We are obviously seriously concerned about the situation at Fukushima and given that have been putting our minds to the options for covering the facility so that the worst case scenario of massive nuclear explosions has a little possible affect on the world above ground as possible.

What we are looking at is a concrete dome structure made from reinforced steel and Barium infused concrete that can be built over the facility. Inside of it should be pumped some kind of two or three phase gas/solid mixture. The concrete dome can then be covered by a second dome which has again the gas/solid mixture pumped into it. This will provide a kind of sponge for absorbing the explosions that are now going off in the earths crust as the super heated fuel is burning its way through to the mantle.

This needs to be done as quickly as possible in order to mitigate against the risk of the entire facility going up in a fiery ball and dispersing the “Spent” fuel rods high into the atmosphere as radioactive a radioactive dust cloud.

It’s already bad enough that the melted cores are working their way through the Earths crust incinerating everything that comes into their path as radioactive vapour and steam. If the explosions cause enough pressure and speed to send the situation critical then we have an unimaginable nightmare situation on our hands.

What we have at this moment is 870 metric tonnes of super heated fuel working it’s way to the earths mantle. In order to create the perfect conditions for a nuclear explosion we require high heat and high pressure to force the fissile material into the required chain reaction. Currently we have exploding fuel burning it’s way through the earths crust. The explosions create the following circumstances

1: Extreme Pressure
2: Extreme Heat

With each explosion it is likely that the perfect conditions could be created for a fissile chain reaction. If that doesn’t happen at the very least we have constantly reoccurring conventional explosions in the range of approx 2000 pounds while the fuel burns it way down through the crust. Anything that is in it’s path will be vapourised or otherwise converted to energy. Keep in mind too that the further it descends towards the mantle the hotter it gets, the more radioactive it becomes and the higher the atmospheric pressure goes too!

You can see from the data maps at the zamg (http://zamg.ac.at) that the toxic cloud is just getting worse every day. The situation is dire and as many people who can put their minds to the solution as possible need to be working on this as their foremost priority.

Tags: Components, construction, disaster, e=mc2, environment, machine, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »

Someone clever decided to put a camera on top of the water crane next to Reactor 4. This is the result…

Tags: Components, disaster, Engine, environment, Fuel, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »

A unique way of cooling a solar collecting energy system is being deployed by Tata Power.

AUSTRALIAN solar power company Sunengy has partnered with Indian power utility Tata Power for a pilot plant of its floating-on-water solar technology.

Sunengy specialises in Liquid Solar Array technology, which has at its core a standard photovoltaic concentrator utilising lightweight plastic concentrator lens which floats on water, mounted on anchored rafts. These concentrators track the sun daily and seasonally.

The photovoltaic cells are housed in a container which sits in the water. The water, through convection action, cools these cells for improved efficiency. The lenses will also retreat under the water during hail or high wind weather events for protection.

This technology is said to utilise well-established solar and structural component technologies, while using relatively simple and less materials. The innovative use of water reduces the need for expensive supporting structures.

The pilot and demonstration system will be online by the end of 2011. Construction will start in August 2011.

Sunengy intends for the LSA technology to be located on and combined with hydroelectric dams to increase the power generation capacity of those sites. An LSA installation could match the power output of a typical hydro dam using less than 10 percent of its surface area. Other markets include mining sites as well as villages and remote communities reliant on diesel power generators.

Sunengy plans to establish a larger LSA system in the NSW Hunter Valley in mid 2012 before going into full production.

Tags: Circuits, Components, Energy Storage, renewable, solar by Sparky
No Comments »

As usual with press releases from MIT they provide just enough information to make it sound good but not enough to actually tell us anything useful.

