Published: November 6th, 2011 at 10:37 pm ET
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Nov. 7 — The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun removing radioactive cesium from water in the No. 2 spent fuel pool, according to NHK.
“There are fears that the metal pipes and walls of the spent fuel pools will erode, as seawater was used after the accident to cool down the spent fuel pools.”
Tepco said removal of cesium from the spent fuel pool water is necessary to remove the salt. “Erosion caused by salt may cause holes to form,” reports NHK.
Watch video here.
Published: November 6th, 2011 at 10:37 pm ET
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Dirty Deeds of the nuke industry going strong….spread the word and wake up..we need to expose these criminals !!!!
Documents show heavy Entergy lobbying on Vt. nuke
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/11/06/documents_show_heavy_entergy_lobbying_on_vt_nuke/
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“The company said removal of radioactive material from the pool water is necessary as a step toward removing salt. The salt concentration of the pools is not particularly high — about one-tenth of the saltwater — but erosion caused by salt may cause holes to form.”
err? one tenth of seawater??
and they said “from 1000 to 100″ no measurement scale at all!!
“This means that every kilogram (roughly one litre by volume) of seawater has approximately 35 grams (1.2 oz) of dissolved salts”
Oxygen 85.84
Sulfur 0.091
Hydrogen 10.82
Calcium 0.04
Chloride 1.94
Potassium 0.04
Sodium 1.08
Bromine 0.0067
Magnesium 0.1292
Carbon 0.0028
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater
3.5 grams of water per litre plus other stuff? How did the “salt” get in there? Did tepcoiaea know about this problem? Why tell us now?? What exactly is in the water?? Caesium + salt or special daichi saltcesium?? If caesium is measured seperatly, how many hundred does it take or is?????? Wtf is it ….BE MORE BLOODY SPECIFIC NHK! Errr great story!
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Arclight. What I know of salt and steel. Back east where I grew up, in Toronto salt was/is used liberally in winter to clear snow and ice making most cars bio-degradable. Cars just rust away. But if your outboard motor falls into fresh water pull it out and even try to start it after drying some. Salt water you retrieve motor but store it in the same salty water if possible until it goes to a mechanic or you start rebuilding it yourself. The idea is no matter how well you dry it the motor that was in salty water will corrode badly exposed to air. Steel is iron and oxygen. Rust is steel that has had oxygen molecules removed making the compound revert to crumbly iron ore type thing. The process is electrical, the water acts like the water in your car battery with two unlike metals. Electricity is the electrons moving from positive to negative, chemically changing steel to rust as oxygen electrons electrically dissipate. The salt in the water makes it denser thus a better conductor.
Now whats happening in the water of a spent fuel pool that must have started melting at some point,( why is cesium in cooling water?) and everything is still radioactive, I mean besides the chemical electricity produced by the rusting tank we have spent fuel still radio active and has gone through an earthquake tsunami power outage. That stuff is in decay mode anyways so electrons are flying around. The metal tank is being exposed to radiation, weird decaying chemicals and salt. They will get brittle faster then say a tank full of paint or oil. So they are concerned tank might fail and they are doing something, blah blah blah don’t worry. That is all you will ever get from Tepco Zombies, mate. Cheers
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Iron plus oxygen is ferric oxide, which is rust, which is essentially iron ore. The oxygen is removed from the ore by melting (smelting) the iron. Steel is an iron alloy, containing primarily iron (85% or higher), mixed with one or more of the following: carbon, chromium, cobalt, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, titanium, tungsten, vanadium or zirconium. Salt and water are catalysts that accelerates the oxidation of the iron in steel, especially in the presence of heat. Steel will rust underwater, but more slowly that in open air, since oxygen is more readily available in open air. The chromium in stainless steel is what resists oxidation, as oxygen has a difficult time displacing its molecular bonds.
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Seawater was injected to the spent fuel pool on March 19. Starting March 26, freshwater was added.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704261504576205033202931822.html
And now its November and there is still 10% value of saltwater in the spent fuel pool. Plus cesium and whatever else. Pardon my above post. The spent fuel pool hasn’t melted but the reactor did. But if the spent fuel pool tank fails and coolant leaks, spent fuel could heat up to fission again. Very scary
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3892719255/spent-fuel-pools-at-fukushima
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Thanks for the chemistry lesson… Not my strong suit. I think that means the tanks will collapse at somd point in time because of what you described and because the ponds are elevated. The CSFP is not elevated am I correct? So it may last longer. But extraordinary measures as yet undeveloped will have to be undertaken to save the fuel from becoming hotter and creating more emissions.
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Are these tanks made out of Steel? One would of thought a high quality Stainless Steel would be used such as 316L or Hastelloy or Inconel for corrosion resistance. Time to start fabricating and transfering rod material.
