Japan Earthquake: Nuclear Plants at Fukushima Daiichi

[Jorge Stolfi]

I've looked and looked, it still looks bent to me. But perhaps it's the perspectives fooling me.

As I see it, there are two hockey sticks on each side of the machine, each makes two 45 degree angles and ends horizontally. There is a transverse bar connecting the ends of those two sticks. Then there is a single stick that comes out horizontally from near the middle of transverse bar, bends another 45 degrees down, and ends with the square box.

The joysticks and attached structure apparently is a set of hollow metal conduits for electrical cables. You can see the cables coming out of the square box and hanging in festoons from a light rail attached to the wall, a couple feet below the crane's much heavier rail. In the right picture cables and their rails are gone.

But you are right, in the "after" picture the whole set seems indeed slightly bent. The tops of the hockey sticks are tilted some 20 degrees, the sides of the square box are not vertical, and the transverse bar is bent, with both ends lower thant the middle. And the vertical part of the hockey sticks seems to be detached from the body of the FHM.

The tops of the hockey sticks seem to be at the correct height relative to the crane and the concrete pillars.

Your right picture shows a green "castle" on top of the FHM, with two floors with railings, which does not exist in the left picture. Presumably the castle was positioned near the opposite wall when the left picture was taken.

So here is another proposal: the FHM was originally parked above the SFP, with that square box just below the concrete "capitel" that supports the crane's rail. When the SFP exploded, it lifted the whole FHM. The square box hit the concrete capitel. The impact bent the jockey sticks and ripped them from the FHM. The FHM then crashed back over the pool. Whether it returned at its original height or sank further, I cannot tell.

 

[HowlerMonkey]

What about this strange idea ?
[PLAIN]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/770/7d39a2e665024e3f8856f31.jpg[/QUOTE]

It does look like it didn't quite clear the edge of the roof of that other building after taking the path you suggested, bounced off the edge, and fell to where it sits.

The two gouges on the same roof further up make me wonder if something didn't glance off the roof there and end up in the water.

 

[biggerten]

http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour.html

Picture 5 speaks of a circular plug for reactor 3.

 

[MiceAndMen]

http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour.html

Picture 5 speaks of a circular plug for reactor 3.

Very interesting photos, thank you for that link. Trivially, perhaps, note that picture 4 has the Kanji symbol for "North" on the column. http://hararie-japan-tokyo-tokyo.co...ws-direction-of-japanese-element-symbols.html

 

[razzz]

Remembering these building were built back in the 70s and 80s... the superstructure is framed out with its major components of 'I' beams and girders (either poured in placed or prefabbed) with ceilings/floors created by filling in with joists between the superstructure components then corrugated structural metal sheets (pieces might remind someone of the corrugated roof seen on a mountain cabin) laid on top of the joists for concrete pump mix to be poured on top and finished as a smooth floor. Also, plywood can be used and concrete poured on top of it, either way metal or wood is left in place. Another way would built temporary wood or metal support to the pour concrete on or in then remove the 'false' work, leaving just the concrete in-place especially done this way when pouring walls.

I the read the exterior wall panels are meant to blow out while withstanding the occasional passing typhoon with earthquakes thrown in on a regular basis and you can see in the pictures that the concrete squares forming the exterior wall between the major upright and horizontal members are not seriously attached, almost floating. Steel reinforcement bar would have been larger and tied in-to the major members in a more direct fashion instead it was meant for the squares to peal away.

Concrete breathes, expands and contracts therefore not waterproof so if used on the roof section has to be covered over with a impermeable material.

These housing structures would be child's play for an engineer/architect as they stand alone, separately built around the reactor. The major function in design would be load bearing for the winch to move the caps and support for the SF ponds.

 

[etudiant]

Has anyone developed a plausible/possible mechanism for the damage to the supports of SFP 4?
A hydrogen blast should impact the upper part of the structure.

 

[rowmag]

Fred's picture gives me an idea about what that thing is that landed on #4's roof:
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/ikzpLE.jpg

From the coloring and shape, I am beginning to suspect that it is concrete wall panel from #4's own wall, that somehow got blown upwards to land on its own roof. Imagine, for example, a 2-3 "cells" high by one or two "cells" wide section of exterior concrete panelling being blown off the east wall, but still attached at the top for a while, allowing it to hinge up and over to land on the roof. (In fact, is that the pivot point below the capital "C" in Fred's "2: SFP Crane" label?)

The section could also perhaps have come from the west wall.

If true, might be supporting evidence for a below-decks (below the refueling floor level) explosion in building 4?...

 

[MadderDoc]

That photo is part of the "Inside the BWR Power Plant" page at the Nuclear Tourist website http://www.nucleartourist.com/areas/bwr-in1.htm

Under the section "Refueling activities" the last picture link "Refueling floor during operation (120K)" is that same exact photograph. At the top of the page it says,
I'm not sure that photograph really is from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

However, that is not my source to that photo at all. I'll post a link to that source, if I can backtrack to it. It was a huge pdf, I remember very well, with a blasted copy-protection and I had to grab the photos in small sections which was a pain, took only what I had not seen elsewhere, otherwise mainly known photos from the unit 3 refueling in 2010. The photos I grabbed were clearly attributed to the Daiichi reactors, I am sure. I grabbed a juicy photo of the reactor vessel head of unit 3 from the same document, btw. :-)

My complete collection of photos from Daiichi as originally grabbed is at:
http://www.gyldengrisgaard.dk/daiichigrab/

Do say if you have good reason to believe misattributions have crept in there. It is _meant_ to hold only reasonably well sourced images from Daiichi.

Edit: I've found that the metal structure on those photos, although similar to those of unit 1, is not identical, that's a good enough reason for me assume misattribution. Thanks for provoking me to reassess.

 

[TCups]

Fred's picture gives me an idea about what that thing is that landed on #4's roof:
[PLAIN]http://k.min.us/ikzpLE.jpg

From the coloring and shape, I am beginning to suspect that it is concrete wall panel from #4's own wall, that somehow got blown upwards to land on its own roof. Imagine, for example, a 2-3 "cells" high by one or two "cells" wide section of exterior concrete panelling being blown off the east wall, but still attached at the top for a while, allowing it to hinge up and over to land on the roof. (In fact, is that the pivot point below the capital "C" in Fred's "2: SFP Crane" label?)

The section could also perhaps have come from the west wall.

If true, might be supporting evidence for a below-decks (below the refueling floor level) explosion in building 4?...

No, the simplest explanation is the correct one. It is a piece of the roof, right down to the little square holes than can still be seen in the roof. The roof has been blown upward on its south end, billowed outward, and crashed down into the top of Bldg 4.

Pre-explosions of the top of Bldg 4 confirm a pattern of the small squares -- whatever they are. Bldg 1 had a few as well. The curve of the slab exactly matches the damage to the underlying girders. The underside (to the south) is irregular from being blasted and torn from the underlying girders. The topside (to the north) still has its pattern of smaller square sections, as do all of the flat roofs at Fukushima.

https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=34557&d=1303159967

https://www.physicsforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=34558&d=1303159967

No big green machines to confuse here -- that is a big slab of asphalt (or something like asphalt) roof lifted up and dropped on end, on the north side of Bldg 4, and it brought the north side face of the building inward with it when it cut in and downward.

See, for example:

http://www.gaf.com/Roofing/Commercial/Products/Modified-Bitumen-Roofing/Ruberoid-Modified-Bitumen-SBS-Membranes/Documents/Commercial_Full_Line_Brochure-13-719-v5.pdf

Oh, yeah, the drawing of what happened . . . well, think of it this way. Have you ever had a convertible with a folding top? Goodnight.

 

[MiceAndMen]

However, that is not my source to that photo at all. I'll post a link to that source, if I can backtrack to it. It was a huge pdf, I remember very well, with a blasted copy-protection and I had to grab the photos in small sections which was a pain, took only what I had not seen elsewhere, otherwise mainly known photos from the unit 3 refueling in 2010. The photos I grabbed were clearly attributed to the Daiichi reactors, I am sure. I grabbed a juicy photo of the reactor vessel head of unit 3 from the same document, btw. :-)

My complete collection of photos from Daiichi as originally grabbed is at:
http://www.gyldengrisgaard.dk/daiichigrab/

Do say if you have good reason to believe misattributions have crept in there. It is _meant_ to hold only reasonably well sourced images from Daiichi.

Edit: I've found that the metal structure on those photos, although similar to those of unit 1, is not identical, that's a good enough reason for me assume misattribution. Thanks for provoking me to reassess.

That picture of the reactor vessel cap is scary looking, if I do say so. It looks like it might be part of an electric chair for a giant (no ambiguous meaning intended there).

Keeping track of everything I've downloaded is getting to be a chore. It's one thing to store a document or a photograph, and it's quite another to remember where it came from in case a source cite is needed. I've got my hard drive folders organized pretty well now. I think I have enough to fill a DVD already between the PDFs, photos, videos and saved web pages. All the bookmarks I've made in the last few weeks are a different story, though. I think I have a dozen bookmarks just for posts in this thread so I can refer back to them.

