In operation since the early 1970s, Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant uses six boiling water reactors, which rely on uranium nuclear fission to generate heat. Water surrounding the core boils into steam that drives turbines to generate electricity.
The reactor vessel is surrounded by a thick steel-and-concrete primary containment vessel, equipped with a water reservoir designed to suppress overheating of the vessel.
Seawater is pumped into a condensor that precipitates the steam into water, which is pumped back to the reactor.
— Earthquake damage
Friday’s disaster cut power to the system, and the tsunami disabled backup diesel generators. A third backup, turbines driven by steam from the reactor, generated electricity needed to run water through the reactor vessel. However, batteries used to control the operation of the reactor have been exhausted, but new diesel generators have been delivered.
Fuel rods in the core of reactor number 2 were reportedly exposed and at least partially out of water. Reactor number 1 reported leakage of reactor coolant and elevated radiation levels in the control room.
— Worst-case scenario
Engineers need a restoration of power and adequate water supplies to contain damage to reactor cores. If, however, they are unable to cool a damaged core, uranium fuel could melt into a pool of radioactive lava, which might melt its way out of the reactor vessel and drain onto the floor of the primary containment vessel.
Nuclear analyst Kenneth D. Bergeron describes the primary containment vessels as “not particularly robust,” better than Chernobyl, but not as good as Three Mile Island.
— How bad is it?
RADIATION Japanese officials on said Saturday that radiation levels per hour at the site at one point were 1,000 times the amount an individual should be exposed to in a year — posing severe health risks to workers at close proximity. At least nine individuals in the area had shown possible exposure to some level of radiation, and an official with Japan’s nuclear safety agency said that number could rise to as high as 160 millisieverts.
Japan radiation
RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS After Chernobyl in 1986, thousands of cases of thyroid cancer were attributed to radioactive iodine in the food supply. Cesium, which was also released, increases the risk for other cancers. Japanese officials said that cesium and radioactive iodine had been detected on Saturday near the site, and they have begun distributing pills to block radioactive iodine from accumulating in people’s thyroids.
— Nuclear plants in seismic zones
Many nuclear reactors, like those in Japan, exist in earthquake-prone areas. More than 440 commercial nuclear reactors provide about 14 percent of the world’s electricity. Click next to see reactors.
— Nuclear plants in seismic zones
Many nuclear reactors, like those in Japan, exist in earthquake-prone areas. More than 440 commercial nuclear reactors provide about 14 percent of the world’s electricity.
==
kai
3 comments
kai
March 13, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Credit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/japan-nuclear-reactors-and-seismic-activity/
တကမ္ဘာလုံးမှာ ညူစက်ရုံ ၄၄ဝ ရှိတယ်တဲ့..။
အမေရိကား၊ ဥရောပနဲ့..ဂျပန်မှာ အများဆုံးပဲ..။
ပုံထဲက အနီရောင်တွေခြယ်ထားတာက.. ငလျှင်အန္တရာယ်မြေတွေ..။ အဲဒီမှာ ညူစက်ရုံရှိရင်.. ပါတ်ဝန်းကျင်ကလူတွေ ဒုက္ခရောက်နိုင်တယ်.။
ဆိုတော့..
ဂျပန်လိုနိုင်ငံမှာ ညူစက်ရုံရှိတာ.. တယ်မဟန်ပါ..။
မြန်မာပြည်လည်း..အနီရောင်ဇုံထဲပါတာမို ့… ညူစက်ရုံမဆောက်သင့်သေးဘူး ယူဆရပါတယ်..။
Normal operation
In operation since the early 1970s, Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant uses six boiling water reactors, which rely on uranium nuclear fission to generate heat. Water surrounding the core boils into steam that drives turbines to generate electricity.
The reactor vessel is surrounded by a thick steel-and-concrete primary containment vessel, equipped with a water reservoir designed to suppress overheating of the vessel.
Seawater is pumped into a condensor that precipitates the steam into water, which is pumped back to the reactor.
—
Earthquake damage
Friday’s disaster cut power to the system, and the tsunami disabled backup diesel generators. A third backup, turbines driven by steam from the reactor, generated electricity needed to run water through the reactor vessel. However, batteries used to control the operation of the reactor have been exhausted, but new diesel generators have been delivered.
Fuel rods in the core of reactor number 2 were reportedly exposed and at least partially out of water. Reactor number 1 reported leakage of reactor coolant and elevated radiation levels in the control room.
—
Worst-case scenario
Engineers need a restoration of power and adequate water supplies to contain damage to reactor cores. If, however, they are unable to cool a damaged core, uranium fuel could melt into a pool of radioactive lava, which might melt its way out of the reactor vessel and drain onto the floor of the primary containment vessel.
Nuclear analyst Kenneth D. Bergeron describes the primary containment vessels as “not particularly robust,” better than Chernobyl, but not as good as Three Mile Island.
—
How bad is it?
