Saturday, September 24, 2011

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Steam Rising from Reactors 2 and 3

The latest videos of Reactors 2 and 3 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant show steam rising from the locations where the reactors are located.

The video of Reactor 3 was taken on August 24, and the video of Reactor 2 was taken on September 17 when the company sampled the air using the remote-control crane; a video camera was attached to the boom.

You can download the zip files from TEPCO's Photos for Press page for your record (Reactor 3, Reactor 2), or you can view them here, courtesy of the Mainichi Shinbun video page.

Reactor 3, August 24, 2011 (see this document for the view angle):



Reactor 2, September 17, 2011, from the opening on the east side of the reactor building (see this document for the view angle):


According to Asahi Shinbun (9/24/2011), TEPCO thinks:

東電は「湯気の下には原子炉がある。原子炉から漏れた水蒸気が立ち上っているのか、雨が入り込んで原子炉のふたの熱で蒸発しているのではないか」と話している。

"Under the steam are the reactors. It could be either the steam is escaping from the reactor, or the rainwater is evaporating on the lid of the reactor which is hot."

Looking at the videos, they do not look like rainwater being evaporated, as the steam comes out unevenly and sporadically. If it's rainwater I would imagine a steady rise of steam.

18 comments:

netudiant said...

Well, we know that all three reactors are still generating several megawatts of residual decay heat. So steam is no surprise.
What is interesting is that the steam is intermittent. It has been suggested that much of the damaged fuel is now covered in slag and salt, so the cooling water mostly runs off it uselessly. These observations would seem to confirm this. Unfortunately, as long as the reactors are steaming and throwing 200 million Bq/hr into the ambient air, it seems imprudent to close them in with even a temporary cover. My guess is that the covers will not be completed anytime soon, because it is less damaging to add to the environmental pollution than it is to make the reactor site off limits to humans.

Anonymous said...

The steam looks to have a dense quality to it. Makes sense as the water is more of a soup with dissolved fuel rods in it. More obvious in #2's video.

Dense almost heavy look.

Excellent quality in #3's vid.

Now they'll attach a gamma cam to the crane, get to see some real fireworks.

(right)

Anonymous said...

Anybody think besides me these reactor buildings need more than just tent panels?

Like maybe 5000 tons of borax and a huge concrete dome? But Tepco has neither the money nor the resources to accomplish such a feat.

On a side note…I wouldn’t want to be the poor little Tepco guy who has to wipe that camera lens!

Anonymous said...

Borax must have left the scene w/Elvis.

This disaster is TRULY giving new meaning to clusterfuck. And to have thought humans could not give new meaning to that term!

Anonymous said...

And to think,how many nuclear power plants are in the world and at risk to the same fate?

Anonymous said...

How do you build a concrete dome on top of water logged landfill? How do you seal them off while they're still spewing (pressure!)?

Nope. Sorry, folks. It's no good. They're going to have to vent until they chill out completely. And the type of engineering required to seal them up for the rest of time doesn't exist, especially right there on the beach. It's absurd. No solution whatsoever. It's hopeless, which is why the Japanese need to become boat people if need be in order to escape. Waiting for their rotten government to evacuate them is masochistic at best.

huemaurice7 said...

The most serious is that even the manufacturers do not respond to the problems !
They now sell power plants with 'ceramic' tanks, but that have never been tested !

The best test remains the accident!

Anonymous said...

My dad had an idea that they could probably use :

Get a bulldozer and 'oops, it fell into the sea'.

I sincerely hope not, but any serious earthquake could possibly put it below sea level.
Just waiting for 'The one'.

Anonymous said...

the complete apposite of: "too big to fail"

Anonymous said...

Ceramic -- for new dimensions of cluster-.

Stay as tuned as you have been, folks, the corium are as unpredictable as Elvis' next visit.

Being as scientific-minded as the Japanese are, I'm surprised they haven't grabbed the bull by the horns and turned it into a well-promoted science experiment/demonstration.

Instead its Big Brother's show with his sidekick, the PR departments.

Viola said...

found a quite good video on YouTube to help orientating. It also includes infrared signals from back in March that match perfectly with the smoke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl8wX4QpvA0

Anonymous said...

.
" KEEP EM' OPEN "

......Liquidator, Pripyat, Chernobyl

RIP

Anonymous said...

At least they can do a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. now : "Fukushima's Shadow" ;-)

Anonymous said...

Possibly the only solution is to undermine that portion of the coast with nukes and send the whole mess to the bottom of the ocean. Good by Pacific, but at least the atmosphere won't kill every living thing. I've heard that Casey predicted that would have to happen.

Stock said...

It really is a "no-brainer" when you blast your cells with high energy particles (ionizing radiation) that your cells will become damaged. What part of "duh" does it take to figure that out.

The Nuke-Pimps can always find and point to something that "proves" that radiation is not just non-harmful it is actually beneficial. The human being is capable of perpetrating many lies within their own mind, rationalizations to support a necessary view. In many cases this necesasry view may be....I have to support my family, I get peer respect from being a nuclear scientist, and I don't want to think of myself as a bad person, plus....I am almost like God, turning matter into energy.

Motive and opportunity are there, now all we need is the weapon to prove the case of crimes against humanity. Plenty of studies show that radiation causes cancers, and there are other bad effects just due to the elements involved being directly poisonous to humans, such as the negative health effect of uranium as a chemical are far worse than the radiation effects that uranium causes.

The Iowa Radon Lung Cancer Study had several strengths. First, independent pathologic review was performed for 96 percent of the cases. Second, the study was carried out in Iowa, which has the highest mean radon concentrations in the United States. Third, the high radon concentrations in conjunction with a strict quality assurance protocol contributed to accurate and precise radon measurements. Fourth, the IRLCS criteria requiring occupancy in the current home for at least the last 20 years eliminated the need to impute radon measurements from missing homes. Fifth, the linkage between radon measurements and retrospective participant mobility allowed for a refined exposure estimate. The IRLCS risk estimates are in general agreement with the National Research Council's predicted cancer risk associated with indoor radon exposure. Overall, the risk estimates obtained in this study suggest that cumulative radon exposure in the residential environment is significantly associated with lung cancer risk.
http://www.cheec.uiowa.edu/misc/radon.html

Anonymous said...

I too found it interesting that they claim the reactors are in cold-shutdown while they emit steam from inside the containment building.
Their statement regarding rain as a possible cause of the steam has no bearing on the status of cold shutdown. If it was in cold shutdown, rain water would not be vaporized on contact with the reactor. I'm guessing there's something inside those buildings that's plenty hot.
swl

Richard said...

'cold shutdown' is yet another nuke industry lie.

They seem to think that just under boiling point is cold. Right, try taking that cold shower.

Anyway, rain would possibly still steam due to the contrasting temperature.

I'm not saying it's what's going on, just saying nuke fools think 90+ degrees celcius is cold. No wonder they're all so fkd up and full of Shet. Then the nuke fools try to tell us everything is alright. Lying tards should be in jail.

Anonymous said...

(cr here) Jail is too good for them.

TEPCO executives and pro-nuke Japanese officials past & present should be down in the reactor basements, all holding live TV cameras;
to try and show the world where the coruims are now.
(Boiling groundwater, melting into the Earth?)

[And, these -insert suitably-descriptive word here- should be given no better medical care nor housing afterward than the unfortunate "subcontractors"/carbon units are.]

Put those who have profitted by these reactors, and refused to allow real evacuation zones, and who have been allowing radiation to be spread/consumed right to work onsite,
and, get some other, tested-Non-psychopath people to be in charge of Japan.

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