nuclear-news

At least seven nuclear cores or spent fuel pools in trouble at Fukushima

It has been obvious all along this was a 7. There are three reactors that are not being cooled (No. 1, 2 &3) and four fuel pools too (No. 1, 2, 3, and especially 4)…there were at least seven cores or pools that had been in difficulty. He noted that at Chernobyl it was only one reactor that created the problem.

Fire at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant, more aftershocks | Reuters By Shinichi Saoshiro and Kazunori Takada TOKYO  Apr 11, 2011 – Engineers were fighting a fire at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant on Tuesday as another major aftershock rocked eastern Japan, swaying buildings in central Tokyo and closing Narita airport runways……

Operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, said on Tuesday that its workers were fighting a fire near damaged reactor No. 4.

It was unclear how serious the fire was……

The Kyodo reported on Tuesday that the high levels of radiation that have been released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant meant it could raise the severity level from 5 to the highest 7, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

Japan had previously assessed the accident at reactors operated by TEPCO at level 5, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.

Kyodo said the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission had estimated that at one stage the amount of radioactive material released from the reactors in northern Japan had reached 10,000 terabequerels per hour of radioactive iodine 131 for several hours, which would classify the incident as a major accident according to the INES scale.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), published by the International Atomic Energy Agency, ranks nuclear incidents by severity from 1 to a maximum of 7.

The commission also released a preliminary calculation for the cumulative amount of external exposure to radiation, saying it exceeded the yearly limit of 1 millisieverts in areas extending more than 60 kms (36 miles) to the northwest of the plant and about 40 km to the south-southwest.

“It has been obvious all along this was a 7. There are three reactors that are not being cooled (No. 1, 2 &3) and four fuel pools too (No. 1, 2, 3, and especially 4),” saidArnie Gundersen, a 29-year veteran of the nuclear industry who worked on reactors similar to those at Daiichi and who is now chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates Inc of Burlington, Vermont.

He said that means there were at least seven cores or pools that had been in difficulty. He noted that at Chernobyl it was only one reactor that created the problem.

Fire at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant, more aftershocks | Reuters

April 13, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011