nuclear-news

The boiling water nuclear reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant were not designed or planned by TEPCO.  The world’s third largest corporation, American firm GE, designed the four main reactors, which stand at the Pacific Ocean side of the site.  A legal case in the 70’s revealed thatGE knew these reactor designs were flawed and the reactors prone to explode due to insufficiently robust ‘pressure containment systems’ – meaning that in the case of a build-up of gas or other pressure, the containment system was not strong enough to hold in the radioactive contents.  GE continued to sell them across the world anyway.  Not only this, but in the case of Fukushima, they designed the cooling pumps and reactors far too close to the Ocean, given the likelihood of seismic events, making the probability and impact of unsustainable pressure build-ups all the higher………

The biggest crisis at Fukushima though are the impacts of three meltdowns in reactors 1-3, and the fate of the fuel pools.  After prolonged exposure the fuel rods melt, forming a boiling pool of radioactive fuel at the bottom of the vessel containing the reactor.  Reactors 1, 3 and 4 are believed to be at this stage.  However, it is clear that reactor 2 suffered a breach of containment at its core. In fact, TEPCO still have no idea where the cores of the four reactors are.  In the worst case scenario, the cores will continue to melt through all material below them until they reach the groundwater, where heat and steam will build until an explosion occurs, releasing the entire nuclear payload of the four stations into the atmosphere.

Without a steady coolant supply, the reactor cores boiled off the water around them, exposing the fuel rods – leaving them damaged and unstable.  In the case of reactor 4, this was of an increased seriousness as the fuel pools were exposed to the elements, 18m in the air on a buckled and tilting structure.  Inside this fuel pool is 400 tonnes of highly radioactive spent fuel.  The radioactive fuel rods are inserted into assemblies of 60-70 rods each.  TEPCO need to remove more than 1,500assemblies from the pool before it collapses.  The company have issued placatory statements on the matter, telling the Guardian:

“Removing spent fuel is done at any ordinary nuclear power plant, and the equipment and methods we’ll be using here are not that different.”

This statement is disingenuous in the extreme.  Nuclear and fuel rod expert Arnie Gunderson uses an excellent metaphor to explain the issues.

“Now nuclear fuel is like cigarettes in a pack of cigarettes. If the pack is new, you can pull a cigarette out pretty easily. But if the pack is distorted and you pull too hard, you’ll snap the cigarette. Same thing can happen inside this fuel pool.”

Removing the rods from the pool is a delicate task normally assisted by computers according toToshio Kimura, a former TEPCO technician, who worked at Fukushima Daiichi for 11 years.

“Previously it was a computer-controlled process that memorized the exact locations of the rods down to the millimeter and now they don’t have that. It has to be done manually so there is a high risk that they will drop and break one of the fuel rods,” Kimura said.

These spent fuel rods contain Plutonium, the most toxic material on earth – trace amounts of which can kill a human being.

Krypton 85 is also likely to be released into the air – this radiation is absorbed by the lungs, is fat soluble and damages sperm and eggs resulting in genetic diseases and deformities.

According to independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Anthony Froggatt, writing in the recentWorld Nuclear Industry Status Report:

“”Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date,”, releasing three times the radioactive material of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, or 14,000 Hiroshimas.”

This piece of work starts this month.

If TEPCO, who have so far proven vastly incompetent, somehow manage to pull off this unprecedented activity without creating a nuclear holocaust, they still have to perform the same effort with reactors 1 and 2, which will be much more complex due to even greater damage to the buildings.https://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/11/13/impending-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-will-be-worse-than-chernobyl-what-you-need-to-know/