Solar Energy Conversion

Solar fuel reactions require the coupling of multielectron processes to protons, and they are energetically uphill, thus requiring a light input. The Nocera group has pioneered each of these areas of science. Examples of multielectron photoreactions originate from the research group with the generalization of the concept of the multielectron excited state, most prominent of which has a parentage of two-electron mixed-valency. The Nocera group has also created the field of proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by timing the electron and proton with ultrafast lasers. With the frameworks of multielectron chemistry and PCET in place, the Nocera group has created the first HX (X = halide) splitting photocatalysts to produce hydrogen from homogeneous solution. The group has also created new H2O splitting catalysts. As has been widely discussed, the production of oxygen from water has been the primary barrier to efficient water splitting. The Nocera group has overcome this challenge with the discovery of cobalt and nickel catalysts that duplicate the solar fuels process of photosynthesis outside of the leaf – an artificial photosynthesis. Like the oxygen evolving catalyst (OEC) of photosynthesis, the new catalysts in the Nocera labs self assemble from water to form a partial cubane structure, they are self-healing and they split water to hydrogen and oxygen using light from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The catalyst operates at 100 mA/cm2 at 76% efficiency. Moreover it can operate out of any water source including the Charles River in front of MIT. Finally, the ability to split neutral water has led to the discovery on an inexpensive H2 producing catalyst that operates at 1000 mA/cm2 at 35 mV overpotential. These catalyst discoveries have enabled the construction of inexpensive water splitting devices that may be coupled to either a photovoltaic panel or coupled directly to the surface of a semiconducting substrate (thus eliminating the module costs associate with a photovoltaic panel). This science discovery sets a course for the large scale deployment of solar energy by providing a mechanism for its storage as a fuel, especially for those in the non-legacy world.

So, what does it mean? The stored energy in water is converted to Hydrogen and Oxygen gas when sunlight is absorbed by the solar leaf. The solar panels integrated into the leaf create electricity which is then used to provide a current for the catalyst to breakdown the bonds holding the Hydrogen and Oxygen together. They say this provides enough energy to power a small home in rural Africa from a single Nocera leaf.

Will they also be required to store electricity in a battery? Will the leaf provide a constant stream of electricity for external use or is the current only useful for splitting water into hydrogen. In that case will it require a hydrogen storage tank?

So many questions abound and as usual MIT don’t provide the answers upfront. One would think that after so may years of making press releases they would have figured out by now how to make sure they get the correct information out and not just the information that sounds good.

Tags: Circuits, Components, e=mc2, Energy Storage, hydrogen by Sparky
No Comments »

So far at Fukushima we have seen 4-5 times more Cesium-137 emitted than from Chernobyl.

Radioactive elements have a half life of differing periods. Cs-137 has a half life of 30 years. The full life however is much longer as it decays exponentially which means it takes 30 years to get to half then 30 years to get to half of that, then 30 years to get to half of a half of a half and so on, so forth…

The amount of danger to humans is also defined by the amount of the material that is released into the environment. While a lot of the Cesium is being dumped into the Pacific ocean it only needs to be consumed by fish to make it into the food chain where it will do damage to human health for over 300 years. Even though they say “the solution to pollution is dilution” it doesn’t matter when it only takes a micron of I-131, Cs-137, U-235, Pu-239 to be within a micron of distance to a molecule in a human body when it has been ingested by eating contaminated fish, meat, dairy, vegetable produce and the like to have a detrimental effect (cancer, posioning, etc…). So far the Japanese authorities have banned over 99 items for sale and consumption. In reality anything from Japan is now off limits to those who prefer not to take the risk of consuming radioactive substances. That includes cars, computers, components, etc.. that can carry radioactive dust. Just having it on your clothes is enough to get sick. Getting it on your hands and then ingesting it will cause horrible debilitating illnesses, sickness and death.

We haven’t even started to account for the amount of Uranium and Plutonium dust that has been dispersed since the March 11 Tsunami. One thing is certain, when aliens come to earth they will be able to say definitively when and where we managed to kill ourselves off. We are witnessing the effects of a nuclear war without having had the fireworks to go with it.

In addition at Fukushima there is enough nuclear material stored to produce more than 400 nuclear weapons. 1760 metric tonnes of nuclear material is onsite at the facility.

The question needs to be asked, what purpose do/did the Japanese have for keeping that much weapons grade nuclear material on hand?

Tags: Components, disaster, e=mc2, Energy Storage, environment, food, Fuel, Fundamentals, government, military, nuclear by Sparky
1 Comment »

The New Scientist has finally stepped up and released a detailed analysis of the radiation being emitted from the Fukushima Facility. Interestingly they provide a new number on the total amount of fuel at the site as 1760 tonnes. With our calculations of the amount of fuel in the 6 reactors as 870 metric tonnes that gives us a better idea of how many spent fuel rods are being store on the site. The total weight of the spent fuel is 1760 – 870 = 890 metric tonnes. Also note the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.

In the 10 days it burned, Chernobyl put out 1.76 × 1018 becquerels of iodine-131, which amounts to only 50 per cent more per day than has been calculated for Fukushima Daiichi. It is not yet clear how long emissions from the Japanese plant will continue.

