Fukushima unit 3 explosion may be a criticality event

When I open that page, my browser dismisses and I'm left staring at my desk top.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

--Winston

I opened that link in a new tab within Firefox 3.6.16 and it loaded without any problem.

Burning fuel rods miles away ...

Reminds me of PepCon, ' Ammonium perchlorate is ok to breathe for a week, everything is well within epa standards.'

It can be hard to get away from when you have a swamp cooler.

Thanks, something much closer to the truth at least.

SW

I tried again and the third attempt worked.

The problem with computers is that trying the same thing over and over is not insanity but sometimes the only logical troubleshooting approach.

Thanks!

--Winston

any problem.

I think that I have the same T-shirt somewhere. ;-)

Whups. Fourth and fifth attempts failed. I should have made time to watch the movie at attempt #3.

Oh Well!

--Winston

What browser are you using?

I used Chrome for Linux.

(...)

Seamonkey. It works fine for every other site. Mysterious, that.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101206 SeaMonkey/2.0.11

--Winston

Yeah. That looks like a pretty well developed explanation. Due to the vectoring of the explosion that Gundersen cites, I thought that the containment cap had been blown off in the following fashion: cooling water to containment fails, containment pumped full of sea water when pumping power restored, super heated sea water instantly phase changes to steam due to reactor vessel breach, and giant steam explosion blows containment cap sky high. The containment cap, however, appears to be in place in the infrared picture he shows in the video. The heat source seems to be in the cooling pond.

I am unsure as to how a hydrogen explosion sets off a critical event, but Gundersen seems to think it possible and surely knows way more about this stuff then I do. What he says happened is basically a "dirty bomb" explosion.....except that no conventional explosive was used and hydrogen gas exploded in place of the conventional explosive typically used in a dirty bomb.

This has certainly created the largest nuclear mess in history due merely to the amount of nuclear material that was stored in the cooling ponds there. A portion of the Japanese mainland is going to be a wasteland. Dave

snipped-for-privacy@is.invalid wrote: ...

As I understood his explanation, the shock wave from the hydrogen explosion compressed the fuel rods together enough to start a chain reaction. Just like in a bomb, except that the reaction soon generated enough energy to vaporize material and separate the rods & stop the reaction before bomb-level energy could be released.

Bob

If he actually used the phrase 'dirty bomb' that is all the evidence anyone needs that whatever gunderson says may be safely ignored.

And there is no way that this compares to chernobyl- that was many orders of magnitude worse.

Dave

The explosion was on the side of the pond, not on the side of the reactor.

Gunersen's explanation is that a "minor" hydrogen explosion compressed the fuel rods, which then instantly went critical and created a nuclear explosion. It only involved a very small portion of the material, of course (otherwise there would be a gaping hole instead of japan), but it was enough to produce a tremendous blast, far beyond regular hydrogen explosions in other units.

Unit 3, also, is the place where MOX fuel was used, which has a high concentration of plutonium.

They are very lucky that prevailing winds blow into the ocean.

Gundersen did not use the phrase "dirty bomb". I did.

And you know this because you are intimately familiar with how many spent fuel rods split open in the explosion and how much nuclear material was vaporized and blown into the atmosphere, correct? Because your sources on this are.....well....what exactly? The Japanese government? TEPCO? Both have already proven themselves deceptive. Dave

Education, besides "self-esteem" training.

Hope This Helps! Rich

The good luck of that Fukushima station is that it is located on the beach, and the winds blow into the ocean. (towards the US)

As far as the amount of radiactive materials released, from cores and exploded pools, may be greater at Fukushima.

I find stating this as a "good" rather short-sighted. Radioactive fish don't seem like such a good thing to me - I suppose it might finally put the Japanese off whaling, once the whales are fully contaminated. Either that or Godzilla will come sort them out on the subject.