New Analysis of Unit 3 Fuel Pool Video Reveals Top of Fuel Bundle

About This Video

A video first released by TEPCO in April has been re-analyzed by Ian Goddard and appears to reveal a handle found atop a single nuclear fuel bundle. This raises more questions about the condition of any fuel still remaining in the Unit 3 fuel pool.

Video Transcript

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Arnie Gundersen: Hi I'm Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds.

If you have been watching the site lately, it has been about 3 weeks since we have updated a video.  During that time, Maggie and I have been on the road making a couple of presentations in Massachusetts, a couple of TV shows and some radio and print.  That will be on the site over the next couple of weeks to inform you of what we have been up to.  But something happened last night that I really wanted to share with you right now.

I got an email last night from Ian Goddard.  And Ian is a long time watcher of this site and has done some really great analysis in the past as well.  He took a look at an old TEPCO video.  And Tokyo Electric had gone into the Unit 3 fuel pool just once.  You remember that Unit 3 is the reactor that is blown to smithereens.  The video showed a lot of damage.  But Ian Goddard was able to find one spot where there is clearly something that appears to be discernible.  It looks like the handle of a BWR fuel bundle.

Ian compares that bundle to other bundles which were looked at over in Unit 4 and it is pretty clear to me and a couple of other nuclear engineers I have shown it to, that this might be a single nuclear fuel bundle in the Unit 3 fuel pool.

It raises more questions than it answers.  First of all, there should be a lot of bundles there.  Yet, obviously, there is only one in this picture.   Where are the other bundles?  The other part of the question is, this should be under about 25 feet of water.  It is not, it is very near to the surface.  So what has happened to that particular bundle, or to the water level in the pool that caused it to come in such close contact with atmosphere?

Like I said, it raises more questions than it answers, but I really do want to thank Ian Goddard for discovering this.  If you have any comments or questions or thoughts on what you think it might be, please send in through the comments section on the website.

Thanks, we will get back to you soon.

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３号機使用済み燃料プールのビデオの再分析で、燃料集合体の上部を発見

東京電力が４月に公表したビデオをイアン・ゴダード氏が再分析した結果、１つの燃料集合体の上に付いているハンドルが確認できるようです。３号機の使用済み燃料プールにまだ残っている燃料があるとすれば、それは現在どのような状態になっているのか、より謎が深まりました。

こんにちは。フェアウィンズのアーニー・ガンダーセンです。ここ３週間ほど更新しておりませんでしたが、その間マギーと私はマサチューセッツでの講 演やテレビ、ラジオの出演、執筆などをこなしながら家を離れていたのです。この模様や経過を２，３週間の内に皆様にお見せできると思います。しかし、今日 は昨夜起きたことをぜひ皆様にお伝えしたいと思ったのです。 昨夜イアン・ゴッダードさんからメールをもらいました。イアンさんはフェアウィンズのサイトに以前から注目してくれ、すばらしい分析もしています。彼は以前公開 された東電のビデオを再度検討したそうです。東電は一度だけ３号機の使用済み燃料プールを撮影しています。思い出してください。３号機は爆発でめちゃくちゃになった原子炉です。ビデオには多くのダメージが映っていました。イア ン・ゴッダードはその中に一箇所だけ、形がはっきり分かるものを見つけたのです。それは沸騰水型原子炉用の燃料集合体の取っ手のように見えます。

イアンはその取っ手と４号機の燃料プールに映し出されていた燃料集合体の取っ手を見比べてみました。ほかの何人かの核の専門家にも見せてみましたが、私にもそれは３号機の使用済み燃料プールに残っている燃料集合体のように思えるのです。 答えよりも疑問の方が多くなってしまいます。まず、燃料集合体はたくさんあるはずです。しかし、明らかに映像には一体しか映っていません。ほかの集合体はどこへ行ったのでしょう？もうひとつ、燃料集合体は水面から２５フィート（７．６m）ほど下にあるはずです。しかし、この燃料集合体はそうではありません、ほとんど水面に近いのです。一体ここに映っているこの燃料集合体に何が起きたのか、または使用済み燃料プールの水位に何が起きたのか。結果としてこの燃料集合体が大気にほとんど触れる位置になっています。

というように、答えよりも疑問の方が多くなってしまいましたが、これを発見したイアン・ゴッダードさんに大変感謝したいと思います。みなさんのご意見、質問、ご感想などありましたら、サイトのコメントに残してください。それではまた、近いうちにお会いしましょう。

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Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed

https://vimeo.com/25002205

About This Video

Original estimates of xenon and krypton releases remain the same, but a TEPCO recalculation shows dramatic increases in the release of hot particles. This confirms the results of air filter monitoring by independent scientists. Fairewinds' Arnie Gundersen explains how hot particles may react in mammals while escaping traditional detection. Reports of a metallic taste in the mouth, such as those now being reported in Japan and on the west coast, are a telltale sign of radiation exposure.

