RE: TEPCO admits Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 core completely melted down

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 10:44:33 -0700 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Telmo Menezes
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2015 10:32 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: TEPCO admits Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 core completely melted down

 

 

 

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:20 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
<[email protected]> wrote:

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/japan/2015/3/19/tepco-admits-fukushima-daiichi-unit-1-core-completely-melted.html

 

Just in case anybody wanted to pretend that the Fukushima disaster is behind 
us; here is this piece of bad news, based on recent telemetry using muon 
detectors for imaging the reactor vessels. The core of reactor units 1 appears 
to have melted through both the reactor itself and the outer containment 
structure. This is also the likely situation for units 2 and 3 as well. A total 
meltdown is not a good scenario – and that is a huge understatement.

 

It sounds bad for sure.

What can the consequences be?

 

They cannot be good, that is for sure. If the cores of units 1,2, and 3 have 
melted all the way through the outer containment structures that implies that 
the radioactive materials that had been contained in those cores has now 
migrated into the ground beneath these units. I would imagine that the 
intensely hot corium, at first melted down in a tendril like manner forming a 
branching structure until it becomes diluted with enough melted rock to 
decrease the intense temperatures. At some point – I would imagine – it would 
become dilute enough so that it no longer is above the temperature required to 
melt rock and at this point it will become fixed into the sub surface geology 
beneath those plants. 

As ground water comes into contact with this highly radioactive materials, it 
will continuously leach some of the content and transport this radioactive 
material elsewhere, including into the Pacific ocean and underlying aquifers.

I believe that this is the prime motivation for the – desperate – attempt to 
create a sub-surface wall of frozen ice around the affected area to try to 
contain this radioactive hell within the ice wall so that it does not migrate 
into the larger surrounding environment.

I have no idea how one could go about trying to remediate this; how would one 
go after the concentrated tendrils of dilute corium that has become frozen in 
place in the surrounding rock matrix. A first step would be to get a better 
idea of the 3-dimensional sub-surface distribution of the highly radioactive 
material, in order to at least begin to get an idea of the scope of the problem.

-Chris

 

Cheers

Telmo.

 

 

 

“The exact location of the destroyed reactor cores for Fukushima Daiichi Unit 
1, Unit 2 and 3 remain unknown.”

 

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