“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.
Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.
“Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,” he said, “You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.”
Thanks for this, Eric and fluidity.
I’ve watched Japan public television (NHK) English-language broadcast for over a year now (it’s one of the few stations my antenna can pull in). I was watching it the night (Pacific time) the earthquake struck & saw the effects live, including the tsunami.
I continue to watch it. Every news broadcast begins with an update on Fukushima Daiichi. They’re not as grim as Gundersen’s analysis; they’re getting most of their info from the Japanese government, TEPCO, and the . They do report on US & international comments and criticisms, but nothing of the magnitude that Gundersen lays out.
NHK is doing a multi-part special on the nuclear disaster, and I’ve seen part one. The tenor of the program is something like Frontline. Part 1 was very very interesting — among other things, they interviewed some people who were at the plant at the time of the event, they apparently obtained some of TEPCO’s documents including data collected from the plant, and they reported how Prime Minister Kan reacted and what he did. I don’t know how accurate the reporting is because I’m unfamiliar with this network’s investigative reporting. It seemed pretty middle of the road, in terms of viewpoint.
It was fascinating to see how they laid out how Kan eventually went outside the government and the nuclear industry to get information and advice. Based on an interview with a government official, they said that TEPCO wanted to “withdraw” from the plant because they were unable to fulfill their responsibilities. They basically wanted to leave and let the gov’t and whoever else deal with it.
When this was communicated to Kan, he apparently stormed over to TEPCO’s Tokyo HQ and reamed them out. They quote Kan as saying, “Stop joking!” and further instructing them to get every man, age 60 and older, to the plant to deal with the crisis, saying “you know what will happen if you leave”. Later, TEPCO said that their communication had been misinterpreted (though there was no explanation in the program of what TEPCO said they really meant).
The program further showed how the nuclear industry in Japan is so closely tied to the government and the purportedly independent safety commission, that none of these entities could cope with the disaster and could not fulfill their responsibilities. Communication among all of them was so bad that a room was set up with representatives so that they would have to speak with each other face to face.
As for the people at the plant in the early days of the disaster, it was chilling to see how unprepared they were. They lacked dosimeters (to assess radiation exposure); the disaster response manual had to be *read* before they could/would make decisions; the gauges and other instrumentation were unreliable due to the flooding and power outage and possibly poor design; etc etc. The pressure was unimaginable — most of them thought it was all over.
Part 1 concluded with the narrator saying that all parties involved basically failed. It was a sharper and more direct criticism than I expected from a Japanese-produced program. I don’t know when part 2 was/will be broadcast.
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I just saw this on NHK’s web site (copied and pasted here — nothing altered):
“Tokyo Electric Power Company has halted operation of a system to decontaminate highly radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as one of the parts reached its radiation exposure limit in less than 5 hours.
The system went into service on Friday night.
One component of the system uses the mineral zeolite to absorb radioactive cesium. A replacement part of the US-made device had been expected to last one month, but radiation exceeding the maximum 4 millisieverts per hour led to the dramatically shortened lifespan.
TEPCO suspended operation of the device early on Saturday to determine the cause.
The utility says it has so far found no abnormalities with the system or water leakage in the system. It adds that the device’s dosimeter may have detected radiation from nearby pipes containing contaminated water or other radioactive materials.
The treatment system holds the key to halting the accumulation of highly radioactive water and re-circulating contaminated water to cool the reactors.
Saturday, June 18, 2011 13:00 +0900 (JST)”
Thanks for posting, Eric. I was amazed at some of the details — the water in the reactors is boiling and will continue to boil for a full year — wow. And all the steam rising up off that boiling water is saturated with radioactivity….
I do not think we have understood the meaning of Fukushima yet.
Thanks for the link, fluidity — I’m keeping an eye on this, neighboring state and all. The map was especially welcome. Who knew so many nuke plants were salted into the midwest! When I lived in Spokane, Hanford was too close for comfort — we’d joke about the glow-in-the-dark jackrabbits. When I lived in San Diego, San Onofre issued regular warnings with rules on evacuating the area.
We’ve never “gotten it” about nuclear anything — we still think we’re smarter than it is letha. It’s a joke — and not funny. Atlantean, indeed.
you heard about the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska?
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/06/16/midwest-floods-both-nebraska-nuke-statio
getting about as much press attention as the revolution going on in spain