Readying for Fukushima fuel move

reply to post by mikell


According to their Video they done it more than 1.200 Times already,
this Time they will use even security Lines, i am highly optimistic
about this Operation!

mikell
Fuel removal is a daily event around the world . All plants get refueled about every 18 months. I'm sure they know what they are doing even though they have many issues to deal with it's old hat

I think you should read the specifics of this fuel removal. Not only does it involve debris on top of the pool it also involves missing boron control rods which would normally keep fission from taking place during this process. If fission takes place at all during this process all the doom and gloom stories you've heard about Fukushima will not equate to the horror that will follow.

en.wikipedia.org...

Isn’t the building tilted?
Can it withstand another earthquake?

Is the building itself not damaged?

Can the fuel pool’s bottom withstand the load of fuel?

Can the building withstand the weight of the fuel removal facility?
Scattering and diffusing of radioactive substances during the work

Aren’t radioactive substances scattered out when fuel are transferred?

Is there any chance of nuclear reactions during the work?
How safe is the fuel taken out of spent fuel pools?

Is there any chance of damaging fuel hit with debris?

What if an earthquake occurs while taking fuel out? I
s there any chance of dropping them?

What will occur as a result if fuel drops?
Can the fuel taken out be managed appropriately?
Can it be cooled in a safe manner?
Can the fuel taken out be managed appropriately?
Can it be cooled in a safe manner?

Does the pool storing the taken out fuel have sufficient seismicresistance?

Is the cooling functionality sufficient?
What if power to the pool were to be lost?

It is a ca. 30 Page Pdf from our Friends at Tepco

Over the course of two days, the company said it expects to remove 22 assemblies, with the entire operation scheduled to run for more than a year.

"At 15:18 (0618 GMT), we started to pull up the first fuel assembly with a crane," a company spokesman said Monday.

The huge crane, with a remote-controlled grabber, is being lowered into the pool and then hooked onto the assemblies, placing them inside a fully immersed cask.

The 91-tonne cask will then be hauled from the pool to be loaded onto a trailer and taken to a different storage pool about 100 metres (yards) away.

Experts have warned that slip-ups could trigger a rapid deterioration in the situation. Even minor mishaps will create considerable delays in the already long and complicated decommissioning.

While such operations are routine at other nuclear plants, the disaster has made conditions far more complex, TEPCO has said.

"This is an important process that is an inevitable part of the decommissioning process, but it includes work that could pose a great risk," the Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, an independent energy think tank, said in a statement.

"We expect TEPCO and the Nuclear Regulation Authority to work with vigilance... and we demand disclosure of information" about the work, it added.

Source

Four fuel assemblies loaded into the cask placed inside the pool

Fukushima, Japan, Nov. 18, 2013-TEPCO announced today that they have completed the first day work for fuel removal from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi NPS. Four fuel assemblies were loaded into the cask, and all the work for the day completed at 6:45PM.

The extraction work started at 3:18PM, following thorough safety preparations with the cooperation of many partner companies and individual workers. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing 22 fuel assemblies into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. President Hirose expressed his gratitude today, towards the employees and workers from partner companies "who have worked so hard, with such ingenuity, diligence, and courage, to make possible this achievement."

Photos and brief report of the first day work:
www.tepco.co.jp... (PDF 177KB)

President Hirose's comments regarding the start of fuel removal:
www.tepco.co.jp...

Video explaining the removal process/Dr. Klein's comments and material explaining the overview of the task:
photo.tepco.co.jp...

Edited by me,
read it because it explain very well what they think
and how the plan to handle the Situation:
The encompassing safety measures towards the assumable risks of the task:
www.tepco.co.jp... (PDF 48.4KB)

Source

Immediate release:
After successful start, TEPCO begins second day of Unit 4 fuel removal at Fukushima

Fukushima, Japan, Nov. 19, 2013-Following a successful first day of fuel removal from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi NPS, TEPCO announced today that they have started the second day of work.

On Monday, four fuel assemblies were loaded to the cask. The rest of a total of 18 assemblies is planned to be loaded today. A video of the first day of the fuel removal work can be seen at www.tepco.co.jp...

The extraction work started at 9:00AM today, and has proceeded smoothly. Eight assemblies (totally 12) have already been loaded by 1:30PM. After the transport cask is filled with 22 fuel assemblies, it will be trucked to the nearby "common pool," a storage facility in a safer and undamaged building designed specifically for longer term storage. The precise transportation schedule is being withheld for security reasons, but TEPCO will announce each transport immediately after it is completed.

After the first cask of unused fuels is placed in the common pool, the work will pause for a scheduled safety review of procedures and methods. Any necessary refinements will be implemented in the next rounds of extractions. The removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014.

Tepco Source

A few new Photos,
and the link for a new Video:
Tepco-Video link

Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report 2013
Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report (Nov 21,2013)Immediate release:First fuel transportation safely completed at Fukushima Daiichi NPS

Cask containing 22 fuel assemblies from Unit 4 has arrived at the common pool to be stored more safely in an undamaged building.

Fukushima, Japan, Nov. 21, 2013 - TEPCO announced today that the cask containing 22 fuel assemblies was safely transported from the Unit 4 reactor building to the nearby common pool building at Fukushima Daiichi NPS.

The fuel assemblies were loaded into the cask from November 18 to 19. Following this, the cask was decontaminated, and after preparation, transported today, with the trailer arriving at the common pool building at 1:20PM. Here, the fuel assemblies will be stored for the longer term inside an undamaged building.

