Workers stabilize spent fuel stored at Japanese reactor

[nadinbrzezinski]

By GREG GORDON

McClatchy Newspapers


Japanese workers, who are risking their lives attempting to cool a half-dozen crippled nuclear reactors, managed Saturday to stabilize a storage pool that holds some of the deadliest spent fuel, halting its release of radiation, the Japanese government said.

However, while progress was made in stabilizing reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, reactor No. 4 could pose a more difficult problem if, as feared, water is leaking through a breach in its pool filled with both live and spent fuel assemblies, U.S. experts said.

Without 30 to 40 feet of water, that pool still could heat up quickly, triggering a hydrogen explosion that could shower the entire plant with deadly radioactive particles. That would further hamper efforts to prevent the one-two punch of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami from causing a nuclear disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986.

The workers, many of whom have absorbed radiation levels widely considered unsafe, labored to restore electric power to four of the reactors' critical water pumps - equipment whose disabling has led to most of the significant radiation releases over the past week.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/19/2738684/workers-stabilize-spent-fuel-stored.html

Yeah we are stepping away from the WORST CASE and closer to a best case... YAY!

[DearAbby]

1. Good news!

Still not over, but I do see a glimmer of hope. Heroes all who are working at these plants. Heroes everyone of them.

[dkf]

2. Thank goodness and thanks for posting.

Now crossing my fingers on no. 4.

[taterguy]

3. Yay my ass. What am I gonna do with all this milk?

I don't even drink the stuff.

[Obamanaut]

8. There are at least two California residents who buy boxed milk. Perhaps

one of them will take it off your hands.

[DeSwiss]

4. K&R n/t

[Urban Prairie]

5. Yeah, even though #4 apparently was not online during the quake

and had no fuel rods in operation at the time, that spent fuel rod pool is damaged and is obviously the one that the workers will have the biggest challenge and difficulty trying to figure out a means to stabilize and cool it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I read today

that it may be as simple (I hope) as a gasket. Problem is getting the gasket in place.


And yes that concerns me, but every little good turn is one less turn to the worst case. So a good thing in my book.

[Warpy]

7. That is really great news

and it means the contamination is likely to be about as bad as it's going to get. Unfortunately, it's pretty bad, covering quite a lot of the Japanese bread basket, mostly agricultural land.

The cleanup, if one is possible, is going to be horrendous.

[Arugula Latte]

9. I first read this sentence as:

..."triggering a hydrogen explosion that could shower the entire planet with deadly radioactive particles."

I need to go change my undies. :yoiks:

[suffragette]

10. Very good news, indeed.