Reactor 2 is still undergoing fission

[bananas]

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/3668

It's official. Reactor 2 is still undergoing fission

Release from Tepco indicates ongoing fission in reactor 2, likely from compromised fuel geometry. Peak values for I-131 occurred on April 13th with I-131 levels 20 times Cesium levels.

It is likely that the fuel configuration is not influenced by borated water.

http://www.glgroup.com/News/TEPCO-Data-Shows-Ongoing-Criticalities-Inside-Leaking-Fukushima-Daiichi-Unit-2-53751.html

Not really "official", just inferred from the official data.

[aquart]

1. Uh huh. Now what?

[PuraVidaDreamin]

2. keep consuming

go to Disney World

[FBaggins]

3. "inferred" by someone without a clue.

The official data ALSO includes temperatures at more than one point in the reactor and pressure at one atmosphere. It also includes the declining amount of water used to keep the reactor cool.

All of which would be impossible In an active fission scenario.

There seems to be a pretty high error rate on stories that are claimed ti be "official" - or include the claim that they "admit" something.

[intaglio]

4. Well you'd better go down to Berkley and tell them off

Whilst you're at it castigate Gerson Lehrman for having a paid analyst who disagrees with you and provides evidence to back up his contention. Don't forget Arne Gunderson, I'm sure he would value your contribution correctly

On the other hand you could be talking out your ass ...

[meow mix]

5. rofl!

dont disturb our armchair mastermind :rofl:

[FBaggins]

6. They've been imagining active fission for weeks now

You don't think that the fact they've been wrong each and every time might eventually damage what little credibility they had?

And no... it isn't Berkley any more than a post on MIT's board is MIT. This same board was clueless re: the supposed "Plutonium found in North America in March by EPA" as well.

[intaglio]

9. Any bad words to say about Gerson Lehrman?

Or Arne?

Exactly what are your qualifications for dissing them?

[FBaggins]

10. "Gerson Lehrman" is just a company

There's no guarantee that a given (anonymous) author has any particular skills in the area. If you look at the author, you can find other posts that he's made on the matter... and he doesn't exactly have the best track record.

Or Arne?

Oh yes. Plenty. The very model of the shill... and entirely unreliable on his own pronouncements on Fukushima.

Exactly what are your qualifications for dissing them?

You don't think that their long list of assessments that were later proven to be bogus is a start?

[FBaggins]

15. Too late to edit

"Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG"

[PamW]

24. You can't do neutron transport in your head...

We have a saying at the laboratory where I work:

You can't do neutron transport in your head!

What it means is that neutron transport and the solution to the
Boltzmann transport equation for neutrons is very difficult.

Criticality is a delicate balance between production and destruction.

It's just not possible to do the calculation of complex systems "on the
back of an envelope".

The determination of whether a complex geometry is critical or not requires
access to neutron transport solver software and the supercomputers on which
to run it.

I wouldn't trust some "one man shop" to do a neutron transport calculation any
more than I would trust a "one man shop" to design a modern jet airliner or
the Space Shuttle.

PamW

( I write neutron transport software for a living for a major laboratory )

[SpoonFed]

31. Boring.

The determination of whether a complex geometry is critical or not requires
access to neutron transport solver software and the supercomputers on which to run it.

Begs the question as to how they ever managed made The Bomb before you and your computer software came along? Pre-transistor and discovery of DNA and all that. What's this software going to be used for now that Nuke Power Industry is RIP?

I wouldn't trust some "one man shop" to do a neutron transport calculation any
more than I would trust a "one man shop" to design a modern jet airliner or
the Space Shuttle.

Add this to another long list of failures of reason. An idea, scientific theorem, or piece of data is not correct or valid or useful based on the number of people employed at the location at which said idea, theorem or data was thought up, analyzed or collected.

( I write neutron transport software for a living for a major laboratory )

Ah, I think that would translate into at least a suggestion of bias, if not actual bias based on the emotional investment people generally have in their academic and professional careers. There has got to be some sort of financial angle at play at the very least, no? Or is this software development somehow altruistic? I'm being rhetorical. In this day and age, you'd have to live on another planet to believe that academia and industry are not rubbing their pajamas together.

I give you credit for publicly admitting your connection to (at least) the research surrounding these discussions.

