Once severely damaged Fukushima reactor building opened to media to showcase progress

Tepco’s representatives and METI’s officials have spent 15 minutes at the top floor of the reactor 3 building, 30 meters above the ground.

0,08mSv/per hour on the platform and 0,7mSv/per hour near the fuel pool with its 566 fuel assemblies supposed to be unloaded within 6 months. According to Tepco, workers cannot stay up there more than one hour or two per day….

The real content of that fuel pool is still mysterious, as no whole picture of that pool has ever been released.

The top floor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 3 reactor building is seen on Nov. 21, 2017. The spent fuel pool can be seen at lower left. (Mainichi)

The top level of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 3 reactor building was opened to the news media on Nov. 21.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry along with plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) guided reporters to the reactor building’s top floor for a tour lasting about 15 minutes.

The building was badly damaged by a hydrogen explosion in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March 2011. However, the debris has been cleared away, and radiation that had stood at 800 millisieverts per hour just after the reactor meltdowns was measured at 0.08 mSv/h on the 7-meter-high platform, on which fuel removal equipment and other devices have been installed, on Nov. 21. Closer to the fuel pool, the figure rose to 0.7 mSv/h. According to TEPCO, workers are limited to just one to two hours on the platform.

The top floor is about 30 meters from the ground. The spent fuel pool currently contains 566 fuel assemblies, and preparations are underway to start the removal process as early as mid-fiscal 2018, with equipment for the job already installed on the platform. A net currently covers the pool to prevent anything — or anyone — from falling in.

A semi-cylindrical cover is also being constructed to prevent radioactive materials from escaping when fuel removal operations begin.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171122/p2a/00m/0na/017000c

1.This Month

of the week

Radiation and harm to human health — https://beyondnuclearinternational.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/radiation-and-harm-to-human-health_27-july.pdf

Sowells Law Blog http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2018/

Another glossy new nuclear film advertisement – “The New Fire”

Film review: ‘The New Fire’ and the old Gen IV rhetoric Author: Jim Green ‒ Nuclear Monitor editor NM866.4751, October 2018 The New Fire is a pro-nuclear propaganda film directed and produced by musician and film-maker David Schumacher.It’s similar in some respects to the 2013 film Pandora’s Promise.1,2 The New Fire premiere was held in October 2017 and it can be streamed online from 18 October 2018…..

The film includes interviews with around 30 people (an overwhelming majority of them male) interspersed with footage of interviewees walking into buildings, and interviewees smiling. The musical underlay is a tedious drone ‒ a disappointment given Schumacher’s musical background……..Interviewees are mostly aging but the film’s main message is that young entrepreneurs may save the planet and its inhabitants with their Generation IV reactor projects……..

These climate heroes are contrasted with anti-nuclear environmentalists. One interviewee says that “people of our generation are the first ones that have the opportunity to look at nuclear power without all the emotional baggage that previous generations have felt…..

Another interviewee attributes opposition to nuclear power to an “irrational fear of the unknown” (which surely poses a problem for the exotic Generation IV concepts promoted in the film) and another says that “once people sort of understand what’s going on withnuclear, they are much more open to it”.

The film trots out the usual anti-renewables tropes and falsehoods: 100% renewables is “just a fantasy”, renewables can contribute up to 20% of power supply and the remainder must be baseload: fossil fuels or nuclear power………

Accidents such as those at Fukushima and Chernobyl get in the news because they are “so unusual” according to interviewee Ken Caldeira. And they get in the news, he might have added, because of the estimated death tolls (in the thousands for Fukushima5, ranging to tens of thousands for Chernobyl6), the costs (around US$700 billion for Chernobyl7, and US$192 billion (and counting) for Fukushima8), the evacuation of 160,000 people after the Fukushima disaster and the permanent relocation of over 350,000 people after the Chernobyl disaster…….

Transatomic Power’s molten salt reactor concept The film spends most of its time promoting Generation IV reactor projects including Transatomic Power’s molten salt reactor (MSR) concept. [Ed note. recently failed and abandoned] .

Scott Nolan from venture capital firm Founders Fund says that Transatomic satisfies his four concerns about nuclear power: safety, waste, cost, proliferation. And he’s right ‒ Transatomic’s MSRs are faultless on all four counts, because they don’t exist. It’s doubtful whether they would satisfy any of the four criteria if they did actually exist……. https://nuclear-news.net/2018/10/01/another-nuclear-film-advertisement-the-new-fire/

EVENTS

November-December 2018 International Uranium Film Festival – U.S. Southwest tour

November 29th and 30th and December 1st, Navajo Nation Museum, Hwy 264 & Post Office Loop, Window Rock, Navajo Nation, AZ

December 2nd, Flagstaff, AZ

December 6th, Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Ave, Albuquerque, NM

December 7th, Grants, NM

December 9th, Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave, Santa Fe, NM

PETITIONS

Tell Congress: Stop Trump from ordering a nuclear first strike without a Congressional declaration of war.

PREVENT UNNECESSARY RADIOACTIVE RISKS ACROSS THE USA NATION

Protect Idaho’s water. Stop nuclear waste.

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope