Slashdot Mirror
US Alarmed Over Japan's Nuclear Crisis
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that the US is urging Americans who live within 50 miles of Japan's earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate as Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that no water remains in a deep pool used to cool spent fuel at the plant and that radiation levels there are thought to be 'extremely high.' Jaczko's testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee suggests that damage to the plant is worse than the Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has acknowledged. On Tuesday, the company said water levels in three of the site's seven fuel pools were dropping, but did not say that the fuel rods themselves had been exposed. Left exposed to the air, the fuel rods will start to decay and release radioactivity into the air and lack of water in at least one spent-fuel pool sparked fears of a worst-case scenario: the fuel could combust. 'If there's no water in there, the spent fuel can start a fire,' says Eric Moore, a consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on nuclear plant design and safety issues. 'Once you have that fire, there's a high risk of radiation getting out, spewed by the fire.' The power company says a reduced crew of 50 to 70 employees — far fewer than the 1,400 or more at the plant during normal operations — had been working in shifts to keep seawater flowing to the three reactors now in trouble. Their withdrawal on Wednesday temporarily left the plant with nobody to continue cooling operations."
Given Japan's position as the third biggest economy in the world and the amount that they produce which is exported to the rest of the world, as well as their technological knowledge, I think we should all be massively concerned about the impact that will be had on the rest of the world, not just from what has already occurred with the tsunami, but also if there is a nuclear meltdown and possible explosion at the plant. Chernobyl still has a 20 mile exclusion zone to this day and the are directly affected by the disaster was far, far wider. If something similar happens in Japan then Tokyo could quite easily become a ghost town for years to come, along with huge areas of Japan. Hell, wind factors could quite easily carry any fallout across Korea and China at the very least.
I seriously think that the time has come for them to do to the Fukushima Daiichi plant what was eventually done to Chernobyl and encase the whole thing in a concrete-mix shroud now before it is too late to stop something worse happening in the days to come.
I don't know how much if this is true. I assume there is a modicum of truth in all of these reports, but these guys seem to offer a more rational and less sensationalist explanation.
Do you really want to believe the power company, the ones that have proven to have lied about this case and others in the past? I still remember BP seriously low balling the oil that was being released. I saw reports where Japanese government reps were interviewed where they dodged every direct question. The latest report is 20 people are ill from radiation poisoning. Odds are the numbers are higher since milder radiation poisoning can take days to present symptoms. There's no way to spin this case. It's bad. They may have lost all six reactors as in none may ever produce power again where as Chernobyl still continues to operate. It seems likely four are dead with only 5 and 6 in question and those only because they were shut down at the time of the quake. No one has yet mentioned what's happening to the millions of gallons of sea water being sprayed and dumped on the site. Lately the water is being dumped and sprayed from the outside so much of the water is in no way contained. The chances of the ground water being affected are a 100%. The site is also likely to be so badly contaminated that the whole plant will have to be abandoned as a power site no matter the condition of the final two reactors. There's no way to sugar coat this it's a black day for nuclear power. Chernobyl may have affected a bigger area but the scope of the damage already dwarfs Chernobyl. Chernobyl was mostly the one reactor where as this involves a minimum of 4 and last I heard reactor 5 was looking bad and the spent fuel was heating up. On some levels it's already the worst disaster and it's an ongoing mess. All we can hope is that the contamination isn't as bad as it seems to be and that they can get the upper hand on cooling the storage ponds since the reactors themselves seem to have done what they are going to do. Storing spent rods in virtually open swimming pools on the roofs of the reactors is akin to storing gasoline next to a furnace. So long as nothing leaks everything is fine but is it really worth the risk?