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Page added on July 10, 2014
Leak at Fukushima Nuclear Plant Threatens Dangerous Meltdown
Trouble is looming at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, as a leak has forced the shutdown of a cooling system that could cause temperatures to exceed dangerous levels.
Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was forced to switch off the cooling system at Reactor Unit 5, after engineers discovered it had been leaking water. If the system is not repaired within the next nine days, temperatures are expected to soar, Russian news site RT reported Sunday.
More than 340 gallons of water leaked from the cooling system intended to stabilize the temperature of the spent fuel at Reactor Unit 5. The system was offline but loaded with fuel rods when the plant was damaged by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March 2011. That accident caused three of the plant’s six nuclear reactors to meltdown, releasing extensive amounts of radioactive material. It was the largest nuclear accident since Russia’s Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The source of the leak was apparently a 3-millimeter diameter hole near a flow valve, a TEPCO statement released Sunday said. When the cooling system was turned off at around noon Sunday, the temperature in the pool that holds the rods was about 73 degrees Fahrenheit but started increasing by 0.193 degrees per hour, TEPCO says.
If no new cold water is pumped in at this rate, it will reach the dangerous threshold of 149 degrees (F) in roughly the next week. Such temperatures would increase the possibility of dangerous reactions and more radiation leaks in the plant.
TEPCO says that currently, there have been no abnormal readings anywhere in the plant.
High temperatures have not been routinely seen at the plant since the cooling system failed in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown in 2011.
TEPCO’s use of seawater for many of its cooling needs at the power plant has previously caused heightened levels of corrosion in sensitive equipment. The cooling system at various reactors has also been compromised by other sources, including rats short circuiting the control panel and forcing a blackout, and an employee “accidentally” switching it off. But those problems were fixed before rod pools overheated.
19 Comments on "Leak at Fukushima Nuclear Plant Threatens Dangerous Meltdown"
Mike2 on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 7:26 am
” Russian news site RT reported Sunday.”
Yeah, RussiaToday as the ultimate source for “serious” information.
(I didn’t know that FoxNews is already on the side of payed pro-Russian-anti/west possters. -Why don’t they just go to moskau and suck zar-vladimir his dick?!)
bobinget on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 8:15 am
Yes Mike, It’s always smart policy to attack the messenger. How far does RT’s credibility extend?
Weather? Earthquakes? Do you really doubt TEPCO
had to shut down cooling to repair a leak?
When we news-watch government sponsored news we should be looking for;
A) spin on actual news.. In the case of FUK, excess drama connected to TEPCO dealing with hundreds of radio- active leaks.
Is RT blowing up one story in order overshadow another?
B) LOOK for stories RT Fails to publish or diminishes in importance.
Here’s another RT article saying Hamas is targeting
Israel’s nuclear reactor.
Hamas rockets target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor
Published time: July 10, 2014 09:37
Edited time: July 10, 2014 10:23
Get short URL
The Dimona nuclear power plant in the southern Israeli Negev desert (AFP Photo)
The Dimona nuclear power plant in the southern Israeli Negev desert (AFP Photo)
Three rockets have been fired from Gaza Strip at the city of Dimona in southern Israel in what the Hamas movement later confirmed as an attempt to destroy a nuclear reactor located there.
READ: Gaza death toll surpasses 60 as Israel’s offensive enters third day
Hamas’ militant wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it fired M-75 rockets towards Dimona.
One of the rockets was intercepted by the Iron Dome antimissile system while two others landed on open areas, according to Israeli reports.
The Thursday rocket launch is the second attempt to hit the Israeli nuclear reactor in the latest surge of Israeli-Palestinian violence. On Wednesday, seven rockets were fired at Dimona, with three of them intercepted and four others failing to cause any damage.
The Israeli military is waging the most intensive campaign in two years against the Palestinian militant movement Hamas, delivering airstrikes at hundreds of targets in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians respond with barrages of dozens of rockets, which are usually intercepted by the Iron Dome or fail to hit the intended targets.
During this round of escalation, the Iron Dome interceptors were launched at about 27 percent of rockets fired from Gaza, those which the Israeli military thought could hit populated areas, US and Israeli officials reported Thursday. The system destroyed nearly 90 percent of them, as compared to 84 percent during the November 2012 conflict and Israel’s Operation Pillar Defense in the Gaza Strip.
So far only the Palestinian side took casualties in the confrontation, with at least 60 people, many of them civilians, killed since Tuesday, according to a Palestinian toll. At least 18 children have been killed in the strikes.
David on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 9:11 am
1 – Cooling has already resumed
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140708_37.html
2 – Even if the pool was dry the rods wouldn’t melt down.
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/facts-on-spent-fuel-pool-at-fukushima.html
3 – No where in the original article is their any mention of possible meltdown. This doesn’t stop someone from trying to read between the lines, but a national news source like Fox should be held accountable for not checking the facts or siting a credible source for it’s wild headline.
Jon on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 11:02 am
OK. Call me stupid but 149 F is nothing. Too hot to take a bath in but not even close to boiling. 149 C is a different beast. I suspect these are CELSIUS number adn not FAHRENHEIT. Again call ME Crazy.
Earl on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 11:37 am
Let me correct this comment made in your article. “It was the largest nuclear accident since Russia’s Chernobyl disaster in 1986.”
It IS the largest nuclear disaster in history. It IS ongoing and will be so for generations to come.
It HAS the potential to become ‘suddenly’ a disaster on a scale that threatens all life in the northern hemisphere of the entire planet.
This is in no way, shape or form exaggeration or hyperbole.
longtimber on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 12:24 pm
Typhoon to complicate matters.
“The storm’s massive downpours present an extra headache for the plant where workers are locked in a daily struggle to contain huge amounts of contaminated water, used to keep the destroyed reactors cool, as well as tainted groundwater leaking into the sea.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10958496/Typhoon-Neoguri-heads-for-Fukushima-nuclear-plant.html
surf on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 2:53 pm
It is important to note that unit 5 and 6 were off line and no fuel was in their reactors at the time of the earthquake. Both are newer designs and only suffered minimal damage. Unit 5 and 6 can probably be brought online to produce power.
The fuel removal work going on in the heavily damamged unit 4 reator was never affect by the unit 5 issue whic was about 1/10 of a mile away.
The fuel rods are designed to withstand temperatures of over 200C in an opterating reactor and the rod cladding can withstand a temperature of about 800C before failre and radiation release occures.
Other news sites that reported this said the water was dangerously radioactive. It’s not in the cooling pool. The fuel is but not the water.
Also keep in mind the hole is only 3mm in size. The leak can easily be fixed by hammering a metal pin into the hol or by injecting fast suring epoxy into it.
The entire tone of this article and other written about it is that this was a major emergency. It’s not. It’s nothing more than a minor routine maintenance issue.
SilentRunning on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 8:17 pm
The very slow rate of temperature rise should be a clue to you – as time passes the cooling needs shrink and shrink. Eventually, thermal leakage to ambient will be such that even if there is no cooling, the fuel rods will never get hot enough to melt.
This also means that the quantity of water needed to cool the reactors/rods shrinks – eventually hitting zero.
This is what happens in dry cask storage- there is no active cooling systems, the rods just transfer their heat to the surroundings.
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 8:33 pm
Silent, you will not live to see the day those rods are totally safe.
Jon, yes, they were likely in Celsius degrees. Most of the world uses Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
SilentRunning on Thu, 10th Jul 2014 10:53 pm
Makati1, I never said the rods will be totally safe. I said the rods won’t catch fire now if the coolant is lost. They simply aren’t generating enough heat.
Yes, they will be unsafe to touch with your bare hands for thousands of years. With proper containment, however, they can be stored for enough time that they will no longer be a threat to human life.
The key point is that the headline used is a lie.
Davy on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 7:16 am
Silent, Mak uses MSM for his purposes and then hypocritically calls MSM corrupted and a tool of the DC Mafia among other things when it does not agree with his world view. Anything Mak can use to paint a negative picture is used except with his Poster girl East Asia. Japan being his neighbor I am surprised he is dwelling on these realities.
Silent, I appreciate your imputes here because I just am not educated enough of the deeper realities of these issues. I have heard convincing point on both sides. I know the situation is bad because we only have a few years before BAU stumbles. Will Japan be able to handle this crisis with a greatly reduced economy and technological abilities? If BAU stumbles energy intensity, technology, and economic activity will most like suffer greatly. Necessary resources may not be available. Will Japan be able to mitigate and manage this long term crisis?
Richard Ralph Roehl on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 9:27 am
Nuclear fission technology is more than insane. It is death. It is inherently EVIL. Those who endorse and promote nuclear fission technology are misanthropic psychopaths.
