Oct. 20, 2014 Chronic and long-lasting
radioactive releases are [ongoing]… Fukushima continues to bleed into
the ocean, because those nuclear cores have melted down and are in
direct contact with the groundwater. It will bleed for centuries
perhaps, and certainly decades to come. So when you compare these
nuclear accidents… [Chernobyl] didn’t hit groundwater… The bottom line
is that accidents are getting worse… Chernobyl contaminated all of
Europe –
Fukushima is contaminating the entire Pacific. >> Watch presentation hereKevin Kamps, nuclear waste watchdog, Oct. 21, 2014 (at 46:00 in):
It shows what’s really been expected, that the massive releases of
radioactivity — both atmospheric, that fell out on the ocean, and
liquid, that are still on a daily basis pouring into the ocean — are
slowly, or not so slowly, making their way to the North American
coastline… This is going to keep going on for years, decades, even
centuries into the future… Everyday, it’s 300 tons of radioactive
groundwater that flows into the sea – every single day for the past
nearly 4 years now — 300 tons of radioactive groundwater, containing a
toxic alphabet soup of radioactive poisons, cesium… strontium-90,
plutonium isotopes. That’s each and every day, so it is an unprecedented
catastrophe for the oceans… The significance is — that is open ocean
sea water. The bioaccumulation, biomagnification — we’re talking about
orders of magnitude concentration of these radioactive poisons. First
plankton, then go up the food chain — we are at the top of that food
chain. So that’s just going to get worse the further up the food chain
you go. It’s a very significant issue that the US federal government and
the state governments are not paying attention to.
With attention focused on tons of radioactive spent fuel that may have ignited, some experts say the Japanese will be lucky if the stricken Fukushima plant creates a disaster only the size of Chernobyl in 1986.
Shattered ... a gaping hole in the wall of Fukushima’s No.4 reactor reveals a green crane that is normally used to move spent fuel rods into a storage pond, just out of shot, which has boiled dry. (Photo: AP) These spent fuel rods are now being blamed for the radioactive releases over Japan. While the reactor cores are encased in bulky containment vessels, spent fuel is separated from the environment only by the water in the pools, said former nuclear engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass.
That those spent fuel rods were even kept at the Japanese plant is controversial. Some used rods remain hot enough to ignite their metal coatings and release dangerous plumes of radioactive gases and dust.
Critics such as Lochbaum argue this storage system, which is widely used in the United States, poses an unnecessary hazard. Indeed, most of the 62,500 metric tons of spent fuel in the United States is stored in similar pools on site at power plants, including Limerick in Montgomery County, Peach Bottom in York County, Oyster Creek plant in Ocean County, and the Salem and Hope Creek plants in Salem County.
Some experts argue the system is not inherently flawed.
Local nuclear plants are designed to withstand earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and other potential disasters, said Krishna "Kris" Singh, an engineer and chief executive officer of Marlton-based Holtec who designed the nuclear-waste storage systems used in most local plants.
Singh said people in the East should not panic, considering how astronomically unlikely it is that a tsunami or magnitude-9 earthquake would ever hit the Mid-Atlantic region.
His firm has been asked to reevaluate storage pools at the Diablo Canyon plant in California, where such a large quake remains possible. He said that plant's overall design was more earthquake-proof than was Fukushima.
Putting rods in swimming-pool-size concrete tanks was intended only to serve as temporary storage, Lochbaum said. Before the mid-1970s, much of the country's nuclear waste was sent for reprocessing, a type of recycling that has fallen out of favor because it produces weapons-grade plutonium.
Lochbaum said his opposition to the overuse of on-site "wet" storage led him to leave the industry and join the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group focused on nuclear safety and other environmental concerns.
Many pools at U.S. plants routinely store as much as 10 times as much waste as pools at Fukushima.
Singh and other experts said it was too early to tell why the water levels in the spent pools at Fukushima appear to have dropped enough to expose some of the fuel. The thick concrete that contains the water might have been damaged in the earthquake or water may have sloshed out.
