Published: October 16th, 2012 at 2:17 am ET
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The SimplyInfo research team discusses the situation in the torus room of Unit 1:
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We show where the varied radiation levels have been recorded in unit 1 in the diagram below. [...] The readings in this area go higher the lower you go and closer to the center of the east side of the torus room.
The highest readings found so far were taken when workers dropped a scope through a floor hole into the torus room on the west side of the building. The lower the scope went the higher the radiation levels. TEPCO found the radiation level in the bottom of the torus room under water to be 100,000 to 1,000,000 Sv/h on the west side. Yet the radiation levels on the first floor on that side are low compared to the radiation levels on the east side of the first floor. This indicates that the torus room readings on the east side if available would be even higher than those very high readings found on the west side of the torus room. TEPCO has not attempted the same inspection on the east side as the 1st floor levels are too high to send workers in.
[...]
June 27, 2012 Tepco Handout: “Indicated order values of 10^8 – 10^9″ (100,000,000 – 1,000,000,000 millisieverts per hour OR 100,000 – 1,000,000 sieverts per hour)
Watch Fairewind’s Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen discuss the Unit 1 Torus Room here
Published: October 16th, 2012 at 2:17 am ET
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This confirms it then doesn't it ? That the corium has left the reactor, and is outside of the containment …
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I can't imagine how the fuel could travel to the torus…
Moreover I believe that a level of 100K-1000K Sv/h is not possible in such conditions. Even at Chernobyl the exposed semi-active core was about 300 Sv/h. I believe such extreme levels (>100K Sv/h) are not possible in such conditions (maybe close to supernova..). Also the fuel is 1.5 years after scrum, so the rate is reduced by now.
They also stated that when they pulled the sensor out of water it was still showing the same extreme rate. So I believe this must be an instrument failure.
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"I believe such extreme levels (>100K Sv/h) are not possible in such conditions (maybe close to supernova..)"
Science is not a kind of believe.
h.
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The science seems to be clearly against that high figures, ignoring that Sieverts are really meaningless random handwaving measure in such a case. Sieverts is effective dose in biological tissues, it depends on the radioactive substance and the tissue affected. Does it even make sense to have Sieverts under water? The water will me absorbing most of the dose, so it's not clear to me how this would be defined.
Now there's a clip of TEPCO handout which does indeed seem to state that, I wonder why the cropping though. It makes a huge difference if the table has multiple columns, in which case the "Indicated order values of 10^8 to 10^9" could refer to them.
One thing I'll grant though, the oft quoted 300 Sieverts/hour for Chernobyl is likely at quite a distance, and the total amount of nuclear fuel at Chernobyl was much less, so 300 Sv/h is not quite the limit. On the other hand it's estimated a total of 80,000 Sieverts of radiation was released at Chernobyl, at 1 million Sv/h that'd be just 10 minutes.
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I should learn to look up those handouts etc. before posting. Yeah I found the original handout and that's the only column it has, so that range is referring to Sieverts(*). However, the handout carries with it an explanation:
"However, the dosimeter seems to have failed as it indicated order values of 10^8 – 10^9mSv/h during the measurement and the values did not change until the dosimeter was brought back up."
While interesting, this indicates instrument malfunction and nothing at all can really be made of the values it was showing.
(*) The original image does carry a huge red warning of "The dosimeter seems to have failed during the measurement." which has been cropped off in the Enenews link, which is very bad practice.
One further note on the maths: Radiation follows inverse square law, due to the radiation spreading out as it radiates from the source, its intensity is inversely propotional to square of the distance. Put in simple terms, when distance doubles, the radiation intensity falls to one fourth.
If you work this equation backwards carelessly, you can reach arbitrarily high values for the intensity at source as the distance approaches zero. The physical interpretation of this would be pretty much measuring the radiation intensity inside the radioactive particle or eventually the radiation itself. Physically this is neither possible nor sensible, and the radioactive particles will be widely dispersed with radiation blocking medium (ie. water)…
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Thank you for tracking down the instrument failure info. Basically it looks like the poor li'l dosimeter went 'o crap, I can't measure that!' and died.
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I wouldn't put it that way, in fact the data does not support the conclusions of SimplyInfo & some here at all.
In the handout the water level is cited as OP 4.000. One will note the radiation is highest, little over 10 Sv/h right above it. But the values measured below surface are rapidly falling – 3.6 Sv/h just 20 cm below that, and then 2.8 Sv/h a meter below that. You might think that's just the dosimeter breaking up, but there's another important clue – the temperature is actually falling the lower the probe descends. That would not be happening if the corium lied at the bottom of the torus room, or indeed the radiation does was rising anywhere near the quoted numbers.
Radiation is very hard environment for electronics, and so is the pressure at several meters of water. Finding some components able to function under the pressure of 6 meters of water may be about as challenging as radiation hardening them. And the data absolutely do not support the contention the dosimeter went "o' crap, I can't measure that". Radiation and temperature were going down, pressure was going up.
There is, however, a disconcerting (not so surprising) fact being ignored here: The corium is not at the bottom of the torus room, either. If it were, the lowest temperature would not be at the bottom. If it were, the radiation would not fall deeper into the water. What we have is just some radioactive debris/light matter having floated to the water surface.
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That's true about Sieverts. But I think this is a kind of simplification, because for beta and gamma particles the weighting factor (from Gy to Sv) is 1, so it's equivalent. For alpha which cann travel only very short distances and neutrons (which common instruments are not capable to measure) it's different, but in this case these are sorted out.. So 'our' Sv seem to be effectively same to Gy (in this case)…
I saw some radiation estimations of a melt-thru accident. The numbers immediately after accident were in range of 100-200 kSv/h (kilo!) in the victinity of RPV. I don't think the corium in Fukushima after 1.5 years can reach such levels (plus covered by water).
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Good dialogue on radiation. Get exposed to any level of contamination you are discussing…is deadly for carbon based life forms.
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Sure, but the question now is "where the heck is Mr.Spock"
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This brought me to one more idea… During the entire accident history there were no neutron measurements published. Never ever. Why? Seems to me intentional to hide the fact of local recriticalities…
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Thanks to you and guezilla for this enlighting discussion.
The neutron question is a really good one.
They are not charged and have a really weak magnetism, todays science is not able to detect them directly, first they have to react with other matter, then you can detect characteristic products.
You can use a fast method with BIG apparatus or very slow detection with handheld one. Not really useful to detect small hot-spots.
h.
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Who knows what and how much was really in the reactor to start with? Anything is proving to be possible at Fukushima Daiichi
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Long time and many events and details ago, i believe that Arnie Gundersen thought the torus under Reactor 1 could be taking on radioactive water or even melted fuel draining from its reactor. I think he further thought that the torus, or the pipes leading to the torus from the reactor, were cracked and leaking the water out into the basement. Given the force of the blast and that it was primarily contained within the building forcing the largest energy of the blast downward, as opposed to Chernobyl, which blew away all containment upwards and out, (and Unit 3 for that matter) that part of Unit 1's corium would make its way into the torus through pipes is very possible. How long the torus could hold the corium, i don't recall anyone saying.
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Big thanks to ADMIN for finding the Gundersen video addressing the torus room in Unit 1. A must watch if you haven't yet.
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Now that's how you play Where's Waldo…
… Clue #2. You're getting warmer.
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An explanation:
Where's Waldo refers to Where's Wally, if you're in the UK, is a children's book collection of find and seek riddles. I.E. Find Mr. "so and so" or Ms. "so and so" and then another clue like, under the umbrella or in pink coat, et.
"You're getting warmer" refers to another type of hide and seek game which, naturally, refers to an object out of sight/hidden from immediate view, is the "object" to be found. The "cooler" the position is relative to proximity of the object and the "hotter" refers to within reach. I.E. "other room" would be freezing cold or, standing next to it, maybe even touching it would be "ON FIRE".
In this case of Fuku, the "hotter" is higher the measurement…
Do they brave touch it?
How can they when being able too has yet to be invented?
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and i think Where's Waldo refers to Where's Vlad, if you're in Russia
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where's Hiro…
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¿adonde está juan?
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During all the time since last year, the cores been watered. What ways the water has taken may be difficult to say. If the readings are low where you might have thought they should be higher (i.e. inside the chamber) it could be because water has been poured in there and rinsed.
This must be proof there is a full nuclear meltdown.
The word they so much tried to hide, at the start of this catastrophe.
