Two more reactors unstable at Japan nuke plant

[brooklynite]

Source: MSNBC

"Plant operators were considering the removal of panels from units 5 and 6 reactor buildings to prevent a possible buildup of hydrogen," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

"It was a buildup of hydrogen at units 1, 2, and 3 that led to explosions at the Dai-ichi facilities in recent days," it added.

Units 5 and 6 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were full of nuclear fuel but not producing when Friday's quake and tsunami struck. They had been considered stable, but on Tuesday a senior Japanese official said temperatures there were also slightly elevated.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42084187/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

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I'm getting confused; I thought there were 4 units at the Power Plant, and that the problems were with units 1, 2 and 4. Where are units 5 and 6?

[dipsydoodle]

1. You're confused ?

Welcome to the club.

:hi:

[Raschel]

2. And we haven't even touched on the other plants. I wonder what the status is on them?

[RKP5637]

3. I'm confused now too as to who's on first. n/t

[Lucinda]

4. There are 10 total at two locations at Fukushima

Complex 1 - Fuskshima Dai-Ichi has 6
Complex 2 - Fukushima Dai-Ni has 4

The two complexes are about 7 miles apart

The last I heard was that 7 of the 10 had issues...but that might be very old news

[Peace Patriot]

5. Here's a nice little chart on current status...from Dixiegrrrrl

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x653905

There are six nuclear plants at the Fukushina Dai-ichi site. And more at the Fukushina Daini site, 10 miles away. As far as I know, all the trouble is in the six plants at Dai-ichi site, which took a direct hit from the tsumami, knocking out all of its cooling systems and backups.

[Sirveri]

6. plants when shut down continue to produce heat. Tech babble below!

In this instance those plants were likely not at the point where heat losses to ambient fully balanced out with decay heat produced by the core. Depending on the temperature and the rate of increase this might not be a problem at all. Also as temperature increases so does loss to ambient because the greater the difference in temperature the faster that temperature will move between two points (core to ambient in this case). So if it's increasing by 10F/hr, and it reaches melt point at 1500F above current temperatures, then even if the rate of increase was constant it would give 150 hours to get someone to simply go inside the plant and flip on the pump switch to circulate water. However it might also decrease the rate of change by 1F every 100F increase, which means it would end up balancing out 500F below meltpoint, and thus there isn't any danger at all. However because I don't know the specific technical details and data for these plants, I can't really give you a specific answer.