If you think of a nuclear fuel rack as a pack of cigarettes, if you pull a cigarette straight up it will come out — but these racks have been distorted. Now when they go to pull the cigarette straight out, it’s going to likely break and release radioactive cesium and other gases, xenon and krypton, into the air. I suspect come November, December, January we’re going to hear that the building’s been evacuated, they’ve broke a fuel rod, the fuel rod is off-gassing. Wasserman builds on the analogy, telling us it is worse than pulling cigarettes out of a crumbled cigarette pack. It is likely they used salt water as a coolant out of desperation, which would cause corrosion because the rods were never meant to be in salt water. The condition of the rods is unknown. There is debris in the coolant, so there has been some crumbling from somewhere. Gundersen adds, The roof has fallen in, which further distorted the racks, noting that if a fuel rod snaps, it will release radioactive gas which will require at a minimum evacuation of the plant. They will release those gases into the atmosphere and try again. The Japan Times writes: The consequences could be far more severe than any nuclear accident the world has ever seen. If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire. Any of these situations could lead to massive releases of deadly radionuclides into the atmosphere, putting much of Japan — including Tokyo and Yokohama — and even neighboring countries at serious risk.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 17:18:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015