Another “Glowing” Report
The BBC tells us Power hopes rise at Japan plant
Workers are close to restoring power to cooling systems at a quake-hit Japanese nuclear power plant, officials say.
Engineers connected a cable through which they hope to supply electricity to part of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
…Radioactive contamination has been found in some food products from the Fukushima prefecture, Japanese officials say.
The iodine was found in products – reported to be milk and spinach – tested between 16 and 18 March and could be harmful to human health if ingested, the officials said.
…Traces of radioactive iodine have also been found in tapwater in Tokyo and five other prefectures, officials said on Saturday.
The traces are within government safety limits, but usual tests show no iodine, the AP news agency reported.
…Japan’s nuclear safety agency earlier hoped that electricity would be restored on Saturday but later revised its projection.
“If no problem is found at the facility today, the power will resume as early as tomorrow [Sunday], ” agency spokesman Fumiaki Hayakawa is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
However, an official from the power company which runs the plant told AFP: “Although we are doing our best, unfortunately we cannot say when electricity will be restored.”
Given the scale of the damage, it is not certain the cooling systems will work even if power is restored. Workers are also boring holes in roofs at the plant to prevent a potential gas explosion.
The good news is that they have finally put some holes in the roofs of those reactors that still have roofs to vent the hydrogen, instead of letting it blow out the walls. I have also seen reports that they have the back-up generators for reactors 5&6 working again, which hopefully means that they won’t be “going nuclear” any time soon.
The power from the grid has almost “been restored” for several days now, and the various spokesweasels for the government and TEPCO should have been saying they didn’t know when the power would be reconnected, rather than giving people a target that would be missed [like Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so far]. The standard voltage in Japan is 220 volts, not 110, and the voltage for large pump motors is probably twice that, which makes mistakes fatal. They have been spraying everything in sight with sea water, so this isn’t a great working environment for high voltage repairs.
2 comments
What blew off was the tin shed on top of the concrete reactor buildings for the GE Mark 1’s that protects the cooling pools and loading cranes. The concrete reactor buildings themselves were/are still intact. My understanding is that they’re concerned about hydrogen buildup within the reactor buildings themselves. Uhm, yeah, because if that blows, the cooling pools (which are on *TOP* of the building recessed into the concrete so that the crane can snatch rods out of them and insert said rods into the reactor) and their contents end up sloshing all over the ground. And at least one of those cooling pools has a HOT load — a load that had been pulled out of the reactor so that they could inspect the reactor. EEEP!
Yeah, 440 will *SNAP* at you. Back when I was doing electrical work, my boss managed to get snapped at by 440v when working on the feed for a big pump at a refinery (probably about the same size as the ones at a nuke plant). It blew him back by ten feet and roasted all the skin off his forearm. He was following procedure, wearing rubber shoes and with one hand behind his back, but apparently his elbow got too close to something that was grounded and…. SNAP! The current went from his hand to his elbow and BAM. Burning meat. As in, his arm was literally on fire from burning fat. Luckily he *was* following procedure, because if it had gone through his body rather than just through his forearm, he would have died instantly. Instead he was “merely” horribly disfigured and had multiple very painful skin graft surgeries for the next six months. And that was *without* salt water all around (salt water, of course, conducts electricity)…
I’m aware that the containment buildings are inside the larger structures, but the fuel pools are outside and reactors 4, 5, & 6 all have HOT loads in their pools, along with spent rods as they were down for inspection. 5 & 6 are separated from the other four, and seem to be in better shape. They are being cooled again with the back-up generators.
The HOT fuel in 4 is why I keep screaming about it. Containment vessels are tough, and can withstand a lot, but there’s more than a reactor load of fuel rods standing in a wading pool in 4 outside of any containment system, and they are currently the most likely to melt down.
I’m guessing that it is the spent rods in 3 that are producing the bulk of the radiation, as they may have lost water in their pool, or the pool may have been damaged in the explosion.
The biggest problem with the nuclear industry is that it wants to make a profit. If SAC ran that nuclear reactor, there wouldn’t be a problem, as they would 6 back-ups, monthly disaster drills, and any lapses would result in guarding planes on a flight line during Arctic winters. SAC was paranoid about all things nuclear, and accidents or acts of “G*d” were not acceptable.
Since the end of SAC, there would appear to be less regard for nuclear warheads in the Air Force than for Slim Jims at a 7-11.
I’ve had my butt kicked twice by 220V that was “Off”, because the breakers were mislabeled. I now pull the Mains. The second time my damn induction voltmeter lied to me. I don’t work on anything higher except to move it out of the way. I have a PVC hook that I put together to deal with downed power lines after hurricanes, but I deal with them from 15 feet away in rubber boots and gloves. Not my field.