Published: February 10th, 2012 at 8:27 am ET
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Tweets by Fukushima Daiichi plant worker Happy20790 translated by EX-SKF:
It seems TEPCO measured the clarity of water in the Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool today [...]
you can vaguely discern the fuel rods with naked eyes after the water injection to the pool is stopped. When I looked at the pool before we installed the floats to protect the pool, I don’t think I saw as much debris as I had expected.
I did see some hand rails… The fuel rods were in the fuel rack, and the rack was standing. Anyway, we’ll find out soon. [...]
Read the report here
More recent news on Spent Fuel Pool No. 4
- Report: Nuclear material came off unused fuel assembly removed from Fukushima Unit 4 pool -- Cobalt-60 at 1,400,000,000 Bq/kg -- Debris "felt like grit" (PHOTOS) (6) March 26, 2013
- Fukushima 50 Special: Unit 4 pool "had boiled dry, raising the spectre of a nuclear fission chain reaction" -- Feared nearby nuclear plant would be evacuated (24) March 5, 2013
- Gundersen soon after 3/11: Photo shows nuclear fuel is exposed to air at Fukushima Unit 4 fuel pool -- Clean path for plutonium to escape offsite (VIDEO) (33) February 23, 2013
- Reporter on Unit 4 Pool at Fukushima: Water was muddy and brown -- Fuel inside not visible (21) February 21, 2013
- Concern about corrosion at Fukushima Unit 4 reactor building -- 'Prevention measures' to be implemented (PHOTOS) (39) February 14, 2013
From last April: "Disturbing": Photo clearly shows no water in spent fuel pool -Nuclear expert (VIDEO)
From May 8:
Published: February 10th, 2012 at 8:27 am ET
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sending...
One thing is not clear. How much of the fuel blew out of the pool before they were able to put water back in it? The light that you see inside the fuel racks must be damaged fuel that has fallen below and is emmitting light. I can’t really see any undamaged fuel assemblies. Anyone? Bubble forming may be hydrogen from fuel/water reaction. What is the temperature of that water? They have had many months to study this and I am sure they know precisely what has happened there.
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Rough Transcript:
The US has over 71,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in spent fuel pools. This is all lying around with an open invitation for terrorists to steal.
Reactor operators are allowed to put FOUR TIMES more nuclear waste material in these pools than they were safely designed for. Japan has 100 Metric tons in each spent fuel pools.. US pools contain from 500 to 700 Metric tons EACH.
If they lose their water, the fuel gets hot and releases catastrophic amounts of radiation. It can render an area uninhabitable that is equal to Chernobyl or worse by 4-5 times. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is roughly 1/2 the size of New Jersey.
These spent fuel pools are a danger to surrounding communities, if cooling water is lost and spent fuel pools radioactive fuel material melts down or explode.
These spent fuel pools should be put into dry concrete containers. Germany did this 25 years ago. They are stored in buried hillsides or in concrete buildings that can withstand a plane crashing into them.
The National Academy of Sciences reported officially you could not rule out a terrorist attack and the threat needed to be taken seriously.
The NRC had a hostile response. The NRC has a too cozy relationship with the nuclear industry and no longer oversees or regulates the industry effectively.
Congress stripped power from the NRC largely due to industry pressure. The NRC now relies more or mostly on self reporting from those same industries that the NRC is supposed to regulate, monitor and control. The nuclear industry has too much power in terms of who even gets to be a regulator in the NRC, as no one gets appointed to it, unless the industry agrees to it.
Recently, the Congress under GOP rule cut off funding for Tsunami warnings, which should be part of a nuclear safety network. After all, a large earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan and caused 3 Fukushima reactors to melt through and/or explode.
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Source: http://youtu.be/EcKpypwyZM8
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I highly doubt that the Youtube video is of spent fuel pool #4. It does NOT match the video shown by Gunderson, which shows the green crane collapsed RIGHT ON TOP OF the fuel racks, and a LOT OF DEBRIS on top of the fuel racks, not just a couple of rocks and a ladder.
Also, he makes the point that they are spraying water into this pool, and it is NOT FILLING UP. In the video he shows, you can clearly see the TOPS OF THE TUBES sticking up out of the steam. He said that these fuel rods are either damaged or melted down and the pool either completely dried out or partially dried out, with unknown consequences.
So how do you go from a cracked, leaking fuel pool with fuel rods exposed, steaming and a pile of debris plus a crane sitting right on the rods, to what is seen in Youtube video? It just does not make any sense, unless a couple of thousand radiation proof genies came out of a bottle and cleaned the place up and fixed the pool leaks.
At the very least, this pool released unknown amounts of radiation either from just having the spent fuel exposed to air, or MORE RADIATION if the fuel rods melted down and then fissioned, as in the case of three reactors at Fukushima, with at least one nuclear explosion and possibly two. Is this radiation included in the total radiation ‘ESTIMATE’ released by anyone? I highly doubt it.
