Vermont nuclear expert, Arnie Gundersen, of Fairewinds Associates, has been a frequent guest on the national media throughout the past week. Now he shares with us his analysis of what satellite views of the damaged reactors might be indicating about the potential for recovery of the situation. Mr. Gundersen is a valued friend of GMD so I am sure he will not mind me referring to him in the familiar.
Among the visual clues that Arnie notes is the fact that no workers are visible anywhere on the site. This is obvious reason for concern, since Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government have not been consistently candid about the facts on the ground and the visuals cast some doubt on their insistence that emergency workers are still laboring at the plant .
The roof structure over Unit #1 has been destroyed and there appears to be nothing but rubble below. Arnie says that if there was water in the containment chamber it would be visible in the photo as a glimpse of blue.
Unit #2 appears at first glance to be intact. But, on closer inspection, there appears to be a plume of steam rising from an aperture on one side. If steam is indeed escaping, he says,
“that isn’t a good sign.”
Then there is Unit #3, which is
“totally obliterated and in danger of melting down.”
Unit #4 has a crack in the side of it, where the nuclear fuel pool is believed to be dry.
Additionally, Arnie points to an area where the floodwater meets the perimeter of the facility. There would have been service water pumps installed on that perimeter, that were intended to provide emergency cooling water. Those pumps are gone. As Arnie explains, this is called “a single point of vulnerability.” Even if the diesels hadn’t been flooded, absent those service pumps, emergency water couldn’t have been supplied throughout the plant in any case.
Looking at the general condition of the site at this point, Arnie thinks it is expecting a lot to assume that there is an intact interior system to take up and deliver the water. It is likely that
“the pipes and pumps and valves inside are not working, or at least not working well.”
Should the most optimistic assumptions about the interior plumbing be true and water can successfully be delivered to the interior of the reactors, one must remember that this will not be normal cooling water, but brine.
“They’ll have to gerry-rig a system to pump seawater inside.”
Assuming that they succceed in doing that.
“Pumping saltwater will build-up contaminants on the nuclear fuel that ‘s likely to clog the nuclear fuel and make cooling it that much harder to do.”
We are extremely grateful for the insight Arnie is providing on this critical situation and promise to keep our readers updated as we learn more.
“Arnie thinks it is expecting a lot to assume that there is an intact interior system to take up and deliver the water.”
Everytime I hear the news saying that TEPCO is rushing to apply power to runs the pumps, I keep saying, ‘what pumps?’ The ones that were destroyed when the hydrogen ignited? what plumbing, the pipes that were crushed when tons of debris crashed to the ground?
TEPCO actually expects us to believe that applying power to these crippled facilities is going to anything other than spark and ignite more hydrogen?
I am hopeful, but realistic.
One day or night with one reactor would be a disaster.
If for an entire week, there are explosions, spent fuel pool(s) dry, fires w/billowing smoke skyscraper heigths into the air, at not one but something happening at various time in all four of these reactors, oh please, even those of us who are not experts know this is an unimaginable disaster.
That smoke & steam as well as the exposed fuel rods are leaking highly radioactive emissions as well as steam & smoke into the environment & the IAEA nor any other entity appears to be doing a thing is criminal as well as an outrage.
The fact that government, US for the most part & Japan, the industry & entire US msm esp the likes of Fox News are downplaying this is reprehensible to say the least.
After the news reports & footage, the apologists for the industry; ‘guests’ & ‘experts’, all industry insiders or pronuclear activists, come out to downplay & explain away everything that was reported.
So, even though foorage is included which shows such things as a reactor building with nearly entire upper portion looking like it has been bombed in a war zone, smoke billowing for hours they continue to spin it & no one is calling them or questioning this.
– crosspost
Thank you for posting this. However bad the news, having someone we trust explain the issues really helps.
This suggests that Arnie’s worst apprehensions may be borne out.
In our short-attention-span news cycle, this unfolding disaster gets conveniently shuffled to the rear of the queue as Libya takes over. I say “conveniently” because the worldwide nuclear energy industry is only too happy to have it pushed off the front page.