The pools are put on the top floor of the reactor buildings - a placement that is considered an engineering choice, according to a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Several of the spent pools at Fukushima were reportedly losing water, but the one at Reactor 4 is causing the most concern because it carries the most fuel and the hottest spent fuel - 135 tons of rods, many of them removed just in December.
Although the fuel in these pools is considered spent, it's still so radioactive that without cooling, it will spontaneously heat up to between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees, enough to ignite the metal cladding that surrounds the fuel pellets. That burning releases explosive quantities of hydrogen gas, which can further damage the fuel and the storage pool.
As the rods heat up, Lochbaum said, gases laced with radioactive substances expand inside the rods. If the metal is breached, these gases are lofted into the atmosphere. If the temperature gets hot enough, fuel pellets will begin to crumble and release dust-size particles containing various radioactive by-products.
According to a briefing by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, those releases can contain strontium-90, which tends to concentrate in bones and cause bone cancer. Some of the fuel at Fukushima contains plutonium, which can cause lung cancer.
Also of grave concern is cesium-137, which has a long half-life and can persist in the environment for more than a century. Cesium-137 released in the Chernobyl disaster rendered huge swaths of the Ukraine uninhabitable.
The United States has never come to any agreement on how to deal with nuclear waste, which can remain radioactive for millions of years.
Singh said he still believed storage in pools can be done safely, especially as technology advances. "Clearly the earthquake was of much greater severity than the plant was designed for," he said.
Singh said his company was creating a new system that would shield the spent fuel. "We're designing it so you'll be able to walk into the building even if you had a horrible scenario like this one," he said.
He has designed aluminum racks that allow U.S. nuclear plants to store many more spent fuel rods in the same pools. Singh's company also supplies a system of dry storage, in which waste is sealed in casks. Lochbaum and others at the Union of Concerned Scientists consider this a much safer alternative in the face of earthquakes, terrorist attacks, or other threats still unknown.
Singh's nuclear-power innovations have led to more than 17 patents. His company's storage systems are used at 80 of the country's 104 nuclear plants. A technological optimist, Singh has recently donated $20 million to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, for a new building devoted to nanotechnology.
Until the 1970s, spent fuel rods were partially recycled, the various components were separated out, leaving behind weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. But once the United States had enough plutonium to destroy the world 100 times over, the government prohibited reprocessing.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, favors a combination of reprocessing, dry storage, and transfer to an ultimate resting place at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. For years, public opposition prevented any waste from being stored there, and in 2009 the Obama administration ruled against using the site. But the utilities and industry group continue to push for it.
Whatever happens to the nuclear-energy industry in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the 60,000-some metric tons of nuclear waste will remain with us.
The Japanese government has reported that trace amounts of radioactive iodine have been detected in tap water in Tokyo and five other areas, amid concerns about leaks from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power station.
The ministry says the amounts did not exceed government safety limits, but the announcement has added to safety fears among the Japanese people. Earlier in the day, Japan banned the sale of food products from near Fukushima after finding elevated radiation levels in spinach and milk from the area's farms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said: "Though radioactive iodine has a short half-life of about eight days and decays naturally within a matter of weeks, there is a short-term risk to human health if radioactive iodine in food is absorbed into the human body."
Tainted milk was found 30km (20 miles) from the plant and contaminated spinach was collected up to 100km (65 miles) to the south.
Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo that the radiation levels exceeded the limits allowed by the government, but the products "pose no immediate health risk" and testing was being done on other foods..
"It's not like if you ate it right away you would be harmed," Edano said. "It would not be good to continue to eat it for some time."
Edano said the amount of radiation detected in the milk was the equivalent to one CT scan – the series of X-rays used for medical tests – if consumed continually for a year.
Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 220km south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.
The food scare is the latest consequence of the cascade of disasters unleashed by the earthquake on 11 March.
Emergency teams scrambled on Saturday to restore power to the Fukushima plant so it could cool dangerously overheated fuel.
Firefighters pumped tons of water directly from the ocean into the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's unit 3. The rods are at risk of burning up and sending a broad release of radioactive material into the environment.
Just outside the bustling disaster response centre in the city of Fukushima, 60km north-west of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting with his wife Junko and their children since the earthquake.
"It's very nervewracking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," Junko told Associated Press. "Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."
She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls, aged four and six and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse, gave their father hugs.
In his latest ministerial update from Tokyo, Edano said: "The situation at the nuclear complex still remains unpredictable. But at least we are preventing things from deteriorating."
A fire truck with a high-pressure cannon parked outside the plant's unit 3 began shooting a continuous arc of water nonstop into the pool for seven hours. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters will only go to the truck every three hours when it needs to be refueled. They expect to pump about 1,400 tons of water, nearly the capacity of the pool.
Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said backup power systems at the plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami that ravaged the north-eastern coast of Japale.
The failure enabled uranium fuel to overheat and was a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said. "I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely."
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric, which owns and runs the complex, said it was protected against tsunamis of up to five metres (16ft) but a six-metre wave of water struck Fukushima on 11 March.
Plant operators said they would reconnect four of the plant's six reactor units to a power grid on Saturday. Workers have to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion.
"Most of the motors and switchboards were submerged by the tsunami and they cannot be used," Nishiyama said.
Even once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.
The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.
Meanwhile, some Britons in the country have begun their journey back to the UK to escape from radiation fears, power shortages, business closures and a lack of food in shops.
Buses and planes ferried people to safety on Friday, with 24 British nationals leaving tsunami-flattened Sendai on two coaches heading for Tokyo.
The Foreign Office block-booked seats for Britons wanting to fly home on commercial flights, the first of which was a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong, and said two other flights to Hong Kong would be made available on Saturday.
Those directly affected by last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami can fly free of charge, but people wishing to leave Japan who have not been directly affected will pay about £600 per seat.
The latest news is that the Japanese military are dropping sea water on the reactors by helicopter.
That sounds very inefficient, very ineffective, and very dangerous.
I described this event to a loved one today as one of the worst catastrophes in the history of humanity. What will she tell her 13-year-old while he watches the news tonight? That Ace is STILL saying the worst may be yet to come? That we might have one spent fuel pool fire after another... and dry cask fires, too... and more reactor meltdowns, and more explosions?
That over the next 20 years there will probably be more than a million dead in Japan from this accident, and thousands dead here in America?
Do we tell them that? These are pretty hard things to have to try to explain to a child.
Do we tell them the poisons are particularly bad for youngsters, infants, and fetuses?
"If you don't understand what's happening, you're probably so young that you REALLY need to know!! It will affect YOUR life most of all!"
There's no way to explain that.
Of course, you can always listen to the pro-nukers tell you not to worry because it can't happen "here", wherever "here" is for you. They will tell you the radiation levels from the Fukushima-Daiichi catastrophe will be little more than background levels by the time they get to you, wherever you are. They'll say background radiation is harmless and might even be good for you. They'll say it's just a dusting. That's it's all going to land in China. That the deaths from Chernobyl didn't happen.
They'll say it all.
Radiation sickness isn't pretty. People in Japan will be coming down with it in droves. Workers undoubtedly already are being visited behind plastic screens for the last time by their loved ones who, if they live close to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, were also irradiated, but not as badly.
I spoke at a hearing last night, near my local nuclear power plant. It was a common council hearing in San Clemente, the city nearest the reactor. I've posted a You-Tube video from the event.
The public speaking portion of the evening started with this author. The reactor company was allowed to speak last, for as long as they wanted. The representative explained that the reactor was built to withstand all foreseeable earthquakes in the area, and all tsunamis that they could foresee as well. And that was that. No talk of new studies, no talk of building the wall higher, nothing like that. Everything's fine at San Onofre, according to them.
Lately at all the hearings for San Onofre, the activists have been overwhelmed by plant employees, some of whom always speak, such as the union duckie, and some of whom just clap for their team and leave when its the activists' turn to talk.
There were NO employees making themselves obvious at this hearing, besides the one management representative. I did not see a single logoed shirt, patch, or San-Onofre beeper this time.
An emergency services person told us that KI is not indicated for people here in the United States. That was yesterday. Today the government admits that we will be getting some amount of radiation from this accident. However, KI consumption for the general public is still not indicated.
I asked several people to help me suggest what to do to prepare. You should not take KI unless authorities are recommending it (or you own a Geiger Counter and know it is properly calibrated, and have been checking it regularly, and are willing to go with that decision on your own...). KI has side effects, such as allergic reactions and so forth.
Dr. Carolyn Dean, a medical doctor, and also a naturopath, herbalist, acupuncturist, nutritionist, lecturer, consultant, author and friend, sent the following suggestion, after I sent her Dr. Brownstein's suggestions: "I'm using some Iodorol anyway. It's a KI. I take 25 mg every day anyway and bumped to 50mg."
Dr. Dean also suggested investigating something called RnA drops. Their claims seem to both of us to be a bit extreme and confusing, but perhaps they're harmless, if nothing else!
Dr. Dean also posted a newsletter at her web site, with additional suggestions.
It is clear now that this is worse than Chernobyl. The Japanese have been calling for U. S. military help at Fukushima Dai-ichi. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says help should have been asked for sooner: They say the Japanese made mistakes that it's now too late to fix.
I think somebody wants to cover their posterior for a later investigation! Accidents like this can't happen here, the NRC will tell Congress soon. Our reactor operators would have called us in sooner! We would have known what to do! Sure.
Nuclear power will do this to us again and again, unless there is a global effort to close the plants. The local communities are profiting too much from the local reactor, it funds their schools and police and other local services. Everywhere jobs are hard to find and work is scarce. So nobody wants to close a reactor and put people out of work.
KORIYAMA, Japan -- Japan's nuclear crisis intensified Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple reactor meltdowns and more than 170,000 people evacuated the quake- and tsunami-savaged northeastern coast where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination.
Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors - including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening Sunday - to prevent the disaster from growing worse.
If a full-scale meltdown were to occur, experts interviewed by The Associated Press said melted fuel would eat through the bottom of the reactor vessel, then through the floor of the containment building. At that point, the uranium and dangerous byproducts would start escaping into the environment.
Eventually, the walls of the reactor vessel - six inches (15 centimeters) of stainless steel - would melt into a lava-like pile, slump into any remaining water on the floor, and potentially cause an explosion that would enhance the spread of radioactive contaminants.
If the reactor core became exposed to the outside, officials would likely began pouring cement and sand over the entire facility, as was done at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told reporters.
At that point, Bradford added, "many first responders would die."
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also said Sunday that a hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the latest reactor to face a possible meltdown. That follows a blast the day before in the power plant's Unit 1, as operators attempted to prevent a meltdown there by injecting sea water into it.
"At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Edano said. "If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health."
More than 170,000 people had been evacuated as a precaution, though Edano said the radioactivity released into the environment so far was so small it didn't pose any health threats.
"First I was worried about the quake," Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker who lives near the plant. "Now I'm worried about radiation." He spoke at an emergency center in Koriyama town near the power plant in Fukushima.
Edano said neither Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor was near the point of complete meltdown, and he was confident of escaping the worst scenarios.
A complete meltdown - the collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to keep temperatures under control - could release uranium and dangerous contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks.
Up to 160 people, including 60 elderly patients and medical staff who had been waiting for evacuation in the nearby town of Futabe, and 100 others evacuating by bus, might have been exposed to radiation, said Ryo Miyake, a spokesman from Japan's nuclear agency. The severity of their exposure, or if it had reached dangerous levels, was not clear. They were being taken to hospitals.
Edano said operators were trying to cool and decrease the pressure in the Unit 3 reactor, just as they had the day before at Unit 1.
"We're taking measures on Unit 3 based on a similar possibility" of a partial meltdown, Edano said.
Japan struggled with the nuclear crisis as it tried to determine the scale of the Friday disasters, when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in the country's recorded history, was followed by a tsunami that savaged its northeastern coast with breathtaking speed and power.
More than 1,400 people were killed and hundreds more were missing, according to officials, but police in one of the worst-hit areas estimated the toll there alone could eventually top 10,000.
The scale of the multiple disasters appeared to be outpacing the efforts of Japanese authorities to bring the situation under control more than two days after the initial quake.
Rescue teams were struggling to search hundreds of miles (kilometers) of devastated coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake, and food and gasoline were quickly running out across the region. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable. Some 2 million households were without electricity.
Japanese Trade Minister Banri Kaeda warned that the region was likely to face further blackouts, and power would be rationed to ensure supplies to essential facilities.
The government doubled the number of troops pressed into rescue and recovery operations to about 100,000 from 51,000, as powerful aftershocks continued to rock the country. Hundreds have hit since the initial temblor.
Unit 3 at the Fukushima plant is one of the three reactors that had automatically shut down and lost cooling functions necessary to keep fuel rods working properly due to power outage from the quake. The facility's Unit 1 is also in trouble, but Unit 2 has been less affected.
On Saturday, an explosion destroyed the walls of Unit 1 as operators desperately tried to prevent it from overheating and melting down.
Without power, and with its valves and pumps damaged by the tsunami, authorities resorted to drawing sea water mixed with boron in an attempt to cool the unit's overheated uranium fuel rods. Boron disrupts nuclear chain reactions.
The move likely renders the 40-year-old reactor unusable, said a foreign ministry official briefing reporters. Officials said the sea water will remain inside the unit, possibly for several months.
Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy, told reporters that the sea water was a desperate measure.
"It's a Hail Mary passIt's a Hail Mary pass," he said.
He said that the success of using sea water and boron to cool the reactor will depend on the volume and rate of their distribution. He said the dousing would need to continue nonstop for days.
Another key, he said, was the restoration of electrical power, so that normal cooling systems can operate.
Edano said the cooling operation at Unit 1 was going smoothly after the sea water was pumped in.
Operators released slightly radioactive air from Unit 3 on Sunday, while injecting water into it hoping to reduce pressure and temperature to prevent a possible meltdown, Edano said.
He said radiation levels just outside the plant briefly rose above legal limits, but since had declined significantly. Also, fuel rods were exposed briefly, he said, indicating that coolant water didn't cover the rods for some time. That would have contributed further to raising the temperature in the reactor vessel.
At an evacuation center in Koriyama, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the troubled reactors and 125 miles (190 kilometers) north of Tokyo, medical experts had checked about 1,500 people for radiation exposure in an emergency testing center, an official said.
On Sunday, a few dozen people waited to be checked in a collection of blue tents set up in a parking lot outside a local gymnasium. Fire engines surrounded the scene, with their lights flashing.
Many of the gym's windows were shattered by the quake, and glass shards littered the ground.
A steady flow of people - the elderly, schoolchildren and families with babies - arrived at the center, where they were checked by officials wearing helmets, surgical masks and goggles.
Officials placed five reactors, including Units 1 and 3 at Dai-ichi, under states of emergency Friday after operators lost the ability to cool the reactors using usual procedures.
An additional reactor was added to the list early Sunday, for a total of six - three at the Dai-ichi complex and three at another nearby complex. Local evacuations have been ordered at each location. Japan has a total of 55 reactors spread across 17 complexes nationwide.
Officials began venting radioactive steam at Fukushima Dai-ichi's Unit 1 to relieve pressure inside the reactor vessel, which houses the overheated uranium fuel.
Concerns escalated dramatically Saturday when that unit's containment building exploded.