[caraher]

7. How would you explain the relative levels of I-131?

Is it possible that just some small fraction of the core might undergo fission, which may not be a lot in terms of affecting overall core temperature and pressure but would result in at least sporadic ongoing creation of fission products? I guess I'm thinking of "mini-Oklos" inside.

[FBaggins]

8. There's a difference between how much I-131 is in the core... and how much escapes

It's entirely possible for the proportion of a given element in leaked water to be different from the relative proportion of the same element in the core. This fission theory assumes that if there's twice as much I-131 in the leaked water, there must be twice as much in the core as well. That's a big assumption.

To oversimplify it a bit, the relative proportion of uranium in the leaked water is NOT going to match what you see in the core... because they don't have the same chemical properties.

We learned a little about this at Three Mile Island when the amount of Iodine emitted didn't match what the core damage implied we could expect. My guess is that we'll learn even more here once they really know what the conditions inside the core are (how much damage, type of leak, etc).

Is it possible that just some small fraction of the core might undergo fission,

Yes. It's possible. Is it possible to do so in a way that can't otherwise be detected (temperature/pressure/other elements/etc)? No.

which may not be a lot in terms of affecting overall core temperature and pressure

Again, yes. You can have very brief criticalities that wouldn't add up to much in terms of heat. They would really only be a concern to whoever ended up working there once the core was opened to take the damaged core out. The problem with that theory is that it isn't possible to create enough I-131 that way to account for the apparent discrepancy (and as above... it would have to create the other fission products as well).

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

11. I was called science illiterate because I posted about the use of borated water to inhibit fission

look like some alleged PhD from MIT owes me an apology

not that I will get one

:D

[FBaggins]

12. Someone challenged what the boron was for? n/t

[jpak]

13. Yup

n/t

[FBaggins]

14. Pretty shocking

I'm pretty sure that it was reported even in the mass media from the earliest days. What did (s)he think it was for (or didn't believe it was being used)?

[jpak]

16. Her comment was basically a personal attack - the facts did not matter

The gist was - there was no need for borate as the control rods had been inserted - no fission therefore no borate needed.

I was responding to someone why they used borated water and this was the excuse for the PA

and she didn't like greenies

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Control rods on this design press in from below, instead of gravity drop from above

lots of reasons to borate, even if the control rods read fully inserted.

Whoever attacked you was not very 'up' on this whole situation.

[PamW]

22. As I recall...

Whoever attacked you was not very 'up' on this whole situation.
===========================

I am the one that "attacked" jpak. As I recall, jpak was offering up boron
as an "antidote" to the radioactivity which was producing the decay heat.

As the more knowledgeable here know, boron does NOTHING to inhibit radioactivity.

Boron is a neutron absorber that can inhibit criticality in a near critical configuration.

However, the discussion was about how to inhibit the production of decay heat which is
due to radioactive decay of radionuclides, and for that boron is useless.

PamW

[jpak]

25. I don't believe a thing you post - nope

We have been down this road before with pronucular types proclaiming "I am a scientist", and distorting people's statements in personal attacks.

Only to find out this person wasn't a scientist after all - but a obsessive-compulsive sociopath with no real science background.

Furthermore, I did not say anything about boron inhibiting radioactivity or heat production - I specifically stated they were injecting boron to inhibit fission and prevent re-criticality - fission.

Your post was bullshit then and now

yup

[FBaggins]

27. You shouldn't have to "believe" or not

Surely you can find the post in question?

I don't remember whether you made the error or not, but there were plenty here who took a couple weeks to learn about decay heat being the most significant factor (by orders of magnitude) these guys were dealing with. If you weren't one of them... that's great. But you could have done more to correct them if you weren't.

On edit - I see that much of what I assume was the thread in question has been deleted. I do, however, see one of your early comments that the boron would stop the fission process and cool the reactors. I also see you jumping on Pam when she (correctly) disagreed with another poster who was badly off and claiming that the radiation was itself caused by fission.

Surely you realize by now that you were on the wrong side of that argument (as when you insisted on an apology from her for not accepting that pool#4 had boiled dry)?

