Red Alert: Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant

A March 12 explosion at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in

Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown.
The key piece of technology in a nuclear reactor is the control rods. Nuclear fuel generates
neutrons; controlling the flow and production rate of these neutrons is what generates heat, and
from the heat, electricity. Control rods absorb neutrons — the rods slide in and out of the fuel
mass to regulate neutron emission, and with it, heat and electricity generation.
A meltdown occurs when the control rods fail to contain the neutron emission and the heat levels
inside the reactor thus rise to a point that the fuel itself melts, generally temperatures in excess of
1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing uncontrolled radiation-generating reactions and making
approaching the reactor incredibly hazardous. A meltdown does not necessarily mean a nuclear
disaster. As long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat,
pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the core breaches but
the containment facility built around the core remains intact, the melted fuel can still be dealt with
— typically entombed within specialized concrete — but the cost and difficulty of such
containment increases exponentially.
However, the earthquake in Japan, in addition to damaging the ability of the control rods to
regulate the fuel — and the reactor’s coolant system — appears to have damaged the
containment facility, and the explosion almost certainly did. There have been reports of “white
smoke,” perhaps burning concrete, coming from the scene of the explosion, indicating a
containment breach and the almost certain escape of significant amounts of radiation.
At this point, events in Japan bear many similarities to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Reports
indicate that up to 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of the reactor fuel was exposed. The reactor fuel appears
to have at least partially melted, and the subsequent explosion has shattered the walls and roof of
the containment vessel — and likely the remaining useful parts of the control and coolant
systems.
And so now the question is simple: Did the floor of the containment vessel crack? If not, the
situation can still be salvaged by somehow re-containing the nuclear core. But if the floor has
cracked, it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through the floor of the containment
system and enter the ground. This has never happened before but has always been the
nightmare scenario for a nuclear power event — in this scenario, containment goes from being
merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible.
Radiation exposure for the average individual is 620 millirems per year, split about evenly
between manmade and natural sources. The firefighters who served at the Chernobyl plant were
exposed to between 80,000 and 1.6 million millirems. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
estimates that exposure to 375,000 to 500,000 millirems would be sufficient to cause death within
three months for half of those exposed. A 30-kilometer-radius (19 miles) no-go zone remains at
Chernobyl to this day. Japan’s troubled reactor site is about 300 kilometers from Tokyo.
The latest report from the damaged power plant indicated that exposure rates outside the plant
were at about 620 millirems per hour, though it is not clear whether that report came before or
after the reactor’s containment structure exploded.
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BBC (“Huge blast at Japan nuclear power plant“):
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared a state of emergency at the Fukushima 1 and 2
power plants as engineers try to confirm whether a reactor at one of the stations has gone into
meltdown. It is an automatic procedure after nuclear reactors shut down in the event of an
earthquake, allowing officials to take rapid action.
Cooling system failure
Television pictures showed a massive blast at one of the buildings of the Fukushima 1 plant,
about 250km (160 miles) north-east of Tokyo. A huge cloud of smoke billows out and large bits of
debris are flung far from the building.
Japan’s NHK TV showed before and after pictures of the plant. They appeared to show that the
outer structure of one of four buildings at the plant had collapsed after the explosion.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant’s operator, said four workers had been injured.
It is not yet clear in exactly what part of the plant the explosion occurred or what caused it.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said experts were trying to determine the level of radiation
at the site.
Japan’s nuclear agency said on Saturday that radioactive caesium and iodine had been detected
near the number one reactor of the Fukushima 1 plant. The agency said this may indicate that
containers of uranium fuel inside the reactor may have begun melting.
Air and steam, with some level of radioactivity, has been released from several of the reactors at
both plants in an effort to relieve the huge amount of pressure building up inside.
Mr Kan said the amount of radiation released was “tiny”.