Water injection fails to cool Fukushima #4 spent fuel storage pool; wrecked piping delays new plan

[Barrett808]

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been forced to reconsider its plan to cool the spent fuel storage pool of the No. 4 reactor.

Water injection from a special vehicle has not been intense enough to cool the water in the pool, allowing the temperature to remain at more than 80 degrees Celsius. ...

They found a large hole in a wall created by the March 15th explosion. They also discovered that a nearby pipe necessary for the cooling system had been mangled. ...

Water injection failing to cool Fukushima Unit 4 spent fuel storage pool – Wrecked piping delays new cooling plan

[madokie]

1. Will it ever end?

Rec

[AndyTiedye]

3. In About 500,000 Years

[FBaggins]

2. It can't cool it AND meet their other priorities.

There have been reports that they don't want the pool to be too full because they're worried about the stress on the damages strucure. They also want to minimize the amount of water flowing out of the pool (and adding to the volume in the basement).

That doesn't leave them any option by to pump water in and wait for it to evaporate. That means it's going to stay pretty warm until they can set up some way to remove water and cool it before pumping it back in.

It would be easy (as it was once they got the pumper truck set up) to keep the pool cool... by just continually pumping cool water in and letting it carry the heat away as it overflowed from the pool... but that left contaminated water leaking out. That's a bigger concern now than a pool of 80 degree water.

[kristopher]

4. FUBAR

[SpoonFed]

6. Yeah.

Evaporate as contaminated steam; industry best practises at work?

[FBaggins]

7. Evaporation and boiling aren't the same thing. n/t

[madokie]

5. You know I don't think you know a fucking thing about any of this

You just make it up as you go along.
Welcome back to my ignore list
you've earned it.

[FBaggins]

8. Should I care?

Either about your opinion or your ignore list?

You don't exactly have the best track record.

Try re-reading the post. It's incredibly straightforward.

Some undisputed facts:

1) - There's a container of water with material in it that puts out heat.<br>
2) - They can only cool this pool (currently) by adding water to it. They are not recirculating cooled water.<br>
3) - They have expressed concern re: the structural integrity of the pool and said that they were limiting the amount of water pumped in to limit the weight that the structure had to support.<br>
4) - They have also said that they were trying to limit the amount of water pumped into all of the reactors and pools to minimize the amount of water flowing into the basements (and eventually the sea).


What conclusion can be drawn OTHER than that they can only add water to a certain level and have to wait for it to fall from that level before adding more (cool) water? What ELSE could happen OTHER than that the temperature of the water will rise until it hits a point where the water level falls?

[truebrit71]

9. ROFL! Priceless!

:rofl: