The Ongoing Events at the Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Power Plant No.

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Rev 1

16 March 2011

by

Michael Flagg

Summary

UPDATE for 16 March 2011: This is an update to this white paper I wrote up on the night of the 15th.
This revision tries to take into account some of the dramatic events from today and provide a little more
explanation on radiation dose to humans.

Much of this report will be the same as you read yesterday, but with new information, taking into
account what is going on right now in Japan.

If you spot inaccuracies or have questions, post them on my facebook page or leave a comment on the
scribd.com page.

This is my personal opinion of what is going on at the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Dai'ichi Power
Plant Number 1. Reactor Units 1, 2, and 3 were all operating when the massive 9.0 earthquake popped
off the coast from the power station on March 11th. The tsunami that hit shore roughly an hour after
the quake absolutely devastated the infrastructure around the reactors, wiping out the backup power.
The lack of backup power helped cause a cascading series of failures that has led to partial
"meltdowns" of the fuel in reactor units 1, 2 and 3. Workers at the reactors have had to vent radioactive
steam to the atmosphere. Explosions and overpressure events have seriously damaged all three reactors
and have led to radiation releases.

In addition, the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 somehow either went dry or the water level became low
enough to allow spent fuel to become uncovered, become hot and apparently off-gas some hydrogen
which led to an explosion. We'll discuss this a bit more below, but the short version is that problems in
the spent fuel pool for Unit 4 (and later Unit 3, where TEPCO says water levels are dropping) are
apparently far more severe than I initially thought and this could very well add to the radioactive
materials being released into the atmosphere.

Radiation rates have risen in Tokyo and other areas downwind, but so far these levels of radiation are
not high enough to be immediately dangerous to the public (that is still the case from I know, as of
March 16th at 10:00 p.m. Central Time in the U.S.). Right now the forecast I heard on NHK says that
winds will continue to blow airborne radioactive material to the southeast, out over the Pacific. They
indicated winds were going to shift to the south some time on Friday afternoon local time. South
means Tokyo, Yokohama, etc. The radiation levels still shouldn't rise to dangerous levels over those
cities, but they will rise.

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Nuclear Power Terms

NOTE: I've added a section on spent fuel pools for Rev 1.

A lot of unfamiliar words are being tossed around in the media, so here are some definitions that might
help. I am putting in links to Wikipedia for those wanting more detail:

Reactor Core: This is basically a big metal lattice holding 12 foot tall fuel rods. A fuel rod is a stack
of uranium oxide pellets, each pellet roughly the size of .22 round. These are kept in a stack inside a
metal alloy called "zircaloy." The core for these types of nuclear reactors stays hot for several days,
even after they have been shut down and need pumps operating constantly to keep the water flowing
around to cool off the core. It is like your car's radiator, except in this case, even after you shut off the
car, you need the radiator to work for awhile because the "engine" (the core) is extremely hot.

Click here for more details on a nuclear reactor core.

Pressure Vessel: This is a very large steel container that holds the core. It is at least 20 cm (nearly 8
inches) thick of stainless steel. Possibly thicker, but I am not an expert on the specific reactor designs
at Fukushima. This is built to hold up under enormous pressures and heat.

For an example of what they can handle, when the core at Three Mile Island Unit 2 partially melted
down (about half the core melted and dropped to the bottom of the core), the steel pressure vessel did
not break or melt.

Click here for more details on a pressure vessel.

Containment or Containment Building: The core is in the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel sits
inside a large, thick concrete building designed to seal the pressure vessel and core from the outside
world. This building is constructed to handle a big pressure rise or explosion and still keep all the
nuclear materials inside the building. It has penetrations to allow for water to be pumped in to keep the
core cooled down.

Click here for more details on a containment building (The reactors at Fukushima are Boiling Water
Reactors (BWR))

Boiling Water Reactor (BWR): The type of reactor at Fukushima. In this kind of reactor you boil the
water inside the pressure vessel and that turns to steam to drive turbines to make electricity. For you
folks in Missouri, the Callaway plant is a different design - it is a pressurized water reactor (PWR).

