Doomsday Scenario at Fukushima

[somone]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-resnikoff/fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-japan_b_835932.html

Doomsday Scenario at Fukushima
Marvin Resnikoff
Senior Associate, Radioactive Waste Management Associates

...What is a fuel pool? Each year a commercial reactor operates, approximately 30 tons of fuel are irradiated. Every year or year and a half, this fuel is moved to a fuel pool for safe storage. Under 20 feet of circulating and replenished water, the fuel is stored. Water shields the radioactivity and cools the fuel, which still gives off heat. If water is not resupplied, which apparently was the case at unit 4, the water levels decline, the fuel is uncovered and it overheats, leading to a hydrogen explosion.

How much cesium-137 is contained in a fuel pool? The amount of cesium contained in the fuel pool is typically measured in curies or becquerels, but these assessments are meaningless unless you are a physicist. An easier way to look at it is in relation to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, where 100,000 Japanese where killed. Cesium is a semi-volatile material that has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool?

In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of irradiated (what the industry calls "spent") nuclear fuel was equivalent to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb. Ten tons is the amount of irradiated fuel that would be contained in a shipping container or cask used to transport the fuel. Why so much more cesium than the Hiroshima bomb? Because an atomic explosion occurs in milliseconds, but a nuclear reactor operates continuously for years. Many more fissions means much more fission products, including cesium. You do the math. If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool...

This is not to say all this material will be released to the atmosphere or ocean. This is the maximum cesium-137 possible inventory at each Fukushima reactor. Each fuel pool at each Fukushima reactor also contains approximately the same amount of strontium-90 and other cancer causing materials. In addition to the fuel pools at each Fukushima reactor, a larger common fuel pool sits at ground level between two reactors in a building with windows. The damage the tsunami caused to this independent fuel pool has not been discussed by the media...

[Poll_Blind]

1. It didn't click about the "fires between reactors" until I got to that last paragraph.

Thanks for posting.

PB

[Zoeisright]

2. Well, that's fucking scary.

And the number of Japanese who died as a result of the atomic bombs is probably much higher than 100,000 because of increased cancer development years later.

THAT is the worst thing about nuclear energy. If you've ever had to watch a loved one suffer from cancer, you'd be scared too.

[liberal N proud]

3. That is why nuclear energy is considered to be so safe

Once you have a nuclear event, it doesn't matter anymore. It just keeps going but you don't and nothing matters any longer.