TEPCO: Unknown amount of ‘radioactive materials’ leaking from Reactor No. 3

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No. 3 Reactor Temperature Falls to Below 100 Celsius, Tokyo Electric Says, Bloomberg by Tsuyoshi Inajima, September 5, 2011:

Emphasis Added

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the temperature of the No. 3 reactor pressure vessel at its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant fell to below 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit), one of the conditions for achieving cold shutdown. [...]

It doesn’t mean the reactor has reached cold shutdown status because the utility still needs to assess the amount of radioactive materials leaking from the reactor, he said. Temperatures remain higher than 100 degrees on other sections of the reactor, the utility said. [...]

Related Posts

  1. “Pump failure nearly brings No. 5 to a boil” May 29, 2011
  2. TEPCO redefines “cold shutdown” — Only bottom of pressure vessel has to be under 100 degrees celsius, not reactor-core coolant July 22, 2011
  3. Large amount of saltwater found in Reactor No. 5 at Hamaoka nuclear plant — Trying to stop reactor from eroding May 16, 2011
  4. TEPCO trying to “prevent re-criticality” at Reactor No. 3 — Temperature soaring in pressure vessel, up over 100°F in 24 hours even after increasing water injection May 15, 2011
  5. Fukushima Blackout: Cooling at SPF No. 3 stopped for 5 hours, still on backup power — TEPCO says no ‘major’ change in temp July 22, 2011

29 comments to TEPCO: Unknown amount of ‘radioactive materials’ leaking from Reactor No. 3

  • Bob Hardin

    “Cold shutdown”? That’s one way of describing it, when the corium has melted into the earth below the reactor. Every China syndrome is a “cold shutdown,” in this sense.

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  • SteveMT

    Question: Was the barometric pressure changes due to Japan’s recent severe weather corrected for? Is the temperature continues to decrease, then I guess this is for real.

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  • SteveMT

    After reading this story, I notice that there is no mention of the words plutonium or MOX.

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  • Ken31ONCA

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC45U5UPiIE

    check out this cnn report today it is pretty crazy but definately worth checking out. also…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ndPqD1je94
    this is from last thursday….seems like there is so much we dont even have any idea about

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  • dav8d777

    Just like CIASpy says, every pressure vessel cools down after the radioactive material has leaked out of it. Just go ahead and blow a hole in the bottom of it and it’ll be in “cold shutdown” in 24 hours.

    That’s not the point. This is going a long way to put a positive spin on something MUCH worse than the situation in The China Syndrome began to imagine.

    For Pete’s sake the ground is opening up in large steam-emitting crevices!! Cold shutdown? Hardly. More of a sign that very soon NO nuclear material will remain in that reactor. Holes in the bottom of pressure vessels never get smaller. They either grow or stay the same….

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  • dav8d777

    +1

    Tepco

    0

    The fuel may indeed be below 100 that is irrelevant. in regards to both entering the reactor, and restoring the reactors cooling functions.

    A.In regards to entering the reactor… Tepco can’t.
    B.In regards to restoring the reactors cooling system… See A.

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  • patb2009

    isn’t the outside of the containment building now showing 10 Sv/hour in spots?

    Inside it must be insane. I doubt even a robot can withstand that.

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    • Pat…

      You are correct, unfortunately this article like many before it, is a stepping piece… to the next public approved batch…

      March-
      Theres no plutonium…

      August (5 months later) –
      Theres a lot of plutonium…

      So I infer…

      Now… (aug)…
      Were seeing the fuel temp below 100c.

      5 months later… (jan)
      Were seeing the fuel dangerously react with the ground water below the reactor…

      Trust me it will come…

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      • StPaulScout StPaulScout

        It’s all physics now Tacoma…..

