Published: March 8th, 2012 at 9:57 pm ET
|
Title: Mixing Seawater and Nuke Fuel: Still Murky
Source: Discovery News
Author: Jesse Emspak
Date: March 8, 2012
Emphasis Added
A year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, questions remain just what happens when you mix seawater with nuclear fuel. [...]
In a paper published today in Science, Peter Burns, a professor of civil engineering at Notre Dame, and his co-authors note that it is not clear exactly what kinds of chemicals were released. [...]
“[Studies] either focused on the gaseous products — you melt the fuel, and see what gets released — or they focused on the interaction of used fuel with the geologic environment. In our study we’re pointing out that neither of these gives us the insight we need,” they wrote.
Nuclear fuel at Fukushima was largely uranium oxide (UO2), with a small portion of the fuel containing plutonium. [...]
When the seawater hit the reactor core, it heated up and evaporated. That likely left salt deposits. Another factor was the extreme heat near the fuel rods. Burns said at those temperatures and in the presence of radioactivity seawater can form peroxides, which are even more likely to react with the elements in the core and do so differently from water. [...]
More from Burns
Since the first reactors went online, there have been about 20 meltdowns, though only three were big enough to garner much public attention and others might have been kept secret [...]
According to the European Nuclear Society there are 435 reactors operating in the world today, with 63 more under construction.
“If you plan for a once in 10,000-year event, that means you get one every 20 years,” Burns said.
Read the report here
See also: Nuke plant manager ignores bosses, pumps in seawater after order to halt – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun
Published: March 8th, 2012 at 9:57 pm ET
|
sending...
The headlines are not getting better,
only serve to confirm what we already know
has / is taking place.
Report Comment
The reason they have stopped pumping sea water is because it forms a scale which insulates the fuel => (Therefore) it gets hotter…
(It isn't rocket science.)
Report Comment
Yes, once an alternative was available, the seawater pumping was stopped.
However, that is not what is referenced here.
The order to halt pumping seawater was given BEFORE fresh water was available.
It would appear they suspected negative effects beyond scaling and corrosion, since some officials were willing to let the melted fuel remain without water, rather than using seawater.
Report Comment
ENENews, it might have been better once they knew their cores were melting to have walked away and let them do so. The steam explosions from below ground couldn't have been significantly worse than the ones they did suffer that destabilized the fuel pools' understructure and opened them to the sky anyway. But that's just past-tense quarterbacking on what was a desperate situation nobody'd ever gamed before. It's likely the "negative effects" included steam/hydrogen and/or criticality explosions that made things far worse. That'll all come out in the autopsy reports.
Sort of like the whole "But we'll learn so much!" exclamations of committed nukes everywhere. Including our own NRC.
Report Comment
Thanks Admin. I guess the pirate in me got the better of me. Arrrrre.
I believe one of them was radioactive sulfur35 formed by nuclear transmutation of chlorine (Sodium Chloride.)
The point is it is mind boggling the number of chemicals/compounds/nuclear transmutations of one element into another that occurred/is occurring. Particularly with sea water.
Talking about buckyballs or peroxides is neither here or there until some 'real' analysis is performed/documented.
There has been no talk of mass spectrometer analysis that i am aware of, only the analysis of single radionuclide's via gamma spectormetry and so on.
A link to the Chloride transmutation into radioactive sulfur35
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=radioactive-chemicals-in-california-fukushima
From "Answers.com"
http://www.answers.com/topic/isotope
"Of the 12 elements onfirmed thus far, 81 have at least one stable isotope whereas the others exist only in the form of radioactive nuclides. Some radioactive nuclides (for example, 115In, 232Th, 235U, 238U) have survived from the time of formation of the elements. Several thousand radioactive nuclides produced through natural or artificial means have been identified. See also Radioisotope.
Of the 83 elements which occur naturally in significant quantities on Earth, 20 are found as a single isotope (mononuclidic), and the others as admixtures containing from 2 to 10 isotopes. Isotopic composition is mainly determined by mass spectroscopy. See also Mass spectroscope."
Report Comment
So why don't they just buy one??
Hand-portable gas chromatograph-toroidal ion trap mass spectrometer (GC-TMS) for detection of hazardous compounds.
http://www.mendeley.com/research/handportable-gas-chromatographtoroidal-ion-trap-mass-spectrometer-gctms-for-detection-of-hazardous-compounds/
Report Comment
Spectrometising, are you saying the UC Davis study in itself doesn't give us enough to go on, yet? Out of curiosity, what do you think researchers should be looking at?
