TEPCO Confirms Partial Meltdown of No.2 and No.3 Reactors

blau writes with an article in NHK World. From the article "The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says findings show that fuel meltdowns may have occurred at the No.2 and No.3 reactors within days of the March 11th earthquake. But it says both reactors are now stable at relatively low temperatures." TEPCO is also now blaming the tsunami for most of the damage rather than the earthquake.

Comments

relatively low temperatures

[pablo_max]

Relative to what? The sun?

Re:relatively low temperatures

[kannibal_klown]

It's on both sides of the fence.

Some article came out shortly after stating that the radiation being emitted into the atmosphere was X% that of Chernobyl... when it was really 1/10th the percentage stated. You have people spreading panic and fear, as well as people saying "see this is why nuclear power is evil."

Meanwhile you have people there saying "no alarm, nothing to see here" and later that day we find out something major happened or people were being burned by the radioactive water.

So you have fear mongers and people trying to sweep it under the rug. It makes it very hard to get an accurate picture of what's going on.

Re:relatively low temperatures

[jd]

Yeah, that was fairly obvious. You don't need to be a nuclear scientist (just someone who knows what historical accidents have been significant, which ones haven't, and what made the difference) to realize that TEPCO weren't being honest, but it helps if you are to understand what they were being dishonest about.

What bothers me, more than TEPCOs dishonesty (which, frankly, is only to be expected when a company relies on image as much or more than products), is the number of people here who went around marking those questioning TEPCO statements in previous discussions as trolls. Sorry, but the science doesn't leave much room for debate. It seemed to be mostly by pro-nuclear fanbois who failed to understand you could be ok with the technology but suspicious of the implementors. I hope they are now willing to admit their errors and apologise for their abuse of the moderation system.

Re:relatively low temperatures

[Artifakt]

But for weeks afterwards, major news sources have run headlines like 'Reactor 1 known to have melted down, reactors 2 and 3 possible, ', even though it sounds like "possible" meant "overwhelmingly probable, on a par with the sun rising tomorrow, but we haven't actually gotten photos to confirm it yet, or at least we've carefully avoided showing them to the guy making this statement.". The general public is going to be influenced by those sorts of headlines without ever seeing the actual status updates,
          I'm personally for building safely designed reactors under responsible management - trouble is, TEPCO has shown they are not in any way what I would call responsible management. The nuclear power industry may survive the blow of having major accidents like this, but can it survive being associated with such incompetence, overwhelming lies and arrogance?

New news? Don't think so

[Andy Dodd]

Many of the status reports from early on indicated a partial meltdown. (It was described as "fuel damage" - but that's meltdown).

So how is this news? We already knew the fuel rods had suffered from partial melting/damage. It's almost a given when you see status reports indicating fuel with only partial water coverage.

Now blaming?

[ustolemyname]

As I recall, the blame was on the tsunami since day one. Sure, there was a brief moment of "The earthquake may have been more responsible than initially thought" a few weeks back, but that didn't seem to amount to much.

Re:It would be funny if it weren't so damn serious

[Microlith]

The big losers here are the population of Japan who can't get a straight answer about the risk to their health. I cringe to think of the birth defects and illness this will cause.

Well, I haven't heard of any 3rd parties reporting anything unusual or notable regarding radioactive contamination above or beyond what has been reported already (and TEPCO can't exactly hide stuff that escapes the site.) Surely if it were so horrible then there would be accurate and reasonable reporting on the "true" radiation levels rather than what is reported, but I'm not seeing anything. And anecdotal rumors and information being spread via social networks (especially in a country like Japan that loves rumors) is suspect.

Re:It would be funny if it weren't so damn serious

[vlueboy]

The long term effects of this to the population: Nothing. The levels are so low for the population that they're laughably small.

Don't pretend like 0 is the number of people affected by this meltdown. Nobody has been "laughing" since they got kicked out of homes they lost millions of yen for. It's not like someone's going to give that house back to them, nor their cash. School closings smack in the middle of the Japanese school year also mean lots of disrupted youths.

With Japan's prior issues with unemployment, fukushima was the straw breaking the camel's back for many souls now banned from living somewhere safe and known to them. But nobody is talking about the local lives in the cone of influence of the actual meltdown.

Because, you know, all gunshot wounds only hurt locally and we can just ignore the pain if we concentrate on the body parts not hurting. Right?

Re:Cracked Vessel

[blair1q]

Maybe, if the earthquake also knocked out the cooling systems.

But it didn't, so it's likely they could have pumped enough water to keep the rods from melting at all, though they would have had a hell of a time sealing the crack.

The fact is that losing electricity to the pumps led to a cascade of catastrophic explosions turned a cracked vessel from a bad thing into a months-long nightmare. And that fact points to naive, negligent, or deliberately penurious design.