Fukushima #4 Spent Fuel Pool

This video is timely as I've been discussing this topic with someone on YouTube  (not associated with this particular video):

Let's look at the spent fuel fire:

But before we do, here's the second video I was referring to:

In particular, at about 25:22, Gundersen tells us the fuel is hot enough to burn and this could lead to 186,000 fatalities based on a Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) study which had less fuel.

To begin, we're not really talking about burning the fuel itself due to decay heat generation.  The cladding can withstand very high temperatures:

What people are really talking about is an oxidation reaction in air or steam (more on this below).

So speaking of BNL (Arnie sourced them, so shall I), they were responsible for preparing NUREG/CR 4982, which was all about spent fuel fires.  Let's remember that this plant was a BWR.  Go to Table 3.1 or Paragraph 4.2 and you can see that a cladding fire is only possible up to 180 days after the fuel is removed.

#4's fuel was removed in December, 2010 (we'll say Jan. 1, 2011) and Gundersen looks to be on that radio show in early June, let's say June 1, 2012.  So this is like 540 days after the fuel was removed long past the 180 days.

We can look at a 2006 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the safety and security of spent fuel.  Let's jump to Chapter 3 and you'll see the oxidation reactions I mentioned above.  Jump back to page 17 and you'll see this:

"At discharge from the reactor, a spent fuel assembly generates on the order of tens of kilowatts of heat. Decay-heat production diminishes as very short-lived radionuclides decay away, dropping heat generation by a factor of 100 during the first year; dropping by another factor of 5 between year one and year five; and dropping about 40 percent between year five and year ten."

So the heat generation drops from tens of kilowatts to tens of decawatts (a kilowatt = 1000 watts, but this has dropped by 100 leaving 10 = a decawatt) after the first year.  Ten's of 10 watts is on the order of hundreds of watts (10 x 10= 100).  A bright light bulb is typically 100 watts.  But we're generating even less heat because more time than 1 year has passed.

Gundersen & Alvarez (first video) are lying.

Alvarez is not new to spent fuel pool fear mongering and he's mentioned in the NAS report as well.

Note that Gundersen mentioned the BNL report with all those fatalities.  That is not the BNL report I linked to.    Apparently there was one in 1997.  But though I've searched BNL and the NRC sites I can't find it.  Regardless, besides for Arnie getting the number of fatalities wrong, that accident was a worst case accident.   I don't know the details (which is what I'd like to read), but having 1.5 year old fuel (Fukushima) is not a worst case accident.  And the number of deaths depends on the population exposed, if the BNL had a greater population than around Fukushima, it will exaggerate the deaths.  Arnie lied again when he equated Fukushima with that report.