Click here for more details on boiling water reactors.

Boron or Boric Acid (as in pouring in seawater laced with boron or boric acid): Boron is a "neutron
poison" - that means the boron absorbs neutrons and keeps them from splitting uranium atoms. This is
used to keep deformed fuel or melted fuel from "going critical" or releasing lots of energy from the
splitting of the atom. Think of it as a sponge, used to soak up neutrons and keep the situation from
getting out of control.

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Click here for more info on neutron poisons.

Spent Fuel Pool: Fuel rod assemblies are used for several cycles in a reactor and, when most of the
uranium-235 has been "burned" up to make heat they are transferred to a spent fuel pool (also called a
spent fuel bay or spent fuel pond). This enormous concrete "swimming pool" has a steel liner. In this
pool are rack after rack of fuel assemblies. These fuel assemblies are far colder than the fuel
assemblies in a reactor core, but you still need to pump water through this pool to keep it cool. The
spent fuel pool at Fukushima normally keeps 16 feet of water over the tops of the fuel elements. This
is a safety measure. In case the pumps fail, you want to have a lot of water that needs to evaporate
before causing a problem.

Click here for more info on spent fuel pools.

Note on Technical Terms

Translating very technical terms from Japanese into English can cause some real communication
problems. Please note that sometimes the way it is worded may be confusing.

What Happened

Please Note, this is my personal opinion and is based on what I can find that I regard as
reputable. I could be wrong on some particulars, but details are hard to come by at the moment,
so don't take this as gospel.

This includes an update to review the events from 16 March.

When the quake hit, units 1, 2 and 3 all survived the quake and shut down safely. When I say "unit"
that just means that there are multiple reactors, all with their own containment buildings, at this site.
For those of you in Southeast Missouri, a way to compare it is that the Sikeston Power Plant has one
coal-fired unit and the AECI power plant at New Madrid has two coal-fired units at the plant.

Fukushima has 6 units. Units 4, 5, and 6 were already shut down for maintenance.

The reactors shut down. The electrical grid, which powers their pumps, went down, so they turned on
their backup diesel generators. Remember, they need this power to keep water circulating over the hot
core. They need their "radiator" working. The backup diesels operated fine for an hour. Then a 30
foot tall tsunami caused by the quake washed ashore. This was a taller tsunami than they had designed
the plant to withstand. The water got over all the barriers and then wiped out the switch yard (where
you would hook up to the grid or where you would hook up extra diesel generators). This also
apparently wiped out the diesel fuel supply and the backup power went down.

There are batteries that then kicked in to run the pumps to keep the cooling system working. They ran
out of juice (these are big pumps and put a hard drain on the batteries).

For a variety of reasons, including this loss of all power systems the coolant systems began to fail.
They had a very, very, very hot "engine" and their radiator had stopped circulating properly.

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Over the next few days, the water began to boil off, exposing the core to air Unit 1, then Unit 3, then
Unit 2. Recall, the pressure vessel and containment is sealed off, so the steam that was boiling off
began to create enormous pressure inside the reactor pressure vessel and containment. Think of it like
a pressure cooker you might use to cook with, except the bleed off valve is stuck shut. The fuel rods
were then exposed to air. Air does not conduct heat away very well and so the temperature of the fuel
rods began to rise. Eventually they got hot enough to melt the zircaloy, which meant part of the core
deformed and some/much has probably fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel. This also put a lot
of radioactive material into the air, which got entrained in the steam.

Okay, so now we have a very hot, very highly pressurized and very radioactive atmosphere inside the
containment building.

Well, the plant operators began to vent some of the steam to the outside. This caused the radiation
levels nearby to rise (we'll talk about rad levels in a minute).