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Mr. Magnifico (may i call you El?) — ok where do i go to foind out hgow many sv/hr this or that? specifically, would ANYTHING be capable of such measurements? like, peacekeeper-ready Doomsday Devices to be stored against a day of Mutual Destruction that they cheerfully and in unison Assure us they have made sure will never arrive ? do the insides of our monstrous missiles, laid bare, even come close to such measurements?
enquiring minds want to know.
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so sorry re typos. oh and another thing: do such high readings bode any ill-er from farther away? (yes i am shortsightedly asking nervous questions like 'how much worse will it be for ME?')
remember, i tell myself, no — unnecessary — freaking out. (– http://tinyurl.com/attn-urgent — a wallpaper for a post 3-11 world as seen from a verbally oriented mind).
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There is more to read here:
http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=7955
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thank YOU
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These silly numbers just show that nothing works properly in high radiation.
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What I wanted to say is that this analysis might be based on incorrect input data. It would also assume that a part of corium would lie on bottom of the CV. That covered by ~2 meters of water might explain the reduced radiation level in CV, but on the other hand we would probably see bubbles in the water and more steam in CV as a result of water cooling the hot lava.
Higher radiation levels in higher parts of CV might mean that a part of the corium is still sticking in RPV.
Correct me if I'm wrong…
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We need to know the radiation level and temperature at bottom of the CV…
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EM, i think the corium went everywhere – a little here and there, some vaporized up the mouth of the reactor, some molten and running into the torus, a heavier corium blog burning through the bottom of the reactor through the rod insertion holes and down into the containment to form corium and burn through the containment vessel.
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Yes VicFromOregon, This is good thinking, Here is a site that makes such assumptions too.
http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=7955
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Shouldn't we see some corium stuck to the grating thru which it should fall down?
Also one more idea. The water treatment system is circulating coolant water from the buildings. There should be considerable amount of hot particles (including corium) dispersed in this water. That is then filtered out by the system and stored in tanks. How much of the hot mass has been sucked out this way? Maybe after a pretty long time they transport the majority of corium out this way
D
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… if you read the measurement table, the readings are in mSv/h, including the three points under water in the torus area …
… so instrument appears to be working, and readings are within the range of the Chernbyl Elephant's foot (300 Sv/hr) and the range above and in the headline should be read as 100 to 1,000 Sieverts per hour … not one thousand times this value …
… it's a nucleocrat's dream, to have these confusing values, changing names for radioactivity units … remember REM???
… One (1) Sievert equals 100 REM … 5 Sieverts equals 500 REM, which is a dose from which 50 per cent of those exposed will die within weeks; 10 sieverts (1,000 REM) is universally deadly to humans, and work in such areas is limited to seconds (oh the Joy!) …
… anything higher than 10 Sv/hr is obviously a big problem …
… they got readings in the 70 Sievert/hr range inside Unit 2 …
which implies a 50% fatal dose in four and a half minutes, and a guaranteed fatal dose in under ten minutes …
… the new readings in Unit one torus are higher, and imply more difficult operating conditions, new technologies needed, lots more hope and prayer, and clearly indict GE for flogging flimsy death machines … with a class action suit awaiting a gutsy legal team …
1,000 Sieverts per hour is 100,000 REM per hour is fatal in one hour divided by 100, or about 36 seconds …
… How much do you love nuke power now???
Creeps!
… peace …
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brilliant stuff nedli…
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ned, I think you're right about the mistaken unit of measure. I recall watching a PBS documentary about Soviet scientists investigating the Chernobyl accident. At one point they round a corner in the reactor building and find the "Elephant's foot" corium blob. They quickly retreated because they got a measurement of something like 1,100 Sv/hr. It's probably a similar situation at Fukushima.
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A lot of those scientists suffered from the exposure..workers at Fukushima Japan will have the same results.
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thank you for scouting this out. still want to know how to find out in the realm of what Sv'hr plutonium pits are… am very interested.
also re x-vessel, corium & water filtration: of course i have been seen in these p[ages with my favorite bit of history, http://tinyurl.com/itgotout . now as far as i know that sucker was between #1 and #2, but what do i know? well i know that it is precisely where one would expect such particulate matter to be, that is to say, to collect.
so then you have
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/highest-radiation-ever-detected-fukushima-10-sieverts-hour
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femalefaust, plutonium pits are of low radiation if the plutonium is weapons-grade, fresh and thus clean.
