Fukushima nuclear plant explosion

**Mental Trousers** · 12th March 2011, 22:43

Sounds like the experts are leaning towards an actual explosion rather than a pressurized steam breach. Main reason is the lack of white smoke in the explosion itself. There was white smoke earlier, but not when the explosion happened.

**Brian d marge** · 12th March 2011, 22:44

oh bolloxs
tomorrow is raining and the wind is in the east

oh nuts

Stephen

**Mike Troutman** · 12th March 2011, 22:50

Well, having been a nuclear reactor operator....

1: the reactor was shut down. loss of coolant results in the core from being able to maintain criticality.

2: WAS a gas explosion. nothing more than that.

3: The containment buildings prevented anything too horrible happening.

4: Could be worse and don't trust 'experts' hired by the media.

**Mike Troutman** · 12th March 2011, 22:58

oh yeah, if there is water in the reactor core super criticiality will be achieved due to the nature of that type of reactor. then yeah, could melt down resulting in a large steam explosion spreading nasty stuffs around. this is what happened at chyrnobel. except the russian reactor was for a different reason.

**Marmoot** · 12th March 2011, 23:08

Originally Posted by Brian d'marge

Stephen

Hey glad to see you're ok.

**Winston001** · 12th March 2011, 23:20

Originally Posted by Mike Troutman

Well, having been a nuclear reactor operator....

4: Could be worse and don't trust 'experts' hired by the media.

Fair enough except some experts do know what they are talking about. The professor on BBC makes a lot of sense.

This explosion is grey suggesting concrete dust. If there is a lot of steam its not obvious - but even so that should be the cause of the breach of the building.

We don't know if the containment vessel itself has ruptured but there is a good chance it hasn't.

Correct me by all means: as I understand it the engineers were releasing steam from the containment vessel cooling water into the building to reduce the pressure. That built up and ruptured the building = explosion we saw.

Nevertheless the nuclear system still has structural integrity although the coolant is leaking steam in an uncontrolled way. No steam visible on cameras at the moment.

Edit: switching between BBC 93 and RT channel 96 - very good coverage on both.

**jonbuoy** · 13th March 2011, 02:41

Chernobyl reactor was still "running" till the bitter end. They say the only problem with Fukushima was the backup generators being swamped by water, they only had a battery powered cooling systems to take away the latent heat from the core. Media are asking why they built reactors on the coast - what do they think is used to cool the cooling system for the reactor.

**CookMySock** · 13th March 2011, 06:20

With no coolant flow, it was just a matter of time before the cooling jacket reached either the critical state, or the destruction pressure of the cooling system. It does surprise me that they did not bleed off high pressure gas to prevent this, or that a safety device did not do it involuntarily.

An alternate theory might be, if the coolant HAD been allowed to evaporate and release in a controlled fashion, there might have actually been little or no coolant remaining. The problem at this point if they ADD coolant, that coolant will immediately and uncontrollably proceed through its critical point and expand at such a rate that the safety valves cannot cope with its' volume.

The grey dust is almost certainly going to be from the destruction of the building.

It also surprises me that they were unable to jury-rig any pump whatsoever to feed the unit. Surely they must have a big-ass diesel nearby to call into service.

Fortunately its in quite a rural area.

**mrchips** · 13th March 2011, 06:43

Originally Posted by Winston001

Update - wind is blowing east from Fukushima out to sea. That is the prevailing wind direction and the reason Japanese nuclear plants are built on the east coasts of Japan. So hopefully most of the radioactive dust and steam will blow away to sea.

You mean..... blown away to inhabited land in the pacific