Published: July 7th, 2012 at 10:27 am ET
|
Interview with Arnie Gundersen
Capitol Forum
July 1, 2012
At 2:30 in
Tokyo Electric ran a probe into the basement of Unit 1. This is not inside the containment, this is outside the containment. On the top of the water surface they found lethal radiation, 1000 rem an hour.
But then they put the probe down into the water and what’s even worse is the bottom, the sediment on the bottom, was thousand of times hotter than that. And what that indicates is that fuel, nuclear fuel, has left the containment, as particles, and settled out on the bottom outside the containment. So, I think that’s a pretty clear indication that the containment was breached. It just makes decommissioning these plants… it was going too be hard already, but this information makes it worse.
Published: July 7th, 2012 at 10:27 am ET
|
sending...
We do not have the technology at present time to clean up this mess, that technology is far in the future, could be thousands of years.
All we can do is mitigate this catastrophe at present time, but how, I believe that they will remove spent fuel bundles but the containment area and basement is no mans land.
They will have to build a new containment vessel around all reactors some how and filter the air of contaminants.
Piter pater lets get at it
Report Comment
The temperature above atmospheric in the basement…
Now that we know that the fuel is completely out of containment in reactor 1 (cough)…
Can we have a little more information as to what that will entail via contamination of the planets groundwater, oceans, and jetstreams…
Care to touch base on that mr gunderson…
Report Comment
taco, i think we already know the answers (cough)
Report Comment
I just had some cheese and red wine. (cough)
Report Comment
As long as it's pre-2011, you're good!
Report Comment
He also has. He was one of the first to mention it. But, if you give him a call, he'll be happy to provide his opinion.
Report Comment
As NASA announces new Orion spacecraft could carry humans to Mars, asteroids. Just in time for the exodus. Instead of cleaning up our back yard they are preparing to leave it.
Report Comment
We'd only be exporting rad contaminated humans that have mutated DNA already. A colony in outer space would be worthless in a few generations. There are no uncontaminated humans left.
There is frozen sperm and frozen eggs, though. Any hope of a future human race is sending the sperm and eggs to a space colony, and hope they can read the directions on the baking oven correctly.
Report Comment
At the close of the anthropocene era, as with all other mass extinctions in the past, life on earth will go on.
So much for stored human embryos, what about all the millions of species also affected? Even before March 2011, there was cause for sadness, hope, resolve and serenity.
As a saying goes; "Live each day as it were your last, and someday you will be right." -writings of patman, circa 2012.
Report Comment
What a sad list. I'm sorry I looked it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_animals_of_North_America
Another log on the nuclear fire.
Report Comment
Thx, patman.
Report Comment
Pete Seeger may have already describe the situation when he sang "Here we are knee deep in garbage, firing rockets at the moon."
Report Comment
if it wasn't for people like arnie understand we would have no accurate information at all. where is our wonderful united states government. what happens when they turn the cameras; the only 2 cameras we have off?
Report Comment
Well if they turn off the cameras by choice, we have various video feeds strewn throughout all of Japan to estimate the dangers that we may be facing. However if another large scale earthquake kicks the power grid down (again) Leaving the entire Japanese power infrastructure offline… We have our intuition and common sense to guide us…
Report Comment
With multiple power stations offline currently in Japan I imagine the slightest error could turn catastrophic pushing their active power stations to their brim in output…
(Hence why the Japanese are pushing for a restart of several reactors).
There isn't enough juice to squeeze, and the entire infrastructure is being heavily effected by the loss of electric services nation wide…
Its just too bad that Nuclear was the route that Japan took to solve the problem in the first place…
They took the route that was clever, and thoughtless…
Instead of the prolonged and thought through…
Now they have an entirely contaminated supercity which needs abandoning. Due to their past careless judgments; I wonder how contaminated present day imports are looking from Japan?
Report Comment
I totally agree they're worried about going to mars in space projects, while we have serious problems here at home….. disgusting…. shameless corporate governmental types
Report Comment
the fuel is VISIBLE OUTSIDE THE BUILDING in an aerial survey: http://tinyurl.com/itgotout (shot around 3/24/11:). I slowed it down and enlarged the stills, it is clearly oozing out of some sort of pipe. all this is available at the above link for download or view.
(…to which copyright, perhaps not so coincidentally, Asahi laid claim recently. … this resulting in my taking down the copy i had uploaded to Youtube. this was around the same time that TokyoBrownTabby's channel got nixed, and i found out MsMiklkyttheclown at youtube and arevamirpal::laprimavera of ex-skf were at around the same time having their energies similarly wasted. Now, emboldened by ex-skf's recent victory (http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ot-asahi-tv-corporation-released-its.html), i think i will repost….)
Report Comment
…..when Time magazine came out with that garbage about Fukushima not being a China Syndrome — and they were not being precise in their use of the terminology like Gundersen is attempting to be when he launches his inquiry — i was so mad i spent a Sunday tweeting and emailing this video clip to every single reporter who had echoed the talking point.
