Japan reactor ‘probably not’ breached (No. 3)

[jpak]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3651b0f4-569f-11e0-9c5c-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HoGfYmNl

<snip>

Mr Edano said it was clear that water that might have been inside the number 3 reactor had leaked, but said the reactor itself had not been breached.

“Unfortunately, it seems there is no question that water, which could have been inside the reactor, is leaking,” Mr Edano said.

However, the reactor “has probably not been breached,” since the pressure inside the vessel was higher than that in the atmosphere, he added.

Mr Edano said “the possibility is low” that the high level of iodine-131 in the seawater would have a negative effect on marine life, since it would be diluted by the vast amount of water in the ocean.

<more>

[nebenaube]

1. pointless report... n/t

[godai]

2. No, the word breached has been tossed around all week.

What I get out of this report is that there is pressure in the reactor, meaning that it is not cracked and leaking directly. However, there is radioactivity outside the reactor, for example in the turbine building. The reactor is connected to the turbine room by pipes. This seems to indicate that radioactive water from the reactor, in pipes, is leaking (into the turbine room). This is bad but maybe these pipes can be sealed to stop the leaking? I'm not 100% sure of all of this but this is how I understand it.

It would be ridiculous to be sending men into the turbine room if the reactor itself were cracked. Is TEPCO lying about this? Possibly, but that seems just crazy for them to be doing. This can't be covered up.

[Turbineguy]

3. There must be

lots of pipes and instrumentation lines running through there. Steam drain lines, HP drains to feed heaters, LP drains to the condenser, etc.

Even in piping there is a hierarchy. The big pipes get the most attention from design through daily operation. The small pipes get the least. It's amazing how much water you can lose through a 1/4 inch pressure gauge line in 2 weeks.

[SpoonFed]

4. uh

i'm pretty sure i read that tepco had fed pressured steam or something back into one of their reactors in the past to fool the pressure sensors so that they could pretend they were releasing less radioactive steam than they were to the oversight body

ie. the thing is venting badly, they're going to calculate how bad it was by the amount of pressure we're measuring and fine us or whatever, so lets hook that compressor up to the thing so that it looks like a smaller leak that it is.

i do not take what tepco says as fact unless it's verified by external data. it seems that the satellite photos and the US warships and external "foreign" scientists are what is getting them to act at all.

why believe them. every day there is a new story about how oh, yeah, that previous report, it was wrong, we read the numbers wrong or mispoke or that guy didn't know what he was doing or blah blah blah with the end message that everything is less worse than it is...

well it's two weeks and the snowball is bigger than the reactors at this point

[PamW]

18. Good hypothesis.

What I get out of this report is that there is pressure in the reactor, meaning that it is not cracked and leaking directly. However, there is radioactivity outside the reactor, for example in the turbine building. The reactor is connected to the turbine room by pipes. This seems to indicate that radioactive water from the reactor, in pipes, is leaking (into the turbine room). This is bad but maybe these pipes can be sealed to stop the leaking? I'm not 100% sure of all of this but this is how I understand it.
=============================================

Yes - the fact that the reactor can be pressurized augers against there being a leak or crack.

You are correct that the reactor is directly connected to the turbine via the main steam
pipes. Within those pipes are the MSIVs - the Main Steam Isolation Valves. When there is
a incident such as this, those valves are programmed to close to isolate the reactor.

A potential explanation is that the MSIV valves could be leaking, or damaged.

Due to the loss of power, the operators don't have working instrumentation that will
tell them the precise level of water in the reactor. They've been injecting water
like mad, and could have filled the reactor to the level of the steam outlets. That
contaminated water could get by a leaking or damaged MSIV, and then get by the
turbine throttle valve and end up in the bottom of the turbine pedestal.

If one had a cracked or breached reactor, one would expect most of the water to be
in the floor of the containment, not in the adjacent turbine building.

PamW

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

5. are they seriously trying to walk back the breach now?? quit with the lies already!

[AtheistCrusader]

7. Nobody said #2 isn't breached in the suppression pool.

If number 3 isn't breached, then it isn't, and should be reported so.

[SpoonFed]

8. straws!!?!

you are grasping at straws now.
the end is neigh

[AtheistCrusader]

9. You get that off a cardboard sign somewhere?

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

14. if it isn't breached then how did the 10,000x Water get there?

with isotopes and zirconium indicating that it came from the reactor???

[AtheistCrusader]

17. In reactor three, multiple possible sources.

Drainage links between buildings 2-3. (2 is almost certainly leaking)
Condensate off the walls of the exterior of the containment shell from steam realeased in intentional efforts to lower pressure in the containment. (possibly ongoing efforts they aren't telling us about)
Downhill drainage from damaged fuel rods in #3's storage pool. (which they have been adding boron to, to reduce the possibility of any of the fuel going critical again, which may have already occurred)

[BeFree]

6. So

I boiled some water on my stove.

Had a nice heavy lid on the pot.

The water boiled raising the heavy lid.
There was pressure in the pot, enough to lift the lid, but steam was escaping.

IOW: The containment was breached.

[SpoonFed]

10. hmm

This whole analogy makes me imagine your kettle has this huge crack down the side and underneath it and it's got a bunch of bubblegum sort of stuck in the crack at some points and a mess of scotch tape over the crack and and old grey sock kinda wedged in there where it fits and some crumpled up newspaper or whatever was lying around the kitchen when the crack was first noticed and the lid is off, and there is just a volcano of steam shooting out the top up to the ceiling but this is only because you're standing on the couch in the living room with the garden hose running from outside with your thumb over the nozzle, and you're shooting a water off the refrigerator door towards the stove.

the whole time you've got the old touch tone phone under your chin and you're shouting at your wife on the phone that "Everything's fine honey, what do you want for dinner?"

i think that's pretty close.

oh, and all the neighbours are on your porch looking in the front window, tapping and asking you if everything is ok in there.

[BeFree]

11. Fukushima!!

That's what is happening on a global scale, and you brought right down to the 'hood.

Damn near made me do more than chuckle. Thanks for the chuckle. Much needed.
Relieved some pressure, it did.

This issue is about to make me boil over in great anger. Fukushima didn't have to happen.

[jpak]

15. Maybe they should hire BP to stop the breach that isn't possible/likely/whatever

If they can plug a highly pressurized blow-out it at 1500 meters in the Gulf of Mexico, they can do it in a silly little reactor vessel.

Can't they?

:shrug:

[BeFree]

16. The similarities are haunting.

Advanced technology causing advanced problems.

Is this the future, or what?

[CRH]

12. How are we to define breached, now ...

This situation cannot be hidden behind semantics. The fact is highly radioactive water has left the reactor vessel, and all other containment, to an area normally thought to be free of high level radiation. Now we are to debate whether this is a breach of the reactor vessel? It doesn't really matter, it is a breach of the designed containment of a specific reactor.

[BeFree]

13. Leaking?

No longer containing as designed. A failure of the system.

Lets hope they can fix it, soon.