New Concerns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

Lot of changes last night at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station. Two more explosions, one at Reactor No. 2 and the other at Reactor No. 4, which was not operating at the time the quake and tsunami hit.

The situation has rapidly deteriorated. Radiation levels appear to have risen dramatically, but readings vary depending on location and may be subsiding. There are six reactors at Fukushima, three of which were operating at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, and three of which were under maintenance. There seems to be a consensus among experts that the damage has surpassed the 1979 Three Mile Island incident and is the worst such accident since Chernobyl.

As reports came in about the explosion at Reactor No. 2, word spread that the containment vessel—the last line of defense—had been damaged. This of course, is not good news. David Wright at UCS explains the two most serious concerns and translates what this might mean:

The first is that Monday night TEPCO confirmed there is damage to the Unit 2 containment and that it may be leaking gases and or liquids. Normally the reactor building is intended to act as a secondary containment and capture radiation leaking from the primary containment so that filters can remove the radioactivity before it is released to the atmosphere. But the reactor buildings for all three reactors have been damaged by explosions and no longer provide this secondary containment.

So if the primary containment is leaking, then a core meltdown could lead to a very large release of radioactivity to the environment.

The second concern is that even if the primary containment is currently intact, the Mark I containment system used in these reactors has a known vulnerability to meltdowns. Molten fuel that enters the primary containment area can melt through the wall of the primary containment—a situation called liner melt-through—which would also allow the release of large amounts of radioactivity to the environment.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there.

The hydrogen explosion and fire in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 could pose the biggest risk. Robert Alvarez explains why:

The pools “contain very large concentrations of radioactivity, can catch fire, and are in much more vulnerable buildings,” he warns. If the pools lose their inflow of circulating cooling water, the water in the pools will evaporate. If the level of water drops to five or six feet above the spent fuel, Alvarez calculates, the release of radioactivity “could be life-threatening near the reactor building.” Since the total amount of long-lived radioactivity in the pool is at least five times that in the reactor core, a catastrophic release would mean “all bets are off,” he says.

The severity of this situation underscores the truly heroic efforts by the workers who have stayed at Fukushima to continue to try and cool the reactors. Not only have they survived a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami, but they’re putting their lives on the line to reign in what is already one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents in history.

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t's clear that the media coverage of this terrible event is being managed and sanitised so that the appalling realities are being introduced in a softly softly way.
I don't know a lot about radiation, but I do find it interesting the way that words like 'meltdown' have been dripped into the coverage. And now 'apocalypse'.

My understanding as a very lay person of Chernobyl, is that there was and continues to be massive radioactive contamination over a large area, including high incidences of birth defects.

The notion that one can 'wash off' radiation...with what? Distilled water, perhaps? seems to smack of the Protect and Survive UK government advice during the Cold War. I seem to recall that the suggestion was to hide under tables.

The numbers of dead and injured in Japan will go up; the severity of the nuclear meltdown will continue to increase, and we will NEVER EVER be aware of the horrific realities which are going down now and for the foreseeable future.

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