Criticality

down to 'Moderator"

The residual heat in the reactor is from the decay of byproducts, not uranium fission. Commercial fuel hasn't been enriched nearly as much as weapons-grade uranium.

In contrast Stalin's A-bomb program enriched it to around 92%, more than necessary.

jsw

...

In simpler terms than I found on the Web, water slows the free neutrons down enough to stay in a Uranium nucleus they happen to hit, making it unstable. Freshly emitted neutrons are too fast to catch.

jsw

That's very encouraging, I have been reading these links. THanks.

i

Primitive fear of the unknown is a large factor in the politics of nuclear power. The subject is much too intensively and extensively complex to explain well in non-scientific terms.

Some years ago I chatted with an official of a nuke at a party, and we were both surprised and alarmed to discover that I knew more about nuclear physics than he did, due to my chemistry degree. The next time we met he had taken some serious refresher courses.

jsw

It is also quite complex, as far as making emergency plans is concerned. "We did not think about this"

Personally, I still support nuclear power. I just want to form an unbiased opinion on what is likely to happen right now.

Yesterday, I had an insight that out of a half dozen things that were going badly at the plant, just *one* has to go from bad to worse, and the workers will be forced to abandon the plant due to radiation. It was a high probability turn of events, and it did happen.

My other thought about this, accepting your model of no chain reaction without water, is that if everything goes wrong, and the plant burns for months, most radiation will go eastward and dissipate in the Pacific. This is what I am personally expecting.

i

Then the food chain will reconcentrate it in large predators. I think I'll go stock up on tuna fish and iodine antiseptic.

Jim Wilkins fired this volley in news:ded6332c-d7f7- snipped-for-privacy@r19g2000prm.googlegroups.com:

You might want to consider potassium iodide tablets, instead, unless you're going to just absorb it through your skin.

LLoyd

I found this website yesterday, and living on the best coast, found it to be of some comfort:

Jon

Jon, the article's predictions turned out to be completely off the mark.

Pretty much everything that the author predicted would not happen, did. Containments were breached, major radiation releases occurred, etc.

He seems to have completely altered his article today, however, probably to save his face.

At least one containment was breached, spent fuel caught fire, and the workers basically abandoned the plant due to high radiation.

Right now, I believe, no one even *knows* what exactly is happening at the reactor sites.

Compare:

i

I happened to have an older version of his webpage, on my browser at work. I "printed it to PDF".

Here's the older version.

The guy seems to have changed his mind A LOT, but he is not saying this, just coyly changed his web page.

Here's what he was saying.

``There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity. By ?significant? I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on ? say ? a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.''

``The plant is safe now and will stay safe.''

``If you want to stay informed, please forget the usual media outlets and consult the following websites:

'' I am not really vilifying him too much for being wrong, but he surely did try to cover his tracks and surely did keep trying to look like he knows something.

What he did not understand was the high likelihood that the plant would need to be abandoned.

i

Maybe molten Lead could be pumped into the rod area.

DL

It sounds like you are talking about the spent-rod storage tank. If so, then my understanding is that the water is there as a shield, to contain residual radiation. Not for cooling. Individually they cannot go critical and they are spaced far enough apart to prevent collective criticality. So draining alone would not lead to criticality.

Not a nuclear engineer, Bob

Here we go, folks. Let the panic begin:

to $300 now...

-- Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. -- Demosthenes

Wow, suckers are born every minutes. What are they really worth, $1 per pack?

i

Close. 10 smackers.

--Winston

Furthermore, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said "It cannot necessarily be called a stable situation." In a country where saying "yes" with insufficient enthusiasm means "no", this basically means everything is completely out of control. This statement would almost be a humorous Japanism if the situation were not so serious.

Coming out of a Japanese official mouth, this means a lot.

i

Here's the dosage:

jsw

It should be noted that thriving Japan, having been nuked not once, but twice, is a clear example of the fact that a nuclear incident is not the "10,000 year barren wasteland" that the anti-nuke crowd tries to hype it up as.