What are Cement Trucks doing at the Fukushima site?

[Junkdrawer]

I've been puzzled for a few days about something in this photo:



Here's a little better close-up:



What are the cement trucks doing there? Could they be trying to pour a retroactive containment slab underneath one or more of the reactors in case of a meltdown? Repairs to the containment? Any word?

[octothorpe]

1. I'd like a concrete answer for this too...

[madrchsod]

2. if they are pouring cement it ain`t going to last...

[dana_b]

3. the heat? sorry - I'm ignorant.

Is this a "hail Mary pass" - so to speak?

[madrchsod]

6. salt water contamination

[Liberal_in_LA]

21. they switched to spraying fresh water

[hedgehog]

4. I heard that they'd been adapted to help bring the water in,

sorry, no link.

[GKirk]

19. I'm thinking that would

be a lie. they are there to deliver cement to seal something off.

[Poll_Blind]

5. Shhhhh! They're probably just having a huge bingo game and need the trucks for all the balls.

Kidding aside, good question Junkdrawer. I haven't heard of any emergency construction at the site for any reason, at least not involving the pouring of cement or anything like that.

FYI, each of the cores has, underneath it, a very large structure called a "core catcher" which, if absolutely all else fails, is used to catch a breached, molten radioactive core and spread it out to allow it to cool but also (and most importantly) prevent it from hitting ground water.

There is the slightest possibility that those cement trucks could be used to dump concrete into the core catchers in an attempt to fill in any cracks which may have formed but I doubt it.

Could they have been on the scene prior to the disaster? I don't recall seeing them in other pictures, though...

OnEdit: You can get an idea what the structure of the core catcher looks like (generally) from these pictures of a Chinese reactor, specifically this one.

PB

[Junkdrawer]

12. I did some Googling, and there's talk that these reactors DIDN'T have core catchers.....

Does Fukushima I have a core catcher?

A popular blog post entitled "Why I am not worried a about Japan's nuclear reactors" claims that meltdown at Fukushima I would be contained, as a last resort, by the reactor's core catcher.

However a comment purporting to be from a young Japanese Atomic Energy Agency researcher claims that Fukushima I has no core catcher: http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/#comment-46

Fukushima I was built in 1970 and the earliest reference to core catchers that I can find is this 1978 patent.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/4113560/description.html

It seems unlikely therefore that a core catcher was installed, and since they go underneath the reactor I would assume they are not easy to retrofit. Does anyone have a definitive answer?

https://www.quora.com/Japan-Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear-Disaster-March-11-2011/Does-Fukushima-I-have-a-core-catcher/answers/441086

[Poll_Blind]

14. .

:wow: + :scared:

PB

[FarPoint]

7. Didn't the Russians cement over

Or bury Chernobyl?

[Paradoxical]

9. They built a large concrete structure over the reactor building.

It's known as the sarcophagus.

[Shagbark Hickory]

8. One of the options was to encase the reactors with cement. Don't they tell you these things on msnBS

[NYC_SKP]

10. "Concrete is being poured into the dangerous spent fuel rod pool at reactor #4

Four days ago, March 21st.

http://www.businessinsider.com/japan-nuclear-crisis-2011-3

They're also sending in a large Sany truck mounted concrete pump to assist in pumping water, news from March 19: http://products.sany.com.cn/group/en-us/media/482_for_special_list_text.htm

:patriot:

[Junkdrawer]

13. That would tend to explain the crane next to the truck...

Patching the pool so it could hold water again. Bailing wire and duct tape engineering. Yikes.

Thanks.

[BeFree]

18. Yikes is an understatement

I am sure as heck hoping they can control this as the days, weeks and years go by.

And they damn sure better not turn down a solution because it 'costs too much'.
But you know they have people ready to argue just that.

[jtuck004]

17. I'm thinking that's a bad translation.

Because the pools are in the air over the reactor - pour enough cement in they come crashing down onto the core. Could be correct, but that is hardly an ideal solution.

They need to get the fuel out of the core. #4 had the hottest spent fuel, had just been replaced before the eq\tsunami. Encasing that in concrete could lead to all sorts of bad conclusions. The ideal is to get it covered with water, then build a new pool and move it to that for 5 or 6 years, till it cools enough to transfer.

A guy from the EPA took pictures inside the sarcophagus with the people who work at Chernobyl in 1996 and mentioned in that piece that, as other experts have, that the concrete was not a good idea, because it has interfered with the cleanup and left the site more radioactive than it needed to be.

The reactor at Chernobyl blew its top and left the uranium exposed to the sky, easy to hit. Here it is encased in a building, and has the hottest fuel encased in a core containment inside that, in a structure that was designed to contain a meltdown. So far there is no evidence that the fuel from in the core has breached that underlying structure via melting through, (but it is possible that flying concrete or steel punctured #1, or maybe it had a rupture from steam). If one was to try and entomb the concrete they would have to blow open the core to get the boron (to prevent fission, like control rods) into the fuel, which could make things much worse. Without that, and perhaps with that, if the fuel is covered with concrete it might be possible to see a thermal explosion that would blow through the tomb and into the air one day. Best possibility is to get the fuel covered with water at all costs, (something that happened far too slowly) to cool and stop the radiation, then figure out how to remove it and put it in a circulating pool.

The concrete pumpers were ordered to supplement the one fire truck there with a boom long enough to pump through the top. If they do not have water trucks available, the concrete trucks can haul much-needed fresh water.

[Art_from_Ark]

23. It could be a bad translation

I would like to see the original Japanese.

Interesting that an American news report (ABC, I think) back around March 14 or so was talking about covering a reactor core (or spent fuel rods, I don't remember which) with sand and pouring concrete on top of that.

[WhiteTara]

11. I'm thinking entombment

and it will take lots and lots of stuff to entomb the monster.

[flamingdem]

15. The gates of hell

the source of the atomic raygun. Not hyperbole.

[WhiteTara]

20. here is the gate to hell

Not hyperbole.
?1301109657388


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/the-worlds-most-bizarre-m_n_571043.html#s89632&title=The_Gates_Of

I wish I knew how to make the image just appear, but please, do click.

[flamingdem]

22. This might work, what is that thing?

You have to delete extra characters so it ends in .jpg

[csziggy]

24. What happens when you drill into a natural gas cavern, then set it on fire

In the hot, expansive Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, near the 350 person village of Derweze, is a hole 328 feet wide that has been on fire, continuously, for 38 years. Known as the Darvaza Gas Crater or the "Gates of Hells" by locals, the crater can be seen glowing for miles around.

The hole is the outcome not of nature but of an industrial accident. In 1971 a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole at an alarming rate. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight. The crater hasn't stopped burning since.
http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-gates-of-hell

[WhiteTara]

25. oh! Thanks for the tip on posting pics

here's the explanation for this horror...or Dick Cheney's summer home entrance.

In the desert in Turkmenistan is a hole 328 ft. wide that has been on fire, continuously, for 38 years. In 1971, a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole. To head off a potential deadly catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole aflame.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/the-worlds-most-bizarre-m_n_571043.html#s89632&title=The_Gates_Of

Here's a few more horrifying man made disasters.

[dana_b]

26. we sure know how to create hell, don't we

I hadn't heard of some of those issues/places. Amazing and horrific.

[freshwest]

16. Doing the Chernobyl solution as recommended by Michio Kaku

This guy is a genius and I think they are following his advice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DkCD5IInMY