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Comment by giberson | Hacker News Reader

Is it exploding, or are they doing a pressure release?

That doesn't look like a very controlled pressure release.

edit: BBC says it's an explosion but article is completely devoid of details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

CNN too, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclea...

Well at 47 seconds in the video there is a white structure, then at 48 it's obliterated.

it looks to me like a still-standing structure completely disappeared. watch the replay a couple times. there's a white building not unlike 2 other to the right, is partially covering a lightning rod. when you see the shockwave, it's no longer there, at all.

This picture just appeared on Wikipedia, of which I am guessing is the building that may or may not be the one that possibly exploded. Maybe someone more knowledgable than myself can identify what the building is used for. The 2011 Sendai earthquake article says " the outer structure of reactor number 1's containment building had blown off, releasing a large cloud of dust and vapour."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2011-03-12_1800_NHK_S%C5%8...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsun...

I have no clue what's going on (and I Am Not An Engineer), but I'm fairly sure that in this photo

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Fukushima...

The longer, rectangular buildings on the seaside are the turbine halls, and the square buildings next to them (in the inland direction) are the containment buildings.

That's correct. Of the four, it's the small building on the right that is reactor number one: the one that is melting down.

Wikipedia deletionists have already put a speedy deletion tag on that. Go Wikipedia!

http://www.ansn-jp.org/jneslibrary/npp2.pdf

That PDF has a schematic of the containment building on page 4. The "MARK-I" image corresponds to the Fukushima I-1 building.

More detailed cutaways:

http://i.imgur.com/Oj4kg.png

http://i.imgur.com/CckjP.jpg

from, respectively,

Madgi Ragheb, UIUC https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20457%20CSE%20462...

NRC http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf

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