"China syndrome," or not quite yet, at Fukushima Daiichi?

The London Telegraph doesn't go as far as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (see post below): the Telegraph reports that molten nuclear fuel has burned through reactor pressure vessels (presumably at Units 1, 2, and 3), but not yet through primary containment structures. It reports that the molten nuclear fuel has "merely" pooled on the steel floor of the primary containment structures, but desperate efforts to cool the molten fuel have stabilized the situation there for now, preventing further melt-throughs. However, the article does admit the obvious: at least a portion of the massive amounts of cooling water inundating the reactor units is leaking out into the exterior reactor buildings, and even into the outside environment, revealing escape pathways out of containment that already allow catastrophic radioactive contamination to reach the soil and sea. But the motherlode of catastrophic radioactivity, this Telegraph article implies, still resides within the molten fuel on the primary containment structures' floors.

Support the Beyond Nuclear Petition to NRC to suspend operation of 23 Fukushima-style reactors in the United States

Become a co-petitioner to NRC and support the Beyond Nuclear call for the suspension of the 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States.

Co-petition with Beyond Nuclear's April 13, 2011 call upon NRC to suspend the operation of the 23 GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactors in the US and:

1) Convene public meetings in each of the Mark I Emergency Planning Zones to take public comment for incorporation into President Obama's charted review by NRC on the wisdom of continued operation of the dangerous Fukushima-style nuclear reactors here in the US;

2) Revoke a 1989 approval of an experimental venting system installed on the deeply flawed US Mark I reactor containment system as was also installed on the Fukushima nuclear power plants and failed to prevent the meltdowns of the three Japanese reactors operating at the time of the earthquake and tsunmai. Ask NRC to require all US Mark I operators to submit a license amendment request for any further modifications to the weak containment design in a process that is accorded full public hearing rights and;

3) Require Mark I operators to install emergency backup power to assure cooling of hundreds of tons of radioactive waste in storage pools located on top of each reactor builidng outside of containment in the event of loss of offsite power. NRC should further require operators to offload high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies) from these vulnerable densely packed storage pools to hardened onsite storage in dry casks.

Note: The Beyond Nuclear petition was amended with the US NRC on June 8, 2011 to include Brunswick Units 1 & 2 (NC). The April 13 petition identified that the Brunswick Mark I containment structures were not identical to the other 21 US Mark I units, but subsequently identified to have installed the same controversial venting system. Therefore, the two Brunswick units have been added to the call for a suspension of operations for a total of twenty-three (23).

Aileen Mioko Smith & Robert Alvarez discuss the latest from Fukushima and implications for U.S. on Democracy Now!

Aileen Mioko Smith hosted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps in Japan last August, including a visit to Fukushima DaiichiToday Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez at Democracy Now! interviewed Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Japan, and Robert Alvarez of the Institute for Policy Studies. The 30 minute long discussion focused on the health impacts of radioactivity exposures to thousands of Fukushima Daiichi workers, as well as countless numbers of residents downwind and downstream, especially pregnant women and children. Alvarez pointed out that Fukushima-style reactors in the U.S., such as Vermont Yankee, contain several times more high-level radioactive waste in its storage pool than all four wrecked reactors at Fukushima put together.

Fukushima reactor(s) "melt-through" to "dry earth floor"

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that one, or more, of the atomic reactors at Fukushima Daiichi which have suffered core meltdowns have actually experienced something even worse -- melt-through of multiple layers of steel (reactor pressure vessel and primary containment structure), so that molten nuclear fuel is now onto the "dry earth floor" beneath. ABC quotes senior adviser to the Japanese government Goshi Hosono (in translation): "At present there is damage to the bottom of the reactor container, we call this ‘core melting’ in English. Part of the nuclear fuel has fallen onto the dry earth floor and it's possible that it's still lodged there." The Random House Dictionary defines "China syndrome" as "a hypothetical nuclear-reactor accident in which the fuel would melt through the floor of the containment structure and burrow into the earth." If the above report is correct, the question becomes, are the desperate attempts to cool the molten nuclear fuel trying to prevent it from burrowing deeper into the ground, if it has already melted through reactor pressure vessel, primary containment, and presumably concrete foundations? Breaches of containment would create pathways for catastrophic radioactivity releases into the environment.

Floodwaters rise at Ft. Calhoun nuclear power plant, Nebraska

Amazing footage - but don't believe the "no danger to public" message. We've already seen what happens when nuclear plants are inundated (see Fukushima). A 1993 flood at Nebraska's Cooper atomic reactor (an identical twin to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 -- a GE BWR Mark 1), also on the Missouri River, caught plant operators flat-footed, and came precariously close to disabling safety significant systems, as well as spreading radioactive contamination. Severe weather, including floods, due to climate destabilization will make nuclear power ever more unsafe, unreliable, and untenable, as summarized in a Beyond Nuclear backgrounder.

Update on June 9, 2011 by admin

A fire at Fort Calhoun, reported by John Sullivan at ProPublica, temporarily disrupted cooling in the plant's high-level radioactive waste storage pool. In just 88 hours without cooling water circulation, Fort Calhoun's storage pool would boil dry, and the high-level radioactive waste would catch on fire.