Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Fukushima Decommissioning Chief Admits 600 Tonnes of Melted Fuel "Missing"


Mark Willacy. Fukushima clean-up chief still hunting for 600 tonnes of melted radioactive fuel. ABC, May 24, 2016, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/fukushima-operator-reveals-600-tonnes-melted-during-the-disaster/7396362
In an exclusive interview with Foreign Correspondent, the Tokyo Electric Power Company's chief of decommissioning at Fukushima, Naohiro Masuda, said the company hoped to pinpoint the position of the fuel and begin removing it from 2021.

But he admitted the technology needed to remove the fuel has to be invented.

"Once we can find out the condition of the melted fuel and identify its location, I believe we can develop the necessary tools to retrieve it," Mr Masuda said....In Reactor 1, all of the fuel has melted down from inside the pressure vessel," Mr Masuda said.
"In reactors 2 and 3, about 30 per cent to 50 per cent remains in the pressure vessel and the rest has melted down. But unfortunately, we don't know exactly where [the fuel] is...
..."It's estimated that approximately 200 tonnes of debris lies within each unit," said TEPCO's Naohiro Masuda. "So in total, about 600 tonnes of melted debris fuel and a mixture of concrete and other metals are likely to be there."

Where Might the Missing Fuel Be Located? 

Although some of it may be in the atmosphere and in the Pacific Ocean, much of the fuel from reactor unit 1 may be located under the plant in the underground river, as illustrated by this diagram that was originally posted by the Swiss Embassy in Japan:




Meanwhile, Fukushima Still Looking Steamy Today:

 






2 comments:

  1. Marcel Leutenegger

    Thank you Majia for this information.

    The significance of the statement by Naohiro Masuda should not be underestimated because it indicates that the entire fuel inventory of reactors 1, 2 and 3 was lost (496t Uranium in reactor vessels and spent fuel pools). Here, I assume that the remaining 104t are made up of control rods and encasing materials. To me it is clear that three complete meltdowns happened and that no fuel remains in any of the reactor vessels, at best some in the containments.

    The China syndrome is very real - hot fuel in contact with ground water. Worse, I think that the very heavy fissile materials segregated out and concentrated at the bottom of the melts, where they undergo sporadic fission flares. It seems sheer luck that the melts never reached fast prompt criticality. The resulting nuclear detonation would pulverize the entire site into the stratosphere.

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