Fukushima: the worst nuclear disaster in history ... by gimleteye

Who can forget, sixty days ago, the parade of nuclear "experts" on TV news assuring the public how the damaged Fukushima reactors would be "nothing like Chernobyl". They scoffed at the worry of regular, ordinary people: the same way that FPL and nuclear experts at NRC hearings look down on commenters who object to the expansion of nuclear power in South Florida at sea level. The problems at Fukushima are far more serious than our 20 second attention spans can absorb. As Arnie Gundersen reminds us: containment vessels that were rated 100 percent unbreachable are leaking like sieves. According to his latest, "With a meltdown at Unit 1, Unit 4 leaning and facing possible collapse, several units contaminating ground water, and area school children outside the exclusion zone receiving adult occupational radiation doses, the situation continues to worsen. TEPCO needs a cohesive plan and international support to protect against world-wide contamination." Thanks to the mayors of South Florida-- including Cindy Lerner, Pinecrest, and Philip Stoddard, South Miami-- who have the guts to speak against FPL's nuclear ambitions at Turkey Point. (Click, 'read more')
Hi, I'm Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds, and it's Friday, May 13th.

I thought I would use today to kind of summarize what's going on on the Fukushima site and immediately off site. But a quick summary would be that if basically this were an American rodeo, the bucking broncos would have been throwing the cowboys all week long. There is a meeting on Thursday where the NRC is being briefed by it's staff, and I think that what the staff is going to tell them is that the situation is still unstable. I think "unstable" is an understatement. Today on Unit 1, TEPCO announced that the reactor core was uncovered and that significant fuel had been damaged and I don't think that should come as a surprise to any of you, but it was a news press release from TEPCO. They discovered this because they were able to get people into the containment for a very brief amount of time who could put new gages in. The new gages indicated that there is no water in the reactor and very little in the containment.

Well that brings up the question, then, where did all that water go? We put in tens of thousands of tons of water over the last two months now, and that's an indication that there are leaks into the groundwater which I will discuss a little bit later. So Unit 1 is dry and possibly has melted throught the nuclear reactor and is now lying on the floor of the nuclear containment, causing incredibly high exposures to the people that are trying to get in. The exposures are 70 R an hour. That basically means that in four or five hours you are dead. And it's not a long term death, it's a quick death, so it's high, high exposures to radiation in Unit 1. So it's time to go back and change the plan on Unit 1 and I believe it is what TEPCO has to do. The radiation levels are just too high.

Moving on to Unit 2, there is really no change there, it is leaking like a sieve. Water is being poured into the top and it's coming out of the hole in the bottom and the containment is leaking. So you have got another large source of water and there is simply not enough room on site to capture all this water. And there is obviously a need to cleanse it and we are talking about cleansing capability beyond what's ever been tried before in the past. On average the Fukushima units are using close to a hundred tons of water a day and demineralization is normally a ton or two a day, so obviously there has to be a dramatic change in the plan to clean this water up, or else it is going to get released into the groundwater, and it's going to get released into the ocean.

Unit 3 is interesting. There has been chatter on the internet about smoke coming out of Unit 3. I don't think that is a cause for concern. It happened at night and air gets cold at night and the Pacific is very cold. And I think what you are seeing is the warm steam coming out of Unit 3 hitting the cold water and producing a really thick, steamy smoke. It's radioactive no doubt, but it's not an indication of a fire, at least I don't think it is. That's about the only good news coming out of Unit 3 though. Like I said before, the temperature at the top of the nuclear reactor is very high, but the pressure in the reactor is very low. And what that means is that water can't exist under those conditions. There is no water and there is no steam inside the Unit 3 reactor, based on a high gas temperature and a low pressure. Well what that means there is air in there and nuclear reactors are not meant to be cooled by air. So there is still a real severe problem in cooling the Unit 3 reactor. A hydrogen explosion is still possible at Unit 3 because of that wide disparity.