 

[flyingblind]

What about this strange idea ?
[PLAIN]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/770/7d39a2e665024e3f8856f31.jpg[/QUOTE]

I don't think so
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/pict6.jpg"

 

[|Fred]

I think I just found our alleged Ballistic FHM
http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour/R3_equipment.jpg
Now we just have to figure out what it is and why it's there
thanks to http://www.houseoffoust.com/ who did some nice digging

edit:
it is located on the north wall on the west of the utility pool at the time of the picture, actually more or less where it is now

edit2:
troublesome part the picture is subtitle 原子炉上部の蓋を外す機械
Remove the lid at the top of the reactor equipment (Ill take those legend with a grain of salts )

this look like the tranfert cast openining located on the south west corner
[URL]http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/f1-16.JPG[/URL]



Unit 3 taken from the south west corner
notice the FHM crane on the right inside of the picture
the reactor round concrete slab in the center
and the infamous former ballistic machine on the left of the picture
http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour/r3_floor.jpg

 

[cphoenix]

40 feet of water has a static head of 17.3 PSI, just over 1 ATM. And, of course, that is only the bottom of the pool, the mid-level would be half that. So, the amount of energy that could be stored there is a lot less than you give numbers for.

Without some mechanism to force the water to remain still and not convect, I just don't see how this can happen. A very messy boiling mess is quite possible when the active cooling fails, but great superheating and then explosive vaporisation just defies logic. But, maybe with superpure water, it is possible. Not sure how pure the water was after the earthquake.

Jon

I already took out a factor of 1/2 in my initial post on the subject. And I acknowledge that 1/10 kiloton is what you get if you manage to stratify the water in the pool and heat it to maximum. But even if you trap just a few tens of cubic meters near the bottom, you still get hundreds of pounds of TNT. 1E6 g * 25 C * 4 J/gC = 1E8 J = 100 MJ. That's 24 kg TNT equivalent per cubic meter, or ~100 kg per square meter of rack covered.

The water could be forced to remain still quite easily, by dropping something flat on top of the racks. 4 cubic meters of water at 125 C has a buoyancy of 21 kg vs. 100 C water. That's only 21 kg/m^2 to hold it down, or 0.03 PSI driving any convection. And it wouldn't have to go all the way to 125 C to store a lot of energy; a 1 m^2 piece of material weighing the equivalent of 10 kg/m^2 underwater would create 50 kg of TNT equivalent.

25 C is not great superheating. It's pretty moderate... until you multiply it by many tons of water. I'm not sure if I should say "superheating" for water that is above 100 C due to pressure.

Someone mentioned that the racks might have fallen to the floor of the pool, which would also reduce convection. If the pipes were open at the top, but not at the bottom, and if there were no bubbles (not hot enough yet - below 125), would convection still be sufficient to remove the heat?

Someone else asked if there would be water in the pool after a geyser explosion. I'd expect that if just a small area "cooked off" then it might go straight up rather than pushing a lot of water to the sides and out of the pool. Some would slosh out, of course. But you could still have the fuel rods covered after a pretty major steam release.

Chris

 

[|Fred]

I don't understand how this floor layout of unit 3 fit anything at hand.. may be if someone could caption it

 

[cphoenix]

If the SFP did flash to steam, it would likely have been an unmistakable event, with a HUGE steam cloud, and water splashed over the entire facility. Anyone outside would have had horrible scalding, and probably anyone in the building at the time, also. The water everywhere would have taken a couple hours to evaporate. So, I think a massive flashing of tons of water to steam would have been clearly different from what we did see, and therefore that isn't what happened.

Also, this would have removed a bunch of the water in the pool, although maybe not completely emptied it, if this stratification theory is possible (I don't believe it is). So, then there WOULD have been major damage to the fuel in the pool, which they say is not so.

Jon

If only part of the racks were covered, or otherwise unable to convect, then the amount of steam might have been small enough to over-pressure the building but not fill the building with steam. A ton of steam is only about a 10-meter cube.

Perhaps I made a mistake by talking about total stratification in my first post, to find an upper bound for energy release. Let's focus now on the very plausible idea that some fraction of the water inside the fuel racks was not able to convect, because a rack was either damaged or covered by something flat that fell in the pool.

You get up to 24 kg of TNT per cubic meter of water, assuming it reaches maximum temperature before it burps. That is about 44 kg of steam, or 73 m^3 of steam at 1 atm.

Depending on how much of the fuel rack was unable to convect, we can make the explosion as small or as large as we need to in order to explain the observations. This may seem too convenient, but I don't see any obvious constraint on the problem.