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      • Pallas89juno

        Tacoma, As usual, I think, if I’m interpreting you properly that you’re on the right track. This piece is just a disinformation or minimization piece, of a fashion, as any other from TEPCO. One of the best disinformation methods is to produce absolutely conflicting reports, back and forth, like tacking to and fro in sailing (or whatever the terminology is for sailing). It keeps the less well informed and those who want to remain less well informed comforted as at least two things are achieved: 1) an attitude of gee, they know as little as we (the uninformed public meaning) do, which is for whatever misguided reasons comforting to such people, and 2) it discourages the easily wearied (intellectually) from seeking or extrapolating bottom lines, which definitely do exist in such extreme crises. Or, of course, these reports are just plain confusing. There’s also always the hope by whomever is manipulating such information that people will take all this information at face value and the ongoing worsening apparent amnesia of the masses, at least I know this to be true in the U.S., will continue to worsen.

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    • StPaulScout StPaulScout

      I heard TEPCO was going to buy new meters that only go up to three SV/hour so then it will be down to three from ten……

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    • Pallas89juno

      Dear Patb: You’re right. It is “insane” on the inside of at least Reactor 1 and Fukushima Dai ichi. Each new peak in radioactivity is a higher value and more radioactive than the previous peak radioactivity. At first several months ago, I was certain that someone was miss-translating that the R1 radiation peaks at that time were on the order of 100 SIEVERTS per hour (Sv/hr) or 87,000 SIEVERTS (not micro, not milli sieverts) per year! I thought to myself that this couldn’t possibly be happening; but I was wrong. Whomever was reporting that or duplicating a media report about these, complete with graphs somewhere under the tabs at the top of the ENE site, were correct. The latest figures that I’m aware of for at least Reactor 1 inside are on the order of at least 400 Sv/hr, which generally would stun anyone getting within a 100 feet or more into a coma and instant death and causes instant failure of any and all digital equipment and will warp the metals, from radiation and not from thermal radiation, in most mechanical devices so that they cannot function at all. Study Chernobyl in the better documentaries where they discuss these effects, but, unfortunately not in great depth.

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  • Pallas89juno

    Cold Shutdown? Who the hell do they think they’re kidding. LMFAO

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  • Pallas89juno

    The corium is in one of it’s off phases of criticality; and will definitely be on again without dividing and conquering that same corium. It’s going to go off, cooler, and on, hotter, for the next 250,000 years.

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  • Sickputer

    P89j typed these discouraging pixels of light:

    “It’s going to go off, cooler, and on, hotter, for the next 250,000 years”

    SP: yep…big bummer…

    …the only way they can ever stop the corium pendulum swings (and they are mighty swings now) would be to blow it into the ocean with a nuclear device. Nobody has the stomach for that…yet.

    See the Slinky graph:

    http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/?n=1

    Things may get uglier the more it fissions…

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  • Cambie

    They are still using that “cold-shutdown”! It is like comming-to-a-safe-stop in your car. No longer applies after smashing into a big truck. There was a story about an operator at Chernobyl who was still trying to pump cooling water into the reactor long after the blow-up. There was no reactor, the insides were lying around the yard, but he couldn’t face it. Sounds like Tepco.

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    • lokay5

      The reason the operator(s) at Chernobyl kept pumping water into the non-existant reactor is due to the fact that they were always told that RBMK reactors absolutely could not blow up. The reactor just HAD to still be there……

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  • patb2009

    it looks like reactor 2 and 3 have bad instrumentation.

    With Rac 1 showering out deadly radiation, no way rac 3 is safe for a temporary entry.

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  • catweazel

    well whats the news? with the northern hemisphere showered in radiation radioactive somethings popping up everywhere WHAT IS THE NEWS?
    the news for the speaker should have been a kick in the teeth. I mean i am totally fed up with this shit. there should be at least clear wording by now and some sort of common sense how to deal with a situation 6 months old. There is NO COLD SHUTDOWN because the plant is wrecked (wrecked beyond believe) and as the plant is broken there are no valid meters available. And as noone is able to check the internal status of the plant noone knows what is going on in there. AND AFTER 6 MONTHS THE “RESPONSIBLES” STILL TALK BULLSHIT.
    time for gloves off.

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  • catweazel

    i have to admit i did watch the short film. that totally made my day.

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  • tomb1

    “cold shutdown” is their wording for “completely destroyed, situation out of control, core in unknown condition at unknown location”

    but no, this would mean we had a “cold shutdown” already in march.

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