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Hi Novamind, I think the tanks are made from concrete, with an arming steel grid inside to add stability. If the concrete around the steel is damaged, water can reach the steel = rusting starts. The rusting steel will help to crumble the concrete – as does water which will become ice in there in winter and accelerate the process.
After seeing videos about unit 2 a while ago, I’m also worried about the steel roof structure, which awaits the same fate of crumbling away.
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According to this “The pool is usually made of reinforced concrete walls four to five feet thick with stainless steel liners. ”
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
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As the stainless steel is a liner so one would assume it is fairly thin. If that fails the concrete would be exposed to the radio active water. I do know Concrete boats used to be popular but I’ve seen photos of boats where the builder hasn’t prepped the iron reinforcement properly and it corrodes in salt sea service. One day boat routinely bumps into dock and concrete crumbles creating a big hole in the side of boat.
4 to 5 foot concrete sounds very thick but how would salty radio active water react to concrete? What are the stress levels of a overhead container filled with how many tons of water? During an earthquake?
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Concrete degradation
Corrosion of reinforcement bars
Chemical damage
Carbonation
Chlorides
Sulfates
Leaching
Decalcification
Sea water
Radiation damages
Exposure of concrete structures to neutrons and gamma radiations in nuclear power plants and high-flux material testing reactor can induce radiation damages in their concrete structures. Paramagnetic defects and optical centers are easily formed, but very high fluxes are necessary to displace a sufficiently high number of atoms in the crystal lattice of minerals present in concrete before significant mechanical damages are observed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_degradation
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Radiation Effects – Reactor Materials
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~murty/NE509/NOTES/Ch7-RadiationEffects-II.pdf
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Potential Mechanisms of Corrosion and Stress
Corrosion Cracking Failure of 3013 Storage
Containers Composed of 316 Stainless Steel
The degradation of 316 stainless steel (SS) storage container materials is a potential
problem for radioactive waste disposition. Container materials will be exposed to significant
ionizing radiation, elevated temperatures, embrittling and/or alloying agents (e.g., gallium),
chloride-containing compounds (as much as 20 wt% Cl or Cl-), oxidizing compounds, and a
limited quantity of moisture. Additionally, containers will contain welds that have heterogeneous
composition due to solute segregation and that may retain significant residual stress. All of the
above-listed environmental and material conditions have been shown to be deleterious to material
integrity under certain conditions….
http://public.lanl.gov/MCEL/PDF-Publications/3013SCC.pdf
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Accelerated Aging Effects of Radiation on Materials At Fukushima Daiichi
Sunday, May 8, 2011
http://news.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/2011/05/accelerated-aging-effects-of-radiation.html
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Wow Jebus, good finds! Thank you – and now off to bed?? lol
I’m already in the Monday morning frenzy
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Feeling like, Humpty Dumpty Radiation sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty Radiation had a great fall.
All the King’s horses, And all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Radiation Wall back together again!
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wow i can now say that i understand the rotting underbelly of the nuke industry….and they want to store this stuff for 100,000 years…how pretentious!!
well done posters!!
peace
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Stainless steel should never be used in salt water service. I can not exactly remember all the metallurgical details but chloride ions in the salt water migrate to the grain boundary of stainless steel and tie up the chromium. Chromium is the element that provides the corrosion resistance. Anyway chlorides cause stainless to become very brittle and will crack like glass. The chlorides tie up the chromium and this causes the stainless to become brittle along the grain boundary. For saltwater service monel, superduplex, inconel, or one of the exotic steels are used.
Concrete is susceptible to chlorides because of the rebar in the concrete. The chlorides migrate to the steel causing corrosion and this causes the rebar to swell. This cracks the concrete and the cycle continues eventually wrecking the concrete. The rebar takes probably about 70% of the loading. The concrete takes about 30% of the loading. When the rebar goes the structure goes. Essentially the concrete holds the rebar in place.
I wrote this in hast but this is the grit of it.
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electrode potential in the cooling water is not balanced, and another than with the steel
will take place in any case an electron exchange.
The microstructure of the tank is weakened,
the potential difference determines the velocity of the ablation
In addition to the radiation erosion and the natural erosion
and bar/cm²(kilopascals/mm²)
the time s running …
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happy repairing. the method to scrap bunkers (no matter how strong):
put a little explosives in them, fill them with water and ignite. best method to kill any bunker. relevance to fuku: explosion near the pool, evenly distributed to every inch of it.
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We all know that the Japanese government and the nuke company in charge are saying everything is safe and normal, so all of the atoms in the spent fuel containers will stay safe and normal, period.
There is no need to pay any attention to laws of physics, chemistry, nuclear science or even laws of man… None of those count anymore.
The law of hubris is now in operation, and will continue until proven otherwise.
All comments to the contrary will be ignored by said authorities.
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I like that about the law of hubris.
Thanks, AGR.
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@ CATW
jep 100
water can not be compressed
is kinetic energy it is passed strengthens
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