Page 4 - Fuel Pool News Today

To which reactor is the problem. in either case, i would expect that the radiation levels would be from release of inert gases from the fuel. >> greta: is there a difference in damage that either could do? whether the 70% uncovered if it now goes down to zero, versus the fuel rods? in the end, does it make a difference if they are completely exposed in the end? >> biggest difference is that inside the reactor building units 1, 2 and 3, you have a pressure vessel and containment bidding. the issu...

To which reactor is the problem. in either case, i would expect that the radiation levels would be from release of inert gases from the fuel. >> greta: is there a difference in damage that either could do? whether the 70% uncovered if it now goes down to zero, versus the fuel rods? in the end, does it make a difference if they are completely exposed in the end? >> biggest difference is that inside the reactor building units 1, 2 and 3, you have a pressure vessel and containment bidding. the issu...

Helicopters to pour water into these fuel pools, nobody is quite sure of that. whether they can actually make that happen. it sounds like all of these are absolute hail mary passes to stop the worst from happening. >> anne thompson, thank you very much for your time tonight. >> take care. >> you, too. joining me now is ken bergeron. he did research on an accident simulation in new mexico which is particularly relevant on a night like this. lets talk about reactor 4 again. if it turns out we ha...

Do you have a sense based on what our officials are saying and the reports coming in how close we are to a worse case scenario. >> with regard to the spent fuel pool its already there. if you have combustion occurring in a dry spent fuel pool that story would be your stop story regardless of anything else. if it werent for the other three reactors. its already very bad. with regard to the three ç reactors, the worse case is that the reactor vessel would melt through and the core material would...

The threat well. are 50 people enough to handle six reactors in distress? >> normally one reactor will have 100. there should be 600 to 700 people on the site. you say ten persons per reactor. no. they must be doing one or two single critical things and i hope one of those is pushing water into that fuel pool. all of the other things that need to be done theyve obviously determined that they cant afford the exposure to these 400 or 500 people relieved. by sending people offsite, you can bring th...

Im glad they took it off the table. the problem is that the gap between the is fuel really critical. im going use my hands here. the gap is designed to be whatever, but if its hit by water, it could push the gap close together. and what that could do is cause a nuclear criticality, a chain reaction to occur. then all bets are off. weve been dealing so far with decay heat from an old nuclear criticality, but the fuel pool itself could begin to have a chain reaction if the water hit it too hard an...

About 30 minutes they could no longer see anymore flames. obviously theres a cooling issue there. what are the risks and what needs to be done urgently? >> the urgent thing is you have to keep water going into that nuclear fuel pool. its not being cooled. they are just pumping salt water in and its boiling off. almost like a pot on the stove. it will keep boiling off. you have to make up for whats boiling off. if the water drops and fuel becomes exposed, it causes a very high gamma ray exposure ...

Appears to be an explosion and fire in unit 4. apparently the fuel is burning. this reactor was shut down prior to the earthquake, but they have a fuel pool, nuclear fuel pool and its apparently on fire. >> brian: thats 4. we know there was problems at 1, 2, and 3. and there have been problems with more. >> steve: the big worry is a meltdown. when youve got the meltdown because then all that nuclear stuff melts out of the concrete and steel bubble and then goes to the containment floor and the w...

Latest updates on this topic.

About this. i also have learned from my sources that the radiation levels in the fourth reactor are so high that they have had to evacuate the personnel from there. what that indicates is that the fuel pool is running out of order. its sort of like leaving a pot on the stove and the nuclear fuel is physically hot and it will boil off the water. and if the personnel are not there to keep it refilled, it doesnt surprise me that radiation levels are increasing dramatically. >> so i want to go throu...