This isn't a news roundup, it's not a speculative analysis of data coming out, it's not yet another re-hash of the weekend's 'news' that TEPCO now admits unit-1 at Fukushima is in a state of "full meltdown." Rather, this is a few choice tidbits (all linked) about the weekend's and early week news, and how all of it compares to what has in fact been known all along by the world's nuclear establishment, TEPCO, the Japanese government, and yes… the press and interested public.
I hope to highlight here how easily facts are able to be ignored, skewed, twisted and re-created as something completely different from what was said before, and how amazingly easy it is to make the public believe self-serving lies over their own eyes, even when they already KNOW the truth because they've already been TOLD the truth.
This overview is offered because there are a number of pro-nuclear apologists still here at DKos trolling for diaries in which to inject their canned propaganda over and over and over again, as if it had never been exposed as bullshit, just in case there's a sucker here who doesn't already know the score. Must get paid by the word. That's pretty much all I can think of that would seem to justify to any individual the thankless task of trying to pull the wool over open eyes. Honestly intelligent pro-nuclear people would be laying low right now, hoping in the end to salvage even a crumb of the nuclear pie at some plant not destined to melt before the people demand its closure.
At any rate, on with the tidbits...
First up is the revelation this past weekend that Fukushima Unit-1 is in a state of "full meltdown", as admitted by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, a.k.a. TEPCO. While we who have been following are well aware of the Japanese government's clamp-down on news about what is happening at the Fukushima reservation, this should perhaps be considered a factor in why TEPCO has waited for two months to announce what happened just 16 hours after the earthquake on March 11.
I figure it has to do with the necessary evacuation of people most endangered by the mess, some of whom have just now been authorized to leave designated areas with government assistance outside the previous exclusion zone. In light of all other major issues of the awful natural disasters that have ravaged Japan, the logistics of mass evacuations have taken some time to set up. Luckily (if there is anything like luck occurring in this horror story), the meltdowns have allowed a little time to get things organized.
As Mainichi made known in the above linked article about the timing of the meltdown at Unit-1, TEPCO was fully aware of what was going on inside the reactor within hours of the quake. As Hiroaki Kiode, professor of nuclear safety engineering at Kyoto University said,
"They could have assumed that when the loss of power made it impossible to cool down the reactor, it would soon lead to a meltdown of the core. TEPCO's persistent explanation that the damage to the fuel had been limited turned out to be wrong."
Did TEPCO know? Well, according to various nuclear watchdogs and engineering societies worldwide who have been publishing the truth about Fukushima from the beginning, yes they did. Here's one from April 28 that traces the conditions as an in-progress worst case scenario, with a small probability of getting worse. Such analyses were used originally to justify the government's expanded evacuation orders, for those more distant towns outside the original zone…
If workers are unable to continue hosing operations, and if the nuclear fuel manages to melt through the bottom of the reactor and fall into a water pool below, this would result in a burst of high temperature and a sudden release of a huge amount of hydrogen explosion that could breach the vessel.
But we now know the Unit-1 vessel is breached, was breached early on. So the first worst case scenario of a corium steam explosion from that one meltdown is magnified.
Next in line, is Unit-1 the only Fukushima reactor in approximately the same state of total meltdown/reactor breach? Here's an article from March 14 - just three days after the earthquake - talking about the Unit-2 reactor vessel breach (which was also known at that time to TEPCO, the Japanese government, and everybody else nuclear in the world). Quoth the NYTimes…
…The nuclear fuel in [the #2] reactor was exposed for many hours, increasing the risk of a breach of the container vessel and a more dangerous emissions of radioactive particles… By Tuesday morning, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said it had fixed the valve and resumed seawater injections, but that they had detected possible leaks in the containment vessel that prevented water from fully covering the fuel rods.
FDL reported on Congressman Ed Markey's reaction to that situation. And on March 30 we learned that Unit-3 was in a state of meltdown as well.
The point I want to make here is that "everybody knew" the plants had melted and mass-breached pretty much from the start of this disaster. As if exploding reactor buildings were just exclamation points appended to that knowledge. The spent fuel pools are another issue, but because they were exposed straight to the atmosphere by those exploded reactor buildings, they took the heat of scrutiny off the actual melting reactors for a few weeks. That didn't stop the meltdowns, haven't stopped them still. The melting and spewing of spent fuel filth is just adding to the overburden. None of them poses the corium explosion danger the reactors pose.
