Friday, June 3, 2011

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant Reactor 1: Packbot Detects 4 Sieverts/Hour Radiation

There is no way a carbon-based worker can enter the place.

Packbot video was taken on 3:30PM on June 3. It looks as if the water was boiling. (Screenshot from the video. To download the video, go to TEPCO here.)

From Yomiuri Shinbun (1:14PM JST 6/4/2011):

東京電力は4日、福島第一原子力発電所1号機の原子炉建屋1階南東部の床を貫通する気体輸送用の配管周辺の隙間から湯気が上がっているのを、調査に入った米国製ロボット「パックボット」で確認、撮影したと発表した。

On June 4, TEPCO announced that the US-made robot "Packbot" confirmed and photographed the hot steam gushing through the space around the air duct that goes through the floor in the southeast corner of the 1st floor of the reactor building of the Reactor 1 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

 湯気が立ち上っている周辺の放射線量は、最高で毎時4000ミリ・シーベルトで、3月11日の事故発生後に測定された中では、最も高い数値だった。3分余りで作業員の被曝(ひばく)限度である250ミリ・シーベルトを超え、15分間続けて作業すると、吐き気など急性放射線障害の自覚症状が出るレベルだ。

The radiation level near the steam was 4,000 millisieverts per hour at the maximum, the highest level ever measured since the start of the accident on March 11. The 250 millisieverts radiation exposure limit for the workers would be exceeded in 3 minutes, and acute radiation poisoning would occur after 15 minutes of work.

 1号機では、格納容器から汚染水の漏出が続いている。

The contaminated water continues to leak from the Containment Vessel of the Reactor 1.

 東電では、格納容器の下部にある「圧力抑制室」付近から漏れ出した、約50度の汚染水から湯気が発生、1階に噴き出していると見ており、「今後、継続して監視する」と話している。

TEPCO thinks the steam comes from the warm (50 degrees Celsius) contaminated water leaking near the Suppression Chamber, and says the company will continue to monitor the situation.

8 comments:

Oops said...

It just keeps getting worse...

With these last two blog entries...those of us that feared this all along, take no satisfaction in being right, just shock and dismay, and a sullen sadness.

At what point will the international political community start to speak?

Anonymous said...

they will never speak! never! or...maybe in 20 years, and then they will all bemoan about what happend in the past and blablabla

Anonymous said...

Of course they would like to stay quiet and secretive for the next 20 years... However, with such a nuclear nightmare, men don't setup agenda...

The thing is just too "big"... "too big to conceil".

People compare with Tchernobyl... But the situation is different at Fukushima :

-the scale is worse

-the contamination is worse (air, water, soil AND... ocean)

-the population is much more "concentrated"... And Fuku is just 250 miles from... the capital Tokyo !

So they will probably continue the comedy for a few months... until one of the reactor (4 likely) collapse... Then it will be impossible to hide the truth anymore.

It's virtually check mate.

Just a matter of months.

And eventually, all those "authorities" will be on trial.

Anonymous said...

no trials will be held. these guys will escape judgment just like the crooked banksters who ruined the amerikan economy.

Anonymous said...

sorry for the following bad english
___________________________________

you(the second anonymous) are absolutly wright! every argument of yours is correct, but that doesn't change what i've (the first anonymous) written.

there is one thing in life, wich one can be 100% sure about:

what ever happens, if it doesn't end life, life will get used to it.

fukushima is real, it is killing ppl, it will continue killing ppl(and all the ohter living things). at first, when the first deaths are announced, the cancer rates rise up, ppl will be scared, they will feel betrayed and stuff, but when years pass by they will get used to it....
and those who don't will start taking drugs, or kill themselves. ppl will get used to that too.

today, i asked my mother what she would do, if a fukushima happend in our "neighbourhood".
i told her, i would pack some stuff, run to the next airport and jet to south america! i asked her, if she would come along and she said, no. my mother is an intelligent woman, she is not! irrational. she knows what keeps her here, and most ppl where they are and i know it too.

ppl are so strongly bound to their enviroment(their possessions, the ppl, the culture), that even when such huge disasters break in, they won't, they can't move. instead of taking actions, what means 'leave this place!', they will prefer living in a dream of the past! - and die in it.

{i, on the contrary, would leave my life behind, in a second! i love my life, but i love my existence more!

i must say, the others inability would work for me. because if everybody fled, many countries would close their borders.}

and all of the officials brains work alike(they can't except that life has changed), or they know of this psychological condition and are working with it.
they just need. to sit. it out.
the damage is allready done, and trials won't change the past. that is why they, or most of them, will get away with everything.
wich is bad. for the futur!


you can't sense radioactivity, it is so much easier to tell yourself that everything isn't sooooo bad. okay, there are the "broken" units, and there is steam and smoke....that doesn't look too dangerous.

__

a huge part of honshu and the east coast of the island is contaminated. the ppl should have fled to the very south or north of japan on the first day. (wich would have been highly difficult, due to the damages caused by the earthquake and the tsunami.)
japan should have asked for international help the second the first findings of high radioactivity far away from fukushima occured, to get all the ppl out of there.
all of them, the ppl and the officials did wrong.
__________

i mean. even me, so far away of this i am, i wish i could betray myself(it's not so bad, it's not so bad,...). i can't. you know, that i wish of it, it scares me!

netudiant said...

Are we not merely getting confirmation of what has been evident to industry experts from the beginning, that reactors deprived of cooling water fail catastrophically within a few hours.
These reactors have done so and there is no possible cure, just marginal cleanup around the edges to try to keep the disaster from spreading.
The only ray of light is that the residual heat is now only a few megawatts per reactor, much less than 1% of the operating power output, so the scale of any future corium induced steam explosion is small.
The problem is the site is swimming in an intenselyn radioactive broth which will take well into next year to clean up if all goes well. In the interim, any radioactive burps from the remains of the damaged reactors could make the site even more hazardous.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

@ Netudiant

You keep claiming the residual heat in the melted cores is much less than 1% of operational output, where are you getting your data? To the best of my knowledge nobody knows the configuration or whereabouts of the fuel cores. You can't extrapolate how a properly cooled intact reactor performs into a melted mass of fuel that has melted it's way out of the RPV.

I'm not saying you are wrong I'm just saying how do you know?

Anonymous said...

@ netudiant, again,

if the corium melts to groundwater it will not be a start/stop event, it will be more of a steam fountain, as someone else described it.

@ Robbie,

less than 1% output is absurd, agreed. He is probably referring to that MIT article he linked. They were describing intact cores, correct me if wrong.

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