Tech | June 16, 2011 | 7 comments

Fukushima: It's Much Worse Than You Think

source: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

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kerriberri
Once again, our American media is MIA on vital news, while we all are subjected to endless Bieberisms. Sadly, we must turn to Al Jazeera English for news that TEPCO (Tokyo Electric) has publicly reported.

A quick quote from the full piece, here: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometers being found 60 to 70 kilometers away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Read the full story here: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html
  1. groups:
    Community,   Tech,   Green,   Business News & Analysis,   2 more
  2. tags:
    Nuclear Power,  Fukushima,  Japan Earthquake,  Japan Tsunami,  2 more
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7 comments // Fukushima: It's Much Worse Than You Think

  • punman
    • +1
      punman  

    • I found this part of the article interesting-

      Blame the US?

      Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

      Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan.
      He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.

      "Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."

      Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.

    • 12 months ago
  • ArchDruid
  • kerriberri
    • 0
      kerriberri  
    • ArchDruid:

      Awesome post, as usual, Archdruid--

      Do you think this statement might mean TEPCO could actually sue GE for damages (hope so!):

      "General Electric said they wouldn't guarantee safety UNLESS we built them according to the U.S. specifications," recalled a former senior official at the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry."

      Have you heard any rumblings of this over there?

    • 12 months ago
  • squarethecircle
  • kerriberri
    • 0
      kerriberri  
    • squarethecircle:

      VERY interesting piece; how about this part?:

      "The Obama Administration has ended radiation monitoring of seafood in the Pacific. It does not provide reliable, systematic radiological or medical data on fallout coming to the United States."

      Thanks for posting!

    • 12 months ago
  • Misti
  • kerriberri
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