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| Users Online Now: 1,919 (Who's On?) | Visitors Today: 2,000,701 | |
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| 12:00 AM | ||
External Power Line Connected To Crippled Nuke Plant Unclear If Pumps Can Still Operate Update Hope To Restart Reactor 2 Cooling Soon | |
| Anonymous Coward User ID: 1295820  United States03/19/2011 05:08 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: External Power Line Connected To Crippled Nuke Plant Unclear If Pumps Can Still Operate Update Hope To Restart Reactor 2 Cooling Soon No one has faith in this operation, they got a reactor plugged in, woot, now what? Shit's full of holes anyway, it's yet another bandaid. We've been hearing the same bs for days now and nothing has changed. |
| AtomicDog239 User ID: 1312895 United States03/24/2011 09:58 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: External Power Line Connected To Crippled Nuke Plant Unclear If Pumps Can Still Operate Update Hope To Restart Reactor 2 Cooling Soon UC Berkeley nuclear engineers also demonstrated why it's impossible for the fuel rods in Japan to catch on fire. They exposed a piece of cladding, just like the ones found in the Japanese reactor cores to 2,000 degrees Celsius. If the cladding burnt, the nuclear fuel inside would send huge amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 1252311"It's worse, much worse to have it on fire. The fire and the smoke become a way to spread the material that's inside," Professor Charles Yeamans from the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering said. The test proved the rods, while they would suffer some damage, would not catch on fire [link to abclocal.go.com] Has anyone heard this before? I thought a fire with the spent rods was the biggest danger? I saw this report and they are obfuscating the issue. Those fuel rods are made from zirconium aka Zirconium cladding they are about 12 feet tall and maybe 2 inches in diameter. The Fuel pellets are loaded into the rods and then they are used after they no longer can give out the high percentage of energey needed for the reactor they are "spent" (its relative) and they go into pools. Zrconium cladding must be underwater otherwise they will start to react with the air exothermically. then the fuel pellets are being exposed and then heating up and then it start to boil the water away. What is truly dangerous is that now they aren't seperate anymore and the pellets are melting together (along with giving off alot of radiation). If not careful or allowed, they could possibly start fission again and then shoot up in heat and have complete meltdown. Here's a link for you to look at, either the newscasters didn't edit this well and/or the professor blew smoke up their butt. [link to www.nirs.org] I have to give you a lot of credit here because the ABC7 edit posted on their website is technically dead wrong. We can start with the fact that this supposed "Professor" is not a Professor at all, but just some loser postdoc they lock in the basement most of the time. Anything with a high enough surface area can burn and metal powders in particular (no pun intended) can burn very exothermically. The difference here is the cladding is a very low surface area and also has a protective oxide layer on it that forms almost immediately upon contact with air, water, or pretty much anything not inert. I think it is very important to monitor the groundwater in the area for Tc=99 and Np-237, as Tc and Np form highly-mobile anionic species and if present in significant quantities in the groundwater, indicate solid core inventory has been able to enter the groundwater. The anionic species are the most highly-mobile but everything else follows eventually. So far we are not seeing solid species in significant quantities in the air, and that is a good sign. |