Chris

 

[MiceAndMen]

troublesome part the picture is subtitle 原子炉上部の蓋を外す機械
Remove the lid at the top of the reactor equipment (Ill take those legend with a grain of salts )

They probably don't have workers manually using big socket drivers, so maybe it is used to tighten and loosen the nuts that screw down on the studs around the RPV circumference that hold the cap on. Like a big torque wrench. The "U" shaped things hanging on it may be flexible hydraulic lines, but I'm not sure.

 

[elektrownik]

Second layer of fuel rods in SFP 3 ??
[URL]http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour/R3_sfp6.jpg[/URL]

 

[MiceAndMen]

I don't understand how this floor layout of unit 3 fit anything at hand.. may be if someone could caption it

From http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/f1-13.JPG
and the 8th picture on http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

The reactor buildings are square at ground level (and below), but that aspect is not carried upward the entire height of the building.

 

[|Fred]

From http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/f1-13.JPG
and the 8th picture on http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

View attachment 34604

The reactor buildings are square at ground level (and below), but that aspect is not carried upward the entire height of the building.

I figured that much ;) its more the color coding that puzzle me what does the orange means Cranes ? the main one should be crossing the building , etc etc

 

[MiceAndMen]

I figured that much ;) its more the color coding that puzzle me what does the orange means Cranes ? the main one should be crossing the building , etc etc

My guess is the colors represent areas with different protocols for fire emergencies. Maybe someone would be kind enough to translate the chart on the left side.

 

[Rive]

I don't understand how this floor layout of unit 3 fit anything at hand.. may be if someone could caption it

IMHO it's an ABWR design and not related to the Unit1-Unit6. The one with the reactor modell is also an ABWR (maybe the same). Possibly related to the would-be Unit7-8?

 

[rowmag]

From the coloring and shape, I am beginning to suspect that it is concrete wall panel from #4's own wall, that somehow got blown upwards to land on its own roof.

No, the simplest explanation is the correct one. It is a piece of the roof[...]

Hmm, you're right! The corrugation pattern on the underside is visible in the following photo from houseoffoust.com:

http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/LARGE4_1.jpg

Another beautiful theory slain by ugly facts.

 

[|Fred]

nope it is definitively the reactor 3 as subtitle on the original page
http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/index41.html

 

[Rive]

What about this strange idea ?
[PLAIN]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/770/7d39a2e665024e3f8856f31.jpg[/QUOTE]

Check the second T-Hawk video about that debris laying on the pipes. I think it's a wall panel from the closest wall. One of the upper ones.

 

[rowmag]

I think I just found our alleged Ballistic FHM
http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/tour/R3_equipment.jpg
Now we just have to figure out what it is and why it's there
thanks to http://www.houseoffoust.com/ who did some nice digging

edit:
it is located on the north wall on the west of the utility pool at the time of the picture, actually more or less where it is now

edit2:
troublesome part the picture is subtitle 原子炉上部の蓋を外す機械
Remove the lid at the top of the reactor equipment (Ill take those legend with a grain of salts )

It says, "Machine for removing the cover of the upper part of the reactor."

Sounds like what MiceAndMen suggested.

 

[Jorge Stolfi]

What about this strange idea ?
[PLAIN]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/770/7d39a2e665024e3f8856f31.jpg[/QUOTE]

I would straighen the red arrows.The plate that is stuck into the #4 roof spans the whole width of of the building (if not more). Note that its West end sank deeper into the roof, and is almost hidden from view.

As for the orange arrows, that debris looks like a chunk of #4's concrete skin, and probably came from the East wall. There seems to have been an explosion in the lower floors of #4 that popped the lower tier of concrete panels (below the main floor) outwards. (Either that, or the hypothetical second explosion at #3 basted through the center panel of the North wall, on that same floor, and came out through the other walls.) There are other similar bits of concrete lying on the ground, next to the West and East walls of #4.

 

[clif]

Stacking in a SFP?

ＭＯＸ燃料を真上から (Fuel from right above)

MOX would mean reactor #3

The objects on the right appear to be a level higher then those on the left.

Image from here

http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/index41.html"

 

[rowmag]

I don't understand how this floor layout of unit 3 fit anything at hand.. may be if someone could caption it

Very blurry and cut off, but here's a stab:

Light Blue: Service areas and passageways
Orange: Reactor components
Dark green: Turbine room
Dark blue: can't make it out
Yellow: some electrical equipment -- distribution panels?

Shape looks like it could be Unit 3 to me, at the level of the foundations.

