(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, admitted Wednesday that fuel of the plant’s No. 1 reactor could be melting.
Describing the possible meltdown, Matsumoto said it can be compared to a state in which molten fuel accumulates like lava.
So what happens if that red-hot nuclear lava melts through the bottom of the containment vessel?
Nobody knows.
And meanwhile, what’s happening at Reactor No. 2?
The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.
“I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the core of Unit Two has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel,” said Markey, a prominent nuclear critic in the House of Representatives.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has reported to a Cabinet Office safety panel that nuclear fuel pellets in the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima power station are believed to have partially melted.
And at No. 4?
Fukushima No. 4
100 tons of plutonium are stored in that beautiful facility!
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I have used it in my letter to the NRC opposing the installation of more plants here.
They say a letter carries more weight than online action Click the link for an address.
In this case I intend to do both.
…as reported on Twitter (not lost in translation):
I’d like to embed some of it, but the embed code doesn’t work here and I’m too lazy to figure it out right now, maybe later.
Fairewinds Associates Fukushima Updates
Good luck to the planet, and all of us.
I haven’t yet had a chance to read all the links, but I’m aware that Reactor No. 4 is the worst of the worst. The radiation being emitted into the ocean and the air grows with each day. (Suffice it that BP’s damage to ocean life has been great in and of itself, despite MSM accountings.) One can only cry for those living in close proximity to these reactors and to Japan, itself.
As we all know, the budget crisis consumes the MSM and we are not only not getting enough information about the effects of these failing and failed reactors, but we’re not getting much of anything at all.
The Norwegian Institute of Air Research has a static map showing potential releases of radiation from the Fukishima plant, which can be updated each day and compared against a previous day(s) map. I think this is certainly one of the more credible sort of maps, antimated or otherwise, that we may have seen, at least it seems so.
Here is a “non-moving” map of today’s date:
(click on map for larger view)
Here is a “refresher” link to update and see the antimated version, along with other important data: Nilu.
To view some previous dates of the map, please see Global Research.
Of course, this is so insidious and there is no way to gauge how long the radiation will travel both the air and the waters, and the final extent of its intensity.
I cannot see how any life form will be spared being tainted by radiation. And how do you grow food on land that is tainted? But eat we must and so . . . . ????? Maybe, if the dosages of radiation to life are gradual enough, the “internal” system can have a chance to develop an immunity????? Of course, I hope and I wish, but the thing is we are simply dealing with a “mystery.” Worse, our own government seems oblivious and gives us no forewarnings of a course for us to take in self-protection, apart the standard ones. Stock up on water, canned goods, keep a room that can be closed off, etc., etc. etc.
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I have always found it of interest to note (and not a bad idea) that there are seed vaults: here is a google of seed vaults. I’m pointing this out purely as a matter of interest!
in the catacombs beneath the plants. Readings on the 18th are higher in the drywells than in the reactors.
It’ll go until it stops, and it’ll stop eventually no matter what. Too much concrete and equipment melt to dilute the fissionables, water it can flash to gas and steam… there’s a reason they’ve been injecting nitrogen. In unit-2 it hasn’t worked.
It’s trying to find its way to the sea. It probably won’t make it, but it could be molten for years and might hit groundwater at some point. Or not. It’s wet enough down there to provide some natural heat-sink. But no matter which “worst case scenario” it follows (and the current one is plenty bad enough), it’s at least an 8.5 on what’s not really a logarithmic scale. This needs to be the end of it.