Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
Taken by a drone aircraft. From top to bottom, reactor buildings 1, 2, 3 and 4. The fuel in reactor 2 has melted through the bottom of the vessel and is pooling on the last concrete floor reportedly. The former reactor 3 building on the right and reactor 4 on the left. Reactor 3 is on the right. We are supposed to believe that the fuel storage pool, which sits atop the half-buried reactor, is intact, holding water, and keeping the highly radioactive fuel rods cool there. This is obviously impossible, so TEPCO has stopped releasing any information about its state.
At Fukushima, workers have been pumping water into three reactors in a desperate bid to keep the fuel rods from melting down. But Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at the plant, said his analysis of radiation levels suggested these attempts had failed at reactor two.
He said at least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel “lower head” of the pressure vessel and on to the concrete floor below.
“The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell,” Lahey said. “I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards.”
The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it will react with the concrete floor of the drywell, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.
Lahey said: “It won’t come out as one big glob; it’ll come out like lava, and that is good because it’s easier to cool.”
The drywell is surrounded by a secondary steel-and-concrete structure designed to keep radioactive material from escaping into the environment. But an earlier hydrogen explosion at the reactor may have damaged this.
No, hydrogen explosions at nuclear reactors are no big deal. After all, this video is reactor #3, not reactor 2 being described above. It’s not as if the explosion below could have damaged a building right next to it or anything.
TEPCO now admits that extremely radioactive water is in an area called the “trench” which is a normally dry tunnel between the reactors and the sea. This water came out of the inside of the reactor and has carried off material from the melted fuel core of reactor #2. This means that by the official definition, a meltdown in the plant is irradiating the outside world. Tests of water in the Pacific outside the plant show high levels of radiation as well and the implication is obvious. Seventeen workers have been irradiated.
Reactor 3 at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has melted down to the outside. The government of Japan, a week too late, has admitted the accident is now worse than Three Mile Island. It is still spiraling out of control and getting worse. If you think it’s inappropriate or premature to compare this to Chernobyl, read this.
NEUTRON BEAMS HAVE BEEN OBSERVED THIRTEEN TIMES. This means criticality has happened repeatedly, probably in the spent fuel pools, and that means serious radiation leaks and the certainty of serious eruptions of radiation.
This is the English article in Der Spiegel, supposedly the explosive photos will only be in the print edition but I’m sure they will make their way onto the internet shortly.