While this is going on, the Japanese know they have to get water over the core. So they begin pumping
seawater laced with boron into the pressure vessels. This eventually worked in Units 1 and 3, though
radioactive material did continue to be vented. Also, seawater is corrosive, so who knows what
damage it is causing - but it is the only way to stabilize things at the moment. Unit 2 had another
problem with stuck valves and they couldn't vent steam at one point. It was so hot and so pressurized
that they couldn't pump the water in. This caused pressure to build up so much that it ruptured the
containment building and dropped material into a big pool of water below the pressure vessel. This is
still contained in the building, but it is not good. Hydrogen began to build up as well. That was the
source of some spectacular explosions over the course of a few days, but these explosions, while
making scary TV, did not significantly damage the containment building.

Radiation levels got high enough that they evacuated all but 50 guys from the plant. The 50 people
remaining are mostly in the shielded control room (I assume) but they are getting significant radiation
dose. These are people who have lost their homes, possibly lost their families and haven't slept in days
and they are hanging in there, trying to get a handle on things.

So why not just bring in new diesel generators and hook them up and get that cooling water flowing
again? Well, the tsunami was so bad that it wiped out all the connections you'd need to quickly feed
power into the plants when the switchyard was wiped out. I don't have details of that situation, but I
know they are working to get power restored, but having real troubles on that front.

Also, the region was hit by a snowstorm, which has hampered delivery of supplies, pump trucks, etc.,
which also have to navigate quake-damaged roads.

As of tonight, things are still worse than yesterday, but still not catastrophic with regards to the units 1,
2, and 3. They are apparently getting water over the cores in Units 1, 2 and 3, but the fuel is still
uncovered. They are close to getting grid power back on site. That will help, though the damage from
the hydrogen explosions will have knocked out a lot of systems.

By "not catastrophic" I mean that three reactors are still hot (but cooling down) and some radioactive
material has been spewed out and nearly 200,000 people have had to evacuate the area, but there has
been no deadly release of radioactive material outside the plant to where locals would be immediately

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made sick or hurt.

Now let's talk about the spent fuel pools. There are a lot of fuel assemblies in a spent fuel pool. This is
normally no big deal. There is a lot of water to keep them cool and the racks are of metal that has a lot
of boron in it, to absorb any stray neutrons. These fuel elements are far cooler than ones in a reactor
core, but if the water were to somehow expose them, they could begin to grow hot. From what I read,
it appears that spent fuel can actually be exposed a bit above water and not become so hot as to affect
the fuel cladding, though it might start generating hydrogen from the heat. What you really want to
avoid is the water getting so low that the rods get very hot, which generates hydrogen and which then
makes it hard to cool down. It is like trying to fill a very hot radiator with cold water - it will flash to
steam. The reason you want to avoid it is that you don't want damage to the racks that hold the spent
fuel - if you disturb them or they partially collapse, you might get enough uranium piled on itself to
have it go "critical" which means that there would be enough fuel around to have a brief burst of energy
come from fission. That can damage the fuel and possibly release material into the atmosphere of the
spent fuel pool building.

The real problem (and potential source of radioactive materials that could be released) seems to be the
spent fuel pools for units 3 and 4. Listening to NHK tonight, it seems the Japanese are saying that Unit
3's spent fuel pool is very low and that is why you are seeing helicopters drop water. Here is a problem
and it has to do with math - each drop from a chopper is around 7 tons. A cubic meter of water weighs
one ton. 7 tons per drop, 7 cubic meters per drop. The volume I find for a spent fuel pool of this type
is around 3800 cubic meters. That's a lot of water drops...

Now, we move on to Unit 4. Unit 4 was shut down and the fuel had even been moved over to what is
called the spent fuel pool before the quake hit. So this unit should have been fine, right? Well, the
spent fuel pool is basically just a big swimming pool where fuel rods are stored after being used. They
cool down over the course of a few years and are much cooler than rods that are in a core that has just
been shut down. You need to circulate the water a bit, but this is a much easier task than in the pressure
vessel. Well, apparently the pumps or the diesels failed here too (this is very unclear to me what
actually happened. I can't believe they would just forget about the spent fuel pools. This will be a big
topic studied after this mess is all over and done with) and the fuel rods stored here, while not as hot as
ones in the cores that were just shut down, were still hot and the water began to boil off.

