Boy, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it? So those reports of very high radioactive leaks, the ones TEPCO denied, were accurate if the reactor core was exposed. There was indeed a meltdown — and the other reactors are also at risk:
Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core’s 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down.
Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged.
Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.
“We will have to revise our plans,” said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for Tepco. “We cannot deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak”.
Tepco has not clarified what other barriers there are to stop radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has been breached. Greenpeace said the situation could escalate rapidly if “the lava melts through the vessel”.
Here’s a cute line from the BBC story. “Experts said the announcement from Tepco did not mean that the situation at the plant had worsened because it was likely that the fuel had dropped to the bottom of the core soon after the 11 March earthquake.”
In other words, its not any worse than it actually has been for a while. We are just now finding out about the true situation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13374153
Jesus. You know, maybe the end of the world is May 21, 2011.
OMG. Just, OMG. Those poor people.