There have been no statements so far of which this author is aware to indicate that TEPCO will not sample Unit 1 and Unit 3 containments for xenon, but this developing trend makes any such action appear not only clearly less emergent but probably less important all the time.
5:25 PM Eastern Tuesday November 15, 2011
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW
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Well, I'm puzzled now. I thought the continuing appearance of xenon after injecting boron was supposed to be a demonstration that the xenon was not due to neutron-induced fission?
ReplyDeleteAh - I see the detection limits on this set of results are way higher than previously. And I also see that now they have a "criticality" statement, showing that the new detection limit is still easily able to detect the level that would imply any rise in neutron-induced fission.
So it's not that the xenon has really gone, but that they have realized that they don't need to look for the ultra-low levels because that won't tell them anything.
They might or might not sample #1 and #3 gas, but unless the opportunity is there to assess ultra-low levels, I wouldn't think they would look any harder than this current process.