stock here: We knew this happened, and yet somehow they removed the rods in an elaborate setup.
Now about the "side melt out"........
And that's about all I have to say about that.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22236558
It is shown which information can be extracted from the monitoring of radionuclides emitted from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant and transported to Europe. In this part the focus will be on the analysis of the concentration ratios. While (131)I, (134)Cs and (137)Cs were reported by most stations, other detected radionuclides, reported by some, are (95)Nb, (129m)Te, (132)Te, (132)I, (136)Cs and (140)La. From their activity ratios a mean burn-up of 26.7 GWd/t of the fuel from which they originated is estimated. Based on these data, inventories of radionuclides present at the time of the accident are calculated. The caesium activity ratios indicate emissions from the core of unit 4 which had been unloaded into the fuel storage pool prior to the accident.
From a reader comment
http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/08/cucumber-found-glowing-blue-near-fukushima-photos/#sthash.0KH54wDw.dpuf
http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/08/cucumber-found-glowing-blue-near-fukushima-photos/
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/wild-pig-stained-blue-inside#sthash.ShOSt2pu.dpuf
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/wild-pig-stained-blue-inside
http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/08/cucumber-found-glowing-blue-near-fukushima-photos/#sthash.ShOSt2pu.dpuf
http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/08/cucumber-found-glowing-blue-near-fukushima-photos/#sthash.0KH54wDw.dpuf
Cut Cucumbers and wild pigs innards glow blue with radioactive cesium from fukushima
ReplyDeletehttp://fukushima-diary.com/2014/08/cucumber-found-glowing-blue-near-fukushima-photos/
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/wild-pig-stained-blue-inside
I added your links as working hyperlinks into the body of the post
DeleteStock, thanks for pointing out this study.
ReplyDeleteWhereas I don't know how much of the fuel in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 overheated and eventually melted, I still doubt very much that the black substance on the side of building 4 was molten _spent_ fuel. Fuel pellets melt at temperatures above 2000°C, meaning that they melt while already burning through other construction materials. Chances are high that the lava would end in/below the basement of the building.
However, the black substance was retained by a thin-walled steel pipe. In my opinion, if the substance were molten fuel, it would have burned through the pipe faster than an oxygen lance - or it would have flown along the building wall behind the pipe down onto/into the ground. Instead, the substance stopped short on the pipe without causing visible heat deformations or ablations.
In addition, the substance fell on the side of the equipment pool, which is used to store the reactor pressure vessel cap and other radioactive vessel parts during maintenance and refueling operations. The equipment pool is just not deep enough to shield the crew from radiation of spent fuel. It is also quite small. Disregarding these issues for a moment, if TEPCO violated every safety rule and _did_ store fuel in the equipment pool, it must have been new fuel rods, because these do neither need cooling nor strong shielding.
Assuming new fuel was stored in the equipment pool and assuming that the black substance on the side of the building is indeed nuclear fuel, I can only imagine that the fresh fuel underwent a prompt moderated criticality and burst open instantly. In this case, it would have flash-evaporated tons of water around it, sending it mostly upwards but possibly through the pool wall as well. In this case, most of the blasted fuel would have contained too little fission products to produce significant decay heat, but it could have escaped the building as water-fuel powder flow emptying the equipment pool. The water would have drained along the building wall, whereas the fuel pieces would have stockpiled on the pipe.
I hear logic
ReplyDelete