Another thing that came out of Unit 3 this week was a movie that they were able to take inside the fuel pool. You'll recall that Unit 3 is the one that is largely a pile of ruble at this point. The fuel pool pictures were awful. They really indicated large pieces of concrete had fallen into the pool. Large masses of metal were in the pool. The control rods and the fuel racks appeared to me to be distorted.

It's clearly an indication that there has been a violent explosion inside that pool. I think the pictures confirm what I have been telling you, that some sort of a violent exothermic reaction occurred inside that pool. Well, the other piece of information that came out that supports that, is that they found high levels of Iodine 131 in that pool. Now we are 60 days into this accident and the Iodine 131 should be gone. To find high levels of Iodine 131 in the Unit 3 pool is another indication that there was what I had called a prompt moderated criticality. And I believe still that that is just more evidence that supports what I have been saying now for several weeks.

Moving on to Unit 4: Unit 4 is leaning. TEPCO acknowledges that Unit 4 is leaning. The structure is obviously compromised
from the fires and the explosion on Unit 3. But It's tilting at the top and that's not good. If there is a seismic aftershock as a result of the first earthquake, Unit 4 could collapse. TEPCO is trying dramatically to shore up that building, but it's tough. It's really tough. There have also been some photos released of inside the unit's floor pool and the racks appear to have maintained their integrity. So the plutonium that we found off site and I will talk about that a little bit here, could not have come from Unit 4. The racks are intact. There is enough heat generated on Unit 4 to burn the building for two days, there was a fire. I wouldn't doubt that plutonium and other isotopes, cesium, strontium, were volatilized. But I don't think that Unit 4 is the source of large quantities of plutonium that have been found off site.

I did some calculations this week and I determined that in order for pieces of nuclear fuel to be found two kilometers away, and that's from an NRC report, those pieces would have to be thrown at around 900 to 1,000 miles per hour out of the fuel pool to travel that distance. Basically what I assumed is that a piece of fuel about this big was thrown out of the nuclear fuel pool in Unit 3 and travelled two kilometers. And in order to get that to happen, with air resistance, it had to start out at over 1,000 miles an hour. What that means is, again, that confirms what I have been saying all along: that's faster than the speed of sound. That shows there has been a detonation in Unit 3 and not a deflagration.

But what does all this mean? Unit 1's containment is leaking. They can't put nitrogen into it to maintain it's pressure. Unit 2's has been leaking and filling trenches off site. Unit 3's is now leaking as well and filling trenches off away from the reactor. So all three nuclear containments are leaking.

Now, here in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that it is impossible for a nuclear containment to leak. In the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards in October of last year, they specifically stated they assume zero probability of containment leakage. Now obviously that is wrong. And it affects lots of regulations on operating plants, as well as the new Westinghouse AP 1000 reactor which is attempting to be licensed. I'll talk more about that next week.

Finally I want to talk about what does this mean for the off site vicinity around the Fukushima reactor. First let's talk about the water. As I said, there is a lot of water going in and not all of it is getting captured. Experts have shown that the site has sunk by about a foot and that indicates that the concrete has to have cracked. The concrete foundations have to be cracking, and that radiation has to be getting into the groundwater. Now in our last video, I talked about how radiation had entered the sewage system at a local town. A sewage expert contacted me this week and he said it is not uncommon after an earthquake for groundwater to infiltrate a sewage system. So I think the most important information that we need from TEPCO and the Japanese government, and which we have not gotten yet, is what is the concentration of radioactivity in the groundwater.

And finally airborne radiation: There is a survey out this week from a combination of American and Japanese overflights
that indicate contamination 50 and 60 kilometers away from the reactor. A high school where kids are now required to wear masks and long sleeve shirts to protect their skin, and while they are in school, out on the parking lot they are stripping out the soil because it is so contaminated that if the kids were outside they would be exposed to adult nuclear worker levels of concentration. That's unconscionable that that school should be kept open.

And finally, all the reactors are continuing to emit radiation. The containments have failed. So it's going down as water and it's going up in steam and there is no plan in site to prevent that from happening in the future.

Well thank you very much and I will touch base with you next week.