Former Senior Reactor Operator: You Can Get A Recriticality In Fukushima No. 4 SFP – ‘There’s No Way To Shut That Down’ – ‘There You Have Another Never Ending Fountain Of Particulates And Gas’ (VIDEO)

Former Senior Reactor Operator: You can get a recriticality in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — “Never ending fountain of particulates and gas” (VIDEO) (ENENews, May 20, 2012):

Subscription Only? Interview with Chris Harris
Nutrimedical Report, Host Bill Deagle
May 18, 2012

Chris Harris, former licensed Senior Reactor Operator and engineer

His extensive career in the industry spans over 3 decades, and special training in severe accidents and mitigation strategies. Chris now works in Maryland for a consultant firm.

In the case of Unit 4… you can get a recriticality.

Here’s how that happens. To prevent criticality, you are depending on spacing of spent fuel in the racks. If you damage [fuel racks] where you’ve got a reduced spacing between assemblies, you’ve eliminated a guard against spontaneous fission. There’s still neutron emitters and water in the area to moderate… You could actually get a criticality in the fuel pool.

That would be a never ending process threes no way to shut that down.

Some of the fuel doesn’t have control blades, a boiling water reactor has control blades not control rods, so some of them are unbladed. Those would be ones where you may get a fission… of course if you have a fission and you’re going to generate more fission products, there you have another never ending fountain of particulates and gas.

Listen to the broadcast here

More reports by Harris here

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.