Beck: On The Alleged Meltdown

Do people know that the fuel rod assembly is inside the containment vessel, which is inside the containment building, which is inside the actual reactor building? Melted fuel rods are not a reactor meltdown.

Glenn goes over what happens during a nuclear meltdown, and how there are several huge differences between the Japan nuclear crisis and the Chernobyl crisis. The props that Beck is using include: pots, bowls and of course, M & Ms.




An estimated 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor and 33 percent at the No. 2 reactor, of the Fukushima nuclear power plant -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday.

The reactors' cores are believed to have partially melted when their coolingsytems were lost after Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Fukushima Prefecture and other areas in northeastern Japan.

What The GE Reactor In Japan Looks Like In Cross Section

Below is Japan's GE designed boiling water reactor in cutaway:





Beck explains with M&Ms so as to not explode ... It was pretty fantastic.

Watch below.




Construction of the Fukushima nuclear power plants

The plants at Fukushima are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR for short). A BWR produces electricity by boiling water, and spinning a a turbine with that steam. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water returns to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The reactor operates at about 285 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 2800 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (cylinders that are about 1 cm tall and 1 com in diameter). These pellets are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy (an alloy of zirconium) with a failure temperature of 1200 °C (caused by the auto-catalytic oxidation of water), and sealed tight. This tube is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form assemblies, of which several hundred make up the reactor core.

The solid fuel pellet (a ceramic oxide matrix) is the first barrier that retains many of the radioactive fission products produced by the fission process. The Zircaloy casing is the second barrier to release that separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the reactor.

The core is then placed in the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel is a thick steel vessel that operates at a pressure of about 7 MPa (~1000 psi), and is designed to withstand the high pressures that may occur during an accident. The pressure vessel is the third barrier to radioactive material release.

The entire primary loop of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel, pipes, and pumps that contain the coolant (water) – are housed in the containment structure. This structure is the fourth barrier to radioactive material release. The containment structure is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick structure made of steel and concrete. This structure is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. To aid in this purpose, a large, thick concrete structure is poured around the containment structure and is referred to as the secondary containment.

Both the main containment structure and the secondary containment structure are housed in the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosions, but more to that later).

The core did not meltdown, but if it had it would have been completely contained within the concrete and graphite lined containment building. The steam explosion was not indication of the "explosions" it was only the top of the weather housing blowing off as designed.

Japan Earthquake And Tsunami: Most Dramatic Video Complilation

On Friday, 11 March 2011, Japan was struck by the most powerful earthquake in its history, triggering a 30-foot tsunami that wreaked devastation on a scale not seen since World War II. These are some the most dramatic videos of the event.

You cam see the Tsunami topping the 25 foot coastal flood wall at about 1:25 in the video.

Where Are The USA Nuke Power Plants?

The threat of a nuclear meltdown in Japan has Americans worried about the possibility of a similar situation the U.S. Bill Hemmer just showed us where the nuclear power plants are and where the seismic activity in the U.S. is most pronounced.

The General Electric-designed nuclear reactors involved in the Japanese emergency are very similar to 23 reactors in use in the United States, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. The design appears to be safe, with multiple containment vessels for safety, and are modern design.

A street-level view of the Japan tsunami. This was about 30 minutes after the quake, and note most buildings were intact before the what was reported as a 30 foot tsunami rushed inshore -- a street-level view of the wave in Kesennuma City, another showing the tsunami slamming into and over Miyako City’s seawall.



Japanese officials now say the nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors, inside the containment structure.

Footage Of Japan Tsunami

Tsunami waves were estimated between 20 and 30 feet high at shore.

Some of the earliest video of the earthquake ...



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Video of rooftop helicopter rescue in Japan's tsunami-hit town ...



Cars ships in Tsunami wave ...











Tsunami waves reach shore ...



Local town and airport ... closet to quake center ...