Officials were aware that the steam contained hydrogen and were risking an explosion by venting it, acknowledged Shinji Kinjo, spokesman for the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, but chose to do so because they needed to keep circulating cool water on the fuel rods to prevent a meltdown.
Officials insisted there was no significant radioactive leak after the explosion.
WASHINGTON - US nuclear experts warned Saturday that pumping sea water to cool a quake-hit Japanese nuclear reactor was an "act of desperation" that may foreshadow a Chernobyl-like disaster.
Official in protective gear talks to a woman who is from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama March 13, 2011. Japan battled to contain a radiation leak at an earthquake-crippled nuclear plant on Sunday, but faced a fresh threat with the failure of the cooling system in a second reactor. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Several experts, in a conference call with reporters, also predicted that regardless of the outcome at the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant crisis, the accident will seriously damage the nuclear power renaissance.
"The situation has become desperate enough that they apparently don't have the capability to deliver fresh water or plain water to cool the reactor and
stabilize it, and now, in an act of desperation, are having to resort to diverting and using sea water," said Robert Alvarez, who works on nuclear disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies.
"I would describe this measure as a 'Hail Mary' pass," added Alvarez, using American football slang for a final effort to win the game as time expires.
An 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday set off the emergency at the plant, which was then hit by an explosion Saturday that prompted an evacuation of the surrounding area.
Workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, after the quake knocked out power to the cooling system.
What occurred at the plant was a "station blackout," which is the loss of offsite air-conditioning power combined with the failure of onsite power, in this case diesel generators.
"It is considered to be extremely unlikely but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades," said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation.
"We're in uncharted territory," he said.
The reactor has been shut down but the concern is the heat in the core, which can melt if it's not cooled. If the core melts through the reactor vessel, Bergeron explained, it could flow onto the floor of the containment building. If that happens, the structure likely will fail, the experts said.
"The containment building at this plant is certainly stronger than that at Chernobyl but a lot less strong than at Three Mile Island, so time will tell," he said.
Peter Bradford, former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that if the cooling attempts fail, "at that point it's a Chernobyl-like situation where you start dumping in sand and cement."
The two worst nuclear accidents on record are the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the partial core meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1979.
Another expert said the Japanese accident will rank as one of the three worst in history.
"If it continues, if they don't get control of this and... we go from a partial meltdown of the core to a full meltdown, this will be a complete disaster," Joseph Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, said in an interview on CNN.
Cirincione faulted Japanese authorities for providing partial and conflicting information about what was happening at the plant.
Cirincione said the presence of radioactive cesium in the atmosphere after the plant was vented indicated that a partial meltdown was underway.
"That told the operators that the fuel rods had been exposed, that the water level had dropped below the fuel rods and the fuel rods were starting to burn, releasing cesium," he said.
Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the Fukushima accident at four on the International Nuclear Event Scale from 0 to 7, meaning an accident "with local consequences," an official said Sunday.
The Three Mile Island accident was rated five while Chernobyl was a seven.
The government declared an atomic emergency and said tens of thousands of people living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant should leave after an explosion at the nuclear plant Saturday.
"This is obviously a significant setback for the so-called nuclear renaissance," said Bradford, the former NRC commissioner.
"The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on the television screen is a first."
But a spokesman for the World Nuclear Association said in an interview with CBS News that the threat of a full meltdown is minimal.
"I think that possibility is remote at the best of times and is diminishing by the hour as the fuel gets cooler and generates less heat," said Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the industry organization.
The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is being described as caused by a “hydrogen build-up” The situation harks back to the “hydrogen bubble” that was feared would explode when the Three Mile Island plant in 1979 underwent a partial meltdown.
The hydrogen explosion problem at nuclear power plants involves a story as crazy as can be. As nuts as using nuclear fission to boil water to generate electricity is, the hydrogen problem and its cause cap the lunacy.
Eruption of hydrogen gas as a first reaction in a loss-of-coolant accident has been discussed with great worry in U.S. government and nuclear industry literature for decades.
