Nuke engineer: Fuel rod fire at Fukushima reactor “would be like Chernobyl on steroids”

[katty]

more:
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2011/03/14/nuke-engineer-fuel-rod-fire-at-stricken-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/

Two days later, the nearby building containing the plutonium-uranium (MOX) fueled Fuksuhima Daichii reactor unit 3 exploded. So why bother about the rubble of reactor No 1? The WaPo quotes a nuclear engineer who knows the answer:

Although Tokyo Electric said it also continued to deal with cooling system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored.

At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside.

“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,” said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.

[villager]

1. Which means large swaths of Japan are going to be permanently uninhabitable

in any meaningful human time scale of "permanently."

[katty]

2. yes

[Confusious]

3. Which means it's all freaking speculation and hype

How about we give them a chance to deal with this before writing them off?

There's enough water in the pool to last a couple of days. It doesn't take much to refill it, scince the rods are already cool.

You could get a helicopter a water dropper for forest fires to refill it. That's just one thought besides doom and gloom.

[Snoutport]

5. and then study the results for 50 more years before acting?

when do we act? people have demanded better safety from these plants for decades...nobody ever acts until it gets expensive for the company.

[Confusious]

6. Your post has nothing to do with what I posted.

[fascisthunter]

8. "...he rods are already cool" Um.... not what I have read

Nuclear rods melting inside three Fukushima reactors, Japan admits
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4770692

[Confusious]

12. I wasn't taking about the rods in the reactor

I was talking about the spent rods in the cooling pools, which was what the OP was about.

I think everyone needs to slow down, stop the speculation and read.

[Poll_Blind]

4. He's right. See "Kyshtym Disaster" (2nd after Chernobyl) on Wikipedia (LINK)

Here

A radioactive fire would be the worst of all possible outcomes, could go on for hours or longer, and would be a "wost case scenario" which hasn't even been seriously considered (publicly) thus far.

PB

[fascisthunter]

7. oh man....

[MineralMan]

9. It's worth noting that no such fuel rod fire has been reported.

This is a worst case scenario. It has not happened so far, or at least has not been reported. This is a speculative article, talking about what might happen, not what has happened. It's not actually news.

[katty]

11. there are a plethora of articles sourcing worldwide from actual

experts (like Gunderson-he's been around for decades) about this potential scenario-and i am not going to research them all again and post links...and nuke experts all over a variety of media for 4 days, they do bring this issue up as a 'potential' only.

[CountAllVotes]

10. NO MORE NUKES!!!!!!!!!

ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH!!!!!!!
:dem: