NRC: No Radiation Risk to the U.S. From Japan's Power Plants

I WANT to agree with you - I don't want a nuclear disaster

but the fact remains that the spent fuel rod pool was found dry, and it is larger than a swimming pool.

the fact also remains that 600,000 spent fuel rods are unaccounted for

I just want to know what the implications are!

But Plan A had failed - cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable - so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened: In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us. The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now.

The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is "liquid control rod". Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

Tags: Japan Tsunami, Japan | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: [link to www.businessinsider.com]

"No risk" is an absolute.

It may be minimal (in this particular situation), but there is risk when something is out of control.

So

at the end of the day


it will be handled


Japan will start re-building


and the radiationtards that have posted factless facts will move on

yeh, and I wonder why the UN would go to all the problem of creating a graphic showing how the radiation will move and then say this

"A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday."

Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse

or that

U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High,’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening (March 17, 2011) (headline)

or this

"Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable."

I mean why would they use words like

"extrememly minor health consequences" why would they say THAT if there were NO radiation going to land here? Kindof an odd thing to say if NO RADIATION IS GOING TO LAND HERE!!!

OH and then there is THIS

"For instance, the Japan forecast shows that the radioactive plume will probably miss the agency’s monitoring stations at Midway and in the Hawaiian Islands but is likely to be detected in the Aleutians and at a monitoring station in Sacramento."

I mean, why would they even say - oh it will miss this station and that station but it will MOST LIKELY show up in alaska and sacramento!

Why would they EVEN say that if NO RADIATION WAS GOING TO MAKE LANDFALL?

The answer is THEY WOULDN'T. they said it because that is what there models show. Period!

I think the facts point to NO RISK

I know.

imagine what GLP wouldve done if Chernobyl had happened today. "the worlds ending!" there'd be all sorts of crap. thanks for the post. it'll get 1* by doomtards, but I'm gonna 5* for the truth

Can anyone confrim that #3 had spent rods? And if so what are the chances they were dispersed upon #3's explosion?

hey OP.. are you going to answer me?

many powers that be hate nuke power and what it stands for


I have issues with it myself and the number of Nuke bombs ready to be used at a moments notice


Many stupid people that don't have a clue what they are talking about fill the air waves daily


I can't explain why people do what they do or why things are reported the way they are. I know the facts of the Gulf oil spill but what I know doesn't line up with what GLP thinks. So be it and what you think to be a fact is a fact at your house.

I guess you're not going to answer me, are you.

I don't know about 600,000 spent fuel rods that are unaccounted for

do you know what spent means ?

if the rod pool was dry is it still dry ?

That's an ignorant and false statement.

So why isnt anyone briging this up besides the likes of AJ. Also wouldnt they be spread alll over the place from #3 explosion?????

SDF helicopters dropped a total of about 30 tons of water in four trips on the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No. 3 reactor to cool a pool storing spent-fuel rods. The reactor uses a mixed fuel known as MOX, which includes plutonium -- a substance far more toxic than uranium.

Additionally, five SDF fire trucks and a police truck equipped with water cannons, each with a capacity of 4-6 tons, sprayed water from below. Personnel braved high levels of radiation to complete their tasks.

It is impossible to tell how much water actually reached the pool. An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), the plant's operator, said the efforts had some effect because steam could be seen rising from the pool. But some 500 tons of water is believed to be needed to fully immerse the spent-fuel rods.

"Although they may have been able to lower the temperature of the fuel rods temporarily, the rods need to be fully immersed to cool them effectively," said Tetsuo Ito, head of Kinki University's Atomic Energy Research Institute.

According to Tepco, a spent-fuel pool at the adjacent No. 4 reactor may still contain water, based on observation by helicopter.

At the No. 1 reactor, which had suffered a hydrogen explosion, and the No. 2 reactor, which may have a damaged suppression pool, the temperature inside the core is believed to be stable thanks to seawater being pumped into the reactor. But temperatures are rising in the spent-fuel pools of the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, which are being cooled with equipment powered by a single emergency generator.

The tsunami knocked out most backup generators at the power plant. On Thursday evening, Tepco installed cables linked to Tohoku Electric's power grid and prepared to connect them to the Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 reactors. Power could be restored at the No. 2 reactor as early as Friday.

Although the No. 2 reactor's containment vessel is damaged, officials believe that there is a good chance that the cooling system will be restored because the damage is relatively small. If all goes well, cooling equipment at other reactors will get up and running, aiding efforts to bring down temperatures in the reactor cores and spent-fuel storage pools.

(The Nikkei March 18 morning edition)

Well said!

The nuclear fuel cycle, also called nuclear fuel chain, is the progression of nuclear fuel through a series of differing stages. It consists of steps in the front end, which are the preparation of the fuel, steps in the service period in which the fuel is used during reactor operation, and steps in the back end, which are necessary to safely manage, contain, and either reprocess or dispose of spent nuclear fuel. If spent fuel is not reprocessed, the fuel cycle is referred to as an open fuel cycle (or a once-through fuel cycle); if the spent fuel is reprocessed, it is referred to as a closed fuel cycle.

Brought to you by the same people that claimed corexit was healthy.

Interim storage
After its operating cycle, the reactor is shut down for refueling. The fuel discharged at that time (spent fuel) is stored either at the reactor site (commonly in a spent fuel pool) or potentially in a common facility away from reactor sites. If on-site pool storage capacity is exceeded, it may be desirable to store the now cooled aged fuel in modular dry storage facilities known as Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSI) at the reactor site or at a facility away from the site. The spent fuel rods are usually stored in water or boric acid, which provides both cooling (the spent fuel continues to generate decay heat as a result of residual radioactive decay) and shielding to protect the environment from residual ionizing radiation, although after at least a year of cooling they may be moved to dry cask storage.

Spent fuel discharged from reactors contains appreciable quantities of fissile (U-235 and Pu-239), fertile (U-238), and other radioactive materials, including reaction poisons, which is why the fuel had to be removed. These fissile and fertile materials can be chemically separated and recovered from the spent fuel. The recovered uranium and plutonium can, if economic and institutional conditions permit, be recycled for use as nuclear fuel. This is currently not done for civilian spent nuclear fuel in the United States.

Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of reprocessed uranium and plutonium and depleted uranium which behaves similarly, although not identically, to the enriched uranium feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed. MOX fuel is an alternative to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel used in the light water reactors which predominate nuclear power generation.

Currently, plants in Europe are reprocessing spent fuel from utilities in Europe and Japan. Reprocessing of spent commercial-reactor nuclear fuel is currently not permitted in the United States due to the perceived danger of nuclear proliferation. However the recently announced Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would see the U.S. form an international partnership to see spent nuclear fuel reprocessed in a way that renders the plutonium in it usable for nuclear fuel but not for nuclear weapons.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

False. [link to qed.princeton.edu (secure)]

[link to www.npr.org]

I agree

that might be a little over the top

[link to www.cbsnews.com]

[link to news.yahoo.com]

ahem

man water

good things take time !


this is not going to be the thing that brings us down

We'll know fairly soon. . . . . .

FACT: CHERNOBYL PLUME Did reach the United States as far east as New York city.

FACT: Soil ,Air and Cows Milk were tested POSITIVE for radiation from the Chernobyl radiation HERE in the United States.

FACT: You are being lied to at this time by your government.

PROOF: Here is the ACTUAL Documentation made by the U.S. Government that shows all of the above and MORE!

CHERNOBYL PLUME
COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY SUMMARY U.S.A.


[link to www.davistownmuseum.org]

The temperature of the water in the spent fuel storage pool for Unit 4 was 183 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, when it was last measured. No measurements have been available since then, Nishiyama said.


"We have no information about whether the spent fuel rods are exposed," he said.





water


lets get some info and deal with it as the facts prove out things have gotten out of control


we are acting like they are out of control

You are SOOOO delusional and misinformed it's difficult to even know where to being tearing your BULLSH*T apart.