The work to extract the fuel from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool will shortly pause for a scheduled safety review of procedures and methods. Any necessary refinements will be implemented in the next rounds of extractions. The removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014.
link

Direct link to the Tepco Channel

The Video is explaining the removal of the Fuel in a manner like
a Salesman of Refrigerator sale Iceboxes to the Inuit.

Not that Informative and added just for the purpose of Entertainment
and Completeness

In a few Hours we will pass the first 1.000 Days Mark or better Scar
since that bad Day, more that 2.500 Earthlings are still missed,
in total more than 400.000 People lost their Home,
incl. ca. 150.000 People who needed to evacuate from their Soil.

I remember this Days very well and will never forget the helplessness
we all felt, Japan was standing still in that Days,
something you can't imagine!

All, nearly gone ...........

Interesting there hasn't been more attention to the fuel removal project on pool 4 after the initial start of the removal, especially on this site. I have looked on the internet and its gone iminously quiet on the subject as well. No media reports or website discussions since early December. Seems to have been completely blacked out. I have found one current site for progress being made. Its actually Tepco's site. They claim 154 of the 1533 rods in fuel pool 4 have been removed to date as of today. You can see for yourself at www.tepco.co.jp... . If anyone has any other info on the fuel removal it would be good to see.

reply to post by panaque

Have no idea but aren't these spent fuel rods at least 100 feet in air or maybe 200 feet - thought i heard that a while back?

BABYBULL24
Have no idea but aren't these spent fuel rods at least 100 feet in air or maybe 200 feet - thought i heard that a while back?

Yes the pool is above ground... they have removed 122 fuel rod assemblies... I am sure they went for the easiest ones first... with each one they remove, the rest get harder and harder... some are bent out of shape.. this has been acknowledged by Tepco

reply to post by BABYBULL24


Ca. 75- 100 Feets, ca. 4'th Floor.

For the removal the Height was not that difficult
but that the whole Machine was gone.

Tepco needed to build a new Building with the Lift,
Crane and Security, in the beginning you can see
a File with a better Explanation.

Regards

Ps: they update this Process every Monday
and now they removed already 12,5-15% of the Rods!

Human0815
reply to post by BABYBULL24

 

Ca. 75- 100 Feets, ca. 4'th Floor.

For the removal the Height was not that difficult
but that the whole Machine was gone.

Tepco needed to build a new Building with the Lift,
Crane and Security, in the beginning you can see
a File with a better Explanation.

Regards

Ps: they update this Process every Monday
and now they removed already 12,5-15% of the Rods!

edit on 25-1-2014 by Human0815 because: spell

Got to love that Tepco math.... we got 15%!!! Don't pay attention to the 85% we haven't removed.

Logic says that they have to remove the easiest ones first... why? because a lot of them aren't going to be quite so easy and the risk of a fuel assembly breaking or coming apart increases with each one removed. By removing as many as they can before disaster hits, they can mitigate some of the damage that is possible to occur with removal.

Doom porn says there is 11,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation in the spent fuel pool... I have no idea if that is true or not. But again, logic dictates when tackling a difficult problem (fuel rod removal), grab the easiest ones first... that way you can get experience before you go on to the not so easy to remove assemblies.... some of them are bent out of shape... and have been for almost 30 years.. they weren't an issue until March 11, 2011. Soon they will be front and center.

Does it really matter at this point if only 200 of the 1500 assemblies start to fission because of an accident? Is that a good thing? Oh look, it could have been worse! We got 1300 out before Murphy's law kicked in.... We should have never had to tread this ground in the first place. Bottom line.

reply to post by RickinVa


Every Journey start with the first Steps!

But we can see again our differences,
i am a Optimist because i cant live with Negativity,
you are different but this is up to you!

Also the bend Fuel Rods are only a few (2-3?)
and it is logical to start with the most easiest ones.

When i go hiking i take a Train which brings me
into the Nature

This has been going on for awhile - no?

The spent fuel rod removal - i heard a podcast months ago that they were going to start doing this maybe in the fall. That's when i heard the fuel rods are on top of the buildings and also heard each one has the potential to blow up.

Not good.

BABYBULL24
This has been going on for awhile - no?

The spent fuel rod removal - i heard a podcast months ago that they were going to start doing this maybe in the fall. That's when i heard the fuel rods are on top of the buildings and also heard each one has the potential to blow up.

Not good.

That's not quite true my friend.... Tepco has started the process to remove the rods..... I will go with the figure of 125 that Human 0815 posted above,,,, that is most likely correct. It is a slow process, it is a dangerous process. There is no risk of an explosion that I am aware of, uncontrolled fission of the rods is a concern, but several things have to happen for that to occur.

Right now, Tepco is removing the rods and that's a good thing....but time is not on their side... should a significant earthquake occur that would cause the building to collapse, then that would be a bad thing. All we can do is hope that Tepco can successfully remove as many rods as possible as fast as they can.... but you can't rush fuel rod removal... its a Catch-22 (which is an excellent book, I was forced to read it in high school and I hated it at first, but I learned to love it the more I read it) for lack of better words

◯Breakdown of transferred assemblies by kind
Spent fuel198 assemblies/1,331 assemblies
Unirradiated (New) fuel22 assemblies/ 202 assemblies

◯Number of times of cask transportation: 10 times

From today, 01/27/14
Tepco


Banzai!

Human0815
reply to post by RickinVa

 

Every Journey start with the first Steps!

But we can see again our differences,
i am a Optimist because i cant live with Negativity,
you are different but this is up to you!

Also the bend Fuel Rods are only a few (2-3?)
and it is logical to start with the most easiest ones.

When i go hiking i take a Train which brings me
into the Nature

Where did you get the information that only 2-3 rods are bent?!?