Video: Reactor No. 1 containment filled with smoke or steam — “What destroyed the inside like this? Earthquake? Explosion?”

Published: September 27th, 2012 at 9:28 pm ET
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Analysis of video by EXSKF: “Video of Inside the Smoke/Steam-Filled Reactor 1 Containment Vessel [...] The camera gets inserted at about 2 minutes into the video [...] The inside seems to be filled with whitish smoke or steam [...] At 5 minutes, a rust-colored wall starts to appear on the left side of the screen. At about 18 minutes, the camera focuses better, and you start to see what looks like metal and concrete (? it may be mangled metal) debris.What destroyed the inside like this? Earthquake? Explosion?”

Published: September 27th, 2012 at 9:28 pm ET
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21 comments

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21 comments to Video: Reactor No. 1 containment filled with smoke or steam — “What destroyed the inside like this? Earthquake? Explosion?”

  • tooktheredpill

    Is it me….or is this like marching a boy scout into the middle of a massive forest fire and saying let me know how bad you think it is???

    The hole they drilled to get the camera in there is microscopic and the images they gained mean NOTHING that is going to help them deal with this.

    TEPco are stating 40 yrs to clean this up…I think 500 is more like a reasonable situation. I refer back to a previous post I made…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawsfynydd_nuclear_power_station

    This is less than 40 miles from me…construction began in 1959, operational in 1968…it shut down in 1991 which provided our region with power for just 33 years.

    http://www.nda.gov.uk/sites/trawsfynydd/

    This station won't be fully decommisioned till 2073 (that's nearly a hundred years since being built!!!) and that's just a regular NPS that hasn't undergone anything like Fuku.

    THAT'S 5 (i repeat 5) generations of humans just to have built, maintained, ran and disposed of 1 NPS. I mean this thing has been shut since 1991 but we've still got 4 years (apparently) until it enters a "Care and Maintenance phase" "During this stage the reactor is left to cool. Most of the structures are removed, and the reactor building is left in a safe state which requires minimum supervision, until final site clearance." WHICH WILL TAKE 67 YEARS ACCORDING TO THE OFFICIAL SITE!!!!

    AND THIS WASN'T A SITE THAT SUFFERED A MELTDOWN!!

    Crazy. :-(


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    • Maggie123

      tooktheredpill: "THAT'S 5 (i repeat 5) generations of humans just to have built, maintained, ran and disposed of 1 NPS" (which will have provided power for a grand total of 33 years during those 5 generations.

      Nothing more should need be said re "practicality"!!

      Thank you for this. The detail helps clear the fog of vague imaginings.


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    • TerraHertz TerraHertz

      Yes, it's insane isn't it? Even just from a timescale POV.

      But it's worse than that. I've seen estimates of the total energy profit ratio of nuclear power stations, that are net-NEGATIVE.
      Meaning: even assuming that everything goes according to plan, the amount of energy society expends overall to construct, fuel, & run a nuclear power station then decommission it and safely store the long term radioactive wastes produced, is GREATER than the total electrical output of a nuclear power station during its operating lifespan.

      In one short sentence: nuclear power gives us nothing but pain and trouble.

      Overall, they actually cost energy, which comes from… you guessed it, the oil energy economy.


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      • Mack Mack

        @TerraHertz – Thanks for affirming that nuclear energy can be net-negative.

        Can you explain this graph.

        It shows DELIVERED Nuclear Energy is 2.19 QBtu

        BUT

        ELECTRIC ENERGY LOSSES is 6.20 QBtu

        http://www.architecture2030.org/enews/images/2010USenergy_full.jpg

        Is it saying nuclear energy loses almost 3 times more energy than it delivers?

        And in case anyone hasn't read it, Enenewser Ramaswami Kumar wrote this nuclear fuel cycle audit where he states nuclear energy consumes five times more energy than it delivers: http://energyauditofnuclearfuelcycles.blogspot.in/


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        • TerraHertz TerraHertz

          Without reading whatever article that bar chart is from, I'd expect "electrical energy losses" to mean the power loss in the electrical distribution grid. As you can see, a lot of the power pushed into the grid gets wasted as heat in the power lines, transformers, and so on. Which is mostly unavoidable.

          The loss/consumption ratio is higher for nuclear power stations than overall electrical, since nuclear stations tend to be further from the consumers than other types of power station, hence higher line losses.


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  • tooktheredpill

    I correct myself…sorry…2073 TO 2083 making it definitely over 100 years meaning 92 years worth of work since after this plant produced it's last Volt.
    Was it worth 33yrs of power for 92 yrs of cleanup???

