Nuclear officials prepare to vent radioactive gas from crippled Japanese reactor

[highplainsdem]

Source: Associated Press

Nuclear officials prepare to vent radioactive gas from crippled Japanese reactor
By Associated Press, Sunday, March 20, 1:06 AM

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — Technicians prepared to vent radioactive gas into the air Sunday because of a new spike in pressure at Japan’s crippled, leaking nuclear complex, while a safety official said protective iodine pills should have been distributed near the plant days earlier.

-snip-

The pills help reduce the chances of thyroid cancer, one of the diseases that may develop from radiation exposure. The official, Kazuma Yokota, said an explosion at the plant’s Unit 3 reactor last Sunday should have triggered the distribution. But the order only came three days later.

-snip-

After the government said Saturday that the unit appeared to be stabilizing after being doused with water, nuclear safety officials said the efforts may not have worked. Pressure was rising again inside the reactor’s containment vessel, requiring a release of radioactive gas to prevent a more dangerous buildup, said safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama.

The venting is an “unavoidable measure to protect the containment vessel,” Nishiyama said. He warned that a larger amount of radiation would have to be released than when similar venting was done a week ago because more nuclear fuel have have degraded since then.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nuclear-officials-prepare-to-vent-radioactive-gas-from-crippled-japanese-reactor/2011/03/18/ABWBIts_story.html

[jannyk]

1. I can't get the link to load (my connection - not your link) Which Reactor? #3?

[highplainsdem]

2. Yes, #3.

[itsrobert]

3. Probably waiting for winds to blow East towards the US

?

[Bluerthanblue]

4. oh no-

I was hoping that the tide was turning.

[Xenotime]

31. Oh no is right. The country has no idea about the horrors that lie ahead.

[PSPS]

5. "protective iodine pills"

Technicians prepared to vent radioactive gas into the air Sunday because of a new spike in pressure at Japan’s crippled, leaking nuclear complex, while a safety official said protective iodine pills should have been distributed near the plant days earlier.

While potassium iodine pills may offer a limited amount of protection from I-131 (radioactive iodine,) it does nothing at all for cesium-137, which has a 30-year half-life and is absorbed as if it were potassium.

[Celebration]

8. Would taking potassium help

Crowding it out (????) of binding to receptors or something??

Have the Japanese authorities ever given out levels of much cesium-137?

[bananas]

12. No

Potassium iodide is a safe way of reducing the amount of radioactive iodine absorbed by the thyroid glands.
Other forms of iodine can be extremely poisonous, and potassium by itself won't block the radioactive iodine.
And you can't just swallow some iodine and some potassium, that could kill you, they have to be properly combined chemically into the molecule potassium iodide.

edit to add: this faq seems correct: http://www.ki4u.com/#100

[suffragette]

6. Bad news

and I noticed many of the live blogs, such as those at the Guardian, France24 and BBC have stopped or switched over to coverage of Libya.

Thanks for posting this update, highplainsdem.

[Raschel]

7. Yes, thanks for the post. I've been looking for info as well.

[wordpix]

25. updates here at NIRS.org

http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm

UPDATE, 10:30 am, Saturday, March 19, 2011. Officials believe they are having some success using a variety of methods to cool the damaged reactors at the Fukushima site, including fire trucks and a remotely-operated system that can spray water for seven hours at a time. A power cable has apparently finally been placed at the site (after several incorrect reports that this already had happened), and may be hooked up later on Saturday. If successful, this would provide power to the site. However, the condition of the safety systems inside the reactors is unknown, so it is also unknown whether offsite power will prove to be the savior it would have been a week ago.

The condition of the fuel pools, especially at Units 3 and 4, appears to remain more serious.

TEPCO has cut holes in the roofs of the Units 5 and 6 containment buildings in an effort to remove building pressure and prevent explosions such as those that severely damaged Units 1, 3 and 4. This means some radiation is certainly being released through these holes.

Contaminated milk and spinach has been found; the spinach was growing 60 miles from the site. More food contamination can be expected in the coming days and weeks.

[Journeyman]

9. What I don't understand is why this wasn't anticipated during construction. . .

and containment vessels into which to bleed off this gas weren't built on site. They could have connected them with freakin' garden hoses and we'd have less garbage vented into the air than we're getting now.

