Helen Caldicott, founding president of Beyond Nuclear, gives Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, newest fan of nuclear power, the lesson in radio-biology that he sorely lacked.
The New York Times quotes Kuni Yogo, a former atomic energy policy planner in the Japan Science and Technology Agency, as saying regarding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant: “There is some trial and error, but this is the beginning of a three- to five-year effort” required to continually cool the hellishly hot, melting reactor cores at reactor units 1, 2, and 3. Given the large-scale radioactivity releases that such activities have already released into the environment in the first three weeks of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that could represent catastrophic radiation releases into the environment over time.
TOKYO — Japan remained on "maximum alert" today over the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant as the government revealed high levels of radiation had been detected in the sea near the facility.
A government spokesman told the Jiji press agency that the level of radioactive iodine found in the sea near the plant was 3,355 times above the legal limit. Mail Tribune
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The Guardian UK is reporting that a core melt has breached the Unit 2 reactor pressure vessel at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 in a lava-like formation that has flowed into the drywell which is the component of the reactor containment structure. The drywell is reportedly now filled with seawater, however, the overall containment structure very likely was ruptured by a hydrogen gas explosion on March 14. While all three reactor Units 1, 2 and 3 are reported to have extremely high levels of radioactive water outside containment in the turbine halls, Unit 2 is leaking high level radioactive water into groundwater offsite now discovered in a trench that opens on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. TEPCo workers and Japanese Defense Forces have been sandbagging around the trench openning to stave off flushing the reactor's radioactive contents into the ocean.
March 30, 2011