That is because a highly volatile substance called zirconium was chosen back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when plans were first developed to build nuclear power plants, as the material to be used to make the rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded.
There are 30,000 to 40,000 rods—composed of twenty tons of zirconium—in an average nuclear power plant. Many other substances were tried, particularly stainless steel, but only zirconium worked well. That’s because zirconium, it was found, allows neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained.
But there’s a huge problem with zirconium—it is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam.
The only other major commercial use of zirconium through the years has been in flashbulbs used in photography. A speck of it, on a flashbulb, ignites to provide a flash of light.
But in a nuclear plant, we’re not talking about specks—but tons and tons of zirconium, put together as a compound called “zircaloy” that clads tens of thousands of fuel rods.
Heat, a great deal of heat, builds up in a very short time with any interruption of coolant flow in a nuclear power plant—the problem at Fukushima after the earthquake that struck Japan.
Zirconium, with the explosive power, pound for pound, of nitroglycerine, will catch fire and explode at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown.
Before then, however, zirconium reacts to the heat by drawing oxygen from water and steam and letting off hydrogen, which itself can explode—and is said to have done so at Fukushima.
As a result of such a hydrogen explosion, there is additional heat—bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level.
Whether in addition to being a hydrogen explosion, zirconium also exploded at Fukushima remains to be known.
But what has happened regarding hydrogen at Fukushima, like the “hydrogen bubble” when the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania underwent its near partial meltdown, is no mystery—but precisely what is expected in a loss-of-coolant accident.
It is described in U.S. government and nuclear industry accident studies as a “metal-water” reaction. It’s a reaction, the research has long stated, that can easily trigger a meltdown.
Using tons of a material otherwise used as the speck that explodes in a flashbulb in nuclear power plants —yes, absolutely crazy.
Moreover, in the spent fuel pools usually situated next to nuclear power plants, there are large numbers of additional fuel rods, used ones, disposed of as waste. There must be constant water circulation in the spent fuel pools. In what is labeled a “loss-of-water’ accident in a spent fuel pool, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods is projected as exploding—sending into the environment the lethal nuclear poisons in a spent fuel pool.
In a desperate attempt to stop a huge area of the Gulf ocean floor from possibly rupturing due to subterranean methane gas (leading to a calamity no human has ever seen) BP has ripped a page from science fiction books.
The giant oil company is now quietly preparing to test a small nuclear device in a frenzied rush against time to quell a cascading catastrophe. If successful they will have the capability to detonate a controlled fusion generated pulse.
While the world watches BP’s attempt to contain the oil gusher at the former Deepwater Horizon site, company officials have given the green light on an astounding plan to use what is known as a nuclear EPFCG charge if all else fails.
Sea floor compromised
Reports still indicate that methane is flooding the Gulf waters at a rate one million times more than normal, and the NOAA research vessel, Thomas Jefferson has reported spotting new fissures. [1]
Last week the science ship stunned some reporters with the revelation that the oceanographic team had discovered and measured a rift in the ocean floor miles from the BP wellhead. The rift was reported to be more than 100 feet long and widening. Oil and methane continues to plume from that rift.
BP has also admitted damage beneath the sea floor. [2]
The Omega plan
Most enterprises—whether business, government, or exploration—have a Plan B to fall back on. To date, BP has attempted Plans B through N. Yet it is the last ditch plan-the Omega plan-that hold the greatest risk. Yet that plan may be the final hope to stop what some insiders now consider a catastrophe that could culminate with a world-killing mass extinction event that modern civilization could not survive.
At a super-secret security base-CFB Suffield-located in southern Alberta, Canada, area reports indicate that high level engineers, physicists and military scientists are feverishly working to complete an ‘explosively pumped flux compression generator’ (EPFCG).
According to published scientific papers [see sources below] an EPFCG generator can be powered by a very small, controlled fusion explosion-in other words, a tiny nuclear bomb.