RADIATION Japanese officials on said Saturday that radiation levels per hour at the site at one point were 1,000 times the amount an individual should be exposed to in a year — posing severe health risks to workers at close proximity. At least nine individuals in the area had shown possible exposure to some level of radiation, and an official with Japan’s nuclear safety agency said that number could rise to as high as 160 millisieverts.
Japan radiation
RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS After Chernobyl in 1986, thousands of cases of thyroid cancer were attributed to radioactive iodine in the food supply. Cesium, which was also released, increases the risk for other cancers. Japanese officials said that cesium and radioactive iodine had been detected on Saturday near the site, and they have begun distributing pills to block radioactive iodine from accumulating in people’s thyroids.
—
Nuclear plants in seismic zones
Many nuclear reactors, like those in Japan, exist in earthquake-prone areas. More than 440 commercial nuclear reactors provide about 14 percent of the world’s electricity. Click next to see reactors.
—
Nuclear plants in seismic zones
Many nuclear reactors, like those in Japan, exist in earthquake-prone areas. More than 440 commercial nuclear reactors provide about 14 percent of the world’s electricity.
==
maungmoenyo
March 13, 2011 at 11:47 pm
သေခြာတာကတော့ လက်ရှိစစ်အစိုးရလက်ထက်မှာ ညူးကလီးယား စနစ်ကိုအခြေခံတဲ့ စစ်ရေး နဲ့ အခြားနည်းပညာရပ်တွေ ဖြစ်မြောက်လာနိုင်တဲ့အလားအလာမရှိပါဘူး။ အဲ့ဒီနည်းပညာရယူနေသယောင်ယောင် လေသံလွှင့်ပြီးနိုင်ငံကြီးတွေဆီက အထောက်အပံ့တွေလက်ဖြန့်တောင်းလာ ဘို့ဘဲရှိပါတယ်။
bigcat
March 14, 2011 at 1:28 am
အဲသာကြောင့် ရှေးလူကြီးတွေက အလုပ်ကြီးအကိုင်ကြီးလုပ်မယ်ဆိုရင် အရင်ဆုံးပွဲထိုး၊ ပန္နက်ချ၊ နေကောင်းရွက်သာရွေးကြတာပေါ့။ အခုဂျပန်ပြဿနာလည်း တောပိုင်တောင်ပိုင်တွေကို တောင်းပန်လိုက်ရင် ပြီးသွားမှာပါ။ အရမ်းစွတ်ပြောတာမဟုတ်ဘူးနော်၊ ဟောဒီမှာကြည့် မောက္ခပညာရေး စာမျက်နှာကနေ ကူးထားတာ http://www.maukkha.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1439:2011-03-11-11-40-09&catid=120:2010-10-11-07-37-22&Itemid=374
(ဒဏ္ဍာရီအရ ဂျပန်ကျွန်းစုများအောက်တွင် ခပ်ကြမ်းကြမ်း ခပ်ယမ်းယမ်း ဧရာမ ကြောင်ငါးကြီး တစ်ကောင် ရှိ သည်။ သူ့ဦးခေါင်းကို ကမ္ဘာမြေစောင့် ရှင်တို နတ်ဘုရား က နှမ်းဖတ် ကျောက်တုံးကြီးနဲ့ ဖိညှပ်ထားသည်။
သို့ပေမဲ့ တစ်ခါတစ်ရံတော့ ရှင်တိုနတ်ဘုရားက သူ့ဖိထားတဲ့ ကျောက်တုံးကို ဖြုတ်ချတတ်သည်။ အဲဒီလို ကျောက်တုံးကြီး ပြုတ်ကျသွားတဲ့အခါ ငါးကြီးက တကိုယ်လုံး လှုပ်ခါယမ်းလိုက်တော့ ကမ္ဘာမြေတစ်ခုလုံး သိမ့်သိမ့်တုန်ခါ ချောက်ခြား သွား ကြရသည်။
မေလ ၁၁ ရက် မွန်းလွဲပိုင်းတွင် ဂျပန်နိုင်ငံ အရှေ့မြောက်ကမ်းခြေနဲ့ ၁၅ မိုင်အကွာ ပြင်းအား ပမာဏ ၈.၉ ရှိ ငလျင်ကြီး တုန်လှုပ်ခဲ့သည်။ တဆက်ထဲ ဆုနာမီ ကြောက်မယ်ဖွယ် ဧရာမ ရေလှိုင်းကြီးများ လိုက်ပါလာသည်။ စက္ကန့်နဲ့အမျှ တလိမ့်လိမ့် တက်လာတဲ့ ရေလှိုင်းလုံးတွေက ကားတွေ၊ သင်္ဘောတွေ၊ အဆောက်အဦတွေကို အမှိုက်အစအနများသဖွယ် သိမ်းကျုံးသွားသည်။ အဝေးပြေးလမ်းမကြီးတွေ ဟက်တက်ကွဲ ကုန်သည်။ တံတားများ ထက်ပိုင်းကျိုးကျသည်။ အိမ် ၅.၄ သန်း လျှပ်စစ်မီး ပျက်သွားသည်။……)