Report Comment
ENENews: Less to see if that pile of crap isn't steaming. No water, no steam. Wasn't there some discussion of metal corrosion as sea water was being pumped in? And wasn't there some discussion at ENE that they were pouring water into containments after most of the corium had gone ex-containment?
Report Comment
Not a musical "scale" as in a special underwater HAARP. The stuff that forms a crust on pirates if they have been left underwater for a while.
A boiler makers worst nightmare material/scale.
Report Comment
"If you plan for a once in 10,000-year event, that means you get one every 20 years" – unless, in your hubris, you overlook something, and if you happen to assume that your start time is the start of a 10,000 year period rather than in the middle of one or near the end of one.
Report Comment
Thanks algeezer !!…That's the word i was looking for. The sea water forms a "hubris" which insulates the nuclear fuel rods and corium.
A mass spectrometer will do the rest.
Report Comment
I love the analogy!
Report Comment
The sea water forms a hubris which insulates the truth from the MSM!
Report Comment
Actually, the HUBRIS insulates the INDUSTRY (and its friends***), so that they keep reinforcing one another's comfortable assumptions. This reinforcement is self-sustaining, and it eventually becomes HYPER-CRITICAL, leading them to conclude, not merely that things are as under control as they want them to be, but even that the whole situation–far from being a disaster for the industry–has in fact demonstrated just how robust their brilliant contraptions really are.
As the chain reaction continues to spiral out of control, they release such dense and noxious clouds of misinformation that they manage to stifle most independent-minded nay-sayers, until the miasma becomes so thick that it clouds even the public's ability to see the cliff toward which these hubris-encrusted hot rods are monomaniacally driving the world.
*** By its "friends" I mean governments, media, military, and the so-called "health physics" PR business (Regrettably, I am no longer able to call health physics people "scientists" since they seem to understand their primary purpose in terms of reassuring the public, rather than recognizing and acknowledging the limits to their actual knowledge, which I take to be an essential feature of genuine science).
Report Comment
re: hot rods = that should say "hot-rodders"
They're no different from those types, seeking to SOUP UP their AGING machines to put out more and more power, regardless of safety
Report Comment
Huaaawwah! NASCAR for nukes! They are getting old so soup em up!!!
Report Comment
They DID soup 'em up. Not with NOS but with MOX. Then the ractors threw a rod! Many of 'em!
Report Comment
Brilliant thread this, made my day. Lol. Hubris indeed explains all.
Report Comment
LOLed! Great work Iam335!
Report Comment
Did you mean something like a verdigris? Not sure it applies since we're talking about steel containment, here.
Report Comment
Terrible odds, one meltdown in 20 years. I'm a long time lurker, minimal computer skills/knowledge. My first post anywhere. I live within the evacuation zone of Vermont Yankee; you can imagine my concern. I fully expected VY to close this year 13 years ago when I bought Real Estate here.
Report Comment
Unfortunately, their "plan" that a meltdown would be a once-in-10000-year event was hyperbolically over optimistic.
Sorry about your plan, Grayfox, which, through no fault of your own, also seems to have been over-optimistic.
Report Comment
Thanks Spade, I tend towards the optimistic, but recent events have me reconsidering my previously sunny disposition. I had hoped to be toasting the the safe shut down of VY in a few days, but that is looking less and less likely given the local news.
Report Comment
Get active, write letters
Report Comment
And a 10,000 year event can happen at any time. It can happen one day (end of 10,000 years) and again the next day (beginning of next 10,000 year period) for example. And it's just a projection, anyway.
This is similar to discussing 1,000 year tsunami events in Japan. The 2011 Honshu EQ caused the second "1,000 year" tsunami event in about 150 years. Actually, there may have been three: 1860's, 1930's, and 2011. Wave heights > 85 feet.
Report Comment
wasnt it already proven that salt water interacting with nuclear core formed peroxides which acted as carrying vessels which were able to cover vast distances therefore being carriers to diseases and god knows what else? isn't that why everyone is getting sick, dying, its happening all around the world. just look around you. one year in and we're going downhill fast. all cause of one little nuke plant. yeah. great job humans, great job…
Report Comment
Great point.
From December: "some nonvolatile activation products and fuel rod materials may have been released when the corrosive brines and acidic waters used to cool the reactors interacted with the ruptured fuel rods, carrying radioactive materials into the ground and ocean."
http://enenews.com/new-study-fuel-rod-materials-may-have-been-released-when-acid-seawater-interacted-with-ruptured-fuel-rods-carrying-radioactive-materials-into-ground-full-magnitude-of-release-has-not-been-w
I'm not seeing that it mentions peroxides though.