Why the UK based BP has set up operations at CFB-Suffield is obvious: The company already runs three oil rigs on the base, have worked with Canada’s chemical and biological efforts on and off for almost 40 years, and have strong ties to the Commonwealth’s infrastructure.
The CFB Base, which incorporates DRDC Suffield, is one of six Canadian military research facilities and critical to the security of the country. DRDC Suffield is the lead facility for all of Canada’s engineering and weapons systems R&D.
The EPFCG—a Star Wars super weapon
A device that can only be used once, the EPFCG generates a high power electromagnetic pulse. It achieves this by using a powerful explosive, preferably nuclear. Advanced, nuclear driven EPFCGs can instantaneously create up to billions of amperes and hundreds of terawatts. Such raw power exceeds lighting bolts by huge orders of magnitude.
The pulse can be shaped and directed and used to knock out electronics-or more importantly in this case—to fuse virtually any material—including crumbling rock strata deep under the sea. The fantastically energized pulse can also compress objects to very high pressures and densities. [3]
According to engineers familiar with the technology, the devices can generate plasma arcs hotter than the surface of the sun that will melt and fuse materials in nanoseconds.
A special security force manned by members of AEGIS, a UK based paramilitary security corporation similar to the old US Blackwater Security company, is reported to have cordoned off the base. The security lid has clamped down hard while the engineers and scientists work with the nuclear materials.
BP’s secret Omega Plan kicked off in earnest on July 7th, 2010. According to sources on the base the British Geological Survey (BGS), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), BP and Halliburton have set up a test site at one of the drill rigs.
While the plan would admittedly only be executed if a worst case scenario seemed imminent, some geo-chemists have expressed concerns that detonating an EPFCG in the Gulf might ignite the methane.
Meanwhile the preparations for the test continue in Canada. . . .
The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests (by official count) between 1945 and 1992. Most of the tests took place at the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands. Ten other tests took place at various locations in the United States, including Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests (by official count between 1949 and 1990. Most of them took place at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan and the Northern Test Site at Novaya Zemlya. Additional tests were conducted at various locations in Russia and Kazakhstan, while a small number of tests were conducted in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
The United Kingdom has conducted 45 tests (21 in Australian territory, including 9 in mainland South Australia at Maralinga and Emu Field, many others in the U.S. as part of joint test series).
France conducted 210 nuclear tests between February 13, 1960 and January 27, 1996.
The People's Republic of China conducted 45 tests (23 atmospheric and 22 underground, all conducted at Lop Nur Nuclear Weapons Test Base, in Malan, Xinjiang)
India conducted 5 or 6 tests, at Pokhran.
Pakistan conducted 2 tests.
On October 9, 2006 North Korea announced they had conducted a nuclear test in North Hamgyong province on the northeast coast at 10:36 AM (11:30 AEST). There was a 3.58 magnitude earthquake reported in South Korea. There was a 4.2 magnitude tremor detected 240 miles north of P'yongyang. The low estimates on the yield of the test — potentially less than a kiloton in strength — have led to speculation as to whether it was a fizzle (unsuccessful test), or a genuine nuclear test at all.
On May 25, 2009, North Korea announced having conducted a second nuclear test. A tremor, with magnitude reports ranging from 4.7 to 5.3, was detected 233 miles northeast of P'yongyang, within a few kilometers of the 2006 test location. While estimates as to yield are still uncertain, with reports ranging from 3 to 20 kilotons, the stronger tremor indicates a significantly larger yield than the 2006 test.
About "2053"
2053 is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.*
Profile of the artist: Isao HASHIMOTO
Born in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan in 1959.
Worked for 17 years in financial industry as a foreign exchange dealer. Studied at Department of Arts, Policy and Management of Musashino Art University, Tokyo.
Currently working for Lalique Museum, Hakone, Japan as a curator.
Created artwork series expressing, in the artist's view, "the fear and the folly of nuclear weapons":