Only in an emergency do we truly learn how woefully ignorant and unprepared our "best and brightest" can prove to be. Such a fuckin' waste of university resources, "educating" such willfully blind fools as nuclear physicists are proving to be. The world would have been far better off with more English lit majors. Thirty millennia from now no one will have been harmed by "Beowulf" or the Canterbury characters, but the garbage these fools willfully inflicted upon us will still rot the Earth.

[bananas]

13. See post #11. nt

[daleo]

17. Suppose you could bleed it off to another containment vessel

Wouldn't that fill with hydrogen and explode too? Then you would have the same problem as now, but somewhat farther away.

[Journeyman]

19. As I understand it, as the hydrogen fills the vessel, it prohibits water from being pumped in. . .

so it has to be released to make room for the possibility of cooling the reactor. Unreleased, the pressure builds and it eventually explodes. So with a larger holding tank at a further distance, it buys them time to cool the reactor. A cool reactor no longer generates the hydrogen gas, so the secondary containment vessel would not fill enough to build explosive pressure.

And let's face my reality: Unlike the assholes who built this nightmare, I'm willing to admit I haven't a clue what I'm talking about. But that's the difference between them and me: I recognize my ignorance and the limits it imposes, but then don't insist that you must live with the consequences of it.

[daleo]

29. I wasn't trying to shoot down your idea

Just thinking it through. Your idea might be quite useful - it could buy some time during a crisis.

I took one physics course in my undergrad that got into reactor design a bit, but that and some outside reading is all I know. I suspect cutting corners to save money has a lot to do with the problems being encountered. That said, nuclear power may simply be too complicated and dangerous for any engineering design to hold up.

[Journeyman]

36. Didn't see it at all as you shooting it down . . .

hard to shoot down the mindless speculation of a nuclear know-nothing.

Unfortunately, recent events have shown my idle speculations to be on par with (and it seems, at least to me, better than) those of the self-proclaimed "experts."

For over forty years I've fought against these arseholes, questioned what they proposed and attempted to defeat what they wanted to do, and now to my horror I find that everything I reasoned -- and they so blithely poo-pooed -- has shown to be true. Well, I never had any respect for them before, now I have nothing but contempt.

"Who could foresee a tsunami causing such damage?" asks the nuclear boob patrol in unison.

"Every moron who ever read about the 1755 ’quake in Lisbon, Portugal," reply all those who labor beneath the black cloud of these fool's ignorance.

[Arcana]

10. More particles coming.

Will it still be in "minute not-so-worrisome amounts" in the U.S West coast by Friday?

[stockholmer]

21. and this venting probably contains plutonium 238, 239, 240, 241,and/or 242 from the MOX fuel

Defo not good, as even a micronic amount (if contacted internally) of any of those isotopes renders a person "dead man walking".

:(

[bananas]

11. Reactor containment buildings are not designed to contain a meltdown

- Reactor containment buildings are not designed to contain a meltdown, and can rupture in a matter of hours.

- In 2002, the NRC's own inspector general concluded: "NRC appears to have informally established an unreasonably high burden of requiring absolute proof of a safety problem, versus lack of a reasonable assurance of maintaining public health and safety."

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x280732

[highprincipleswork]

14. maybe not, live coverage in Japan

Been following coverage in Japan at http://www.ustream.tv/channel-popup/YokosoNews.

Say there, in news conference, that unit 3 has stabilized to point where venting is not currently necessary.

As usual, need to take with grain of salt, bad pun, but let's hope this is true.

Also, interesting to see that robots are starting to be used at Fukushima and elsewhere, as well as drones.

[jtuck004]

15. They have been venting steam and helium, washing radioactive reactors

with seawater that then spills on the ground and rolls back out to the sea, as well as having smoke rise at different times and places for a week, and expect that to go on for some weeks or months. And the reactors "vent" themselves periodically by exploding hydrogen or steam blowouts. Now they make a whole new story out of it. Just because they douse it with water doesn't mean it's gonna cool correctly - too many control systems broken. And it sure looks like they aren't putting all the resources they could into the effort, cause they are only filling #3, while #4 is heating up, but I guess we will see in another few days.

Here is an overview of the status of the 6 reactors at Fokushima by Japan Intl Atomic Agcy. Mostly things are cooling down, except #4 is heating up (no fuel in core, but storage of fuel which has been the big problem for the most part).