Here's another report on saltwater, though it too does not mention peroxides:
http://enenews.com/major-study-saltwater-used-in-fukushima-reactors-causing-unprecedented-phenomenon-forms-tiny-uranium-compounds-able-to-travel-long-distances-also-concerns-about-how-much-this-will-increase
As the most recent study mentioned, "presence of radioactivity seawater can form peroxides, which are even more likely to react with the elements in the core and do so differently from water."… I think that's the first I've seen of this concept.
Report Comment
Agreed Enenews,
I took particular interest in the later link you post and do recall the first as well and the peroxides were absent in both. The second was a quite a scientific finding as I recall and there was absolutely no mention of peroxides at that time. Which strikes me as odd. Would not the peroxide show during those studies?
Report Comment
What I suspect, is that the research was being done and serious questions were being asked back before December, and it was so complex that many involved did not truly understand what was being discovered, only that those that did truly understand, were getting really nervous, this paper was released early January at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and certainly mentions peroxides.. which means it was undertaken much sooner, and I suspect as a direct result of finding unexplained fukushit plutonium in California… I remember posting regarding fission grade plutonium found in the California cow pie story long time ago..
here is the abstract on peroxide:
Uranyl peroxide enhanced nuclear fuel corrosion in seawater
The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident brought together compromised irradiated fuel and large amounts of seawater in a high radiation field. Based on newly acquired thermochemical data for a series of uranyl peroxide compounds containing charge-balancing alkali cations, here we show that nanoscale cage clusters containing as many as 60 uranyl ions, bonded through peroxide and hydroxide bridges, are likely to form in solution or as precipitates under such conditions. These species will enhance the corrosion of the damaged fuel and, being thermodynamically stable and kinetically persistent in the absence of peroxide, they can potentially transport uranium over long distances.
http://www.pnas.org/search?fulltext=nuclear+fuel&submit=yes
Report Comment
Maybe it can be deduced from basic discussion of water chemistry. See discussion of sea water below. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peroxide
In the environment
Peroxides are usually very reactive and thus occur in nature only in a few forms. These include, in addition to hydrogen peroxide, a few vegetable products such as ascaridole and a peroxide derivative of prostaglandin. Hydrogen peroxide occurs in surface water, groundwater and in the atmosphere. It forms upon illumination or natural catalytic action by substances containing in water. Sea water contains 0.5 to 14 mg/L of hydrogen peroxide, freshwater 1 to 30 mg/L and air 0.1 to 1 parts per billion.[4]
Report Comment
The discussion above (formation of hydrogen peroxide in sea water) assumes a catalytic reaction. So what was the catalytic reagent at work?
Report Comment
The catalytic converters on the hot rods formed hydrogen peroxide which is a component of rocket fuel which….
Report Comment
I wonder if these peroxides have anything to do with "bucky balls"???
Report Comment
Yes they do:
Uranium filled buckyballs from Fukushima meltdowns may be bound for west coast:
[Michael Collins]
http://www.enviroreporter.com/2012/02/beta-watch/all/1/
[about the 16th paragraph down]
Report Comment
Thx!
Report Comment
Here's a link to more info. on scientific studies:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060929093614.htm
An egg-shaped fullerene, or "buckyball egg" has been made and characterized by chemists at UC Davis, Virginia Tech and Emory and Henry College, Va. The unexpected discovery opens new possibilities for structures for fullerenes, which could have a wide range of uses.
Haven't been able to find a direct link between fullerenes and their presence at Fukushima, though. Looks like Cataclysmic posted a link above where this is discussed.
Report Comment
And link from Cataclysmic provides info. from UC Davis researchers. Thanks, all.
Report Comment
Oh good, can we go outside and play Bucky ball now?
What kind of game is that, anyway?
Report Comment
It might be called soccer.
☺
[Soccer balls are shaped like buckyballs]
Bucky balls are based on sixty coordinates all based on phi
http://www.goldennumber.net/buckyball.htm
Report Comment
re: What kind of game is that, anyway?
the most dangerous game
Report Comment
… because WE are the targets …
Report Comment
… and the stakes are life or death
Report Comment
Why are we allowing nuclear power plants to continue? . .
