nuclear-news

Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 reactor a radioactive time bomb

 if the [spent fuel rods] pool should spring a leak, or another earthquake bring the pool crashing down, all that fuel would be exposed to the outside air, letting them heat up and release massive amounts of radiation. 

Fukushima Daiichi’s Achilles Heel: Unit 4′s Spent Fuel?  WSJ,  By Phred Dvorak, April 17, 2012,  Just how dangerous is the situation at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant? Very, according to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a senior member of the Senate’s energy committee who toured the plant earlier this month.

Another big earthquake or tsunami could send Fukushima Daiichi’s fragile reactor buildings tumbling down, resulting in “an even greater release of radiation than the initial accident,”
Mr. Wyden warned in a Monday letter to Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki.

In particular, Japan isn’t moving fast enough to remove dangerous
nuclear-fuel rods from the reactors, and the U.S. should offer its
help to speed things along, Mr. Wyden urged, in letters to Ambassador
Fujisaki, as well as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman
Gregory Jaczko……
Mr. Wyden’s warning touches on what some experts think is the biggest
problem at the Fukushima plant: another earthquake or tsunami that
exposes the least protected of its nuclear fuel to outside air……
Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 reactor was shut down for maintenance when last year’s accident took place, meaning the nuclear fuel rods were outside those protective vessels and sitting in a pool of water, high up in the reactor building, where they were being stored. The water in that “spent fuel pool” keeps the rods cool and insulates them from the
outside.

But if the pool should spring a leak, or another earthquake bring the pool crashing down, all that fuel would be exposed to the outside air, letting them heat up and release massive amounts of radiation. Other reactors have spent-fuel pools too, but they contain less fuel……
Mr. Wyden points out,.. that the schedule allows up to ten years to
get all the spent fuel in all the Fukushima reactor pools out —
something he says is too risky.

“This schedule carries extraordinary and continuing risk if further
severe seismic events were to occur,” he wrote in his letter to
Ambassador Fujisaki. “The true earthquake risk for the site was
seriously underestimated and remains unresolved
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/04/17/fukushima-daiichis-achilles-heel-unit-4s-spent-fuel/

April 18, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, safety