Arnie Gundersen simulating the Fuel Rods melting at Fukushima

[c1ue]

Re: Arnie Gundersen simulating the Fuel Rods melting at Fukushima

Here is what is supposedly a Reactor Safety Team (RST) assessment of the plant from March 26th.

Nice find.

Again, though, no numbers.

The core was offloaded 105 days before the tsunami - and it is safe to assume that the core wasn't active right before offloading.

If the offload was right after SCRAM, the output would be around 0.25%, if it was say 30 days later then 0.23% - so safe to say the number from the above back of envelope calculation are all quite high.

However, the total number of 'hot' fuel rods in #4 would then be higher - not sure how many that would be.

BTW - Gunderson said in the WaPo on March 14 that Fukushima would be "Chernobyl on steroids" - seems that there's a clear pattern of advocacy here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...VDU_story.html

“That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,” said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1.

In terms of effects? Nah. The damage to core and cooling ponds is catastrophic but the actual radiation released is trivial. TMI supposedly released the equivalent to 2 or 3 chest x-rays if you lived close to the reactor when it underwent partial melt down. Fukushima appears to be more than that but no one is going to die or even get statistically elevated chance of cancer from this. Worst I've heard is somewhere around effectively 1/5th of what a nuclear plant operator gets in a year. "Another TMI" is pretty much spot on.

I agree, but the criteria is amount of radiation released.

By anyone's book, there was much more radiation released at Fukushima than TMI, though much less than Chernobyl.

[mesyn191]

Re: Arnie Gundersen simulating the Fuel Rods melting at Fukushima

I agree, but the criteria is amount of radiation released.

OK fair enough.