TEPCO has discovered that the #3 reactor is heavily damaged by falling debris. Personally, I think the plug displayed was damaged by the different explosion in #3.
Remember the worries I posted about damage to the racks in the #4 SFP? It looks like that happened in the #3 SFP as well. But worse. The damaged fuel rods obviously didn’t dump enough pellets to create a criticality, but how we’re going to remove the damaged rods I’ve no idea. The water itself is VERY hot from the spilled fuel. I suppose they’re going to have to lower torches from a safe distance and try to cut them out.
Here is an update report on a visit to the #4 reactor. Heavily damaged, as expected. They’re reporting about 20% of the fuel assemblies have been removed from the #4 SFP.
They’re seeing so much gamma radiation around the work area in #4 that they have had to put down lead plates and reduce work times. The gamma is likely coming from neutron activation of some of the nickle parts, turning them into cobalt 60. The #4 reactor was empty at the accident, so where did a neutron flux that intense come from? Perhaps the “different” explosion at unit 3?
Japanese Doctors are starting to issue more dire warnings.
The US and Canada have received about 13% of the Fuku emissions according to this study.
Very hot material found about 15km from Fuku. Probably from #3, though it’s not clear if it came from the explosion or floated in from the sea.
Remember last week I reported new record cesium levels? Well, that record has been broken. Officials admit there may be a new leak. TEPCO and the JG are still preparing the world for dumping massive amounts (“controlled releases”) of very hot (“within government guidelines”) of radioactive water. They’re still trying to come up with reasons the world will accept. IMO this is a cost issue, they simply don’t want to pay the price to store the water.
No Nukes! Weapons or power plants. They are harmful to all living things.
Too bad for Canada, ay? I mean, they’re innocent in all this.
But deep down inside, don’t you think the Japs are getting a great big laugh about the stuff drifting our way?
Ironies abound.
We nuke them. We teach them about the wonders of nuclear power generation, and they buy a bunch of GE’s top of the line plants from 40 or so years ago.
And everybody agrees that protecting to an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale is just fine, because how often you gonna go beyond that, and why waste money?
But Nature goes way beyond that.
And so the GE stuff fails.
And, in an effort to put cost containment first, as opposed to contaminant containment first, the stuff is now drifting back across the Pacific and hitting us.
And anybody who is anybody here would be very sympathetic to TEPCO thinking in terms of holding costs down – we are never going to give them flak over that.
In Japan I’ll bet they’re thinking “Blowback is a bitch, isn’t it, you round-eyed cuckoos? Especially when it’s real radioactive blowback. Ah, ha ha ha ha ha.”
Too bad for the Canadians, though.