    (i make that nearly 6 generations of families involved in the whole process)

    WWII ended only 3 generations ago and we can't really imagine what that was like then! Perception of timescale has seriously been twisted.


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    • m a x l i

      While you are correcting…from 1968 to 1991 it is only 23 years of being operational, not 33. Further, if everything ran smoothly, then you would have to subtract estimated 2 years for periodic routine maintenance, leaving about 21 years being operational.


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  • tooktheredpill

    Let me put this into a perspective (as i see it)

    when we talk about WWII it is a distant (black & white) memory that most families today only can connect to through stories from their GREAT grandparents or grainy 'pathe' news clips.

    I am talking GREAT,GREAT,GREAT grandparents whose children will still be cleaning this up!

    When WWI ended (which nobody could've imagined at the time) it was called "the great war" (not the 1st world war) as obviously they never envisaged just twenty years later there would be a second (they even went so far as to promise "globally!" that they would never let this happen again.)

    Swing forward 60 years, do you think those same people could ever have envisaged skyscrapers as huge as the world trade center let alone their downfall!!!

    In timescales such as this…NOTHING, NOTHING can be predicted!!!!

    yet the NRC, IAEA, and all the other bodies would have you believe that they have a crystal ball…so clear…that it can base our futures on this industry!

    We might be at war in 5yrs time!!! can you tell me it couldn't happen???

    Where does all their planning go then??

    (I'm using the world wars as a example btw but only to show that in 1932 nobody could've predicted 1939!)


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  • tooktheredpill

    Hi Anne,

    I'm not sure if your post was a counter to my last statement about predicting 1939 in 1932 or not?

    I understand that world politics and war are more orchestrated than mere sheeple like myself will ever know and it wouldn't surprise me if 1939 WAS predicted/planned in 1932 I still think that the sheer amount of time since the war ended in '45 still only equates to just over half of the entire lifetime of a NPS from beginning to end and that it's almost impossible to imagine what life was like back then only 3 generations ago, even with grainy film and anecdotes from family members.

    just counted…there have been 12 presidents since then. In half the lifetime of a NPS (who knows what could happen between now and another 12??)


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  • TerraHertz TerraHertz

    About the rubble in the video – I wish I knew where this was in the containment. If it's fairly low, down near the base of the pressure vessel, the fragments might be from when the reactor core melted out and hit concrete.

    Molten corium hitting concrete (wet or dry) has got to be a quite violent process. From welding and casting metal I know what happens when blobs of molten steel hit even dry concrete. It goes BANG as the water in concrete (it's a hydrate) disassociates explosively. This is why metal casting works use loose sand floors, not concrete.


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  • AGreenRoad AGreenRoad

    What fun they are having with Fukushima now.. all of the BILLIONS of test subjects…

    Just a few back then, millions after Chernobyl, now it is BILLIONS…

    Human Radiation Experiments Performed Without Consent Or Knowledge; via A Green Road http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/09/human-radiation-experiments-performed.html


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  • Nigwil

    Interesting video. At around 22:00 there is a view of what looks like a fragment of a fuel assembly. Looks like about two rows thick by 5 or 6 rods wide. Or maybe a bunch of control rod guides. Either way I don't think what we see can be found on the as-built drawings!


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  • moonshellblue moonshellblue

    I think an underground explosion caused by the corium burning through ground and hitting water is happening as there is smoke visible thus it must be recent? This of course is an uneducated guess but what else could explain the smoke at this juncture. If it was from the earthquake I would think that would have dispersed by now. Also I have read that the temperature is increasing but of course this could be due to a faulty gauge as TEPCO always says when something like that goes awry.


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    • PhilipUpNorth PhilipUpNorth

      Moon: My guess is that smoke and steam are continuous, and will continue for a hundred years.


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      • moonshellblue moonshellblue

        Philip, I think you're right I just hope it is not still fissioning? but who knows we are in unchartered waters. I need to check current levels on I-131 which may indicate fresh fissioning. Also I hope Super Typhoon Jelewt slows down to a Tropical storm when it reaches Japan as it is suppose to do.


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        • PhilipUpNorth PhilipUpNorth

          Moon: We can tell from the radioisotopes in the fallout that Fukushima continues to fission as it steams and sputters and sparks in the mudrock beneath the ruins. Humanity's only control of the 3 Rogue Nuclear Reactors is to let ground water continue to flow over, under, and around the coriums and thence into the Pacific Ocean, to its ruination. (Alaskan King Crab was my favorite). :(


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  • Andres Arce Andres Arce

    after twenty minutes with the best definition, the surface of water is distinguishable down there, boiling with bubbles and emitting contaminated steam


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