GUNDERSEN: Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit1

[FourScore]

Run time: 05:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLLJnQxFOzY   Posted on YouTube: April 03, 2011 By YouTube Member: Tyrfingr Views on YouTube: 23   Posted on DU: April 03, 2011 By DU Member: FourScore Views on DU: 3347

 

[aquart]

1. Well, that was today's happy news.

Oh boy.

[barbtries]

2. finally

some real information. i'm going to go subscribe to this guy on youtube.

[ladywnch]

3. just what I was thinking. no hyperbole, no screaming the end is near, just

calm, easy to understand, thoughtful analysis of the most current data and what it may mean to Japan and the World, and what options are available.

how refreshing.

[axollot]

6. You can find out more info @

www.fairewinds.com/update

Including transcripts to all of his videos and who fairewinds associates are!

I turned Fourscore onto the site when he had a lot of questions the MSM were not answering!

Cheers
Sandy

[barbtries]

7. thank you

but the link's not working. :(

[axollot]

10. sorry try..

www.fairewinds.com/updates (missing s on updates)

Sorry was typing to fast

Cheers
Sandy

[DeSwiss]

9. Here's more info and their website URL:

Who We Are

Research and Analysis
Our groundbreaking analyses of the shortfall in Vermont Yankee's decommissioning fund resulted in a national review of gaps in decommissioning funds at many nuclear sites around the country. See The Washington Post: Decommissioning Shortfall. Arnie has more than 25-years of experience in decommissioning oversight including his role as a co-author of the first edition of the Department Of Energy (DOE) Decommissioning Handbook.

Paralegal Services
We specialize in environmental and energy litigation and federal and state administrative law, and we strive to achieve the best possible outcome for our clients. Our technical research and paralegal services are thorough and therefore enable our clients to make timely decisions regarding possible intervention, administrative law hearings, or preparation for litigation.

Expert Opinions
Our thorough research and expert reports meet the rigorous demands of today's legal system. Fairewinds Associates' expert witnesses are experienced in being deposed and in testifying in administrative law hearings, such as those conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), or in civil trial court proceedings. See the Reports Section for a sampling of our opinions and expert testimony.
More on Research and Analysis.


Arnold Gundersen

Arnie is an energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience. A former nuclear industry senior vice president, he earned his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering, holds a nuclear safety patent, and was a licensed reactor operator. During his nuclear industry career, Arnie managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants around the country. He currently speaks on television, radio, and at public meetings on the need for a new paradigm in energy production. An independent nuclear engineering and safety expert, Arnie provides testimony on nuclear operations, reliability, safety, and radiation issues to the NRC, Congressional and State Legislatures, and Government Agencies and Officials throughout the US, Canada, and internationally. In 2008, he was appointed by the Vermont Senate President to be the first Chair of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Oversight Panel. He has testified in numerous cases and before many different legislative bodies including the Czech Republic Senate. Using knowledge from his Masters Thesis on Cooling Towers, Arnie analyzed and predicted problems with Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers three years prior to their 2007 collapse. His Environmental Court testimony concerned available and economically viable alternatives to cooling towers in order to reduce consumptive water use and the ecological damage caused by cooling tower drift and heated effluents. As the former vice president in an engineering organization, Arnie led the team of engineers who developed the plans for decommissioning Shippingport, the first major nuclear power plant in the US to be fully dismantled. He was also an invited author on the first DOE Decommissioning Handbook. Source term reconstruction is a method of forensic engineering used to calculate radiation releases from various nuclear facilities after nuclear incidents or accidents. Arnie is frequently called upon by public officials, attorneys, and intervenors, to perform source term reconstructions. His source term reconstruction efforts vary. Arnie has calculated exposures to oil workers, who received radiation exposure while working on wells. He has also calculated radiation releases to children with health concerns, who live near a nuclear facility, like the one that carted radioactive sewage off-site and spread it on farmers' fields. Finally, he has performed an accurate source term construction of the radiation releases from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Also involved in his local community, Arnie has been a part-time math professor at Community College of Vermont (CCV) since 2007. He also taught high school physics and mathematics for 13 years and was an instructor at RPI's college reactor lab.


Margaret Gundersen

The founder and president of Fairewinds Associates, Inc, Maggie is a freelance paralegal specializing in environmental, nuclear safety, and energy litigation in federal and state administrative law hearings. As a liaison between clients and experts she also conducts technical and legal research, prepares documents for public release and court filings, interviews and retains expert witnesses, drafts motions and legal briefs for client attorneys and prepares legislative testimony and presentations. In addition to conducting technical research and preparing deposition questions, Maggie helps experts prepare reports that are understandable to the average person as well as to judges and juries. Maggie earned her Bachelors Degree in Law and Society from Skidmore College and her Paralegal Certificate with a 4.0 from Burlington College. She was the recipient of the Vermont Paralegal Organization Scholarship 2002-2003. From her experience as a former nuclear industry spokesperson and an engineering assistant in nuclear fuel reload core design for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR’s), Maggie is well-versed in energy issues, nuclear technology, NRC terminology, and the Code of Federal Regulations. She is adept at explaining these issues to attorneys and legislators in language that is easily understandable by the press, other interested parties, and stakeholders. A newspaper journalist for five years, Maggie works as a free-lance journalist and also blogs on Green Mountain Daily, rated the number one political blog in Vermont. She also appears regularly on local TV and radio to discuss women in media and politics, energy issues, and nuclear safety, reliability and decommissioning issues. Committed to local community service, Maggie serves as a Burlington Public Works Commissioner. She has also served on the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Task Force, spent 18 months as a volunteer on one of Burlington’s Restorative Justice Panels, was elected to two 2-year terms on the City’s Community Development Block Grant Board (CDBG). Every year Maggie works on several pro-bono cases involving domestic violence or juvenile justice. Maggie was elected to her second 2-year term as a Justice of the Peace in November 2008 and will be running for re-election as a JP in 2010.