Personally, I think this spent fuel pool is in WAY WORSE SHAPE than the Youtube video pretends to show.
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I agree, This is yet more TEPCO Nuclear Baloney (NB)!
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Let’s take a vote..
Would anyone be surprised if this youtube video turned out to be from the Daini plant spent fuel pools, instead of the Daichi plant #4 spent fuel pool?
In about 40 years, they can say; Gee, we made a spelling error on the plant name… sorry about that… and who cares now anyway?.. That is ancient history.
Who cares about a bunch of spent fuel anyways? It is just garbage. No one cares about garbage, right?
Yea, right, normal garbage cannot kill off all life on the planet, like a melted down fissioning spent fuel pool with MOX fuel (with plutonium in it) can.
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http://enenews.com/nrc-leave-it-to-nuclear-engineers-to-catch-a-pond-on-fire-referring-to-fukushima-spent-fuel-pool-no-4
“NRC on Mar. 15: Leave it to nuclear engineers to catch a pond on fire — Referring to Fukushima Spent Fuel Pool 4 (EMAIL)Looking at the IAEA news feed: 15 March 2011 02:35…the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is on fire”
I am wondering how spent fuel pool #4 can be on fire if it has WATER covering the fuel racks by 30 feet or so?
This is not some conspiracy theorist saying that the pool was dry and that the fuel had melted down and was on fire.. This is directly from the IAEA, the regulatory body governing this facility.
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AGR typed these pixels of light:
>I am wondering how spent fuel pool #4 can be on fire if it has WATER covering the fuel racks by 30 feet or so?
Simple process…they slow down the feed of water…the earthquake holes in the structure leaks out the water and the rods boil away the rest of the water and then catches fire.
Then the kamizaze workers come rushing up in their Nissan 4X4s and fire up the water cannons again and then they put out the fires once more. Endless cycles of feed and bleed. at least until the building drops the whole load or the Common Spent Fuel building blows up. Or half a dozen other scenarios involving the Blobs of runaway corium could blow the island into the mesosphere.It would be terrible if that happened on photo ops day, eh? *;-) What a bummer!
They are cherrypicking accessible rods out with cranes. They try to pick them up and dump them in the convenient nearby ocean. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the best thing those poor nuclear fireman have going. The real question is how much of the spent fuel assemblies are accessible for such an extraction process? Are they melted together and beyond hope of extraction for 20-30 years? Watch for some fake photos to emerge that all is well.
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Creepy thought. The UC Davis study found dumping seawater on the reactors caused nuclear “bucky balls” to form, containing lots of isotopes. They can get airborne. Some are speculating or asserting there is much more health risk from the “bucky balls” than from the isotopes by themselves.
If they do the unthinkable (dump the rods into the ocean) are we going to end up with nuke bucky balls by the gazillions all over the planet? In the air and oceans, water everywhere? As if the problem isn’t bad enough already ….
WIsh I could do more “technospeak” on this but I don’t understand the chemistry or physics of this issue.
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TEPCO is trying to pull a slight of hand IMO…
+
TEPCO and the Nuclear Mafia
http://is.gd/b8kXDL
snip
“TEPCO’s involvement with anti-social forces and their inability to filter them out of the work-place is a national security issue. It is one reason that increasingly in the Diet we are talking de facto nationalization of the company. Nuclear energy shouldn’t be in the hands of the yakuza. They’re gamblers and an intelligent person doesn’t want them to have atomic dice to play with.”
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At the time… they were told the reactor of #4 was empty. Well? It wasn’t… that’s where the fire was. As to the vid?.. they did use a crane to get most of the stuff out. There are 40 rods sitting separate in that pool… they are not Urainium, NOR MOX!.. they are Plutonium breeder rods, and if that pool goes dry, it goes BOOM! That’s why #3′s went BOOM… by the way.
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The vid they show above… is an old one from last year… still waiting for new one.
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http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20120210/k10015938821000.html
here’s new vid… signifigant change in upper shape of the breeder rods! The top-cap areas on them are GONE !!!!
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Here’s translated story:
***
Nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daiichi is planning to do the decommissioning 40 years up to, including taking out the first fuel in the fuel pool at Unit 4 within the next year first, we have decided to temporary storage facilities on site.
The fuel pool at Unit 4 is contained within a fuel of the book 1535 the most, because rubble is scattered in the water building is broken under the influence of hydrogen explosion, not been able to grasp in detail the state of the medium, Tokyo Electric Power Company on March 9 looked into the inside of the pool underwater camera.
Towards the retrieval of fuel, since it is necessary to accurately grasp the state of the rubble fell on top of the fuel, but this time was measured by the transparency of the water off the wire spotted from the side of the camera, is the transparency that was approximately 5 meters.
Is that from the video, but it was found that some rubble fell on top of the rack to hold the fuel grid, deformation or damage of fuel that was not confirmed.
TEPCO has been that the pool of Unit 4, several times, put the camera underwater, examine in detail whether there is damage to the state of the rubble in the water and fuel next month.