 

[razzz]

A construction or design flaw as the roof is suppose to scatter and not harm the main frame. That portion of the roof blew up whole and came down whole folding the parapet inward and taking a whole row of cross-members down. Had to have some airtime. Guess we will never see that explosion on real time video.

I agree the oddball green machine is an overgrown hydraulic torque wrench to batten down the hatches.

 

[rowmag]

Ok, I am going to go back to wondering if hydrogen got into Building 4 from somewhere else. Why? Because of the 5 meters of water which were found in the basement there. Yomiuri reports that the water is contaminated, though they don't know how badly, so that argues against the tsunami theory mentioned on the news last night, I think. And I doubt it is from SFP4.

If there is a path for contaminated water from one of the other reactors, then perhaps there is also one for hydrogen.

Don't suppose anyone has any underground trench or conduit maps?

 

[|Fred]

Embryo Proposition for unit 3 chain of event, aka Bang Bang Bang
(nothing to do with the audio track that I'm I'm not taking into consideration)


Bang 1 : First explosion, is a regular "clean" explosion with an horizontal plan main component. Walls gave out

Bang 2 : Is not explosion it's the hudge heavy top crane falling down on the operating floor, and likely damaging the concrete slab /shield / cookie and link to the pool

Bang 3: Its the second explosion the vertical component.


Missing all the ins and out, the implosion or sucking in that happened after bang 1

 

[Rive]

nope it is definitively the reactor 3 as subtitle on the original page
http://www.newcs.futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/index41.html

The whole gallery has a 'reactor 3 ' subtitle, not the drawing. And there is that ABWR modell which does not fits with MK1 or MK2 containments at all. And the containment part of the drawing is square shaped, with the core at the centre. The Unit3 has the RPV on the side closest to the turbines.

I don't KNOW, but I seriously doubt that this is about Unit 3.

http://translate.google.hu/translat....futaba.fukushima.jp/05-20000519/index41.html

 

[|Fred]

Thank you rowmag ! It's great to have some one reading Kanji around here.
Mice is correct! This is the mighty Bolt Driver Machine.

 

[Jorge Stolfi]

The object is heavy -- yes, hard -- no. Isn't the flat roofing structure of most commercial roofs is something like corrugated metal with a thick layer of tar and pea gravel sprayed onto the metal substrate to form a heavy, watertight roof slab? Someone here must know commercial roofing, but I am betting the roof was fairly flexible, but heavy. And if the mass of the whole roof were lifted, peeled upwards largely intact and put in motion by a pressure wave from the explosion and then gravity, then that slab of roofing would have plenty enough mass and kinetic energy to do some serious damage IMO.

On the hi-res pictures one can clearly see the upper edge of the object. It is fairly smooth, with no signs of rebar. The object is also too thin for a concrete layer, but too thick for corrugated metal. It also seems quite stiff, bending rather than cracking. It was obviously hard enough to knife through the steel beams of the roof without any visible crack.

Indeed the roof seems to have been constructed as you described, but the metal layer was apparently made of many separate strips, perhaps 8--10 m long and 1 m wide, which are scattered all over the place.

Units #3 and #4 were twiins, apparently. If the object came from #4's roof, where is the corresponding object from #3?

Unit #1 had a different construction. There the explosion obviously pried the roof as a unit --- truss, metal base, and tarmac --- from the side walls. (in units #3 and #4, the roof truss was solidly anchored to the concrete walls, and the attachment resisted the much stronger explosions.) The roof of #1 may have been lifted for a short distance, then crashed back onto the floor below. Even this relatively gentle event turned the tarmac layer into rubble, and molded the roof to the shape of the underlying machinery. Thus the metal layer on #1 (if there was one) cannot have been very thick either.

if the object came from #4's roof, perhaps it was a partial armor plate, spanning only the middle part of the building, meant to protect the reactor against terrorist attacks?

 

[Rive]

Oyster Creek Blueprints

...

One can access these PDFs and the other parts of the FSAR at the NRC's Web-based ADAMS search page as follows:

1. Go to the main ADAMS site at http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves/
2. Select the Advanced Search tab
3. In the search box put "Accession_Number:ML011270* $titleyster" without the quotes
4. Press the Search button and wait

Thank you for this: it's very useful.

Oyster Creek is BWR2/MK1 as the Unit 1. Unit 2 to 4 are BWR3/MK1 as like Dresden NPP, Monticello, Quad Cities, Santa María de Garoña or Pilgrim NPP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiling_water_reactors

I've actually started to search, but it's too much, it'll be slow (days).