[email protected] wrote:
..don't forget the earthquake. There is no guarantee that things are where they were put.
I do not think the earthquake displaced the rods in the holding pond. Two reasons:
1. The ponds and everything else is engineered to withstand earthquakes. This earthquake, at this location far from the epicenter, was not particularly strong. It did not seriously damage other equipment in the plant.
2. If the rods had been displaced, I think they would have seen that. I am pretty sure they sent someone to confirm the status of the ponds right after the earthquake because that was a big issue in the 2007 earthquake that hit the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. In 2007, they broadcast surveillance camera videos of the ponds, showing some water splashing out. Surely they have similar videos of these ponds, at least up until the time of the explosions, when the cameras must have been wiped out.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was closer to the epicenter and there was serious damage to some peripheral equipment, and a fire. The fire looked dramatic but the damage was actually mild, and there was no threat of a meltdown or other nuclear-related problem.
The robust performance at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plus Three Mile Island accident lulled me into a sense that we have experienced the worst that can happen to a U.S. or Japanese-made reactor. There have been a lot of improvements since Three Mile Island, and they were retrofitted to older reactors. Frankly, I was shocked by the events at Fukushima.
If the fuel rods are "rubblized" at the bottom of the ponds, that is the result of the fire and explosion, not the earthquake. I discussed the possibility of rubblization with Ed. He did not think that can cause a criticality event, for the reasons I listed briefly.
(The term "rubblized" was invented to describe the condition of the melted core at Three Mile Island, which they did not discover until years after the event. Nothing to do with stage and screen star Barney Rubble.)
- Jed