http://www.fairewinds.com/

[axollot]

11. You Rock! They are great. n/t

[DeSwiss]

13. De nada

:hi:

[Lucinda]

4. TY!

[axollot]

5. (!) Hi Fourscore! Glad you posted this - I posted the link to the video

at www.fairewinds.com because I didnt know they had the Youtube version out already. Been waiting for the transcript to update the GD post on this video update.

Thanks! Glad I was able to help you - help me get this info out!!

Cheers
Sandy

[barbtries]

8. this link works

thank you. bookmarking

[FourScore]

18. Thanks axollot!

You've been such an enormous help in getting solid information out there.



:yourock:

[Junkdrawer]

12. I thought they were adding boron to the water....

Is it possible that the fuel melted through the bottom of the reactor and is configured with concrete in a way such that occasional criticality is achieved? :shrug:

[axollot]

19. The reactors are the least of the problems tbh -

the worst isotopes come from the spent fuel rods. They fission when exposed to air and other chemicals like salt from sea water. There is evidence that at least 1 or more fuel ponds have been exposed to air for some time. *that* is a HUGE problem!!

Cheers
sandy

[bertman]

14. Thanks for posting these videos, FourScore. I barely passed high school

chemistry so this stuff is not my 'specialty' but these videos are so basic and so informative that I actually think that I understand what he's saying. For what that's worth.

But it is good to have a scientific explanation of what is possibly occurring at the plant.

[garybeck]

15. Arnie Gunderson is a true American hero.

Arnie has been the key figure in helping us shut down the nuke plant in Vermont. The plant was designed to last 40 years and that expires in 2012. they want to extend the plant's license another 20 years and Arnie has testified before the legislature that it is not safe to operate it past its original design lifetime.

Thank you Arnie!

[certainot]

16. good on mr gunderson

[ElsewheresDaughter]

17. I hope he is telling TEPCO that they have got to add boron to the water..because so far they haven't

done it

[benld74]

20. For us luddites What the heck is a periodic chain reaction? Is that what I think it is,,,,?

[defendandprotect]

21. Least of all should nuclear reactors ever be in PRIVATE hands -- !!!

[JayhawkSD]

22. I'm not sure this is entirely right

It's been forty years since I was in US Navy Nuclear Power School, but I don't think that fission stops entirely even when an entirely intact reactor is properly shut down. The moderator rods are inserted between fuel rods containing uranium, and those rods absorb the neutrons which hit them, bringing the chain reaction to a stop. But the rods do not intervene between individual atoms within the rods, so there will continue to be neutrons emitted and hitting adjacent uranium atoms, splitting them. It will just be that the mass is so small that the reaction will be too small to matter in the sense of generating heat.

The term "criticality" refers not to the point at which fission is occurring, as I recall, but to the point at which the thermal neutrons are being created and are causing new fissions faster than they are being consumed. (A fission consumes one thermal neutron and releases more than one, most of which miss everything and cause no additional fissions.) At that point you need to begin absorbing some of those thermal neutrons to stabilize the process. It's all about the mass of the fuel, because the more uranium mass there is on one place the more collisions become possible. Controlling a reactor is a process of inserting moderator rods into the "pile" which absorbs the neutrons, reduces the effective mass of uranium which is in one place, and slows the process below that "critical" level at which it can accelerate out of control. But nothing can stop uranium from fissioning at a low level, because some of them do it spontaneously(?), and some neutrons are always going to be present.

My memory is foggy about neutrons, but as I recall they are really big and really slow and, while they travel a long distance, are not all that hard to stop. They are also enormously damaging to human tissue, so if the nuclear reaction is continuing at any significant level there is certainly a huge danger. But if too many neutrons are flying around I would be more worried about a loss of shielding and/or that some of the fuel has escaped the shielding than I would about the level of criticality.

He may have some information regarding the number of neutrons being detected that would indicate a chain reaction ongoing, and I may be wrong in what I remember. But as I was listening to this it just didn't sound quite right to me.

[JayhawkSD]

23. Oh, the other thing that was a bit wierd

...was the bit where "they add water and the chain reaction starts, the water boils off and it stops." That sounded backwards to me.

[JayhawkSD]

24. TEPCO has already said thay have melted fuel

And melted fuel is unquestionably going to be fissioning at some level.