Published: October 10th, 2012 at 9:09 am ET
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Title: Water level in Fukushima No. 1 reactor higher than expected
Source: Kyodo
Date: Oct. 10, 2012
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Wednesday the water level inside the No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel is higher than expected.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Masayuki Ono said following its latest survey that it is difficult to accurately determine where melted fuel inside the vessel is located, but stressed that the utility does not expect to change its plan for decommissioning the reactor.
During the investigation conducted Wednesday, workers found the surface of the water was around 2.8 meters from the bottom of the flask-shaped vessel, about 80 centimeters higher than expected.
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The radiation dose increases as the device gets further away from the location Tepco suspects the melted nuclear fuel to be:
Published: October 10th, 2012 at 9:09 am ET
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sending...
1st, certain humans chose for the science to go pearshaped soresearch can be done to see how pearshaped it really turned to act as if it is to learn from while the actual learning is always one step behind.
Like the proverbial limping horse..
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"…the surface of the water was around 2.8 meters from the bottom of the flask-shaped vessel, about 80 centimeters higher than expected."
This is about 2.8 meters higher water level than I'd have expected. Did they succeed in repairing the hole in the bottom of Containment1? Have they been injecting concrete or something similar?
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For you guys who actually work in GE Mark I plants throughout the world, who lurk here for the latest Fuku news: Bet you didn't think a GE NPP could just blow up like those 3 Fukushima plants, did you? Gives you something to think about, doesn't it? When you are lying in your bed staring at the ceiling when you should be sleeping. When we say the Mark I is full of design flaws, and should be shut down, you know what we are talking about, don't you?
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Is it possible that it fuel is contained within the biological shield (control rods area)? That way, the radiation would have an easier time moving up towards the drywell head and then back down towards the sensor. That would cause the levels to be higher as you move up the drywell outside of the biological shield. Another possibility is that it hasn't melted through the RPV and that puts it up higher compared to the sensor.
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The reason the cover is on Unit#1 is so that you can't see what is going on. There is no mystery as to where the fuel is. It was severely damaged and then corroded by saltwater and it has for 19 months been eating down through the porous sandstone and landfill. They've been waiting 19 months for it to completely disappear. I don't know how much now is beneath the ocean floor, but it must be a considerable amount.
I suspect that when they visited Chernobyl many months after Fukushima they saw how hopeless containment of the nuclear fuel really is. This is true everywhere there is nuclear waste.
Dry cask storage is not temporary until another solution is found. It is the only solution they will every find.
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Well, it's pretty simple, actually. Deprived of cooling water, a portion of the fuel rods vaporized during meltdown and condensed on the walls of the containment vessel. As it cooled, it dropped down, condensing further, but not as much as condensed on the walls as it did above at first contact.
TEPCO is not very good at physics if they can't see that. (I suspect they can, but there is something in the explanation they don't want to admit, so they call it a mystery to the press.)
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Agree to that, Dosdos. Hundreds of different substances are prevalent in the melted cores – and many have their melting point so they condense higher up. That is where it is cooler.
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Sorry I ment many of them hav their BOILING point so they condense higher up..
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Putting this in perspective, the highest reported radiation level inside unit 1 is under 10 Sv/h, but there have been measurements at the Daiichi site that exceeded 10 Sv/hr outside of the reactor cores (in one of the pipes). For comparison, "ten minutes next to the Chernobyl reactor core after explosion and meltdown" is said to be 50 Sv (that's 3,000 Sv/h!). (Reference: http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/files/2011/03/radiation.png ). Fuel fragments at Chernobyl were 15,000-20,000 roentgens per hour (1,500-2,000 Sv/h). (reference: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA335076&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf ). The fuel has left the containment if this is all they are finding!
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Opps. Should be 300 Sv/h, but still….
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In layman's terms: The fuel is burning its way down through the earth and could go for a very, very long time.
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Unit 1 exploded, scattering fuel chunks all about, through pipes, and into the air. There were deadly pockets of fuel all over the grounds. Most of them got bulldozed under, where the rain would eventually wash it away.
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