Well, just like in the cores, once these fuel rods lost the water around them, they got very hot, which
made the water evaporate further, which made them hotter, and so on and so on. Hydrogen began to
build up in the building that holds the spent fuel and we had a large hydrogen explosion yesterday.
This ripped a huge hole in the wall of the spent fuel pond (which is part of the reactor building) and
released a cloud of radioactive material. There have been fires as well, though the cause has been
disputed.

In addition, the whole problem with Unit 4's spent fuel pool is very, very troubling. On NHK tonight
Japanese officials are strongly saying that Unit 4 has water over the fuel elements. That really seems
unlikely given the big explosion yesterday. In addition, to add to the confusion, the head of the U.S.
Nuclear Regulator Commission, Gregory Jaczko, got in front of the U.S. Congress today and said that
spent fuel pool #4 was dry. Now we have the Japanese saying one thing and the head of the U.S.
nuclear regulatory body saying completely opposite things. I am not sure we are getting the whole
story out of the Japanese, but I can't be sure because the information is just so spotty and contradictory.

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The spent fuel pools are the key to how the rest of this accident will play out. If these pools do dry out
we could see a lot of damage to a lot of old fuel which could cause a serious contamination event. This
is something to watch and I am quite confused over how in the world we can be getting such different
messages on this topic. If the fuel in these pools does begin to melt or become damaged, then it will
become a very serious problem for the crews working to secure these plants.

They are bringing in water cannons normally used to douse protestors to spray water into the spent fuel
pools of units 3 and 4. The helicopters are going to have a tough time keeping up and the radiation
levels over the reactors are quite high, which means they can't spend much time there.

In short, things are still bad. Every time I think they have a handle on the situation, there is another
explosion or we learn about something like this problem with the spent fuel pool in Unit 4. The U.S. is
sending significant help, as are the South Koreans.

Radiation Levels and Health

I'll spare you the lecture on radiation safety. Just keep this in mind - if you hear about radiation levels
measured in "milli-sieverts" that can be bad. If you hear about radiation levels measured in "micro-
sieverts" this is not nearly as bad and is a radiation level you can probably work in or evacuate through.
When your teachers told you that prefixes matter, they weren't kidding. Earlier tonight Minister Edano
from Japan misspoke and said that radiation levels were in the 600 - 800 milli-sievert/hr range (a very
large dose to take) when he meant to say 600-800 micro-sieverts (not good, but a lot, lot less radiation
to deal with).

Also, the rate is important. Most every radiation level reported will be in dose per hour.

Time is very, very important. You can handle a very high dose, if you are only exposed for a few
minutes. It is like handling fire. Let's say you have a roaring bonfire. You can run and leap over that
bonfire and not even be scorched. You don't want to walk slowly up into the middle of the bonfire and
stand there. Time matters.

If things become catastrophic and a big release of material happens, Japan will be significantly
affected, but the U.S. will not. Don't believe the rumors and hype that might follow such an event. We
are far enough away that the worst radiation will be diluted.

For details on what levels of dose begin to cause health problems, click here.

Conclusion

The Japanese are working hard to keep these reactors from spewing out large amounts of radiation that
would affect public health. So far they have been successful. There have been releases, but they have
not been of sufficient dose to cause immediate health problems.

The spent fuel pool problem remains my biggest worry right now.

Keep an eye on things.

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Words to watch for that indicate things are getting worse:

• the spent fuel has dried out and has caught fire (unlikely, but this is my big worry right now - it
would lead to a big release of radioactive material)
• massive breach in containment for unit 1, 2 or 3
• dose readings in the high milli-sievert/hour range

Let me know what you have questions about and I can update this as we go along.

Online Resources

NHK World (English language news broadcast, constantly streaming).

The wikipedia article on this has a lot of good info as well and is updated constantly.

CNN has a timeline that looks fairly complete for more details and pictures.

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