You could transport it practically unshielded in your pocket.
In USSR the nuke warheads' plutonium was exchanged about every ten years, as it becomes dirty (more radioactive) with time.
Furthermore, it depends much on the quality, e.g. Pu-238, 240, 241 isotopes decaying makes it dirty rather quickly.
Reactor grade plutonium is very dirty, and so nobody really wants it.
The "megasievert" thing is a hoax imho. Either it was really a defect or just an detector overflow.
My guess is that it was because of cesiumiodide washout and leaching to the torus when watering of the molten mass began.
Regarding the video, isn't the red blob loacated above the reactor, excluding the possibility that it can be corium?
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… wow!! Borax Part 2 (you tube) is so Daichi Unit 3 …
and we learned from Arnie in his "Bury it and come back in 300 years" interview with Helen Caldicott … that …
… GE's fuel (such a good thing they (we) brought to life)/sarc. has gone ex-containment … it has disintegrated, not really all melty – blobby style core melt, and it has collected in the Torus rooms … the basement concrete cellars surrounding the big, wet metal donut thingy, settling out on the floor as a kind of nasty ash, awaiting clean up, and imperfectly covered by and still polluting, regularly, our communal hydrosphere by leakage through cracks in the concrete, these deadly, radioactive poisons into the groundwater at this site … which flows into the ocean …
… and the radioactivity is transferred to the food chains via the water …cesium salts are water-soluble … its all so complex … bring back some football … the brain starts to hurt …
… but the brain is affected … Chernobyl dementia … Arnie's claim of 'radiation risk to personnel' when he doesn't say, "these poisons should never have been allowed to be produced and accumulated, in the first place" … that's the truth of the matter … it is that simple … it was and is a hoax … a nuclear hoax propagated by wicked American businessmen … GE …
… peace to the newsers everywhere
… in honest pursuit of the truth of the matter … no spin, no lies … no MSM Cover up
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Thanks for these posts.
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here, here. I concur!
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Fukushima Diary has an infrared image of the corium from unit 1 taken some time in 2011.
It was posted in October 2011
http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/10/news-inside-of-reactor-1/
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Mania,
I produced a short clip of the core from a helicopter flyby over unit I, it's hosted on my YouTube user channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRcnUavh6o
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Majia, that is. (Darn auto correct)
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longer version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbEgG2Rcy4g
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Thanks I will check it out
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nice. i embedded it an update to my post on the subject:
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-case-you-missed-it-fukushima-molten.html#fair-use
this clip was since flagged by Asahi and thus removed by my forced hand from my youtube account. if the name is an indication, this is the edition of the clip that may indeed have been your source, no? thanks to googlevideo not being linked to youtube, one may still view and download a copy of fuku-molten.mp4, as well as an archive of the stills:
http://femalefaust.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-case-you-missed-it-fukushima-molten.html#zip
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This cannot be corium. Look at the temperature scale.
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Unit1 meltdown began with 50 tons of fuel. The radiation level inside Containment1 shows only a residual coating of fuel in Reactor and Containment. High levels of radiation in water in Torus basement room indicate some corium is still there, probably on the East side of Torus basement. Figure maybe a ton is in the Torus and Torus basement. This leaves 49 tons to burn out through the floor of the Containment or through the Torus basement floor, and into the mudrock beneath Fukushima.
Keep this in mind: TEPCO perpetuates the myth that corium is all safely contained within Buildings1,2,&3. This way, the public continues to believe that Fukushima was an event that happened in the spring of 2011, and that the radiation is being cleaned up, slowly but surely. In any case, all reactors were in cold shutdown by the end of 2011, and so are of no further concern. The fact is that there are over 200 tons of corium at Fuku which TEPCO has yet to locate. Much of this melted corium has exited Buildings1,2,&3, and has merged with nature. Radiation levels are still increasing worldwide. Fukushima is not over. Where is the 200 tons of melted nuclear fuel, TEPCO?
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Awesomely stated.
