Friday, May 20, 2011

Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: "No One Knows How Fukushima Could Be Wound Down" As the Corium May Be Melting Through the Foundation

So says Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, in a telephone interview on May 19 with independent video-journalist Tetsuo Jinbo of Videonews.com (who did the video report of the 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone back in April, showing cows and dogs prowling the deserted towns).

Koide is practically agreeing with Christopher Busby that there's not much anyone can do to stop the release of radioactive materials and further contamination of air, soil and water, other than somehow "entomb" the reactors (a.k.a. Chernobyl solution).

Koide reiterates his view that the corium (he says "melted fuel" and "melted core" in the interview for lay people, but it is melted fuel, and anything else that melted with the fuel inside the RPV) may have already escaped the Containment Vessel in the Reactor 1.

Following is my notes as I jotted down the salient points Koide made in the interview:

  • (Assuming that TEPCO is telling the truth) the worst-case scenario of a hydrogen explosion inside the reactor caused by the melted fuel seems to have been avoided.

  • I believe the Reactor Pressure Vessel has a large hole, not the small holes that TEPCO says.

  • TEPCO cites the pressure and the temperature data as the reasons to believe the melted fuel still stays inside the RPV. However, I wonder if the pressure and the temperature data of the Reactor 1 is accurate. After all, the data on the water level was completely wrong.

  • That much water has leaked (4,000 tons in the reactor building basement) and yet TEPCO says there's still pressure inside the RPV. It is impossible, given the structure of the reactor.

  • There is no definite data as to whether there is any water in the Containment Vessel. Considering the reactor building basement is flooded with water, I think it is possible that the melted fuel already damaged the Containment Vessel.

  • Outside the Containment Vessel, what's left as containment is the concrete foundation of the building.

  • In order to have a reactor in "cold shutdown", you need to have the RPV intact so that the cooling water can circulate. No point in talking about cold shutdown when we don't even know whether the fuel is still inside the reactor.

  • We're in the uncharted territory that we enter for the first time ever since the human race started to use nuclear power.

  • As to whether the radioactive materials are going to be released into the atmosphere [from the meltdown and breach of RPV and Containment Vessel], I don't think it is likely as of now. The concrete foundation of the reactor building may have sustained some damage, but as a whole I don't think it is completely broken.

  • I cannot properly assess the possibility of the corium melting through the concrete foundation and reaching the water table. If that should happen, the radioactive materials will flow into the ground water and contaminate the ocean even more.

  • As to the the corium, I think the inside of the corium is not solid even if there's water in the reactor.

  • The Suppression Chamber in the reactor building basement is torus-shaped. The location where the corium may have dropped is the center of the torus, and it is concrete. The thing to worry about is how far down the concrete the corium will go.

  • The water circulation system using water in the building proposed by TEPCO is tantamount to admitting that the Containment Vessel is broken. It is a much more serious situation than I envisioned, and there's no other way to cool [the corium] other than the one proposed by TEPCO.

    [Koide was proposing a system that circulate water inside the Containment Vessel back into the RPV, as he had assumed correctly that the RPV had been breached.]

  • However, if the corium goes into the concrete, no point in talking about circulating water to cool. There will be nothing you can do. The only way may be to entomb the whole building in a concrete coffin.

  • I suspect that TEPCO's "roadmap" was created by the TEPCO headquarters under political pressure, and not by the TEPCO people in Fukushima I Nuke Plant who struggle everyday to contain the situation. If anything, the "roadmap" should be created by them, not by the headquarters.

  • According to TEPCO's data, even now the fuel rods in the Reactors 2 and 3 are soaked in water up to half the height.

  • Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Fukushima is still on-going. There is a possibility of further hydrogen explosion, and it is still possible that Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl in terms of magnitude of the disaster.

For those of you who understand Japanese, here's the interview:

If you are curious about this maverick nuclear researcher, here's a good interview of him done in 2007 (translated from original Japanese). Koide entered the field of nuclear science full of hope for the peaceful use of nuclear technology in 1968, only to see the reality two years later when he saw Onagawa Nuke Plant being forced upon the residents and understood why. Ever since, he has continued to research nuclear energy as an opponent of nuclear energy.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its all G.E.'s fault, who know about problem with 3 Engineers who resigned in early 1970's. Just one breech in Cooling mechanism for this design goes into severe meltdown phase and G.E. knew about this with their B.W.R. designs. G.E. should be sued the hell out of, for lying about design. But that's ok, the Lawsuits against G.E. are lining up strong and very large lawsuits coming with them (G.E.), which might send G.E. to bankruptcy, even with channeling so called laws.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

The National Post (Canada) has an interesting article titled "Peter Goodspeed: The ‘myth of safety’ in Japan’s nuclear plants". It is good to see some people are starting to look past the fantasy BS coming out of TEPCO and the government. (BTW, the NP is a conservative news source).

I hadn't heard this:

"Public confidence was shaken further when it emerged engineers at Fukushima were so unprepared for the disaster, they had to scavenge flashlights from nearby homes and used car batteries to try to reactivate damaged reactor gauges."

No wonder they were using taped on plastic bags to protect their feet from radioactive contamination.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/05/21/peter-goodspeed-the-myth-of-safety-in-japans-nuclear-plants/

Grim said...

http://thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Japanese.htm

Anonymous said...

This article completely misses the truth, which is that this is deliberately being allowed to burn and poison the world, just as the BP oil spill was allowed to continue. Most people can't imagine the evil that is running this planet and what's being done to sicken and kill people. So long as you deny it and don't address reality, you won't change anything.

Any fool can see these plants should be buried in boron and sand. But all the owners care about is saving their investment, and as a result over one million people will die, and many more will suffer. Which is just the bosses of the owners want.

Meanwhile the people... the people continue to buy every lie handed to them - from the same liars who told them these plants were safe to build.

That is reality - try talking about it instead of repeating lies. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the information you're attempting to put forward on your blog. But you need to dig deeper.

Anonymous said...

u say no nukes ? im sayin was there mini nuke weapons used to make sure the sh*( went down as was supposed to - core meltdown . from the beginning it was produced as a shakespeareatastrophy

Bruce Hayden said...

I will go one step further Anonymous. I have come to the conclusion, rather reluctantly, that the evil entities are out to destroy ALL life on this rock. And if they are even human they are probably half human at best. I recently read that it was the Draco and they have destroyed many planets in this galaxy. I've thought that perhaps it is our creators doing this--the Anunaki. Zecharia Sitchen's Earth Chronicles series of books says it all about where we came from and how our myths (true stories!)of gods and goddesses came to be.
There are many more disasters to come. People will be praying to their false gods and acting like the animals many of them truly are. I'll stop here as I know I am wasting my time with most and expect ridicule....the last refuge of the psyche of weak-minded individuals.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

I'd like to also point out Chernobyl style "entombment" hasn't been achieved at Chernobyl after 25 years of major effort. They are still begging for the international community to pony up the funds just to "adequately" cover over the mess for the next century (they hope). They still don't have a road map for dealing with objects like the elephant's foot or all the spent fuel and half burned radioactive graphite the Bio-robots tossed back into the smoking hole. They are using silicone to degrade contamination transport along with mountains of zeolite as a stop gap measure but these tactics require constant attention and supervision. Containing the Chernobyl disaster is something that has become "normal" for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Instead of generating power Chernobyl is now a debt generator for nations the can ill afford it after the fall of the USSR.

I bet Putin's recent tirade against Japan's handling of the nuclear crisis has to do with the lack of nuclear reclamation business Japan has thrown their way. I'm sure the Japanese contractors are too busy writing their cost + contracts and scaring up able bodies to think about hiring outside help right now. Japan will probably want to keep Fukushima as domestic as possible so the yen stays in country. They also want to control the flow of information and that can be hard to do with foreign entities involved.

"Japan refuses to receive aircraft with Russian nuclear scientists":

http://www.newsbcm.com/doc/682

"Chernobyl veterans advise Japan to cool reactors with tin":

http://www.newsbcm.com/doc/689

I'm still waiting see the water processing facility that they are supposed to be setting up that can treat "1200 tons per day". I've seen some big holding tank setup on site but I haven't heard much about the treatment plant progress. The existing water treatment plant doesn't have the ability to process such highly contaminated water that's why you don't hear about all the water it is processing.

