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Merged nuclear power safe?

The latest update from World Nuclear News...

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Second_fire_reported_at_unit_4_1603111.html
... Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has described problems that occurred on the morning of 16 March with Fukushima Daiichi 3 and 4. He also outlined plans to pump water into unit 4.

At 8:34am local time white smoke was seen billowing out of Fukushima Daiichi 3. Efforts to determine the cause of this development were interrupted as all workers had evacuated to a safe area due to rising radiation readings. Readings from a sensor near the front gate had fluctuated for some time, although Edano said that on the whole there was no health hazard. Earlier in the morning readings had ranged between 600-800 microsieverts per hour, but at 10am readings rose to 1000 microsieverts per hour. Readings began to fall again from around 10:54.

Edano said that one possibility being considered was that the unit 3 reactor had suffered a similar failure to that suffered by unit 2 yesterday, although there had been no reported blast or loud sound, which had been the case for unit 2. The immediate focus, said Edano was on monitoring of levels and checking pumping operations.

It was not clear whether the increase in radiation readings were due to the problems today with unit 3 or the ongoing problems resulting from the damage suffered by unit 2, yesterday. ...
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pipelineaudio said:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wor...ate_struggle_to_stop_meltdown_at_fukushi.html
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News on Japanese TV channels still reports people continuing work at the plant but crews are rotated more rapidly.
According to this same source crews aren't allowed to approach the spent fuel pond of reactor 4.

In addition to the earlier reported suspected damage to the torus of reactor 2 the status of reactor 3's containment is also listed as suspected damaged.

12:30 JST
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300252224P.pdf


[For what it is worth, TV channels here usually switch to continuous news coverage if a certain developing event requires it but at the moment relatively ordinary programming is broadcast on the channels I can receive and the events at the Fukushima I nuclear plant are part of but not the only item in news bulletins.]
 
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What's the latest on the fire? Was it spent fuel rods or something else?

And why are the spent fuel pools upstairs in the same building rather than somewhere far away?
 
timhau said:
Regarding the situation in Tokio, this page is supposed to give you more-or-less live geiger counter data from Tokyo; unfortunately, it's mostly in Japanese so I have no idea whether that is true. Does anyone here read enough Japanese to either confirm this or call BS?
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That's what it says it is.

ETA: There's even English info at the bottom:

Nuclear radiation detector：Black Cat Systems GM-10 Geiger Counter Radiation Detector
Location: 　Latitude:N 35 ° 39 ' 28 '' ( 35.658 °) Longitude:E 139 ° 24 ' 5 '' ( 139.402 ° )　
100CPM = about 1 micro Sievert/hr
Reload every 10 minutes.
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Puppycow said:
What's the latest on the fire? Was it spent fuel rods or something else?

And why are the spent fuel pools upstairs in the same building rather than somewhere far away?
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Fuel rods are exchanged through the top of the pressure vessel. They put the pool just beside that opening (or in some cases, put the opening in the bottom of the same pool) to keep the fuels rods under water all the time.

In later designs of the BWR that's used in Fukushima, only a small working pool is put at the top of the containment vessel, and the rods are moved through water filled tunnels to a larger storage pool in a separate building.
 
Puppycow said:
That's what it says it is.

ETA: There's even English info at the bottom:
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Thanks. I knew it was geiger readings, but I couldn't tell whether they say it's from Tokyo or whether it's the guys from our local sushi joint making measurements in my back yard.

Anyway, if it's legit, they had peak readings of over 0.5 µSv/h early in the morning local time, but the level has almost halved since.

If my memory serves, flying in a plane at over 10 kilometers, you get somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 µSv/h.
 
timhau said:
As long as the only fatality in the plant is due to a crane that collapsed during an aftershock, I wouldn't call this even a nuclear disaster. Serious? Yes. Cause for concern? Yes. But 'disaster' or 'apocalypse'?
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I'd focus on the things making the real headaches, such as the PETROchemicals. And lunch.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Why, the levels spoke, they did the pruedent thing and got the workers out, then when it dropped back down, they went back in and carried on doing their jobs.
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Are you sure they went back in? The latest I can find says they pulled em and thats that
 
timhau said:
Are you sure it wasn't microsieverts? Living in 0.6 mSv per hour for a while would either make you very sick or turn you into Spiderman.
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Indeed which is why it was condemned for a time, until they pumped the radon out of the basement and added something. But i am probably recalling it wrongly and it was probably not that bad.

ETA: still bad enough that we had to go into an hotel for what felt like an eternity, weeks.
 
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armageddonman said:
I'm ashamed of being German these days.

German politians are claiming that this will bring the end of nuclear power worldwide.

German papers are claiming that the reactor core has been breached.

The goddam reactor core.

WTF is wrong with Germany these days? Seriously, I'm never going back.
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It may be the end of BIG nuclear reactors that people can easily see and point at saying "OMG! Scary nukular reactor!"

But as power gets more and more dear in places like the UK or Germany, cute little handfuls that nuclear proponents here at the JREF have been talking about may sprout in corporate basements like so many mushrooms. The power addiction is a bytch, so the atom is here to stay.
 
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