Lochbaum said it was more apt to be called an "America Syndrome," and with tthat i agree….
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2011/07/fukushima-syndrome-by-any-other-name-is.html
Report Comment
The Force is strong with you, aff.
Welcome.
Report Comment
::::thank you::::
(…………….been here a while)
Report Comment
"It just makes decommissioning these plants… it was going too be hard already, but this information makes it worse."
It's just going to make decommissioning the plants harder to do?
Decommission the plant..how is this to be done?
The discussion should progress to location and condition of the nuclear material.
Anytime now….Mr. Gundersen.
Report Comment
Arnie is already on record saying the (3) melted cores did not do the 'China Syndrome' thing (melt into the earth). I don't know what you expect from Arnie, things are bad enough, but jumping to conclusions or using worst case scenarios doesn't represent what is really going on. So, Arnie waits for results or conformations before making definitive statements. In the meantime he pens a book for Japanese citizens trying to explain the situation outside of Japanese government propaganda.
Look at Chernobyl, one plant blows up and another plant along side kept on running and producing nuclear power during the event (these type of plants didn't even have containments just exposed reactors). It's all so surreal…except for the end results.
Report Comment
@razza..I'm not jumping to conclusions.
I took a look at the original explosion.
X-containment.
Meltdown ..in the air..in the water.
Uncontrolled nuclear material.
Done.
The condition of Fukushima Npp has to be addressed in truth..the decommisioning.(or rather the inability to be decommissioned) has to be addressed in truth.
Report Comment
PS.Sorry ..I typoed your name.
Report Comment
Granted there is nuclear fallout everywhere and continues being emitted to the air and water because of lack of containment but at this point in time the corium(s) are thought to be in the immediate area and not in some self-drilled hole on their way to the center of the earth.
Even if the melted fuel was in containment, it would take years to cool before it could be removed (like 3 Mile Island).
Here you have thousands of tons of radioactive blobs in various areas, contaminating anything they come in contact with i.e. air, water, materials, that still has to cool down before you can even think about removal. A waiting game with ongoing everyday contamination.
Worse would be if the corium were unreachable. Right now, and probably for decades, they are only untouchable for removal.
As bad as the situation is, it could be worse, much much worse.
Report Comment
Arnie 'presumes' that the corium spread out like a pancake, and therefore would have dissipated enough heat to not form a blob capable of burning through the concrete foundation of the containment structure. Without 'industry knowledge' I can't counter that, however based on info that I've gleaned from other sources, there is no model that can be reliably referenced, as this hasn't happened before.
In GE Mk1 reactors the control (hahahaha) rods come up from underneath, as they melted down with the fuel rods there would have been molten corium flowing down through the holes that the control rods pass though into the control rod drive cavity, quite probably enlarging the holes as it flowed. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reaktor.svg
At 2400-2800c corium burns through concrete at the rate of 5cm per hour, and the base of the concrete dry well beneath the pressure vessel is about 8m as far as I can discover (anyone with better knowledge?). The time it would have taken the corium to burn through that thickness is about 160 hours. There are 24 hours in a day so 160 hours is 6.6666 days. (There's one for the numerologists amongst us! Debbil's work for sure..)
So let's say that after the fuel to start melting following the main cooling system failure during the earthquake (not tsunami, earthquake that fractured the cooling pipes), within about a week the corium would have been into the ground.
Many many clips by Nuks show steaming steaming steaming…
Report Comment
http://i.imgur.com/Oj4kg.png
8m of a concrete base to eat through sounds about right, even though there is no way to confirm the thickness. And I suppose there are other possible routes the corium flows could have taken but nothing has shown up in the cam shots yet.
Steam is a good sign there is inaction with water going on so if there were no heat glowing reflections at night but maybe blue glows (Cherenkov radiation) reported then maybe the coriums spent most of their time in cooling waters rather than in hellish temperatures.
Report Comment
Maybe folks can get past Arnie bashing, go rewatch his interviews before assassinating his character or putting words into his mouth, and then contribute something accurate and constructive to this conversation instead of vitriol.
Report Comment
tell me about it.
Report Comment
Decommission the plant..how is this to be done?
They will never be decommissioned. TEPCO will become a new "government motors" and when the Japanese economy finally fails so will any talk about decommissioning.
Report Comment
They will then have another "war memorial" like the one that celebrates the nuking of Nagasaki.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=nagasaki+memorial&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&biw=1366&bih=525&tbm=isch&tbnid=AsdRuNwfFVObMM:&imgrefurl=http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/slideshow-photo/04-nagasaki-memorial-statue-by-travelpod-member-mondobri-arao-japan.html%3Fsid%3D11019742%26fid%3Dtp-7&docid=2FYHxxsX9CkxrM&imgurl=http://images.travelpod.com/tw_slides/ta00/a82/5de/nagasaki-memorial-statue-arao.jpg&w=413&h=550&ei=-ov4T4voEYiXrAGT0eWHCg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=354&sig=114952679649008933792&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=100&start=0&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0,i:97&tx=59&ty=85
Report Comment
No. There won't be anyone left to build it.
