Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Fukushima Daiichi's Strange Lighting Yesterday and Today and Speculation About Plant Conditions


Yesterday I noted a strange light/reflection at Fukushima Daiichi. I have no idea whether TEPCO has simply installed a new light that produces new glare that is visible on the webcams, OR whether the strange lighting effect is symptomatic of some other phenomena.

My guess is the former explanation. However, as a "webcam watcher" I make note of any unusual activities and let viewers come to their own conclusions.

Here are two screenshots showing the new illumination:






In the next two images, the lighting has diminished and the glow is gone from both views:




The effect is NEW. I have only seen it the last couple of days.

Plant conditions have been "steamy" but atmospheric humidity levels have also been quite high.

Years ago Arnie Gundersen said that steam is visible on high humidity days because the buildings are so hot from the radioactive decay. At one point TEPCO reported that unit 3 exposure level, when inside the building, measured in sieverts. I'm not going to take the time to track down the source citation because its public knowledge that unit 3 is too hot for humans and electronics.

It is possible the added steam I've seen recently is from the failing ice wall, in addition to the high humidity level. TEPCO has acknowledged the ice wall is failing to contain the majority of water flowing down the river running under the plant, emptying ultimately in the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO recently reported that the majority of fuel is still located in unit 2's reactor pressure vessel:

Bulk of melted fuel in No. 2 reactor at damaged Fukushima plant at bottom of pressure vessel: Tepco. July 28, 2016. The Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/28/national/bulk-melted-fuel-bottom-fukushima-no-2-reactor-vessel-tepco/#.V6IeAaKYK5o

Most of the melted nuclear fuel inside the No. 2 reactor at the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant is likely located at the bottom of its pressure vessel, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. has revealed.

According to a study that used a cosmic ray imaging system, an estimated 130 tons of the so-called fuel debris remains at the bottom of the vessel, the first time the location and amount of the melted fuel have been estimated.
However, Simply Information, an excellent source, disputes this finding with their own reading of the muon scan results, concluding that they actually show the fuel outside of containment:
SimplyInfo » First Fukushima Unit 2 Muon Scans Dispute New Scan Results July 30th, 2016 |http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15650
In the newest report TEPCO claims almost all of the fuel for unit 2 fell to the bottom of the reactor vessel and stayed there....The Nagoya scans have lower resolution than the more recent scan but with the large volume of fuel TEPCO claims to have in the reactor vessel, those lower resolution scans would have easily picked it up. This raises more questions about the accuracy of the newest muon scan report from TEPCO and IRID.
Simply Information's findings have strong relevance for decommissioning efforts.

However, even if the fuel remains in containment, as argued by TEPCO, the containment is CRACKED. TEPCO acknowledged this assertion in a video produced by NHK:  Unit 2 containment is cracked, leading to ground water contamination.

All that melted is very, very hot and requires continuous water cooling. Unit 1 has required nitrogen injections, which I may have documented with TEPCO webcam imagery, in my blog.

Could radioactivity increase intermittently at Daiichi depending upon contingencies in radioactive decay processes?

I'm not a nuclear physicist or engineer so I'm just asking questions here.

But I did notice an article from August 1, 2016 discussing a "degradation issue in spent fuel pool" at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant. The article describes how problems with a "neutron-absorbing panel in the plant’s spent fuel pool" poses risks of a "“self-sustaining fissioning reaction” should spent fuel cooling be disrupted:
Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Reports “Degradation” Issue in Spent Fuel Pool. Cape Cod.Com, August 1, 2016. http://www.capecod.com/newscenter/pilgrim-nuclear-plant-reports-degradation-issue-in-spent-fuel-pool/
According to the NRC, maintaining the neutron-absorbing materials in spent nuclear fuel pools is needed in case of a “self-sustaining fissioning reaction” involving spent fuel. If there was a failure of the neutron-absorbing panels, the water in the pool could heat up and boil, hindering the ability to cool the fuel rods.

Hypothetically, interruptions in cooling due to power outages (which have been reported frequently at Daiichi) and other problems could produce increased fission activity that produce more visible steam and perhaps other visual effects (e.g., such as the episodic pink shift in the morning light over Daiichi visible on the Futaba cam - its been very pink lately).
 
Is that happening at Daiichi? Based on my five-plus years of observations I believe it happened in 2011 and 2013, but not sure about what is going on now.



1 comment:

  1. On June 13, 2014, enenews reported that Asahi Shimbun stated "In his notes, Shimomura states that TEPCO officials suspected the bottom of the pressure vessel may have broken off, a catastrophic development." Steel has a temperature limit of about 1200 degF. After 1200 degF there is not any stress left in the material to counteract the pressure force of the reactor. That is the reason I think there was a massive steam explosion prior to the atomic explosion.

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