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Ditto Anthony
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repost, hope it's helpful to understand the situation:
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. Providing of course the thermal power of the corium was not exhausted by the concrete as is passed through.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_%28nuclear_reactor%29
http://enenews.com/new-asahi-doc-nisa-team-knew-of-triple-meltdowns-by-march-18-nisa-kept-secret-until-tepco-admitted-it-two-months-later-melted-fuel-not-fully-submerged-in-water
.anyone have better info/measurements/links? C'mon TEPKiLL, hows about some…
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(cont)
Also, Arnie Gundersen puts the temperature of corium closer to 3500C, so could go through even faster, and who knows how fast or far it may have gone through the rubble that FukuSteamer was built on…plus, how many fractures or cracks in the foundations now from hundreds of tremors since…does the rise of the tide now contact the coriums and create all the steam that is rising from the ground and between the reactors now?
See Knuckelchen's and Fuku1live's clips..samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD7QGPuaCoY&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g1TbyBMo1s&list=UUiO3EpYoV9oYmCcNbRxBVtg&index=8&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/user/nuckelchenblogde
http://www.youtube.com/user/fuku1live
Some pics of what appear to be molten slag exiting building 2: http://femalefaust.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/about-that-slag-melting-through-rubble.html
Peace on Earth…
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omniversling, I have used the rule of thumb that over 200 tons of Coriums1,2,&3 reached through the floors of Buildings1,2,&3 by the end of March, 2011. Further, I believe the Coriums have now "exhausted themselves", as you put it, and have stopped at depths of between 25' and 75' below ground level, surrounded and cooled by ground water flowing through the site. (anne has conjectured here that some corium may have followed cracks in the mudrock, flowing down and under the seabed of the Harbor.) I believe that some spreading out has occurred as corium interacted with the soft layers in the mudrock. Although stable, coriums pop and sizzle as they continue to fission, and pass on a very high radiation load to the ground water that passes around Coriums1,2,&3 and flows unhindered into the Pacific Ocean. The loss of the Pacific Ocean Fishery is a gigantic loss to the human race, and a big hit for the world economy. When the waters of the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of the US and Canada become highly contaminated, not even the gigantic nuclear industry bribes will stop the government from acting to close the Pacific Fishery, ban all imports from Japan, and shut down all North American nuke plants.
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Philip,
If the corium went where you say it did, would it not create something akin to a lava tube? In Chernobyl, the corium blob mixed with sand (located in compartments around the reactor, if memory serves) to create glass. Years later, the glass has broken down and become brittle, turning into dust.
What if the corium under Fukushima has become "glassified?" If so, then for a certain number of years perhaps water interaction won't have much effect. But after it starts breaking down into dust, contamination with the ocean seems likely to occur.
Pure speculation based on what we know about Chernobyl, but food for thought.
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Pudding, I agree. The Chernobyl video showed the coriums had already stopped flowing and burning through by the time they reached the basement floor slab. This shows that the molten fuel rods do quickly become absorbed by volcanic glass. I go out on the lava flows near my home alot, and what it sounds like when I walk on pahoehoe sheets of lava flowstone, is like crunching glass. It is solidified glass lava stone in a sense. In the area are wisps of glass fiber that float on the wind, and sand. The vitrification at Chernobyl was similar to pahoehoe 'glass stone'.
I don't see why they are hosing down the pahoehoe slumps at this late stage of the game. Bury them.
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… in the absence of info from them that know, we are free to speculate … and I'm guessing we're a whole lot closer to the truth than 'cold shutdown' …
… in fact it is our duty to speculate, to mull it over, to search for the truth … and this is noble, compared to the dissembling we get from TPTB
… so carry on newsers everywhere, and thanks to Admin. for the forum!!!
… kind of like the secret Cheney energy meetings … in the absence of admission as to the guest list and the agenda, we are free to guess and speculate … what say you they tried to block natural gas expansion back then, to prop up the false economics of nuclear?? not to mention the California rip off benefiting Enron ($10 billion … and they folded six months later … and 9/11 covered their tracks) etc. etc.
… we are on to them
… the truth will out
… Newsers: Stay strong
and thanks for the encouragement above, Aftershock, Anthony and PurpleRain …
Keep it up PhilipUpNorth, Majia and Arclight!!!
p.s. what ever happened to WhatAboutTheKids???
… peace! …
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agreed nedli. I also miss WhatAboutTheKids. That said, keep up the excellent analysis…
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