Video Transcript

[tabgroup][tab title="English"]

Arnie Gundersen: Hi I'm Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds.

There has been a lot of discussion in the press in the last week about Tokyo Electric changing their estimate for the amount of radiation that was released at Fukushima, and there has also been a lot of discussion about radioactive hot particles being discovered all over Japan.  I wanted to tie those two together today and talk about just what that means.

First, Tokyo Electric recalculated the amount of radiation that came out of Fukushima in the first week.  And they discovered that that first week released twice as much radiation as they had thought was released in the entire accident.  So it released an enormous amount more than they anticipated.

But the second piece of that, is that most of these new numbers, most of these new radiation particles, were hot particles.  And here is why.  Right after a nuclear fuel melts, it releases all of it's gasses and those gasses are called Xenon and Krypton.  They are noble gasses, they don't react and they surround the population, bombard the population, with gamma rays.  Now that part of the calculation is pretty straightforward.  That part doesn't change with this new estimate from Tokyo Electric.

So the Xenon and Krypton part of the estimate is there.  But what has changed is that they have realized that an enormous amount more hot particles were released.  Now even then, this is an assumption, remember all of the radiation detectors were blown to smithereens.  And still they are assuming that about 98% of the radiation is still inside that reactor.  But this new radiation is in the form of hot particles.  What are they?  Cesium, Strontium, Plutonium, Uranium, Cobalt 60 and many, many others.  When you go outside and you are in a cloud of noble gasses, you could pick it up with a radiation detector, because you are bombarded by gamma rays.

But when you are in hot particles, unless there are many, many, many, it is very difficult to detect a single hot particle.  But that doesn't mean it is not dangerous.  We are discovering by scientists, independent scientists, using air filters in Japan, that the average person in tokyo breathed in about ten of these hot particles every day all the way through the month of April.  Those same scientists, using air filters, are discovering that in Fukushima, people were probably breathing in 30 or 40 times more radiation than they were in Tokyo, again in the form of a hot particle.  What surprised me is that the air filters in Seattle, indicate that the people there were absorbing 5 hot particles every day for the month of April.  What does that mean?  It means that that hot particle gets absorbed in your lung, or it winds up in your intestines or it winds up in your muscle or it winds up in your bone.  It constantly bombards a very narrow piece of tissue.  Now we have here a picture of a lung from an ape and there is a hot particle in the lung.  And you can see how localized the damage is from that hot particle constantly bombarding the ape's lung.  Now a constant irritant like that your body fights, and most of the time your body wins.  Sometimes however, those hot particles can cause a cancer and of course, that is a grave concern.  Now you can't run a geiger counter over someone's lung on the outside to determine if they have a hot particle.  Because those particles, those rays, don't travel outside the body.  They do their damage to the local tissue.  But we know they are there, because the air filter results indicate that they are.

Since I was about 16 years old, I used to work on cars a lot.  I know that if I was working on a car in Japan right now, I would be using gloves and a respirator if I was removing the air filter in a car, because I know that there is radiation on those air filters.  That is what the independent scientists are telling us.

The last thing I would like to talk about tonight is that there have been reports coming out of Japan, of individuals tasting a metallic taste.  Now this is not the first time that that metallic taste has been detected after a nuclear accident.  People near Three Mile Island detected a metallic taste in their mouth.  People near Chernobyl detected a metallic taste in their mouth.  Also, patients undergoing radiation therapy for cancers also have detected a metallic taste in their mouth.  This is anecdotal.  It is very difficult to measure, but that we are seeing it in Japan confirms what has already been detected at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl.

That's about it for tonight.  Next week, on Thursday, June 16th, I will be at the Boston Public Library between 6 o'clock and 8 o'clock at night.  The topic is:  Fukushima - Can It Happen Here In The United States?  I will be with David Lockbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists and Dr. Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist.  If you are in the Massachusetts area, it would be nice to meet you there.

Thank you and I will keep in touch.

