 24 2017, @01:52PM (2 children)
This isn't a zomg-tsunami, but it's a specific related concern (basement flooding risk) unearthed from more than 18 years prior:
- Japan Times, 14 July 2011 [japantimes.co.jp], emphasis added.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 24 2017, @10:38PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday July 24 2017, @11:59PM
I haven't personally researched that, but they were Pretty Darn Visible, per wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#1991:_Backup_generator_of_Reactor_1_flooded [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 23 2017, @12:55PM
The people who need the power from that nuclear plant. Why do you drive when it's unsafe to drive? Why do you live when you're gonna die [youtube.com]? There's always reasons to do things which have risks. Maybe you need to learn what those reasons are in this case?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:20PM (4 children)
California has a couple of plants situated by the sea...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:47AM
San Onofre is shut down.
The operator (SoCal Edison) was caught being lying cheating incompetent crooks.
**OK, so we didn't do the repairs correctly. Just allow us to run at full power and let's see if it blows up.**
(Company officers of power utilities should be required to live right next to the plant.)
Diablo Canyon is indeed located on the confluence of several earthquake faults.
With California producing so much power (from renewables) that 40 percent of the total is effectively given away to Arizona, Diablo Canyon could be shut down today and not missed by Cali.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday July 24 2017, @02:31PM (2 children)
It's not just California. Here in North Carolina, I live at the beach, near the Duke Energy Brunswick Nuclear [duke-energy.com] plant, and it's very close to the sea (map it here [google.com]); it's on the river, about 2 miles from the inland waterway and 5 miles from the ocean proper.
Opened in 1975, the plant provides us... electric power such as that which I'm using to type this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @06:29PM (1 child)
You omitted the point that Southport and the rest of that region has lots of sunshine and rooftops and could meet its energy needs without a nuke.
(I toured that facility when it was under construction and while I was still naive about nukes.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday July 24 2017, @09:36PM
As renewables were not mature and viable in 1975, I'll give them a pass. We are moving to solar energy in baby steps [bemc.org]. There's also pretty reliable wind here in the form of prevailing sea breezes.
Wish I had. Now they just give tours of their media center building and a mock-up of a control room.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:49PM (1 child)
You can tell someone's not an engineer, probably not even STEM ed, when their thinking is purely binary. In right mind or not, next to or not, geologically unstable or not. Its a different language from an incompatible culture, like when people used to make fun of bad translations of Ching-lish in walmart product instructions and the like. Its a good example of theological vs scientific outlook and language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @07:07PM
Statistically significant or not
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @08:11AM
fillertextforthefilter
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @03:32PM (2 children)
good thing, dihydrogenoxid cannot become radioactive ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @06:47AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritiated_water [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 24 2017, @07:12AM (3 children)
Rough translation from Japanese.
Progress of internal PCV survey of Unit 3 ~ Disaster survey on 2017-07-21:
* (1) Unit 3 Reactor inside the pedestal inside: CRD housing lower part 1 [tepco.co.jp]
* (2) Unit 3 Reactor Containment Pedestal Inside Pedestal: CRD Housing Lower Part 2 [tepco.co.jp]
* (3) Unit 3 Reactor inside the pedestal inside: CRD housing lower part 3 [tepco.co.jp]
* (4) Unit 3 Reactor Containment Pedestal Inside Pedestal: Platform Near Part 1 [tepco.co.jp]
* (5) Unit 3 inside the reactor containment pedestal: in the vicinity of platform 2 [tepco.co.jp]
* (6) Unit 3 Reactor Containment Pedestal Inside Pedestal: Platform Part 3 [tepco.co.jp]
* (7) Unit 3 Inside the reactor containment pedestal Inside the platform 4 Part 4 [tepco.co.jp]
* (8) Unit 3 reactor containment vessel inside pedestal: near the pedestal wall Part 1 [tepco.co.jp]
* (9) Unit 3 Inside the reactor containment pedestal: near the pedestal wall Part 2 [tepco.co.jp]
Shooting date: 2017-07-21
Provided by: International Reactor Research and Development Organization (IRID)
Progress of internal PCV survey of Unit 3 [tepco.co.jp] (preliminary report of the 21st survey) (PDF 283 kB)
Unit 3 location can be found here [wikipedia.org].
What does "CRD" stand for?
Someone that can describe in even more detail what is seen would be nice.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday July 24 2017, @10:45PM (2 children)
Control Rod Drive, on that model the control rods are inserted from below.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 25 2017, @04:06PM (1 child)
Won't that increase the likelihood of leaks?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday July 25 2017, @04:44PM
Less than would be introduced by having the refuelling machine under the core. The CRD is often placed below for that simple reason (that it would otherwise have to interface / be integrated with the refeulling machine) in traditional vertical cores. And making machine housings that can be guaranteed to remain sealed for two years after inspection when placed in fresh water is pretty run off the mill. (Nuclear shares a lot of engineering with naval)