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300584349P.pdf

If you know people there know that our hearts go out to them. Many are not nearly as affected by the reactors as they are by the lack of food, water, supplies, and the loss of their homes, especially those from Minami Sanriku. I saw a mayor of a town with worried tears in his eyes asking for food and water, but that may have been a couple days ago, and now they need fuel. I hope the organizations getting aid to them are getting the job done.

And given that most level-headed people with good information say the likelihood of a real danger here is quite low, we should be more concerned about Japan and the people. And not turn our backs on the reactors. That fuel needs to come out into cooling ponds.

[grahamhgreen]

16. All of their reactors should be retired. Japan is a bad place for nukes, in fact,

they have no place in a clean energy future.

[CountAllVotes]

20. couldn't agree more!

n/t

:kick:

[wordpix]

23. +1 and CA and NY fault lines are just as bad places

[Aerows]

33. They are.

I'm not in CA or NY, I'm on the Gulf Coast (which has a continuing problem of oil spills now :( ), but it would make sense to me to build them away from fault lines.

[freshwest]

18. Great post. IMHO, though, it's been venting non-stop.

These stories maintain the hope the PTB are taking care of things. It's devastating what is happening there. And will be happening in months if not years. We must unite to face the changes coming.

[wordpix]

24. yes, there are so many holes from the blowouts there's a lot of venting going on

intended or not

[wordpix]

22. they've already been venting so why is this news?

http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm

UPDATE, 10:30 am, Saturday, March 19, 2011. Officials believe they are having some success using a variety of methods to cool the damaged reactors at the Fukushima site, including fire trucks and a remotely-operated system that can spray water for seven hours at a time. A power cable has apparently finally been placed at the site (after several incorrect reports that this already had happened), and may be hooked up later on Saturday. If successful, this would provide power to the site. However, the condition of the safety systems inside the reactors is unknown, so it is also unknown whether offsite power will prove to be the savior it would have been a week ago.

The condition of the fuel pools, especially at Units 3 and 4, appears to remain more serious.

TEPCO has cut holes in the roofs of the Units 5 and 6 containment buildings in an effort to remove building pressure and prevent explosions such as those that severely damaged Units 1, 3 and 4. This means some radiation is certainly being released through these holes.

Contaminated milk and spinach has been found; the spinach was growing 60 miles from the site. More food contamination can be expected in the coming days and weeks. snip

[stockholmer]

27. this is a new venting from Unit 3, the link you provided is from 40 hours ago, Japan time

[Aerows]

28. Unit 3?

I thought #3 was under control and #4 was the problem.

[stockholmer]

30. venting is Unit 3, here is a quote from the OP, Unit 4 now has possible chain reaction in spent fuel

"But the buildup in pressure inside the vessel holding Unit 3’s reactor presented some danger, forcing officials to consider venting. The tactic produced explosions of radioactive gas during the early days of the crisis.

“Even if certain things go smoothly, there would be twists and turns,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. “At the moment, we are not so optimistic that there will be a breakthrough.”

Nuclear safety officials said one of the options could release a cloud dense with iodine as well as the radioactive elements krypton and xenon."


Units 1,2,3, and 4 are not "under control", by any objective measure, IMHO.

Unit 4's vessel was not in operation when quake/tsunami hit, but it has well over 100,000 spent fuels rods in the pool outside the vessel, above it.
These are now probably starting to form a brand new chain reaction.

Unit 2 has the least info coming out on it (and is unfortunately the one with a confirmed reactor VESSEL breach). Unit 3 has the biggest potential harm , due to the plutonium MOX fuel. It also has the most containment building structural damage, due the huge explosion 6 days ago.

Unit 3 explosion, March 14th, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ

[Aerows]

32. Well, not "under control" per se...

...but relative to the situation they were in on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

Unit 4 is a major concern because that could be a new chain reaction and a meltdown, but #3 still having problems, because that's where the MOX is, is horrible.

I feel so badly for the Japanese people.

Lord.

Thanks for the information.

[stockholmer]

34. yes, Im just sick in my gut about Japan(much to do with non-nuke events)so many hungry, cold, alone

:(

[Aerows]

35. I went through Katrina

And honestly, compared to the fact that they are also facing a nuclear crisis, it was a drop in the bucket. God knows we had our challenges living through it and rebuilding afterwards, but this new development for them is beyond words.

I hope they have neighbors, friends and family like we did. None of us would have gotten through it without our community (those of us who stayed through it).

[Aerows]

26. This is not good

Jeez, it seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket. I had hoped they were turning a corner.