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 日本からシアトルに飛んできたホットパーティクル（放射性を持った粒子）は、吸い込んでも飲みこんでもほとんど検出不可能

キセノンとクリプトンの放出の、元の見積もりでは同じ数値に留まっているものの、TEPCO（東京電力）の再計算は、ホットパーティクル（放射性を持った粒子）の放出量について、劇的な増加を示しています。 このことは、独立系科学者により行われた空気フィルターの観測の結果からも確実になっています。フェアウィンズのアーニー・ガンダ－ソン氏は、既存の検出システムで検出されないホットパーティクル（放射性を持った粒子）が、哺乳類に対してどのように反応するであろうかを説明しています。現在、日本あるいは西海岸で報告されているような口腔内金属性テストの報告が、放射能被曝を明確に示すひとつの証拠なのです。

こんにちは、フェアウィンズのアーニー・ガンダーセンです。東京電力が福島第一原発から放出された放射線量の推計値を修正したために、先週はメディアで 様々な議論がなされました。また、高放射能粒子が日本全国で発見され、これも大きな議論を呼んでいます。今日はこの2つの出来事を結びつけ、その意味するところをお話ししたいと思います。

まず、東電は事故後一週間で放出された放射線の総量を計算し直し、当初予想していた量の二倍だったことに気づきました。予想をはるかに超える膨大な量が放出されていたわけです。

しかし、新しく増えた分のほとんどはホット・パーティクルと呼ばれる高放射能粒子です。なぜそうなったかというと、核燃料は融けるとすぐに気体状の放射性物 質をすべて放出します。この気体はキセノンとクリプトンで、希ガスと呼ばれる種類であり、ほかの物質と反応することはありません。気体は住民の周囲を取り巻き、住民にガンマ線を浴びせます。この希ガスの放出量に関しては計算が単純なので、東電の新たな推計値でも変化はありません。では何が変わったのかといえば、放出された高放射能粒子の量が予想をはるかに上回っていたことに気づいたのです。

事故の際に放射線計がすべて粉々に吹き飛ばされたのを思い出してください。それでも彼らは、放射性物質の約98%はまだ原子炉内に留まっていると想定していました。しかし、今回新たに判明した放射性物質は高放射能粒子という形態をとっています。具体的にいうと、セシウム、ストロンチウム、プルトニウム、ウラン、コバルト60などで、ほかにもたくさんの種類があります。

人が屋外に出て希ガスの雲に入った場合は、放射線計で探知することができます。希ガスが浴びせるのはガンマ線だからです。 ところが、高放射性粒子の中に入った場合、粒子の数がよほど多くないかぎり一個一個の粒子を検出するのは非常に困難です。検出されないからといって危険性 が低いわけではありません。独立機関の研究者が日本の車のエアフィルターを調べたところ、東京の平均的な都民は4月中、毎日約10個の高放射能粒子を吸い 込んでいたことがわかりました。同じ研究者によれば、福島県民は東京都民の３０～４０倍の高放射能粒子を吸い込んでいると見られています。

私 が驚いたのは、アメリカ西海岸のシアトルのエアフィルターからも、住民が4月のあいだ毎日約5個の高放射能粒子を体内に取り込んでいたとわかったことで す。これはどういう意味でしょうか。高放射能粒子が最終的に肺に入ったり、腸に入ったり、筋肉に入ったり、骨に入ったりする、ということです。体内に取り込まれた高放射能粒子は、非常に狭い範囲の体組織に絶え間なく放射線を浴びせます。

これはサルの肺の写真です。肺に高放射能粒子が入り込 んでいます。高放射能粒子がサルの肺に絶え間なく放射線を浴びせた結果、非常に局所的な損傷が生じていることに注目してください。絶えず組織を刺激する物 質が存在すると、体は戦います。たいていは体が勝つのですが、ときに高放射能粒子ががんを引き起こすことがあります。そうなればもちろん非常に憂慮すべき事態です。

体の外側から肺の上にガイガーカウンターをかざしても、体内に高放射能粒子が取り込まれているかどうかはわかりません。高放射 能粒子が出す放射線は体の外には出ないからです。ただひたすら体内組織の狭い範囲にダメージを与えます。それでもエアフィルターの調査から見て、体内に取り込まれているのは確かです。

私は１６歳くらいの頃から、よく車の修理をしました。ですが、もしも今私が日本で車の修理をするとしたら、車のエアフィルターを取り外すときに手袋をはめてガスマスクをつけるでしょう。そのフィルターに放射性物質が付着しているのがわかっているからです。それ が独立機関の研究者たちの調査結果です。