Interested parties - and there are many here - need to try hard to keep in mind what has always been known about the conditions at Fukushima, and NOT allow themselves to have their perfectly good brain memory cells erased post-facto by orchestrated propaganda tactics so spun they look more like cotton candy than hard facts. Please. This kind of brain-twisting can negate any and all possible real good and humanitarian progress that could possibly be built from the tragedies of Japan. Necessary changes, necessary focused activist energy. Don't get lost in the tall grass, run headlong into a tree! Every single engendered inaccuracy in our own sequence of events, understanding of events, and fair observations of ramifications to the public in Japan and all over the world will be jumped upon greedily (as if they knew it was coming) and nailed to the wall with 16-penny jobbers. Then they can play their usual elitist "trust the experts" game while going back to calling their detractors "ignorant Luddites." Basic psychology, 401 (senior level): planting time bombs in other people's brains you can trigger at a later, more opportune time. These folks helped perfect it, even if they didn't invent it.
In my own opinion at this point in the game, I'll say that while things could get significantly worse at Fukushima, I am encouraged (surprisingly, to me) that they haven't already gotten significantly worse. Time in this crazy instance, is actually on the nukes' side. Thus in this disaster, also on the people's side. There is time for the evacuations to be extended where they need to be, time for Japan's government and damaged infrastructure to accommodate the displaced masses, time for the world to gage fairly whether or not these arrogant nukes can actually control their beasts from Hell, or if we need to just shut them all the fuck down.
I'm on the Shut 'em The Fuck Down [STFD] side of the fence, of course. Where I've firmly stood for more than 40 years of my life. Others got there later, some are still confused and unsure, some are in a thumb-sucking state of denial. On April 17, a month and 5 days AFTER they knew their plants were in a hopeless state of self-fueled catastrophe, TEPCO came up with a plan projecting "cold shutdown" of the entire crisis (3 reactors plus at least 4 fuel pools) in six to nine months. Prime Minister Kan apparently thinks the 'new' revelations about what has always been known won't change that game plan even in TEPCO's revision due tomorrow [today Japan time].
Here's the new plan from NHK. Focus for the reactors is to set up some form of recirculation from the water in the turbine buildings - where water being poured into the breached vessels is accumulating - to those vessels, thereby diminishing the amount of new water pouring in and leaking right on out. Also, TEPCO hopes to install heat exchangers for the 4 fuel pools by sometime in July. Improved working conditions and some makeshift seawalls to help block releases are also planned, but the schedule remains the same.
So what does this mean per continuing dangers? My take: Corium on the loose in the bowels of the reservation's catacomb of tunnels and basements is entirely likely to dilute and convection cool itself to a standstill at some point within six to nine months. Every bad thing that's going to happen will most likely have happened by then, apart from 'the usual' filth that gets spread around during recovery/decommissioning (times 11). If all this can happens without huge secondary pressurized (underground) hydrogen explosions that could easily flatten the entire facility, we will all be very thankful. If the worst happens, we can all be thankful as many people were moved out of the way as were moved out of the way before it happened.
Whatever has or will happen has basically nothing to do with TEPCO's spectacular management or skills at managing a nuclear super-disaster. If Japan and the rest of the world manages to escape the worst we should probably consider the death and destruction it does engender to be our Last Best Warning. If humanity refuses to stop the insanity we'll have no one to blame but ourselves for the results.
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Oh, by the way. It's nice to know that TEPCO now also admits that its facilities at Fukushima may have been damaged before the tsunami. Just for when the apologists lob another round of "they survived the earthquake, it was just the tsunami that got 'em."
Even worse, TEPCO now reports that workers manually shut off the Unit-1 emergency cooling system BEFORE the tsunami, following procedures for preventing reactor damage from a low pressure transient that occurred right after the scram. They're still deciding whether or not those procedures were correct in the actual situation. My guess is that if they decide to go with "operator error" on this (as they did at TMI for actions taken in accordance with established emergency procedures), they'll have to be re-writing those operations manuals for every GE boiling water reactor on the planet. Including the 31 that we've got still operating. Then who are they going to blame when the next one melts? As one or more inevitably will if they are allowed to keep operating for 20 years beyond their past-due dates.
Does it really take a psychic to read these cards and foretell the radioactive future?
UPDATE: Just had to offer this little tidbit (latecoming) from Asahi today…
…like the No. 1 reactor, the melted fuel appears to have created holes in the pressure vessel of the No. 3 reactor, according to the data of Tokyo Electric Power Co. released May 16.
Goshi Hosono, special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, acknowledged the likelihood of meltdowns at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
"We have to assume that meltdowns have taken place," Hosono said at a news conference May 16.
But that doesn't change The Plan. According to TEPCO, it still needs just 6-9 months to get everything cleaned up. Yeah, it might look like they consider the public to be complete idiots, but they've got a few idiots of their own making "official" TEPCO statements to the press. Like this one [from the Asahi article]…
We have yet to be able to grasp the entire situation at the plant," the official said.
This is ridiculous.