Report Comment
We 99% have little say in what the other 1% shove down our throats…
Report Comment
because the lunatics are running the asylum?
Report Comment
Seems to be glaringly so
http://www.thehiddenevil.com/psychopathy.asp
In depth analysis of corps.gov and how they pull the wool over me and you
http://silencednomore.com/corporation-full-movie/
Report Comment
Yes, radioactive sulfur was a serious new side effect of the unusual situation at Fukushima.
Probably there have been several disasters with nuclear reactors involving sea water emergency cooling (think Russian and American naval vessels)but there has never been such a massive meltdown that involved the dynamics on the scale of one of the largest landbased commercial reactors and a megaplex with multiple meltdowns. The dynamics of that has had the true eggheads at NRC and IAEA really worried about how bad this thing is going to turn out. If it scare them…then it scares the crap out of me.
Here's a roving scientist who had insight on this thread topic:
"The sulphur peak in the atmosphere was noticed on March 28, 2011, 15 days after the pumping started. According to a study conducted by chemists at the University of California, San Diego, – the first quantitative study of the disaster – about 400 billion neutrons were released per square meter of the cooling pools of liquid in the power plant. This rate stayed constant from 13th March to 20th March. The mechanism of producing radioactive sulphur is well understood from cosmic ray studies, but this is the first time such a process is being noticed near the surface. The study measured 1501 atoms of radioactive sulfur in sulfate particles per cubic meter of air, much much higher than normal levels.
For the levels of sulphur noticed at California to be correctly correlated with sulphur levels over Fukushima, the team calculated that the levels of sulfur ought to be 365 times that over California."
http://techie-buzz.com/science/fukushima-california-radiation-sulphur.html
Part 1
Report Comment
SP: I remember this other report from August because it was the only report where a writer stepped up to the plate and reported a serious health possibility from breathing in radioactive sulfur-35 (which by the way was a previously "unreported" type of fallout from Fukushima.
"Sulfur-35 has a half-life of 87.5 days outside of the body, but a biological half-life of 623 days, according to Michigan State University’s Office of Radiation, Chemical & Biological Safety.
Most universities advise employees to handle volatile Sulfur-35 within a hooded enclosure.
Sulfur-35 is absorbed by the entire body but is of particular concern to men because it tends to concentrate in the testicles, according to a Nuclide Safety Data Sheet from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Beta radiation occurring there could damage neighboring cells"
"The California Air Resources Board estimates that Californians inhale 10-50 liters of air per minute during normal activities….. may have inhaled only about 360 radioactive sulfur atoms on that day—or more."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/08/16/wheres-that-radioactive-sulfur-now-possibly-in-your-pants/
SP: Well, I say nuts to that kind of radiation! I guess the NRC and Tepco agreed…might have been a political landmine.
Part 2
Report Comment
"Sulfur-35 is absorbed by the entire body but is of particular concern to men because it tends to concentrate in the testicles"
The result?
Yep. Buckyballs.
YIKES!
Report Comment
Re: Buckyballs for men
Big advantage over steroids and their peanut effect huh? I was going to comment about how this nuclear testicle affliction gives a whole new meaning to the term getting the rocks off. But I refuse to stoop to such crude gallows humor. Please remove these preceding pixels from your medulla oblongata immediately. Big Brother appreciates your toe-touching mentality. That is all.
Almost…..
"“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Report Comment
Sulfur-35: Arnie Gundersen and others have raised the alarm because girls and babies are 5-7 times more affected by radiation than a 30 year old man. This gets no reaction at all from the public. Today there is news that Sulfer-35 ends up in men's nuts, damaging surrounding cells So of course, there will be urgent demands that nukes be shut down immediately. I expect to see all nuclear plants in cold shut down by the middle of next week!
Report Comment
afaik buckyballs are carbon-based.
with zeoliths they have in common that material can be "loaded" into cavities in the molecule, not in a chemical reaction but through surface-adsorption effects. by doing so the zeolith and the added atom or molecul both change their chemical/physical properties.
The adsorption could be cracked for example by chemical reagents because the order of adsorbing force is smaller than the force in chemical compound-bindings.
Report Comment
I believe extensive testing was done at some point with the introduction of salt water years past, it only seems likely the amount of money being poured into the industry and testings, I also believe they know much more about this interaction and the behavior and couscouses of mix and what it produces and is a well keep secrete for the information came out in the testing to be very disturbing, we have seen & read about some developments but I think these were known before the latest people did research and found out about the properties and the interaction that are very dangerous !
Report Comment