Report Comment
i agree with "TIME IS SHORT" No. There won't be anyone left to build it.
Soon there will be no one qualified at daiichi….too much radiation …….right?………..so daini is a mere 7 miles away from daiichi….too much there as well. Say that now both are contaminated beyond what machines and humans can tolerate. There is another plant within their radiation radius……..closer to the worlds most highly advanced city housing over 30 million. The radious of cesium , plutonium ,uranium now expanded by yet more and more plants with sickening workers plant by plant until………? Sounds very alarmist and I apologize ………no fear mongering…………i just see the inevitable
Report Comment
Some amount of corium has left the reactor. How much has not been determined. Arnie was one of the first to suggest that it had and what horrible effects such a scenario would have. In fact, he calculated the rate that he thought the corium would take through it's descent through concrete and steel. He also talked about how, if this proved to be true, and he thought it was, that clean up efforts would probably not be able to occur given current technology. So, this is really bad news. Arnie has done about 40 plus vids, several papers, and hundreds of presentations. You will find his "pancake theory" in several of them. The theory is not about whether corium breached the containment, but, about what shape it is currently in, which effects the rate and possibility of recriticalities, not to be confused with the groundwater contamination issue, which Arnie was the first to be able to draw attention to with a handful of other professionals who also speak carefully and wait for the evidence before making claims while still offering hypothesis as to what "might" be happening.
Report Comment
Cultivate hope/faith, while expressing (rather than stuffing) fears. No one can say for sure what will happen. I have not heard of any experts whose predictions are as dire as some commenters here. If the pessimists (who consider themselves realists) are wrong, by leading people who'd help mitigate the effects to believe we're wasting our time, they could help make it happen. Gundersen predicts a million cancers worldwide resulting from Fukushima over the next 35 years. Caldicott predicts 3 times what Gundersen does, but even 3 million out of 7 billion is only a tiny fraction of the global population. Giving up would serve the interests of the powers that be when we need as many as possible to work like our species' survival depends on it to get all nukes shut down asap. Thnx, Vic, for "hope transforms while despair degrades."
Report Comment
A journalist called this scenerioa,"demonic meltdown." like a set of dominos
Report Comment
Nuclear poison is just one challenge of many that we, of this threatened world, are dealing with right now. Yet, if we are to succeed, deal with it we must. So, for me, the choice isn't about whether things are getting really horrible and snarky, but, how do i want to face that. And, i keep coming back to a phrase that i have lived by for nearly 60 years. "I would rather die standing than live on my knees". I'm not going to let fear and despair close my eyes to the opportunities to offer help, support or hope to others, even if that life or mine lasts only a few moments longer. An act of hope is never wasted. Hope is not denial. It is not the refusal to look at the hard facts and "face reality" or accept the "inevitable" as some would suggest. Hope is understanding the seemingly impossibility of improvement, yet, also admitting that it is remotely possible that one is failing to see all the options, and so, must become patient, vigilant, expectant. That is why hope transforms while despair degrades.
Report Comment
Lol……I must be the King of Negativity. People seem to hate my suggestions. Look…….Arnie said we have 1000rem minimum in the sediment at the bottom. Deathly levels at the top. I dont feel the love from tepco or the government. The situation is dire and I will save the prayers for Sunday. Arnie Gunderson and Helen Caldicott…dont seem so chipper or "HOPEFUL" either. Tepco lies and I don't believe i feel the love or the hope..Situation is critcal…hope has not faired we as of6/8/12 at 1014 am
Report Comment
Yes, greensnotbubble, it is very, very dire, very, very dangerous. A deep and profound injustice to all life, especially to those who will not live through it or who will suffer because of the nuclear poison. But, i have faced death and danger and threat many times in my life or right by the side of someone struggling. I have witnessed many deaths and partings. I have seen the worst that people do to each other and to the world. And, i have come to finally learn that, for me at least, to predict certain doom is to stand on the tracks with one's eyes closed and wait for the train to come. There is a courage in being able to do that. There is a freedom in such resignation. But, it is not for me. I am here to heal the world, no matter how sick people make it. The train may still overrun me, but, i will have been trying to get myself and any others off the tracks before it does.
Report Comment
thanks ……..i know what you feel
Report Comment
http://tiny.cc/You-Dont-Say — "Fukushima Fuel Breached Containment? You Don't Say! (An Update) –…an op-ed i wrote yesterday on this — has a decent Gene Wilder Fukushima meme — thought the Gentle Readers at Energy News would like to know
Report Comment