If I lived in Seattle, I’d leave. Of course, it’ll spread to the rest of the Northeast eventually, so there’s no place to run:
June 12 (NHK) – The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been forced to reconsider its plan to cool the spent fuel storage pool of the No. 4 reactor.
Water injection from a special vehicle has not been intense enough to cool the water in the pool, allowing the temperature to remain at more than 80 degrees Celsius.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, aims to install a circulatory cooling system that will pump water out of the pool and return it there as coolant. The utility originally hoped to put the system in place next month.
On Friday, workers entered the 4th floor of the No. 4 reactor building where the pool is located for the first time since the nuclear disaster took place.
They found a large hole in a wall created by the March 15th explosion. They also discovered that a nearby pipe necessary for the cooling system had been mangled.
TEPCO says the repair team found it hard to work near the pool as equipment had been destroyed and debris was scattered on the floor.
Fixing the damaged pipe is expected to be extremely difficult. In addition, it remains unclear if there is another pipe that can be used for the cooling system.
This Reactor 4 is actually the most dangerous situation of them all, even though it was not operating at the time of the earthquake. All of its fuel rods had been taken out and put in this storage tank (plus some rods from other reactors). This makes them EXTREMELY vulnerable since they are not in the steel reactor vessel. It this building gets further damage in another earthquake or a typhoon, the rods will be open to the atmosphere. If the inadequate cooling methods they are using completely fail, they will boil off their cooling water and catch on fire. A couple of people were saying a few weeks ago that the building was leaning to the extent that it might fall down. (Supposedly TEPCO is preparing to build a steel reinforcing structure to hold it up.)
If any of that happens, then we will really be in the deep doo doo, and some say people on our west coast might be in danger.
Look at the video in this report an you can see the big ass hole in the wall that leaves the whole thing open to the sky.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_02.html