Similarly, says Wotawa, caesium-137 emissions are on the same order of magnitude as at Chernobyl. The Sacramento readings suggest it has emitted 5 × 1015 becquerels of caesium-137 per day; Chernobyl put out 8.5 × 1016 in total – around 70 per cent more per day.

“This is not surprising,” says Wotawa. “When the fuel is damaged there is no reason for the volatile elements not to escape,” and the measured caesium and iodine are in the right ratios for the fuel used by the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Also, the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site, and an unknown amount has been damaged. The Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.

Tags: Components, disaster, e=mc2, Energy Storage, environment, food, Fuel, government, military, nuclear, weather by Sparky
1 Comment »

As previously discussed we have some details on the amount of radioactive material at the Fukushima facility.

Each pellet is 19mm x 8mm. Each fuel rod is 8mm x 4.5m. The active length of the radioactive material is 3.8m. To get the total mass of fuel in a fuel rod 8mm x 3800mm

Each reactor has 241 fuel assemblies and each assembly weighs 660kg = 160 metric tonnes

6 plants x 160 = 960 metric tonnes of nuclear material

+ 783 used fuel rods (according to a report by NHK news – unconfirmed amount)

Lets do the Math!

To get a more precise idea of the full amount of radioactive material at the facility we need to know how much each fuel rod weighs.

To find the area of a circle we use this simple formula Pi * rA * rA where rA is the radius of the circle.

So we have Pi * 0.004m * 0.004m = 0.000050265 sqm

To get the mass in cubic meters we can multiple 0.000050265 x 3.8 = 0.000191009 cubic meters

The density of Uranium Oxide is approx 10970 kg per cubic meter

0.000191009 x 10970 = 2.095366902 kg

Which means each fuel rod has approx 2.095366902 kg of Uranium.

Each assembly weighs 660 kg

660 / 2.095366902 = 315. So we can say that there are 300 fuel rods per assembly (including Zirconium cladding and additional parts)

If there are 241 assemblies per reactor and 300 fuel rods per assembly we can get the total mass of radioactive material in the reactors.

241 assemblies x 300 fuel rods per assembly x 2 kg of Uranium Oxide per Fuel rod = 144600 kg of Uranium Oxide per reactor or 144.6 Metric Tonnes.

With 6 reactors there is 867.6 metric tonnes of Uranium Oxide at Fukushima in the reactors alone. In addition they have 40 years of spent fuel rods stored in cooling ponds and reports of additional reactor cores being stored there are now surfacing although unconfirmed.

This information is crucial to the scale of the disaster. With the cores continuing to burn and emit the highly toxic poisonous clouds of death we have a disaster of unprecedented proportions happening at this very moment. There is also the possibility of the much denser Plutonium-239 that is created as the fuel is used by the reactors separating out and clumping together. If that happens while it is still in an active state (chain reaction in process) it will go to critical mass and then we have the biggest nuclear explosion that modern civilization has ever seen.

Tags: Components, e=mc2, Energy Storage, Fuel, nuclear by Sparky
2 Comments »

More details on the situation at Fukushima are being divulged now. Looking at the latest maps from ZAMG it’s no wonder that increased levels of radiation are now being measured in Tokyo’s water supply. Any areas in the path of the toxic cloud of death will be subject to intense radioactive fallout. In addition there is also the issue of the Gamma rays that are being emitted directly from the Reactors. Each one of them is emitting enough gamma radiation to cause significant health issues in anyone that happens to be in the path. The radiation is also being reflected by overhead clouds and distributed across the region which is therefore irradiating the areas that it is reflected onto.

So not only do the Japanese have poisoned air, drinking water and food they also have to dodge highly potent gamma rays reflecting off the sky.

It’s important to note that Reuters have finally decided to publicise the ZMAG data although we also note that they downplay the research with highly unusual statistical comparisons like “3-4 days of Fukushima is equivalent to 20-50% of amounts from Chernobyl in 10 days” (wtf?) to attempt to minimise the impact of the data. Please note that one way to read that statistic is 3 – 4 days of Fukushima is equivalent to 5 days of Chernobyl.

The Austrian institute’s Dr Gerhard Wotawa stressed the two isotopes from Fukushima he had sought to estimate — iodine-131 and caesium-137 — normally make up only one tenth of total radiation.

Based on measurements made at monitoring stations in Japan and the United States, Wotawa said the iodine released from Fukushima in the first three-four days was about 20 percent of that released from Chernobyl during a ten-day period. For Cesium-137, the figure could amount to some 50 percent.

“It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere,” said Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.

