Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Plants at Fukushima Daiichi

[Gilles]

So even though we have a scram, surely some decay will be occurring, producing the short half lives found...? We don't have to have a chain reaction to find them, or do we?

John, the figures are totally inconsistent with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_fission" . The decay half-life of U235 is 7E8 years, i.e 2.E16 s - so we have a decay rate of 5E-17 per second and per nucleus. The fission probability is 7E-11 - meaning 4E-27 fission per nucleus per second. In 1 t of U235, you have 1E6/235 *6E23 = 2.5E27 nuclei, so around 10 fissions per t per second. If I-134 concentration is the result of a steady state between production and decay, the production rate must exactly balance the decay rate : the reported activity is 2.9 billion Bq/cm^3 = meaning a production rate of 2.9 billions of nuclei per s and per cm^3 - just multiply by the volume of water and you'll have an idea of the numbers of fission events you need (actually it's more because you still have to correct from the I-134 yield ). We are orders and orders of magnitude over spontaneous fission.

 

[Borek]

it strikes me they are making a bad situation worse by dispersing the radioactivity from the reactor cores (esp. no. 3) to the turbine buildings. But I guess that comes from not clearly understanding the situation before acting.

To all: please refrain from this kind of comments. We are all judging situation based on partial information, I suppose they have reasons to do what they do.

I am not assuming they are not making mistakes, but knowing better in this situation is completely unjustified.

 

[John5656]

John, the figures are totally inconsistent with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_fission" . The decay half-life of U235 is 7E8 years, i.e 2.E16 s - so we have a decay rate of 5E-17 per second and per nucleus. The fission probability is 7E-11 - meaning 4E-27 fission per nucleus per second. In 1 t of U235, you have 1E6/235 *6E23 = 2.5E27 nuclei, so around 10 fissions per t per second. If I-134 concentration is the result of a steady state between production and decay, the production rate must exactly balance the decay rate : the reported activity is 2.9 billion Bq/cm^3 = meaning a production rate of 2.9 billions of nuclei per s and per cm^3 - just multiply by the volume of water and you'll have an idea of the numbers of fission events you need (actually it's more because you still have to correct from the I-134 yield ). We are orders and orders of magnitude over spontaneous fission.

I'm with you. Many many thanks for the explanation.

 

[curious11]

We are orders and orders of magnitude over spontaneous fission.

By that, do you mean it must be continuous fission?

 

[HansHooligan]

Tepco is planing to pump the water in the condenser (at the moment)

Storing it to a leak free place to prevent it leaking to sea or to underground water deposits?

Or maybe the think that since condenser has not blow up yet, they want to create some purpose for it to explode... ;)

 

[PietKuip]

By that, do you mean it must be continuous fission?

There is a chain reaction. Might be intermittent.

Which can also be seen in the "innocent" data http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110327e2.pdf".

Low levels, but the levels of I-132 (half-life 2 hours) are comperable to other fission products.

 

[Gilles]

By that, do you mean it must be continuous fission?

yes , more or less. Actually the presence of short half-life isotopes means for me that there must have been at least a burst of fissions just a few hours before the measurement - we have no idea of how concentrations are varying with time. I can't imagine any other explanation - if somebody could offer one here, I would be glad - and relieved - to hear it.

 

[Dancewithbear]

yes , more or less. Actually the presence of short half-life isotopes means for me that there must have been at least a burst of fissions just a few hours before the measurement - we have no idea of how concentrations are varying with time. I can't imagine any other explanation - if somebody could offer one here, I would be glad - and relieved - to hear it.

Assuming (given) there is fission... what do they do to stop it?

Watering just appears to be making a mess.

 

[rmattila]

There is a chain reaction. Might be intermittent.

Which can also be seen in the "innocent" data http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110327e2.pdf".

Low levels, but the levels of I-132 (half-life 2 hours) are comperable to other fission products.

I-132 is produced by decay of Te-132 (half-life > 3 days), so it is not necessarily a sign of recent fissions taking place.

However, the concentrations given for I-134 in the unit 2 turbine building are very difficult to explain. It would take a very large number of fissions to produce this concentration of the isotope in the cooling water - of the order of several hundred megawatt-hours, if my (rapid and as yet unchecked) calculations are correct. Surely there should be other signs of significant number of fissions having occurred (i.e. activation products such as Na-24), if this result would be true.

 

[PietKuip]

I-132 is produced by decay of Te-132 (half-life > 3 days), so it is not necessarily a sign of recent fissions taking place.

Yes, you are right.

 

[Astronuc]

Perhaps someone knowledgeable could explain to me why they haven't started closing these plants up with concrete? How much longer do we need to wait?
Does anyone perhaps expect something could be salvaged in those plants?

There are several complications with that.

1. The containment is closed except for the cooling pipes of the feedwater system and other systems. Therefore the concrete slurry would have to be pumped though those pipes without setting up. It would have to get passed pumps and valves. One would have to get the concrete source as close to the containment as possible.

2. The volume of concrete would displace an equal volume of radioactive water. Where would that radioactive water go?

3. The structure is not designed for the additional mass of concrete.

4. The concrete would not allow cooling of what remains in the core.

As for salvaging the plant, the primary cooling system has been been exposed to seawater for about 2 weeks. There may be enough corrosion, particularly of the core components, such that they cannot be used again. The fuel is damaged (so the core would have to be replaced), but more importantly, the control rods and the drive mechanisms would have to be replaced. And likely the recirculation systems have been compromised, so essentially, much or all of that needs to be replaced. All those components would have to be decontaminated and scrapped. Given the contamination at the plant, that will take years.

 

[Astronuc]

Why would 'special equipment' be needed to detect Plutonium isotopes??

unconfirmed translation from twitter: Tepco may have just stated that the device they need is at Daiini

I think TEPCO wanted to use a detector in an area of relatively low background. The activity around Daiichi is now relatively high.

 

[Joe Neubarth]

From the attched pdf, "An immediate question is whether a PWR is more resilient to an
earthquake/blackout than a BWR. By using our PCTRAN PWR models it is
quantitatively analyzed in great details. We may conclude an affirmative “yes” -
but not by much - just buy you a few more hours to resume onsite power supply.
After that the consequence is the same."
This qualifies conclusion 2 considerably.

I'm quite sure conclusion 3 will be the most obvious outcome of this event - spent fuel will no longer be stored for decades in pools in the secondary containment.

I think your conclusions are far stronger than warranted by the report.

Quite frankly this entire crisis would not have happened if the Emergency Diesel Generators were not placed in an area where their operation could be interrupted by a Tsunami. They needed to be placed far above any area where a Tsunami could reach them. An Emergency Power generating station on the hills behind the Fukushima power plant would have been ideal as long as the power lines could not have been broken by a Tsunami action.

 

[timeasterday]

Now they say the high radiation measurement was not accurate.

 

[jensjakob]

Now they say the high radiation measurement was not accurate.

Source? Link?

To all, please allways include a source and link - we need to be very factual in here.

 

[timeasterday]

Source? Link?

To all, please allways include a source and link - we need to be very factual in here.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_EARTHQUAKE?SITE=NCAGW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

[jensjakob]

TEPCO is quoted for saying that the numbers are not credible, and they are taking additional samples - but they don't have the new numbers yet:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/huge-jump-in-radiation-reported-inside-stricken-no-2-nuclear-reactor

Fair to say that they want a second sample, but not fair to state "current numbers are not credible"... (IMHO)

 

[dtaipei]

Japanese press says that the error was not the reading, but the isotope (stated to be I-134) and therefore the "10 million" multiplier.

 

[Gilles]

TEPCO is quoted for saying that the numbers are not credible, and they are taking additional samples - but they don't have the new numbers yet:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/huge-jump-in-radiation-reported-inside-stricken-no-2-nuclear-reactor

Fair to say that they want a second sample, but not fair to state "current numbers are not credible"... (IMHO)

i would say that 2 millions Bq/cm^3 of I-134 may be more realistic than 2 billions, but as ominous.

 

[Astronuc]

>slide explaining the isotopes found in a reactor
If the reactor is working properly I thought that the isotopes were contained in the Zircaloy casing

If the cladding remains intact, those fission products remain contained within the fuel rod (cladding and endplugs). There is some tramp uranium on fuel, but it is very low level. However, in the normal course of operation, some fuel rods do fail due to PCI, debris, perhaps unusual corrosion. In that case, Xe and Kr isotopes escape from the breach, and so do I-isotopes, Cs-isotopes, and a few others. If the fuel operates long enough with the breach or at power, and if the breach opens (guillotine break or axial split), then more of the solid fission products escape to the coolant, as the fuel matrix is oxidized.

In the current context, the fuel does not have to melt. Rather is only needs to split open to release a large inventory of fission products and allow the coolant (seawater) to interact with the fuel material. Normally the coolant is purified water, but seawater has NaCl and other salts. I don't know of any research that has looked at the solubility of irradiated fuel in seawater.

There are normally activitation products of Fe, Ni, Cr, and the activition of Ni is a source of Co (n,p reaction). The oxides of Fe, Ni and Cr come from the normal corrosion of stainless steel or Ni-alloys (structural materials), which are deposited on the fuel where they absorb neutrons and become activated. In addition, the control rod structures are mostly stainless steel, and some are used during operation to control reactivity. The introduction of seawater 'shocked' the system, and those activated products are released from the core to the coolant. One typically refers to a crud burst.

The presence of short-lived isotopes is somewhat of a concern. If the reactor, shutdown two weeks ago, and one is detecting short-lived isotopes, then one must ask if that is consistent with the reactor shutdown. If the detected levels are more consistent with a near term fission process, then when and where did that fissioning occur.

There are spontaneous fission in Pu-240 and Pu-242, and isotopes of Cm, Am. But are those fission rates sufficient to activate Na-23, Cl-35 and Cl-37, as well as producing I-132, I-134.

Meanwhile:

Unit 1 Dry Well 35.4 Sv/h or 3540 R/hr
Unit 2 Dry Well 43.2 Sv/h or 4320 R/hr
Unit 3 Dry Well 36.1 Sv/h or 3610 R/hr

This would be consistent with the release of fuel and corrosion products from the core into the coolant (seawater), which then found its way to the drywell (torus?).

 

[AtomicWombat]

0:27 and 1:31 - gives you an idea of the size of the RV cap. I don't think it has blasted anywhere.

But good illustratitions and good narrative.

"Wow it looks too big" is a weak argument about whether an explosion can blast a pressure vessel or other object away.

The reactor lid weighs about 80 tonnes (assuming 6 metre diameter 180mm thick steel). In Chernobyl the upper biological shield (the plug) weighed 1000 tonnes. It was dislodged by the explosion there. The water circulation operated at 70 kg/cm^2 (about 70 atm) - close to the 1000 psi operating pressure of BWRs.

[PLAIN]http://www.world-nuclear.org/images/info/chernowreck2.gif

See:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%20Engineering/Chernobyl%20Accident.pdf"

Size is not good guide to surviving explosions:

[URL]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MfX4tKGzQ5I/S4UfOTPv07I/AAAAAAAAATA/wFqGhGE02Nw/s1600/Lees-Bleve_Mexico1.JPG[/URL]

[URL]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MfX4tKGzQ5I/S4UfO87SaDI/AAAAAAAAATI/vO1eUgbypX8/s1600/Lees-Bleve_Mexico2.JPG[/URL]

 

[Astronuc]

Quite frankly this entire crisis would not have happened if the Emergency Diesel Generators were not placed in an area where their operation could be interrupted by a Tsunami. They needed to be placed far above any area where a Tsunami could reach them. An Emergency Power generating station on the hills behind the Fukushima power plant would have been ideal as long as the power lines could not have been broken by a Tsunami action.

Yes - that was made painfully obvious the moment the EDGs (and/or their fuel system) were taken out by the tsunami, while at the same time, the site had lost connection to the grid. And the fact that they only had battery backup, and I'm sure that the batteries were not designed to run pumps, but rather are intended to provide power to the monitoring systems.

