Nuclear Accidents 19 - Whats going on at Fukushima?
There has been a lot of news lately about the mess at Fukushima. They are still not sure exactly where the cores are. Water is being pumped underground to cool the cores that melted into the earth. We are told that hundreds of tons of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima have been flowing into the Pacific daily since the accident. Estimates are that the plume of contaminated water will reach the West Coast of the U.S. within the next year. There are also models that show that there will be a measurable rise in radioactivity in the entire Pacific Ocean by 2020.
TEPCO has been storing hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated cooling water in tanks that they bolted together. Those tanks are almost full and in danger of corroding. The groundwater is rising up around the site, turning the ground into a swamp and threatening the stability of the buildings. And, at this point, it looks like the cooling water will be flowing directly into the Pacific soon. The latest plan is to pump liquid nitrogen down holes drilled into the ground in order to freeze the groundwater in place. I am still confused about this new groundwater threat and the groundwater that has been flowing into the Pacific for two years.
At first TEPCO had only assigned two men to inspect over one thousand tanks for leaks. They were not even wearing dosimeters to monitor their radiation exposure. They did find some leaks and measured some increased radiation levels. Then it was found that the radiation meters that they were using were not able to measure above a certain level of radiation. TEPCO put more men on the monitoring with better Geiger counters and found a serious increase in radiation in the past few days on the order of eighteen times the previous averages for past months. This level can kill in hours. Some nuclear chemists day that it is not possible that the spike in radioactivity is from leaking tanks. They speculate that there may be active fission processes going on with the melted cores underground.
In the past few days, some nuclear experts have been saying that the spent fuel pool in the weaken Unit Four reactor building at Fukushima may very well be the most dangerous situation that the human race has ever faced. Another earthquake could bring down the building and expose the fuel rods to open air which would cause them to burst into flames and burn. This would release massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere that would make its way around the whole world. TEPCO has decided that they are going to try to remove the rods manually because the automatic machinery has been destroyed. However, the radiation levels are high and very dangerous. If they disturb the rods as they try to remove them, they may trigger the lost of cooling water and the burning of the rods. Sort of a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.
The Japanese government, after dithering around for two years has, finally decided that TEPCO is not competent to clean up the Fukushima mess. They promise to get more involved and have asked for external help from other countries that have nuclear technology. They do, however, claim that it is perfectly safe to hold the Olympics in Tokyo in spite of numerous reports of black dust and mold in Tokyo that tests positive for radioactivity. They are also shutting down one of the two reactors that they had restarted and are talking about shutting down the other one. But Prime Minister Abe is still running around the world trying to sell less developed nations Japanese nuclear reactors.
There has been a viral picture circulating for several days on the Internet that purports to be a photograph of the Fukushima plant and the nearby ocean boiling. There is something in the air over the ocean but it could be anything from smoke to steam to mist. It is hard to tell and there has been no corroboration in the international media. But the International media and the Internet are certainly boiling over Fukushima. It is a truly international disaster and it is certainly not helping the floundering global nuclear industry.
Ocean boiling at Fukushima??
