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Fukushima Will Blow -- Ongoing Cover-up
by WB via stan - Washington's Blog Thursday, Nov 24 2011, 9:54pm
international / environment / other press

Fukushima is an ongoing HOT -- active fission -- nuclear disaster, which will easily exceed the devastation that the Chernobyl reactor caused.

Fukushima reactors could blow at any time, fact! The major crime here is not the criminal deception and frauds committed by Tepco Executives and Japanese politicians but the continuing nuclear pollution which is slowly but quietly being released into the environment, ground and sea, because Corporatists view it as the least expensive option!

dangerradiation.jpg

I’ve repeatedly noted that we may experience a “China syndrome” type of accident at Fukushima.

For example, I pointed out in September:

Mainichi Dailly News notes:

As a radiation meteorology and nuclear safety expert at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, Hiroaki Koide [says]:

The nuclear disaster is ongoing.

***

At present, I believe that there is a possibility that massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again.

At the No. 1 reactor, there’s a chance that melted fuel has burned through the bottom of the pressure vessel, the containment vessel and the floor of the reactor building, and has sunk into the ground. From there, radioactive materials may be seeping into the ocean and groundwater.

***

The government and plant operator TEPCO are trumpeting the operation of the circulation cooling system, as if it marks a successful resolution to the disaster. However, radiation continues to leak from the reactors. The longer the circulation cooling system keeps running, the more radioactive waste it will accumulate. It isn’t really leading us in the direction we need to go.

It’s doubtful that there’s even a need to keep pouring water into the No.1 reactor, where nuclear fuel is suspected to have burned through the pressure vessel. Meanwhile, it is necessary to keep cooling the No. 2 and 3 reactors, which are believed to still contain some fuel, but the cooling system itself is unstable. If the fuel were to become overheated again and melt, coming into contact with water and trigger a steam explosion, more radioactive materials will be released.

***

We are now head to head with a situation that mankind has never faced before.

Mainichi also reports:

The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) and residents of the zone between 20 and 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant held an emergency evacuation drill on Sept. 12 … in preparation for any further large-scale emission of radioactive materials from the plant.

***

The scenario for the drill presupposed further meltdown of the Fukushima plant’s No. 3 reactor core, and a local accumulation of radioactive materials emitting 20 millisieverts of radiation within the next four days. …

And nuclear expert Paul Gunter says that we face a “China Syndrome”, where the fuel from the reactor cores at Fukushima have melted through the container vessels, into the ground, and are hitting groundwater and creating highly-radioactive steam.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said [video included] recently that a new build up of hydrogen may cause the reactors to explode again.

Nuclear expert Dr. Ian Fairlie – former scientific secretary to the United Kingdom government’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters, who advises the European Parliament as well as local and national authorities in several countries – told Dr. Helen Caldicott:


Really it’s just a matter of time before it [the corium] goes through and into the bottom of the actual station itself. And if it ever hits ground, well… there’s a lot of water sloshing around there, if molten fuel gets into that water it will immediately flash to steam and you will have huge steam explosions going on.

***

I’m not ruling out a nuclear bomb-type explosion”.

And the architect who actually designed Fukushima Reactor No. 3 – Uehara Haruo, former president of Saga University – told popular Japanese news source Live Door on November 17th that (translation courtesy of Fukushima Diary):


In this interview, [Haruo] admitted Tepco’s explanation does not make sense, and that the China syndrome is inevitable.

He stated that considering 8 months have passed since [the March 11th earthquake] without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.

He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.

Copyright applies.

[It is tragic but expected that today's Corporate controlled mass media deliberately backgrounds stories relating to the ongoing dangers of Fukushima reactors; we wouldn't want the masses to begin asserting their right to self-preservation and then applying pressure on thoroughly incompetent puppet politicians around the globe under ANY circumstances, would WE? Quick, screen American Idol and be sure to maintain the media blackout on the massive and VIOLENT CIA/NATO sponsored social repression -- including rapes and murders -- occurring in criminally conquered Libya!]


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Japan nuclear meltdown ‘worse than thought’
by staff report - AFP Thursday, Dec 1 2011, 8:52am

Molten nuclear fuel at Japan’s Fukushima plant might have eaten two thirds of the way through a concrete containment base, its operator said, citing a new simulation of the extent of the March disaster.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said their latest calculations showed the fuel inside the No. 1 reactor at the tsunami-hit plant could have melted entirely, dropping through its inner casing and eroding a concrete base.

In the worst-case scenario, the molten fuel could have reached as far as 65 centimetres (2 feet) through the concrete, leaving it only 37 centimetres short of the outer steel casing, the report, released Wednesday, said.

Until now, TEPCO had said some fuel melted through the inner pressure vessel and dropped to the containment vessel, without saying how much and what it did to the concrete, citing a lack of data.

“Almost no fuel remains at its original position,” TEPCO said in the report.

Two other reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant also went into meltdown when the tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the plant.

However, only about 60 percent of their fuel dropped through to the concrete floor and caused less damage, the report projected.

The molten fuel in the three reactors is believed to have stayed cool and stable because water has been injected into the vessels, the utility said.

TEPCO added, however, that it has yet to closely study many areas of the damaged reactors due to high level of radiation and stressed its findings were based on modelling.

The exact position of the fuel believed to have eaten its way through the concrete and to what extent it is being exposed to the cooling water is not known.

“Uncertainly involved in the analysis is significant due to the uncertain nature of the original conditions and data used,” the report said.

“Using (realistically assumed) conditions for the evaluation, the concrete could have been penetrated, but (the fuel) stayed inside the casing,” it said.

Fukushima Daiichi has spewed radioactive materials across eastern Japan since it was inundated by the huge waves of March 11.

The world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 has not directly claimed any lives, but has left tens of thousands of people displaced and rendered tracts of land uninhabitable, possibly for decades.

TEPCO and the Japanese government have pledged to bring all the plant’s reactors to a state of cold shutdown by the end of 2011.

© 2011 AFP


 
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