 

[wasteinc]

We have an on the record acknowledgment from TEPCO that there is a possibility of re-criticality . Read http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110317/twl-japan-admits-nuclear-problem-is-seve-3fd0ae9.html" :


"We have to keep cooling the fuel so it doesn't reach criticality," the Tepco spokesman said, adding that radiation levels have barely fallen at the site. "

and this acknowledgment was from 10 days ago. (17March).

While I cannot comment on physics and radiochemistry, I can understand one or two things about news. So let me put that in perspective.

On the 17th TEPCO spokesman admits that there is a possibility of re-criticality.

Then people here see that the I-134 and Cl-38 found in the water cannot be explained by the normal decay process in sub-critical conditions.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81325.html" talks about the isotopes found in the water and seems to weight particularly the presence of I-134 which is the only other isotope it pays attention to apart from the famous couple (I-131 , Cs-137)

I don't know if recriticality is a possibility , but TEPCO seems to thinks so

 

[rmattila]

And the fact that they only had battery backup, and I'm sure that the batteries were not designed to run pumps, but rather are intended to provide power to the monitoring systems.

Not just for the monitoring systems, but also for managing power-operated valves - such as those needed for reducing the reactor pressure (blowdown system), providing steam for the RCIC turbines and enabling the feedwater to be pumped into the core. I'm not sure how the Japanese plant is equipped in this respect, but it appears that loss of DC could have been one factor contributing to the core uncovery.

 

[|Fred]

If some of you do speak good Japanese here are links to video streams , who fully broadcast all the NISA and TEPCO Press Conference and Press Q&A
Please note that they are in japanese and NOT translated, and that most of the time the camera is filming although the Conference ended ot did not start

It is the most up to date information but without translation it is useless

http://iwakamiyasumi.com/ustream-schedule/ustream1

some are archived there
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwakamiyasumi

 

[AntonL]

what to do with all the water was asked earlier and we puzzled about the fact of it being moved to the condensers. This is the current plan, the condensers have a environmental shield around them, (red encasing) and the plan seems to be to fill these according to below info-graphic.

 

[Joe Neubarth]

If a full meltdown has occurred it may be possible for critical mass arrangements of molten fuel, cladding and control rods to form by chance. In any case there would be a tendency for the components of the melt to separate based on different melting temperatures, chemical reactivity, solubility and density. So it would not be surprising for fuel to clump into a porous structure that allows water circulation.

However, this is speculation based on the evidence that fission continues. I suspect there have been no detailed studies of such a process.

Actually they garnered a heck of a lot of information from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. AT Chernobyl, the Lava that was generated from the melt down actually flowed through pipes under the reactor and out onto a basement corridor floor. Photos are available all over the Internet, but the easiest one to locate is a Wiki. Three Mile Island had accumulation at the base of the reactor vessel. That mass was analyzed for content and it consisted primarily of Zirconium and Uranium with far smaller amounts of Steel, Nickle (Inconel), and Chromium. When I read that report I was wondering what happened to the control rods. It turns out the Boron (If the control rods have melted) eventually becomes Boric Acid in solution. As the Japanese were pumping sea water into the reactor, they were diluting the Boric Acid and it was flowing out into the building. Do that long enough, and you can make your corium glow with numerous fissions, especialy if it started out as an old core operating at a high rate of power when the troubles began.

 

[Astronuc]

I-132 is produced by decay of Te-132 (half-life > 3 days), so it is not necessarily a sign of recent fissions taking place.

However, the concentrations given for I-134 in the unit 2 turbine building are very difficult to explain. It would take a very large number of fissions to produce this concentration of the isotope in the cooling water - of the order of several hundred megawatt-hours, if my (rapid and as yet unchecked) calculations are correct. Surely there should be other signs of significant number of fissions having occurred (i.e. activation products such as Na-24), if this result would be true.

The presence of short-lived fission products and activation products is somewhat puzzling, although there appears to be a significant release of fuel material into the coolant (seawater). I would like to know the relative activities of the I-isotopes, the Cs-isotopes, and isotopes such as Ce-144 and Nd-146. The matter will also be complicated by different solubilites.

With repsect to Cl-38, I would also expect Cl-36 (but low activity due to long half-life) and Na-24.

See the (n,γ) cross-section plots attached.
blue = Na-23
green = Cl-35
red = Cl-37

 

[Joe Neubarth]

We have an on the record acknowledgment from TEPCO that there is a possibility of re-criticality . Read http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110317/twl-japan-admits-nuclear-problem-is-seve-3fd0ae9.html" :"We have to keep cooling the fuel so it doesn't reach criticality," the Tepco spokesman said, adding that radiation levels have barely fallen at the site. "

and this acknowledgment was from 10 days ago. (17March).

While I cannot comment on physics and radiochemistry, I can understand one or two things about news. So let me put that in perspective.

I am willing to bet that the damn thing can pulse.

On the 17th TEPCO spokesman admits that there is a possibility of re-criticality.

Then people here see that the I-134 and Cl-38 found in the water cannot be explained by the normal decay process in sub-critical conditions.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81325.html" talks about the isotopes found in the water and seems to weight particularly the presence of I-134 which is the only other isotope it pays attention to apart from the famous couple (I-131 , Cs-137)

I don't know if recriticality is a possibility , but TEPCO seems to thinks so

The real consideration is self sustaining criticality. Any time you have a Uranium atom split from a neutron strike and it releases its 2+ Neutrons and at least one of them causes another Uranium atom to split and that goes on for a few seconds, you have a continuing chain reaction..

In the present state it can not be sustained even if they are flushing all of the BoricAcid out of the reactor and creating an ideal situation for a hot box for a hundred years.

 

[jensjakob]

I read somewhere (sorry for not being able to provide link right now) that the EDG's was swamped by the wave - e.g. the air intake was flooded - which leads to immediate flooding of EDG's - e.g. hydrolock of the cylinders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolock

 

[Reno Deano]

As for salvaging the plant, the primary cooling system has been been exposed to seawater for about 2 weeks. There may be enough corrosion, particularly of the core components, such that they cannot be used again. The fuel is damaged (so the core would have to be replaced), but more importantly, the control rods and the drive mechanisms would have to be replaced. And likely the recirculation systems have been compromised, so essentially, much or all of that needs to be replaced. All those components would have to be decontaminated and scrapped. Given the contamination at the plant, that will take years.

Good speculation, but items submerged in seawater tend to exhibit faster corrosion when removed from seawater and oxygenated air helps the corrosion (many examples, such as the Titantic and WII ships in the Pacific. The navy pulled a sunk unfueled nuke sub from a seawater river in Vallejo, CA and saved the reactor. It was a stinky mess.

Basically, the end cost will not justify the outlay by the bean counters. They will treat it as we did the TMI reactor.

 

[Joe Neubarth]

I read somewhere (sorry for not being able to provide link right now) that the EDG's was swamped by the wave - e.g. the air intake was flooded - which leads to immediate flooding of EDG's - e.g. hydrolock of the cylinders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolock

Gross stupidity from an engineering standpoint. Who in his right mind is going to design a plant with the Emergency Diesel Generators placed where they can get douched by the ocean?? ? ? ? ?

 

[Astronuc]

Not just for the monitoring systems, but also for managing power-operated valves - such as those needed for reducing the reactor pressure (blowdown system), providing steam for the RCIC turbines and enabling the feedwater to be pumped into the core. I'm not sure how the Japanese plant is equipped in this respect, but it appears that loss of DC could have been one factor contributing to the core uncovery.

I should have indicated instrumentation and control functions. Yes - the loss of power (AC or DC) resulted in a loss of coolability of the core - and some degree of uncovering. The complete loss of power (LOOP) was certainly unanticipated. As far as I know, accident analyses of LOOP and LOCA to date all assume that there is some power (EDGs) available minutes and hours after the accident, such that the core is cooled appropriately and there is sufficient margins to the various design limits.

 

[jlduh]

Well, I'm trying to keep up with the flow of informations on this thread and it's not that easy, one day absence for me and i got 7 or 8 pages to read to try to be up to date!

But anyway, thanks to everybody for the great collaborative effort deployed here to better understand what's happening and what could happen...

Thanks especially to those who have knowledge about isotopes and stuff like that, i have NONE on this but it's very important to have people who can analyse this material because it can give as important information for the health of the reactors than we can get from a blood analysis for a human, as i understand it. Please, try always to add at least a sentence of summary to clarify your conclusions or hypothesis because sometimes what is obvious for specialists are not that obvious for others... which starts to be many here writting, and even more i think reading, and trying to get a feeling of what's going on there.

I've read several times here people saying that the press is mixing very often (and maybe more and more) numbers expressing doses of radioactivity (in millisieverts for example) with those expressing flows of doses of radioactivity (in millisieverts/h for example, or per 24h, or per year) and that they compare oranges to apples by doing so, and that's something I've been seing since the first days of the accidents. But are these "mistakes" only from the press or is the press just reproducing some foggy ways of presenting the situation by the autorities (and Tepco)?

I see more and more informations also from the autorities where the conclusions are in fact biased because on one side they compare one flow in millisieverts/h with legal limits that are in fact doses per year, which ends up very often to a situation where annual legal limit will be reached in few hours or days... Very often, i see sentences in their declarations where basically they measure something close to or higher than "limits" (and often limits are for doses over one year!) but keep saying there will be no health effects!

In fact they make as if the exposure were just transitory and wouldn't continue for long... which confirms day after day to be untrue based on our analysis of the situation at the plant that will last AT BEST stable for a very long time, but could get even worse at this point of time.

I give two examples of this strange language.

Look at this article for example.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_01.html

In this case, everything is said quite clearly (in one day you get 40% more than he annual limit) BUT no health problems BUT stay in alert because the situation will last... Quite a strange way of communicating on this...

Second example, this text has been on Ibaraki prefecture for several days.

http://www.pref.ibaraki.jp/bukyoku/seikan/kokuko/en/data/radiation_no_danger.pdf

In this case you have a perfect example of first giving some true info, then start mixing radioactivity/h and dose per year, and then giving comparisons between oranges and apples to conclude with the misleading title of the declaration for the public: "Radiation no danger. No need to worry about radiation accompaniying Fukushima power plant accident" !

I read now that Tepco just says that the high measurement in water from reactor 2 was not credible, ok maybe there has been a mistake we will see, but really i DON'T SEE ONLY MISTAKES, i see oriented datas and conclusions from the autorities and this is not a good way to create confidence in the public opinion. Meanwhile, confidence is of absolute necessity in such moments.

I heard yesterday i think the mayor of Minamisoma (I think it's the right name) which is in the 30 kms limit zone (between 20 and 30 kms) and he was completely upset because national government was just "advicing people to voluntarily leave the area" (so no order to evacuate). In fact 10 000 were still in this zone, some were afraid of not been able to leave later because no more gas but at the same time some other ones were coming back because they were concluding that since there was no offcial order to evacuate (for several days) then it would mean it is quite safe (which is the strange conclusion of many declarations...).

That's a pity because crisis management can create more victims because of bad or misleading communication.

 

[Joe Neubarth]

Actually they garnered a heck of a lot of information from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. AT Chernobyl, the Lava that was generated from the melt down actually flowed through pipes under the reactor and out onto a basement corridor floor. Photos are available all over the Internet, but the easiest one to locate is a Wiki. Three Mile Island had accumulation at the base of the reactor vessel.

That mass was analyzed for content and it consisted primarily of Zirconium and Uranium with far smaller amounts of Steel, Nickle (Inconel), and Chromium. When I read that report I was wondering what happened to the control rods. It turns out the Boron (If the control rods have melted) eventually becomes Boric Acid in solution. As the Japanese were pumping sea water into the reactor, they were diluting the Boric Acid and it was flowing out into the building. Do that long enough, and you can make your corium glow with numerous fissions, especialy if it started out as an old core operating at a high rate of power when the troubles began.

When the Japanese announced that they were feeding sea water into the plants, I was wondering if they knew they could be diluting the boron inside the plant, but figured that the engineers there knew what they were doing. Now, I think they did not consider what they were doing after the explosions.