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Unprecedented problems face Japanese workers at Fukushima

“The fact they have to handle two spent fuel pools and three reactor cores with kid gloves, (they) don’t have any margin for error,”

Nuclear experts: Many challenges, few options for Japanese By Jim Barnett, CNN Senior Producer,April 7, 2011 Washington (CNN) — Nuclear experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists said again Thursday there are many challenges ahead and few options left to Japanese workers trying to ease the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

“The fact they have to handle two spent fuel pools and three reactor cores with kid gloves, (they) don’t have any margin for error,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and director of the group’s Nuclear Safety Project.

“It’s hard to say whether things will get better or things will get worse because they have so many challenges to face on so many places that it’s going to be difficult to be 100% right all five times. So it is a bad situation over there.”…..

The scientists told reporters on a telephone conference call there is a limited amount of equipment to deal with the emergency.

Lochbaum said, “They’re so far beyond where emergency procedures and preplanning have done that they’re basically having to jerry-rig solution paths or potential solution paths for situations that were never anticipated.

“The other problem that’s complicating it is nobody ever anticipated an accident on more than one reactor or more than one spent fuel pool at a site,” Lochbaum said.

“The assumption all along was we’d have a problem at one reactor or one spent fuel pool, and we’d use the equipment from the others to help deal with the situation. Now you’ve got problems across the board, and you don’t have that supplemental equipment that you can shift from one unit to the other to try to help you out. Everybody needs help, and there’s just not enough equipment to deal  with that.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists is an independent nuclear-industry watchdog group that focuses on safety issues.

Nuclear experts: Many challenges, few options for Japanese – CNN.com

April 8, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011