Sunday, February 12, 2012

Reactor 2 RPV Bottom 91.2 Degrees Celsius (TEPCO Press Conference 11AM, 2/13/2012 11AM)

(UPDATE 2: Instrument deemed broken, as the temperature at 5PM on February 13, 2012 is 275.9 degrees Celsius. It was as high as 342 degrees before 3PM. See my new post.)

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(UPDATE: 94.9 degrees Celsius as of noon on February 13, 2012. Instrument failure most likely, the company says.)

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The temperature at the bottom of Reactor 2 RPV (69H1):

2/13 5:00 89.6
2/13 (missed the time, I think Matsumoto said 10:00) 91.2

It is not responding to the increased amount of water injected (about 18 tonnes/hour). The temperatures at the other two locations (69H2, 3) are going down. Therefore, it is the instrument failure most likely, TEPCO's Matsumoto concludes.

TEPCO will maintain the amount of water injected for the time being. No plan to change the amount for the time being.

Q: The steady rise of temperature like this doesn't seem like instrument failure.
A: We want to investigate whether such "failure" is possible where the temperature rises in small increments.

Many reporters, hardly any questions, and the press conference is over in less than 30 minutes.

Matsumoto said the temperature may change because they are conducting some test of the instrument.

The temperature data is not yet updated on TEPCO's site.

UPDATE: Hourly temperature at Reactor 2 RPV bottom, latest.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Someone needs to pressure him to answer this question at the next press conference:

"What's your 'Plan B' should you discover the temperature rise IS in fact happening and NOT due to a faulty thermometer?"

Also, "What kind of thermal sensoring monitoring equipment is being used to track the exact location of any such potential 'hotspots'?"

And finally: "What preparations are being done by the government to prepare citizens for evacuation should another explosion occur at Fukushima?"

MikeNZ said...

There is a big blob of molten corium 40 meters below the reactor ... the temp rise is a response to increased thermal output from fast neutron fissioning.
There is probably 15 meters of slag on top of the corium ... and the rocks about will be HOT!

Start drilling 100's of pipes under the reactors - suck out as much debris as you .... and blow in truckloads of pure Silicate (SiO2).

The silicate will melt around the corium, forming Uranyl silicates - them blow in boron to quench it. This should slow down the migration of fission fragments into the environment.

Anonymous said...

Is anyone else concerned with what they're going to do with all that now radio-active water?

Anonymous said...

^dump it in the pacific as usual?

Anonymous said...

It is all so confusing. Tepco still talks like the reactors are fine, they just have some higher than normal temperatures. They just showed the fuel rod pool in building four,as though it is just fine...but previously what exactly were they saying about this pool boiling or dry and fuming? So confusing. My sense of the three reactors is they all melted out and are in corium below. I would not suck out anything as MikeNZ said. They do not need silica because they are already in the form of uranyl silicate! Thaz corium baby.

Please just bury this whole ugly mess at Daiichi including the plutonium shards all over the ground from three. Leave it all where it is but bury it deep down. Thanks and good luck.

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