Arnie Gundersen: Demonstrates How Fukushima's Fuel Rods Melted and Shattered

[DeSwiss]

Run time: 04:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwvVJpyf_VY   Posted on YouTube: April 11, 2011 By YouTube Member: wildbill20102012 Views on YouTube: 55   Posted on DU: April 11, 2011 By DU Member: DeSwiss Views on DU: 1299

 

[clayton72]

1. That's a cutting torch

Maybe I'm missing something here. They' got it hot and squirted some water on it, so what? Nothing significant happened there. Then the guy starts at the top with his finger on the trigger, blasting oxygen out that liquifies and blows droplets through the air. It wasn't an experiment, it was a dramatization from my POV.

[DeSwiss]

2. Still.....

...I think I'll stick with Arnie's POV,

- But thanks.

Arnold Gundersen

Arnie is an energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience. A former nuclear industry senior vice president, he earned his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering, holds a nuclear safety patent, and was a licensed reactor operator. During his nuclear industry career, Arnie managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants around the country. He currently speaks on television, radio, and at public meetings on the need for a new paradigm in energy production. An independent nuclear engineering and safety expert, Arnie provides testimony on nuclear operations, reliability, safety, and radiation issues to the NRC, Congressional and State Legislatures, and Government Agencies and Officials throughout the US, Canada, and internationally. In 2008, he was appointed by the Vermont Senate President to be the first Chair of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Oversight Panel. He has testified in numerous cases and before many different legislative bodies including the Czech Republic Senate. Using knowledge from his Masters Thesis on Cooling Towers, Arnie analyzed and predicted problems with Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers three years prior to their 2007 collapse. His Environmental Court testimony concerned available and economically viable alternatives to cooling towers in order to reduce consumptive water use and the ecological damage caused by cooling tower drift and heated effluents. As the former vice president in an engineering organization, Arnie led the team of engineers who developed the plans for decommissioning Shippingport, the first major nuclear power plant in the US to be fully dismantled. He was also an invited author on the first DOE Decommissioning Handbook. Source term reconstruction is a method of forensic engineering used to calculate radiation releases from various nuclear facilities after nuclear incidents or accidents. Arnie is frequently called upon by public officials, attorneys, and intervenors, to perform source term reconstructions. His source term reconstruction efforts vary. Arnie has calculated exposures to oil workers, who received radiation exposure while working on wells. He has also calculated radiation releases to children with health concerns, who live near a nuclear facility, like the one that carted radioactive sewage off-site and spread it on farmers' fields. Finally, he has performed an accurate source term construction of the radiation releases from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Also involved in his local community, Arnie has been a part-time math professor at Community College of Vermont (CCV) since 2007. He also taught high school physics and mathematics for 13 years and was an instructor at RPI's college reactor lab.

http://www.fairewinds.com/content/who-we-are">link

[formercia]

3. Arnie is a Nuclear Engineer

I think he's making a good point.

[neoralme]

4. Tell you what: I'll believe him over you.

[SoulSearcher]

5. Proved that the metal casing became brittle.

and the pic of the 3-MileIsland rods helped too.
But once the fuel spills out of the containers I didn't understand
if the Uranium pellets are now in an uncontrolled, continuous reaction
or are just superhot but gradually cooling down. WIll watch for
Vid#2. Thank you for the demonstration.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. Blowing chunks off with the torch was probably unnecessary but

the important part was he could break off pieces of metal with his bare hand after it was weakened by the heating/contamination with oxygen.

Not exactly rust, but sort of like what happens to steel when permeated by iron oxide. It becomes brittle.


Edit: Oops, this was supposed to be in response to reply 1.