[AtheistCrusader]

28. I should know better by now. My mistake.

[kristopher]

17. Kick and recommend everyone read analysis at second link in OP

When Units 1-3 were all scrammed on March 11, 2011 from earthquake-caused station blackout, the chain reaction of splitting fissile U-235 and Pu-239 into numerous fission products came to an immediate stop. Reactor scram means that neutron-absorbing control rods are dropped into the reactor core to absorb enough neutrons that the chain reaction ceases. Because I-131 has no long-lived "parent" to "feed it" by parent decay, the levels of I-131 in scrammed reactors with intact geometry will decrease exponentially with an 8-day halflife, meaning that after 5 halflives (40 days) the I-131 levels are only 3% of what they were at scram.

But instead of seeing that expected decrease in I-131 levels relative to Cs-134 and Cs-137 in the regular TEPCO press releases, I-131 was seen to be increasing, instead of decreasing as the physics said it should.

Until the April 28 press release with accompanying graphs and table, I discerned that something strange was happening with the elevated I-131 levels, but until this latest news, it was impossible to know where, exactly, was the source of the high I-131 levels.

The answer is clear if you look at the graphs of groundwater radioactivity measurements from all six reactors. "Outlier" Unit 2 has I-131 levels roughly 20 times its levels of Cs-134/137. The only possible source of I-131 would be "pockets" of molten core in the Unit 2 RPV settled in such a way that the boron in the injected water is insufficient to stop the localized criticalities.

http://www.glgroup.com/News/TEPCO-Data-Shows-Ongoing-Criticalities-Inside-Leaking-Fukushima-Daiichi-Unit-2-53751.html

[FBaggins]

18. Of course, by "analysis"... you really mean "wild unsupportable speculation"

"The physics" says that total amounts of I-131 should be declining (and they have been), it does not say that any particular measure of leaked water should show a declining proportion of iodine relative to cesium.

Without going too far over your head, there are differences which the author pretends to address... but really ignores. Paying attention only to relative half-lives. This far too dramatically oversimplifies the problem.

There are issues of mobility, solubility and volatility. There are temperature differentials and plenty of unknowns related to how the core "slumped" (or flat-out collapsed into the bottom of the RPV). There are oxides and catalytic reactions and various salts in solution... then there's the exact manner of exit that the water is taking. We could go on and on about the specifics that we don't know... any number of which could account for the difference... but let's take a simple one.

Compare the boiling point of Iodine to that of Cesium. If the fuel was above one point at the time, but well below the other (and it looks like it was)... and the fuel was exposed but also being sprayed... you could easily see a decline in the overall inventory of Iodine in the core (due to decay), and still see an increase in the proportion of Iodine to Cesium in the water that leaks out.

This is far more likely than a fission chain reaction that produces lots of iodine but no other fission products and no amount of heat consistent with that amount of iodine supposedly added.

Weren't you the one who posted a thread early on about how this would be bigger than Chernobyl because almost all of the core inventory of iodine could be released under the right conditions? Cesium is more likely to escape than just about everyting but the iodine and noble gases (and of course steam), but it isn't close to the iodine... and there are conditions where the iodine can be MUCH more likely to escape. All of which ignores the comparative inventory in the core. IOW... it's at least as likely that conditions were more favorable for iodine release than it is likely that significant criticality issues are producing more iodine (while magically ignoring everything else).

On edit - Here's a good source. Page eight starts the most relevant info: http://www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/docs/1994/csni-r1994-28.pdf

[kristopher]

19. Frankly Baggins, I consider any source more reliable than you.

You can write your spin, but on any matter that can reflect negatively on nuclear I consider your posts to be nothing but propaganda. You have no demonstrated record of integrity at all; instead you have a track record several years long of being completely willing to fabricate anything in support of nuclear power.

[FBaggins]

20. By which you mean that you can't refute of word of what I said.

What a shocker. :rofl:

I tried to keep it simple. Don't blame the messenger if the facts are inconvenient. You guys have been imagining active fission since almost day one. At what point do you realize that it didn't happen?

[kristopher]

23. By which I mean that I treat what you write as something out of WorldNutDaily.

[FBaggins]

26. Is there some reason I should care?

Your standard for credibility makes it an award I would like to avoid receiving.

Citing the lunatic fringe UFO crowd as "experts" makes me want to stay as FAR from "credible" in your eyes as possible.

[SpoonFed]

33. How dare the pro-nook side,

disparage the esteemed lunatic fringe UFO crowd to which it so looks up to, as a bastion of well-reasoned argumentation, reason and sanity.

[FBaggins]

35. The pro-nuke crowd isn't the one using their websites as credible sources.

We're the ones laughing at them.

[SpoonFed]

32. Do I understand it...?

Weren't you the one who posted a thread early on about how this would be bigger than Chernobyl because almost all of the core inventory of iodine could be released under the right conditions? Cesium is more likely to escape than just about everyting but the iodine and noble gases (and of course steam), but it isn't close to the iodine... and there are conditions where the iodine can be MUCH more likely to escape. All of which ignores the comparative inventory in the core. IOW... it's at least as likely that conditions were more favorable for iodine release than it is likely that significant criticality issues are producing more iodine (while magically ignoring everything else).

So, in laymans terms, you're not arguing that the conclusion was wrong but that the reasoning to get there was wrong?

The fault was that it would be massive Caesium or Iodine releases, and not the massive Cobalt-60 releases that the 77yo dude from the JNTI talks about in the coverage mentioned DU E/E today (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x291951)

Let me translate that into street vernacular for us idiots since we can't possibly understand the science, technojargon and PhD x1000 level stuff going on here.

You're basically saying, "You're so wrong when you try to discuss this issue using the scientific terms and jargon that we pro-nukes are so accustomed to, and so when you draw the correct conclusions that this is a radiological fustercluck of nightmarish proportions, though you point to the wrong component of the nuclear filth as the probable culprit, we'll continue to hop up and down, steam coming out of our ears, and pretend that your reasonable conclusions are wrong." I don't really care what the seasoning on my nook crap sandwich is, I'm not that hungry.

And so I'm starting to understand the real reason the nooks resent all this nay saying and poo pooing of the nookular industry. It's that the general layperson does actually grasp the basics through all the jargon and misinformation and that just rains all over their parade of expertism and superiority. Interesting.

[FBaggins]

34. Could you restate your "laymans terms"

so that it makes sense? Or at least comes close to what I said?

To simplify... it's possible for more iodine to come out of a reactor core than what you would assume based soley on the comparative inventory of iodine to cesium. What you measure in a release is not direct proof of the comparative proportions in the core. This is proven easily enough by pointing out that there's LOTS more uranium in those cores than either cesium or iodine... but almost none (comparatively) has been released. They have different chemical properties.

The claim was that the comparative proportion of iodine to cesium was proof that active fission was occuring in the core. In "laymans terms" I was saying "no".

The fault was that it would be massive Caesium or Iodine releases, and not the massive Cobalt-60 releases

Has there been a massive amount of cobalt-60 detected?

I mean... I entirely understand your desire to hop from one failed theory on why this is way worse than it appears... but eventually doesn't there have to be... you know... facts behind the claim?

You're basically saying, "You're so wrong when you try to discuss this issue using the scientific terms and jargon that we pro-nukes are so accustomed to,

Not at all. I'd strongly prefer that you do discuss it in those terms. Of course you'll need to learn them first. :)

[SpoonFed]

36. Was that a yes or a no?

I know that for your ego that it's important that the details of the arguments that you feel you are winning or losing are correct, despite those details constantly changing due to reality and the current set of theories that attempt to explain the current observations.

Those details that you hold so dear, are unfortunately irrelevant on a human level. The moral and ethical arguments present against the nuclear power industry are valid, whether or not more cobalt or iodine or strontium or uranium or plutonium were released at Chornobyl versus Fukushima or some future disaster. This was the point I made that you failed to grasp.

Do you believe that the layperson is somehow fooled into trusting the nuclear power industry and subsequent incredible claims of safety from all the fuss and bluster over the specifics of the details and mechanisms of release of the poisonous filth coming from these reactors?

What do you get exactly by winning an argument that Chornobyl was worse, on an isotope by isotope, actinide by actinide comparison, in an essentially meaningless technical sense? My is this argument so near and dear to the pro-nuclear side of this "discussion"?

I'd hazard a guess that it's the same soothing of hubris and enormous ego that comes part and parcel with the types of people who blindly believe humans have domain over all of nature.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Half life of I-131 is eight days

and they are getting peak values?

Good inference.

:-(