TEPCO have been talking, “the future further investigation in order to remove the rubble that fell into the pool, what is needed and”.***
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Definitively they have been our ‘Glowing Blob’ source folks!
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PattieB, do you mean the glowing blob in the webcams?
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Yes… the tops of the breeder-type rods have gone missing. So they have been emiting Plutonium each time they allowed to ‘glow’ due to reduced amounts of borination of the water. But needs be calm to work on site… conservation of supplies, damage such acid does to pipes / filters… scary type of balancing act!
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Hmm…the complexity of the chemistry is unbelievable. No wonder it is so deadly. I looked up its chemical uniqueness and it is pretty mind blowing.
Forgetting that it is radioactive, its chemical reactions with other materials is huge.
Thanks again PattieB for steering me in a meaningful direction..
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=plutonium%20chemical%20reactivity&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fas.org%2Fsgp%2Fothergov%2Fdoe%2Flanl%2Fpubs%2F00818038.pdf&ei=FIA1T5-4Bs-UiQfb4oGYAg&usg=AFQjCNGgcgyICmtNZzfIet05AXlLCvoQFQ&cad=rja
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Hmmmm…As PattieB is saying the corrosiveness of boric acid is phenomenal….NRC doc here.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/gen-letters/1988/gl88005.html
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The pipes of the temp cooling / filtering operation ar made of plastics! PVC and others… Boric Acid eats them, and seals… as-built pipes are all metal! And as you have heard… even at that in S. Cali… they have issues in high-heat environments. Many such pipes made… GEE… right there in JAPAN!… have failed in the Cali San Orino reactors.
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The NRC document here suggests reactors all over the US are actually over-sized rust buckets if you read the fine print….
ASTONISHING !!!!! Another mind blowing eye opener ..Thansk for the direction again PattieB…you are legend.
I will post this again…Have a look!!..before they take it down.
These guys should not even be in charge of taking the scale out of a water earn. I ask…Why have these nukes exploded decades ago?????????????
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/gen-letters/1988/gl88005.html
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Better vids here… http://enenews.com/missing-fuel-assembly-racks-spent-fuel-pool-4-video
They don’t show us the footage from cam dropped into #4′s reactor core though! Rat finks are still hiding stuff!
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The green trolly-crane was over the #4 reactor core inserting fuel.. and had just started back to the pool… when disater struck! The middle film shows steam / smoke issuing from the reactor core, not the pool. The last one is looking from north-to-south, the yellow cap sits on the west wall of the building.
The3 clip they showed with the crane sitting crashed into the pool last year?… that was #3′s after the first explosion, but before the second one. The second explosion of 3 buried it in debris.
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They added last May’s survey of the pool to the back-end of 3rd film… let’s all pretend that it’s the current look… shall we?
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Yes… interesting word chosing in the doc! Some ‘leakages’ of radioactive fluids… chapter & verse… are not only ALLOWED!? They are EXPECTED, and STATED as such in the design-plans drawn up BEFORE THE PLANT WAS BUILT!
Just so long as such ‘leaks’ are of only a specified size and under… for the particular bit of plant hardwear… it’s FINE!
This is the type of thought-process being employed at our nucular (Reads NUCKLE-HEADS!) plants and in the managment folks in charge!
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JNN cam … look at base of tower in front of #3. There once was the roof of a building there… NOW!? Just frame-spikes like side-wall of #3 are sticking up into the air!
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this one @ 31 sec. in… showes the original building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPNFiwSuguw&feature=related
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Do de do be do… checking me some Spent Fuel Pool #4 Fuel Rods.. hmm.. do doo..
WOAH! WHAT DE HEY!
0:43 in the video.
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A; The crane that dropped into the fuel pool was #3′s… NOT #4!
B; The trolly-crane was inserting fuel into #4′s reactor, and started back to the pool when power-outage / earthquake hit.
C; It was seen in the same state it’s in now on day the roof popped off.
D; the fires that building has had, have been in the open-top reactor core. NOT the pool.
E; The major issue with the pool? The May vid-show shows 40 rod bundles that had pyrimid-like tops on them. They are breeder rods… containing only PU-239 recycled from USSR’s bomb project, and moderation segments! Just like #3′s had! THAT is why when it melted-down… it went BOOM!
F; Them bad boys are what’s been giving us all the ‘ORB’ light shows! I direct your attention to the fact that that separate rack of rods… has lost its tops! They appended the MAY film to the end of the last vid show on this thread. They were only rods that never had handles on them, and are of MAJOR concern! (They spent a good time looking at their remains!) In may’s vid, they extended out the top of the racks a good bit… now they seem recessed!
G; The junk on the top of the racks… Huuumm..? I should think with the fire in the core… placement of the trolly-crane… it’s bits that erupted out of the core when it went empty and caught fire. Spewed-up, whanged off the bottom of the trolly… and then dropped into the pool!
H; The fools are still hiding bad stuff… as they sent a cam down into the core… DIDN’T SHOW IT though… now did they!?
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