So we can read those numbers as 40% 1-131 for 5 days and 100% Cs-137 for 5 days!!! In addition they note that the amounts measured only account for 10% of total radiation emissions. Hence we are seeing the potential for 10x the amount of emissions than Chernobyl!

With data like this is it any wonder that Germany’s Chancellor Merkel has termed this “a Catastrophe of Apocalyptic Proportions” and is making plans to completely turn of all nuclear power stations in Germany and switch their grid to entirely non nuclear renewables?

In other reports we see the following information coming to light:

A water treatment centre in central Tokyo that supplies much of the city’s tap water found that some water contained 210 becquerels per litre of iodine 131. A city official said: “Under government guidelines, water containing a radioactive substance of more than 100 becquerels per kilogram should not be used for milk for babies.”

Naoto Kan, the prime minister, instructed the governor of Fukushima prefecture to order residents not to eat leaf vegetables grown in the prefecture after radioactivity far beyond legal limits was found in 11 varieties. Some 82,000 becquerels of cesium were found in a variety of vegetables, 164 times the legal limit, as well as 15,000 becquerels of radioactive iodine, more than seven times the permissible level.
Six prefectures in northern Japan have been told to check produce for radiation levels and shipments of parsley and milk have been halted from Ibaraki Prefecture.

The temperature in the No. 1 reactor, which topped 400 degrees centigrade. Large amounts of seawater were pumped into the reactor to cool it. Similarly, radiation levels of 500 millisievert per hour had earlier been detected in the No. 2 reactor’s turbine building, preventing emergency crews from reconnecting electrical power to a control room.

Hong Kong, a major importer of Japanese food, also banned produce and milk imports from the disaster zone. Japan’s Jiji news agency said Hong Kong authorities had found radioactivity levels in spinach and turnip samples up to 10 times above the safety limit.

60 miles away in the Ibaraki Prefecture, the radiation levels have been running anywhere from 800 uSv to 1300 uSv per HOUR since 03/11…which is about 25,200 uSv per DAY or 2.52 mSv, which equals 76 mSv per MONTH. The EPA maximum recommended dose for an average person is 1.5 mSv (1000 uSv) per YEAR. The maximum allowed dose for a radiation worker in the United States is 50 mSv per YEAR.

Tags: Components, e=mc2, environment, food, Fuel, government, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »

Here’s a snippet from an interview about the Fukushima nuclear situation in Japan. It gives us some insight into why they are covering up the issues and the depth they are prepared to go to to maintain the lie that everything is going to plan.

But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV). This is just a cartoon. Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph). This is the butt end of the reactor. Take a look. It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes. On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors. Only the engineers know. This is where water has been poured in. This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy. Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there. And it’s salt water, right? You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens? You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won’t move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate. I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this. You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body. What happens? Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. That’s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared. That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.” Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that. And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much. That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments. You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post. It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air. Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point. We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.

Tags: Circuits, Components, e=mc2, Energy Storage, environment, Fuel, Fundamentals, government, military, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »

Highly concerning is the following information from Robert Alvarez about the scope of contamination that can be caused by a fire in a spent fuel rod pool. Particularly note the area that would become uninhabitable in the case of just one pool catching fire.

On average, spent fuel ponds hold five-to-ten times more long-lived radioactivity than a reactor core. Particularly worrisome is the large amount of cesium-137 in fuel ponds, which contain anywhere from 20 to 50 million curies of this dangerous radioactive isotope. With a half-life of 30 years, cesium-137 gives off highly penetrating radiation and is absorbed in the food chain as if it were potassium.

In comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl accident released about 40 percent of the reactor core’s 6 million curies. A 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by Brookhaven National Laboratory also found that a severe pool fire could render about 188 square miles uninhabitable, cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, and cost $59 billion in damage. A single spent fuel pond holds more cesium-137 than was deposited by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the Northern Hemisphere combined. Earthquakes and acts of malice are considered to be the primary events that can cause a major loss of pool water.

In 2003, my colleagues and I published a study that indicated if a spent fuel pool were drained in the United States, a major release of cesium-137 from a pool fire could render an area uninhabitable greater than created by the Chernobyl accident. We recommended that spent fuel older than five years, about 75 percent of what’s in U.S. spent fuel pools, be placed in dry hardened casks — something Germany did 25 years ago. The NRC challenged our recommendation, which prompted Congress to request a review of this controversy by the National Academy of Sciences. In 2004, the Academy reported that a “partially or completely drained a spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment.”

Tags: Components, e=mc2, environment, Fuel, military, nuclear by Sparky
No Comments »