最後にお話ししたいのは、「口の中に金属の味がする」という報告が日本から届いている点です。原 発事故のあとで金属の味が確認されるのは今回が初めてではありません。スリーマイル島原発の近隣住民も［事故後に］金属の味を感じ、チェルノブイリ原発の 近隣住民も金属の味を感じました。また、がんの放射線治療を受けた患者も金属の味を感じます。これは経験談なので科学的に測定するのはきわめて難しいので すが、今回日本で金属の味が報告されたことによって、スリーマイル島やチェルノブイリでの経験談が事実だったことが裏づけられたと思います。

では今夜はこの辺で。来週の木曜日、6月13日に、私はボストン公立図書館で午後6時から8時まで講演を行ないます。テーマは「福島の事故はアメリカでも起こりうるのか」です。私のほかに、「憂慮する科学者同盟」(Union of Concerned Scientists) のデビッド・ロックバウム博士や、疫学者のリチャード・クラップ博士も参加します。もし皆さんがマサチューセッツ近辺にいらっしゃるなら、お越しいただければ幸いです。

ありがとうございました。またお目にかかりましょう。

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Gundersen Discusses Current Condition of Reactors, TEPCO Claim of "No Fission" in Fuel Pool, and Lack of Radiation Monitoring in Fish

About This Video

Gundersen analyzes new pressure and temperature data from the Fukushima reactors and containments. TEPCO recently denied that the fuel pool in Unit 4 was experiencing a partial inadvertent criticality, despite the finding of radioactive iodine-131 (an isotope with an eight-day half-life). The utility blamed the iodine on deposition resulting from the explosion of the other buildings. Gundersen takes an in-depth look at TEPCO's Theory. Lastly, he discusses the FDA decision not to monitor fish for radioactivity.

Video Transcript

English

Arnie Gundersen: Hi, I’m Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds, and it’s Monday, April 18th.  I’ve been away at New York City for several days on business, and I wanted to tell you: it’s nice to be back.

I appreciate the emails we’ve been receiving, both the ones saying keep it up, but separately I’ve gotten some good technical information from some of you as well, and I really appreciate that.

I wanted to talk about three things.  The first is the condition of reactors 1, 2, and 3.  The second is the condition of the fuel pool in Unit 4.  The third is the monitoring of [radioactivity in] fish.

The first, the condition of reactors 1, 2, and 3, is actually as a result of several of you who sent me a really great link about the reactor parameters as measured by TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Company].  The first graph I want to look at is the pressure inside the reactor.  Unit 1 is on the left, Unit 2 is in the middle, and Unit 3 is on the right.  If you look at those, then you’ll see there’s no pressure inside of Unit 2 and inside of Unit 3.  That’s a good thing.  That shows that the reactor itself is under no stress.  There is pressure, relatively high, one-hundred and fifty pounds (150 lbs) inside of Unit 1 and I don’t know why.  I’ll have to get back to you on that.  But let’s go over to the next slide, which begins to make this a little bit curious.  The next graph is Unit 1, 2, and 3 again, but it’s the temperature inside the reactors.  If you look at Unit 3, the temperature is right at boiling, which is really great.  Very low pressure, very low temperature; that’s basically about the best they could hope for right now.  But look at Unit 2.  Unit 2 shows three hundred degrees Fahrenheit (300 degrees F), or about one-hundred and fifty on the Centigrade scale (150 degrees C) inside Unit 2.  That can’t happen if it’s water.  In thermodynamics, there’s this thing called the “steam tables” and water at room pressure, which is zero [PSI] (0 lbs/Sq. in.) on these charts, boils at two-hundred and twelve (212 degrees F).  You can’t have water or steam at three-hundred degrees [Fahrenheit] (300 degrees F) when there’s no extra pressure put on it.  What does that tell me?  That tells me that what they’re measuring in Unit 2 is not water or steam at all, it’s hot air or hot hydrogen.  And that’s a problem.  It tells me that Unit 2 is not being cooled.  Now, if you look at Unit 1, temperatures are higher still, but the pressure in Unit 1, going back to the other graph, is high also.  So it can have water inside it, and [therefore] still be water cooled, but Unit 2 cannot.  Now, we’ve talked about it before, that Unit 2 has a hole in the bottom of it, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the pressure is zero, but we should be very concerned that we’re exhausting hot gasses out the top of that reactor.

