From Bad to Worse

Tough as our economic and environmental challenges may be, one need only look to Fukushima Prefecture to know we have been relatively lucky, so far.

In a new video release by Fairewinds Energy Education,  Arnie Gundersen tells us that recent reports from TEPCO indicate that the scope of damage to the spent fuel pool in the #3 reactor at Fukushima far exceeds anything that has been previously suggested in news releases.  

Much has been said about the commencement of efforts to remove spent fuel bundles from the damaged fuel pool of reactor #4.  Shifting the focus to reactor #4 was a shrewd way to avoid discussion of the much graver situation at reactor #3, where fifty-plus tons of debris have collapsed into the fuel pool following a detonation shockwave that represented the worst explosion that occurred at the facility.

TEPCO doesn’t want to talk about Unit 4 because it has no good answer to provide for what can be done about the radioactive mess at the bottom of the debris pile.

The implications are chilling, but the bad news is deeply buried in a recent corporate report entitled TEPCO’s Nuclear Power Plant Roadmap.  The company has provided no translation, so volunteer translators are assisting Fairewinds in making the information accessible to industry watchdogs around the world.

Bottom line?  Because bad stuff does happen, if events like the Unit 3 detonation shockwave can’t be planned for and a successful robotic response engineered into the original design, it’s madness to even consider the continued use of nuclear energy.

New TEPCO Report Shows Damage to Unit 3 Fuel Pool MUCH Worse Than That at Unit 4 from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

 

About Sue Prent

Artist/Writer/Activist living in St. Albans, Vermont with my husband since 1983. I was born in Chicago; moved to Montreal in 1969; lived there and in Berlin, W. Germany until we finally settled in St. Albans.

3 thoughts on “From Bad to Worse

  1. Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster

    David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan, Union of Concerned Scientists

    In the first definitive account of the Fukushima disaster, two leading experts from the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, team up with journalist Susan Q. Stranahan, the lead reporter of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Three Mile Island accident, to tell this harrowing story. Fukushima combines a fast-paced, riveting account of the tsunami and the nuclear emergency it created with an explanation of the science and technology behind the meltdown as it unfolded in real time.

  2. According to the truth-challenged apologists & sociopaths — the only class of humans who could possibly continue this very bald lie & patently obvious falshoods:

    Spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi safer than asserted

    Posted on May 16, 2012

    by pbowersox| 184 Comments

    By Will Davis

    In recent days, a number of articles have been printed that assert that a grave danger exists at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear generating station. These articles claim that this danger exists due to the condition of the spent nuclear fuel at the site and the supposedly shaky condition of its storage and care

    http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012

    Comments typical but the cavalier nature of them & mentality in light of what we now know as debacle continues – many experts claim there is no end – is astonishing. Unsurprisingly two of the “credits” for the story goes to faithful sockpuppets of the nuclear industry & partners in crime Atomic Rod & Ms. Angwin.

    How do these lying SOS sleep at night? Blow-by-blow is breathtaking:

    The occurrence of a cataclysmic release of radioactive material as surmised is hinged upon the occurrence of so many statistically impossible events that it is certain to be a practical impossibility. Since the assertions continue to gain a wider audience, however, it is necessary to examine them and make a realistic assessment of their likelihood

    Nearly two years later we can see that it is simply untrue. Primary source of info? TEPCO!

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