One account mentioned that GE-Hitachi’s nuclear reactor experts aren’t on the scene because they’re in North Carolina, and out of phone contact with Japan. They were in North Carolina working on a problem at a GE reactor there. GE-Hitachi is located at the Brunswick Nuclear Power station operated by Carolina Power & Light near Wilimington (the power company in North Carolina NOT run by nuclear engineers – they bought GE ready made reactors)
This story about 3 weeks ago gives a major hint.
http://starbeacon.com/local/x789958596/Perry-Nuclear-Plant-monitoring-defective-control-rods
They discovered that many of the control rods in the Perry Nuclear power station (near Cleveland Ohio) are defective. Inserting the control rods is essential to stop the heat generation of a nuclear plant in an emergency shutdown.
The Brunswick nuclear plant is currently shut down for its yearly maintenance, and you can be sure GE-Hitachi was looking at the control rods
Failure of the control rods to work would explain why the nuclear power plants in Japan are failing to shut down normally.
For extra credit reading:
“Failure of the control rods to work would explain why the nuclear power plants in Japan are failing to shut down normally.”
It might explain it if you change the laws of physics. In a BWR the control rods are not required to shut down the reactor. Simply stopping the main coolant pumps will do the trick. The nuclear physics of a BWR core are unique. For the nuclear chain reaction to continue the coolant must be two-phase (boiling), at the proper pressure, and at the proper ratio of liquid and vapor. If you have too much steam OR too much liquid, nuclear fission cannot be sustained and the reaction shuts down. Also if the fuel gets too hot the fission reaction shuts down. The control rods must be withdrawn of course to initiate a chain reaction during reactor startup, but there are many ways to shut down a BWR without using the control rods. In fact to most physicists it’s a minor miracle that the BWR core design can be coaxed to sustain fission in the first place!
The news report that “GE-Hitachi’s nuclear reactor experts aren’t on the scene because they’re in North Carolina, and out of phone contact with Japan” is ridiculous. This implies that every senior safety-analysis/design engineer at GE is spending the weekend down at the Brunswick plant doing an inspection job that would take only a couple of engineers to accomplish? Not likely. If they are out of phone contact from reporters it’s because they are locked in a war room (TMI-style) trying to come up with solutions. Besides which, traveling to Japan would take 20 hours that they don’t have to spare. And I’m sure the Japanese would be ready with nice corporate offices and working computer systems for them to move right into?