Anonymous said...

I would like to know what happened to the worlds largest concrete pumps that were purchased and shipped in cargo aircraft to Japan. Why have we not seen this pumps been set up to entomb the reactors? Why have TEPCO been left in charge of the most dangerous threat to the entire human race? Why do the worlds leaders seem only interested in war and sex and riches and death while the earth is being rendered uninhabitable?

Janet Smiles said...

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague. — Cicero

Anonymous said...

Before California gets it, lets fix california nuke reactores. They are located near the fault lines. They want it explode like japan. I will tell you the same will happen here. Dont trust or expect your corrupt Govt to do it. Lets hold GE accountable and hang them all. Death will cleanse their wicked satanic souls.

Anonymous said...

Your assumption on a concrete 'footing' is incorrect. While there may be a concrete floor under the reactor proper, that would be all that the corium would need to penetrate to reach 'virgin' earth, and presumably penetrate to the water table.

Depending on the geotechnical conditions on site, construction would likely consist of piled footings or rock anchors with a slab-on-grade floor for the reactor building.

I'm sorry, but if the core had melted through the reactor, it has almost certainly penetrated the slab. The only question that remains is the permeability of the underlying soils.

-an Engineer

Anonymous said...

I'm starting to consider things like what Bruce Hayden said. What else could this insane smorgasboard of crap that's going on? Nothing is making any sense anymore.

Anonymous said...

Read a report that HAARP was involved with the triggering of the earthquake. There was the US Ronald Reagan on site just outside Japan monitoring the situation. They left once the explosion happened releasing the radioactivity. If this is so this is TREASON and also a crime against HUMANITY. All the Individuals involved should be hanged like Sadam, or worse, as their crimes are far more heinous than his.

Anonymous said...

very interesting film about the Chernobyl accident called Battle of Chernobyl.

Anonymous said...

We have 3 reactors that melted and there's little if any press over this. Very interesting, and the EPA here has shuttered the Radnet. Very interesting. Meanwhile my measly little detector has been showing an increase of a couple of points over the last several weeks here in Oregon.16ur,is the average which is high for this area. Normally its 9 to 11 ur. The first couple of weeks after the quake my unit registered in the 23ur range and went back down. it came during the rains, and then went back down to normal levels.
I know they don't owe us the truth about anything, but this is really nasty of them to keep this so quiet. Just my 2 cents.

Anonymous said...

The only thing they can do is cover it all over and evacuate to China. Japan is a small country and the contamination will spread making it's water unuseable even if not all of the land is contaminated.

Anonymous said...

the plan is to kill 95% of worlds population.how stupid are all you people?

Anonymous said...

@Bruce Hayden: No ridicule from me. ETs are definitely involved in the dark forces that run this planet. I don't think their agenda is simply to kill everything - that could be done more simply. Rather, there is an agenda to keep the human race under a thumb - to maintain conflict, violence, and disease which they somehow benefit from (they feed off the suffering of others, just like some humans). And there seems to be an agenda of depopulation, and certainly an agenda to create a world of poor, chemically retarded people. Slaves.

David Icke's website and books are a good source of info for people ready to wake up to what is really happening on this planet. The narrative provided by govts and media is a lie. Lies are so much easier to believe, but won't get you where you want to go. There is SO much more happening than what most humans see and talk about. Seek alternative sources of info.

It's also important to remember that there are benevolent ETs and forces around Earth as well. Which are we calling into our experience? Which path are we taking? We do have power - always there is the power to choose - but we give most of it away to those who promise to 'protect' (enslave) us.

Keep believing in scientist priests and they will destroy your world with their stupid cleverness, a repeat of Atlantis. There is a difference between cleverness and intelligence. Cleverness builds bombs and nuclear reactors; intelligence builds homes and conserves the environment. So how smart are these scientists creating things like Fukushima?

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

koide will testify in the Upper House Government Oversight Committee on May 23 Monday (JST). It will be live on the net, for those of you who understand Japanese and want to watch. From 1:00PM JST.

http://www.webtv.sangiin.go.jp/webtv/index.php

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