The Fukushima time-bomb nuke plants in Japan will be poisoning the Pacific Ocean for countless centuries. And this is only the beginning of a major EXTINCTION EVENT.
David on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 11:22 am
Original RT article said 65C, which works out to 149F. Fox news doesn’t know what a meltdown is, but at least they can do basic math.
Makati1 on Fri, 11th Jul 2014 10:32 pm
Davy, Fukushima is not my neighbor any more than Newfoundland is Florida’s neighbor. ~2,000 miles by air. However, the flow of the Pacific is clockwise and the radiation goes past Alaska, the West coast and all the way down to the equator before it comes back to the Philippines. It has not even reached here yet. And, by the time it does, it will be totally diluted. The jet stream does take air born particles right over America, less than 12 hours after it is released in Japan. Lucky you!
Davy on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 7:25 am
Mak, Japan is in the east am I right. Your beloved East that you constantly pump up as the Nirvana of life. I am not stupid Mak. I know the winds and ocean currents the US is directly down wind and current of Japan. You should understand that a radiation catastrophe in your Nirvana east will affect you don’t you? Maybe not the radiation initially but the mass migrations and disruption of the normal economic activity. Think of the factories in Manila that will stop when they cannot send their low value parts to Japan to be assembled into a high value products. “Or”, as usual, you will claim it a problem for America only not an issue for you in your Mountain top perch in the Philippians. “Correction” your 5th story small condo you are sitting in typing as we speak. Maybe you would quit your anti American posting if you would ever go out to your mountain top perch and develop and maintain the land. Mak, I can tell you prepping on land is constant work. It is not for sissies or old men like you.
Makati1 on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 8:26 am
Davy, Talk about refugees flooding over the borders, how many tens of million have flooded into the US in the last 15 years? 10 million? 15 million? More? Sorry, you need a good boat to get to the Ps from anywhere else. No land mass connections. And not much chance of them coming here anyway. Nothing for them to gain and they know it.Not like the lifetime goodies the US offers to anyone.
As for trade and factories…lol. At least the Ps still have factories and industry. They didn’t send them to China for profit. The US makes war as their main product and export. Not much else. And if the imports stop, so will the US industry that is left. They need resources from all over the world to even make weapons, because they have wasted their own.
Mountaintop? No, about 85 meters on top of the foot hills. And the condo is the 27th floor. You seem to assume a lot from the words I print here. I’m no stranger to work nor and I a ‘decrepit old man’. I studied biology in college and know about soils and plants and farming/gardening from decades of experience. But you would not know that as I have not shared specifics.
The world is turning against the US faster and faster every day. The internet has spread the truth and it is becoming obvious where most of the world’s troubles have originated for most of my 70 years. The DC Mafia.
Davy on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 8:39 am
Mak, then get off your ass and get to the farm and “DO” something. You are in the middle of a huge mega-city that will collapse ugly, messy, and nasty my friend. I imagine if you were at your farm I would not have to hear your constant spiel of negativity since I doubt there is internet there. At least I hope not, so if you ever go there I don’t have to read your puk. That would be refreshing.
Merl on Sat, 12th Jul 2014 11:20 am
The danger is that if the rods become too hot, they will catch fire. Fire produces smoke, and this smoke would be radioactive. Where the wind goes, the smoke and radioactive particles would follow. That’s why the rods are cooled in the first place. Fox needs to check its facts; meltdown takes place in a reactor, and that already happened in three reactors at Fukishima at the time of the tsunami.
surf on Sun, 13th Jul 2014 11:47 pm
The danger is that if the rods become too hot, they will catch fire.
The rods don’t burn with flames. They rapidly corrode and turn to Zirconium oxide dust without any flames. In order for the rapid corrosion to occur the temperature of the rods must exceed 1000C.
The youngest fuel rods in the pool are about 3 years old. The heat generated by 3 year old rods is known and using thermodynamic calculations the maximum temp the rods could achieve without water cooling is only about 500C. Well below what the Zirconium cladding can withstand.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/01/1252062/–Apocalyptic-Fukushima-Fuel-Rod-Removal-Begins-Nov-8-TEPCO-Subcontracts-Yakuza-gangsters#
Now if water cooling had been lost in less that 6 months of the rods being removed from the reactor they might have gotten close to 1000C. But we know that didn’t happen. Also over half of the fuel rods have now been removed from the unit 4 spent fuel pool without any of the previously predicted accidents or radiation releases.