Today the Tokyo Electric Power Company – builders, owners and operators – and the Japanese nuclear regulatory authority drifted a few more tidbits of information about the major meltdowns of the various nuclear reactors at the stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima.
The secretive Japanese authorities finally admitted what the Environmental Parliament discovered first and shared with the Japanese government & public, with the US and UK governments and with the IAE commission and the global UN nuclear energy regulators and the people of this earth. We are especially concerned about the people and their children who have been unduly exposed themselves to the nuclear fallout coursing the global atmosphere. People suffered and continue to suffer, in Japan and across the globe, extreme radiation exposure – due to no fault of their own – and we recommend now to provide all children between the ages of infancy till puberty a healthy dose of iodine to protect their thyroid from the irradiated iodine found in the atmosphere as well as in the air, water, and earth. Because the nuclear meltdown is so vast and the radiation release far greater than Chernobyl, we seek government support to provide iodine for children.
The Japanese government finally admitted that all reactors went into meltdown after stricken by the earthquake.
And it was not the tsunami that caused the meltdown as was admitted today that two more of the six reactor units at the facility probably underwent meltdowns immediately, after the disaster on 11 March.
TEPCO acknowledged last week that fuel rods in reactor unit 1 probably melted down within as little as four hours from the time of the earthquake.
Today, the company said that there were probably meltdowns in reactor units 2 and 3 as well, after the tsunami destroyed cooling systems needed to prevent meltdown through overheating of fuel rods.
Unit 3 probably melted down first, on 13 March, followed next day by Unit 2, after water levels fell below those needed to keep fuel cool enough to avoid meltdown. A day later, on 15 March,faulty valve systems led to an explosion in unit 2 which led to leakage of radioactive water into the sea.
Despite the meltdowns, they claim erroneously, that there is no further danger because the melted cores are now safely covered by at least 3 metres of water, TEPCO officials told journalists today.
But problems are mounting elsewhere, with storage space rapidly running out for the tens of thousands of tonnes of radioactive water that have collected in reactor buildings. A TEPCO spokesman is quoted in UK newspaper The Guardian as saying that dealing with the contaminated water could take till the end of the year, and rise to as much as 200,000 tonnes. TEPCO is collaborating with the French firm, Areva, in a plan to recycle the tainted water through the reactors as a coolant.
Measures are also under way to improve cooling of spent reactor fuel being stored in the reactor buildings. Rods in reactor unit 4 caused problems early on when they caught fire through lack of cooling water, spreading clouds of radiation into the environment.
According to the Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper, TEPCO issued a plan on Saturday to install external heat exchangers for cooling storage ponds at units 1, 2 and 3. The exchangers will use cold “secondary” water to cool “primary” water continuously circulating through the rods. Air cooling equipment will be used to re-cool down the secondary water as it circulates.
The newspaper reveals that currently, the temperature is 70 to 80ºC in unit 2′s storage pond, but should be half that. But with the exchanger installed, the company is confident the temperature can be lowered to 41ºC within a month. Exchangers will be fitted in June to the ponds in reactor units 1 and 3, and in July to the pond in unit 4.
A careful dance of slow and minor public releases of news has been orchestrated from the beginning — in order to not disturb the nuclear industry game…
Yet the people don’t feel like dancing to this tune anymore.
As a matter of fact we are not amused at all.
Yours,
Pano
With the nuclear industry under such a cloud, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is pressing on with plans to expand Japan’s reliance on renewable power. According to the Nikkei newspaper, he is considering plans to make installation of solar panels mandatory in all new buildings by 2030, and will make them public later this week at the G8 summit in Deauville, France.
But to us his dance feels like a strategic move and not a real move away fro nuclear, because earlier this month, when PM Naoto Kan signalled a move to renewables, especially wind power, he had also stressed that nuclear power would still be needed to meet the country’s energy needs.
One needs to ask:
Why is it so difficult for the Japanese government and the acting Prime Minister to do the right thing?
People need to impeach him and go find another.
