The video was taken on November 5 when TEPCO did the dust sampling of Reactor 3. It shows the Spent Fuel Pool and the location where the Containment Vessel is. The Spent Fuel Pool is full of mangled metal beams. (Where are the fuel rods?)
Past 4 minutes, the camera goes down through the beams and metal sheets onto a flat area with tons of concrete debris. There is a shiny, metal-looking pipe sitting there, and the camera spends some time capturing the image. As the camera goes up again, you see another similar pipe. The screen shot is below, and I've circled one of the metal pipes:
For your own copy, go to TEPCO's "Photos for Press" page.
The camera angle (approximate) is shown on this handout:
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14 comments:
I believe the pipe is a piece of spent fuel rod which has also be shown on infrared photos.
Jesus Christ, Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
The pipe doesn't look like a fuel rod, though, and it would have melted sitting there without any cooling. What does Arnie Gundersen say?
The fuel rods were blown all over the countryside, up into the air, and into the ocean...Ian Goddard and arnie gunderson only identified 1 fuel bundle left in the sfp. That was in the beginning of July. those fuel rod particles are probably lodged in all of our lungs by now...plutonium flew 6722 miles to BOSTON.
I doubt somehow that these pipes are spent fuel parts. They just seem too big of diameter.
Too sad they didn't include radiation measurement, or at least display the radiation in the video.
So nobody knows how intense the radiation field is at the surface of these materials lying around. I fear radiation is high; if it were low then this would be good news that Tepco would love to publish.
Regarding this close-up videoing of this mess, I also wonder what these dark lumps are. Quite unusual color for concrete/mortar.
We still don't know how Tepco intends to clean up this debris and construct the new fuel element cranes there which they need to empty the spent fuel pools.
Water's milky-green. Lots of concrete in it.
@Atomfritz: bits of tarmac from the roof, maybe.
If the pool had any fuel left in it, it would be boiling / steaming surely? When was the last time anyone saw them adding water to it?
At the 4:30 mark with the concrete rubble below there is a discolored patch on the top of the rubble pile.
It looks to be quite inorganic, very similar to volcanic vent deposits.
Individual rods are thin, yes, does anybody know the diameter of the rod bundles/assemblies?
Arnie always maintained that a prompt criticality led to the original explosion in #3. If his analysis is correct, why should we expect anything to be left in the pond?
"Individual rods are thin, yes, does anybody know the diameter of the rod bundles/assemblies?"
BWR fuel rod length is about 4 meters. Outer diameter is 1.252 cms. 63 fuel rods per assembly.
Never did see the fuel rods. Are they still there?
@evendine: According to JAIF, they are injecting water regularly into the spent fuel pools, including the one at reactor No.3 since the end of June:
"②Spent Fuel Pool cooling （Unit １ - ４）
【Goal】 More stable cooling (achieved)
【Status】 Circulation cooling with heat exchanger in progress"
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1320895760P.pdf
The tube doesn't appear to be a fuel rod, and assemblies are larger in diameter than the object in question.
As per Ivan, 63 rods is considerably larger than the object.
This shiny object looks kind of like a fuel rod assembly outer casing. Arrnie did a video on April 10th where he disassembled a real Zirconium fuel rod, which is black and very narrow and then heated it with a torch to produce hydrogen gas when he hit it with water. Luckily, the video is still on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7t64SG6gvg
Of course the Unit 3 LEU/MOX fuel rods got blown out of this end section casing if that's what it is.
Maybe that black chit is the Plutonium Oxide Residue after it released it's radioisotopes onto Tokyo?
The good news is the SFP is full and not boiling. Which really surprises the hell out of me. I saw the supersonic shock wave come off of the building prior to all the cement going up in the air and was sure the whole SFP would be gone after watching that mushroom cloud go up. You know some MOX pellets probably fell down into the bottom of the pool when a rod assembly overheated and detonated. So if this is really Unit Three Daiichi and not Unit 3 Daini, which is about ten miles to the South, or video of one of the other ten total reactors, then this might be good news. I can see why Tepco wants us to see this.
But this film could have been taken before the SFP blew critical. Tepco first claimed they just had a hydrogen explosion, which might be true, but that doesn't explain why fuel rods were found miles away. Arnie thinks the mushroom cloud was too big to be just a hydrogen burn.
I agree. When you study this thing on Google Earth and look at this month's images, and zoom in, Unit 3 doesn't look this good, imho.
Correction: The google earth image I was looking at was from March it says on the bottom, even though I specified Nov's sat shot. And the steel debris blocking the corner of the doorframe that they lowered the camera down into does appear to be identical to the March 19 google shot.
So I think this video is in fact Unit 3 Daiichi, I'm just not sure when it was taken.
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