New sings of “fission” at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan

New sings of “fission” at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan

A sign of unexpected “fission” was collect at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. The nuclear plant was damaged during the earthquake and tsunami hit the country in March.

The reactor was damaged and the fuel breached out of its cells, causing radiation in the atmosphere. The heavy damages to the reactor called a high alert situation in the area.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has revealed that it has discovered some amount of xenon. It is a substance that is produced as by-product of fission.

The xenon was found in the water and boric acid solution used in no. 2 reactor. The mixture is used to prevent any reaction in the nuclear fuel.

Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said, "It can be assumed that isolated criticality took place for a short period of time judging from the presence of xenon."

However the amount of xenon found in the reactor no.2 was little, that could have been result of a short reaction.  The fuel present in the reactor is at stable temperature and it is unlikely that it will melt down again.

The fuel in the reactor had melted during the quakes and tsunami hit Fukushima, destroying its water cooling system. This caused the world biggest nuclear eruption since the Chernobyl about 25 years ago.

A professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University, Kazuhiko Kudo said, "Some of the lumps of fuel that melted off early in the accident may have caused the nuclear fission. I would not rule it out completely but this possibility is highly unlikely
as many elements, like temperature and the amount water, have to be at a right balance for fission to occur."

Kudo also presented another possibility about the presence of xenon in the reactor no.2. He further said that from the reaction it could have also been due to the splitting of uranium.

The amount to trigger the reaction is too low which if caused any reaction would not leave any impact.

Recently in October Tepco claimed that the efforts to cool down the nuclear fuel has been successful. It claimed to do a cold shutdown of the reactor within this year. It was also reported the radiations have decreased to half since the plant wrecked.

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Posted by Samer Ahmed on Nov 2 2011. Filed under Latest News, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry