From Three Mile Island though, which I think is a better to comparison to what's going on now, the maximum distance we think it traveled was just a few miles. ![]() It's possible for radioactivity to travel literally thousands of miles in the atmosphere. "Well we know from Chernobyl, it was a tremendously large, full meltdown, we had there in Russia. If the heat ruptures the vessel, it could result a large and violent release of radiation with serious health effects.Įxpert Daniel Aldrich says that so far, the release of radiation at the Fukushima plant has been similar to the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in the United States rather than the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history. A full nuclear meltdown occurs when the fuel in the core melts and falls to the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel. "There's not an annunciator there's not an alarm window or a computer print out that says, 'I've experienced a core meltdown.'"Ī partial core meltdown occurs when nuclear fuel is not cooled for several hours and begins to melt. So right now, to our knowledge, this is only a partial meltdown," he said.īut nuclear engineer David Lochbaum with the Union of Concerned Scientists cautions that it is difficult to detect a meltdown. And if uncontrolled, this could build into a larger meltdown. So in this case, it means the fuel gets so hot, the rods themselves melt. "This is a smaller scale meltdown, where the fuel rods themselves have not been cooled down by water or normally by other cooling fluids. state of Indiana says the situation at the stricken plant is not as serious as the 1986 nuclear power accident at Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine. Japan expert Daniel Aldrich of Purdue University in the U.S. Then the reactor's vessel is contained in a primary containment vessel that is made of concrete," he said. The nuclear core is contained in reactor vessels that are made of higher steel. ![]() "The nuclear reactors BWR have multiple safety measures. ![]() As a result, the release of radioactivity was limited," he said.Īmano described the many layers of protection at the Japanese plant. "Despite the hydrogen explosions, reactors vessels and containment vessels stayed in tact. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano sought to calm fears about the release of radioactive gas into the air, following two explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, some 200 kilometers north of Tokyo. But the fluid situation and fears of a possible meltdown are raising concerns. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, said Monday in Vienna that despite problems at two nuclear power plants in Japan stemming from last week's earthquake and tsunami, there is no indication of a reactor meltdown.
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