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| The wave approaches the plant's sea barrier |
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| --the wave destroys barrier. |
More: The news from Fukushima is not getting better, unfortunately, but that is the reality of the worst nuclear power accident in history. TEPCo confirms there are numerous holes in the containment of Unit 2 which will allow more radioactive fallout to enter the atmosphere. Of course, the nuclear industry maintained for years nuclear containments are nearly impervious. Fukushima will prove them wrong again. The Unit 4 reactor building is tilting and possibly sinking. Three explosions and tons of cooling water have weakened the structure and undermined some of the building's foundations. There will be deaths from radioactive exposure among the workers trying to bring the doomed plant under control. A Tokyo University radiology professor said, "this is like suicide fighters in a war". At Chernobyl, the Soviet government sent in 800,000 draftees as "liquidators". Many are suffering from exposure symptoms and there is an escalating death toll. Similarly, a cadre of workers sacrificed themselves in the early stages of the disaster at Fukushima. Japan has raised the allowable exposure for workers from 100mSv/hr to 250 or five times what is allowed for US workers. Soil samples from a wide area show contamination of Cesium 137 above those found at Chernobyl that resulted in compulsory evacuations. 60 tons of highly contaminated waste water has leaked out from makeshift storage tanks and leakage apparently is continuing. Greenpeace is testing marine life 12 miles from the plant site and is finding seaweed with contamination levels 60 times the legal limit. As if conditions at the plant site were not bad enough, Typhoon "Songda" is approaching the northeastern coast of Japan. Hurricane force winds may be strong enough to topple a structurally compromised reactor building.
{25.5.11}What nuclear experts and activists knew weeks ago and reported here {"meltdown"}, the Japanese power company that owns the ruined Fukushima-Daiichi plant is only now, 10 weeks after the event, saying publicly that three of the four damaged reactors are melting down. Extremely radioactive slag has formed and is melting its way through containment in a 'China Syndrome' scenario. The sad fact is that a swath of northeastern Japan is now an uninhabitable zone of national sacrifice similar to the area around Chernobyl. The area's evacuees will not be going home, ever. A sadder fact is that the meltdown in Unit #1 started before the thirty foot tsunami hit the plant, exacerbating an already dangerous loss of coolant event. This revelation may require recalculating the time needed for a power reactor to begin melting after loss of coolant. There is a report that radiation warnings went off less than an hour after the earthquake. The saddest fact of all is that the multiple meltdown disaster is worse than Chernobyl because the impact of Fukushima radiation on the world's oceans is ten times larger than the meltdown of one reactor in the Ukraine according to the respected Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The company's president Masataka Shimizu, has resigned in the wake of a $15 billion loss before compensation is paid to disaster victims. TEPCo released these pictures of the tsunami wave on its path of destruction.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists and former instructor for boiling water technology at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a congressional committee in March that in June 1998, a tornado disabled the power supply to the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. High air temperatures above 90℉ caused the back up supply to also fail. However, unlike the Daiichi scenario, workers at the US plant were able to restore grid power an hour before the backup supply failed. He told Congress US reactors are not immune from a loss of coolant event sufficiently severe to cause a meltdown. A station blackout constitutes the highest source of risk to plants located away from coasts and faults. He also recommended spent fuel over five years old be stored in dry casks where natural ventilation can cool the rods sufficiently. Spent fuel pools in the US are reaching capacity.
More: Switzerland's government announced its recommendation to parliament that the country's five aging nuclear power plants not be replaced but phased out by 2034. The first plant to be shut would be Beznau I in 2019. The federal council called on the entire nation to set the world an example by meeting their energy needs from renewable energy sources while asking industry to cut consumption. The effect on the nation's GDP according to calculation would be less than one percent. One percent to save Earth from a hellish future? Sounds good to US Person! Closer to home, the citizens of Pueblo, Colorado convinced their county commissioners to reject a plan for a nuclear power plant put forward by a local lawyer who describes himself as a "visionary". Five hundred citizens packed the ordinarily staid hearing room on March 16th to voice their objections to rezoning land in the county to allow the construction of a nuclear power station. One voter asked the three commissioners to "bury this thing as deep as you can." Both scarce water and the effect of radioactive leaks on agriculture were central issues in the relatively short-lived debate.