The last graph is a series, again, [of] Unit 1, 2, and 3, of the containment pressure.  That’s the box the reactor is inside of, and that shows that, basically, Unit 1 and Unit 3 have slight containment pressure, and Unit 2 has no containment pressure.  If you look at Unit 1, and 2, and 3, there’s two lines on 1 and 3, and there’s only one on Unit 2.  That means there’s no pressure at the bottom of the containment.  We know that to be true because there’s evidence of an explosion causing a leak.  So, this graph clearly shows that Unit 2’s containment is leaking.  The previous two graphs show that Unit 2 is not getting water inside the core.  I don’t really think that the mainstream media has addressed that:  that Unit 2 is the cause of all of this radioactive pollution [going] out into the ocean because its containment doesn’t have integrity, and its reactor doesn’t have integrity, so whatever water is going in the top is going out the bottom, through the containment, and into the surrounding soils.  It’s the biggest concern. Unit 3 seems to be out of the woods, and Unit 1 is somewhere in between.

Now I want to talk to you about the Unit 4 fuel pool.  On Friday, TEPCO had a [press] release that said they’d measured the water in the pool and they found that a little tiny cubic centimeter (1 cc), about that big, had two-hundred and fifty disintegrations per second (250 Bq) of iodine.  Now, you remember that iodine is one of those fission products that break up.  I believe that when you find iodine in a pool, it’s an indication that a fission reaction has occurred.  It can’t have come from Unit 4 because Unit 4 has been shut down for five months – unless a reaction occurred after the accident as a result of the accident.  I think TEPCO anticipated my argument, and they said, no, that’s not what happened.  The iodine fell from the sky from the explosion in Units 1, 2, and 3.  [That’s] called “iodine deposition.”  Well, let’s take TEPCO at its word.  A little box, this big, has two-hundred and fifty disintegrations per second now (250 Bq), but the accident occurred thirty two days ago.  So, that’s four half-lives.  If it’s two-[hundred] and fifty (250 Bq) now, it was five-hundred (500 Bq) eight days ago, one thousand (1,000 Bq) eight days before that, and two-thousand (2,000 Bq) eight days before that.  So, that little box, when these plants were exploding, had iodine fall into it to the tune of two-thousand disintegrations per second (2,000 Bq).  That little box is a centimeter by a centimeter by a centimeter.  If we look at a cubic meter, there’s going to be a hundred by a hundred by a hundred of those little boxes, or a million (1,000,000 cc) of those little boxes, in a cubic meter.  If we multiply that two-thousand (2,000 Bq) by a million, we get two-thousand megabecquerels in a cubic meter (2,000 MBq/sq. m, or 2,000,000,000 Bq/sq. m).  Well, that pool, this is the last piece of math here, that pool is fifteen meters deep (15 m), so imagine those boxes stacked fifteen high.  So we take the two-thousand megabecquerels (2,000 MBq) times fifteen, we get thirty-thousand megabecquerels (30,000 MBq) in that column.  If we take TEPCO at its word, all of that fell from the top.  That’s a square meter.  What that means is that the iodine deposition on a square meter was thirty-thousand megabecquerels (30,000 MBq).  That’s pushing the numbers at Chernobyl.  So, if we take TEPCO at its’ word, they have had Chernobyl-level releases on the other units which caused the iodine to fall on Unit 4.

There’s two other pieces of that, though.  Iodine is a gas, and I don’t know how a gas falls from the sky in these kinds of quantities and gets absorbed into a fuel pool.  There’s probably a thousand-to-one factor there, too.  The last piece is, if we take TEPCO at its word that the iodine fell from the sky, Unit 1 exploded first; Unit 2 exploded next, [correction] Unit 3 exploded next, sorry; and Unit 2 exploded third.  Unit 4 still had its roof on during all of those explosions, so it’s hard to imagine iodine deposition getting into the fuel pool as a result of the explosions in Units 1, 2 and 3.  But, if we take TEPCO at its word they’re claiming, basically, a Chernobyl-level release.  I’m saying that it could be that, or it could be that the fuel pool had a self-sustaining chain reaction.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was fish.  Over the weekend, the FDA [United States’ Food and Drug Administration] announced [that] it would not be monitoring fish on the West Coast, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.  If there’s anything you can do as a result of these videos besides staying informed, and I appreciate that, it’s to contact your congressperson and say, “Hey, we’re citizens here, and we deserve to have our fish monitored.”  I don’t think we’ll find anything initially, but over the next year as the little fish get eaten by bigger fish, get eaten by bigger fish, and the plume spreads, we might.  It just seems to be a prudent health risk that can be avoided by proper monitoring.

Thank you, and thank for everyone for their emails, and for those of you who pushed the donate button, I also appreciate it.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I have other information to share.

日本人

ここをクリックすれば日本語でこのビデオをご覧になれます。

French

Cliquez ici pour voir cette vidéo avec sous-titres en français