"What is the U.S. government waiting for?"

Japanese diplomat Akio Matsumura, more than anyone, has raised the alarm about the structural integrity of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool. Matsumura has published a new essay explaining the Japanese government's inaction, and calling for international action. Matsumura argues that the U.S., in order to protect its own interests, must urge the Japanese government to allow in an independent assessment team to determine the status of the Unit 4 pool, and the best path forward on removing its irradiated nuclear fuel, before another big earthquake strikes.

Geologists predict a 90% chance of a Magnitude 7.0 quake hitting the Fukushima area in the next three years. Unit 4's collapse could result in its high-level radioactive waste catching fire, unleashing a global catastrophe. Unit 4's high-level radioactive waste pool contains 8 to 10 times the Cs-137 released by Chernobyl, but its release would put in jeopardy all seven high-level radioactive waste storage pools at Fukushima Daiichi, containing 85 times, or more, Chernobyl's Cs-137. Such a worst-case scenario would certainly result in significant radioactive fallout on the North American mainland, not to mention further contamination of the Pacific Ocean, and radioactivity bio-concentration in the food chain. 

Please contact the White House, and urge President Obama to offer cooperative assistance to the Japanese government, in order to independently assess the Unit 4 pool, and determine how best to quickly remove the irradiated nuclear fuel before the reactor building collapses.

Of course, the U.S. has potentially catastrophic risks of its own, as well. There are 23 still operating GE BWR Mark Is (identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi's Units 1-4), and an additional 8 Mark IIs (very similar in design).

However, whereas Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 had 219 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) stored within -- the most at any of the four wrecked reactors -- U.S. Mark I pools contain multiple times that much HLRW. As but two examples, the Mark Is at Pilgrim, MA and Fermi 2, MI each hold more than 600 metric tons of HLRW in their storage pools. In fact, they both still hold every single irradiated nuclear fuel assembly ever generated in those reactors.

Pilgrim now has an NRC rubberstamp permit for dry cask storage, so is supposed to slowly begin offloading a small fraction of its HLRW into ground level dry casks in the not so distant future.

Fermi 2 has had an NRC rubberstamp permit for dry cask storage for several years now, but has yet to move a single irradiated fuel assembly out of its pool. Why? Because, 40 years, Fermi 2 either forgot or decided not to install structural welds in its reactor building. The reactor building is not strong enough to hold a crane, and its nearly 100-ton waste transfer cask loads. Presumably, Fermi 2 is now installing those structural welds, albeit 40 years late.

Update on November 18, 2013 by admin

In this sense, Fermi 2 and Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 have a lot in common. It took Tokyo Electric from Marcy 2011 to November 2013 to rebuild the reactor building's infrastructure to the point where such crane operated offloads were even possible. Today, November 18, 2013, Tokyo Electric Power Co. has begun the slow process of removing both new (un-irradiated), as well as irradiated (highly radioactive) nuclear fuel assemblies from Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2. The transfer job is supposed to take until the end of 2014 to complete. However, Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds has warned that some of the irradiated fuel in the Unit 4 pool could well be damaged -- corroded from salt water used as emergency coolant in the first days of the catastrophe, or bent by the explosion which sent a certain amount of debris crashing down into the pool, or simply stuck in deformed fuel channels in the storage pool itself. That is, the fuel transfer operation might not go smoothly.

Update on January 1, 2014 by admin

Remarkably, Tepco gave its Unit 4 fuel transfer project workers two weeks off for the New Year's holiday. Never mind that the precarious Unit 4 pool, holding a couple hundred tons of high-level radioactive waste, could unleash a global catastrophe if the cooling water drains down suddenly, or even boils down in slower motion. The releases of Cs-137 alone from a pool fire could be orders of magnitude worse than what's already occurred at Fukushima Daiichi since March 2011. The storage pools, after all, are not surrounded by any radiological containment whatsoever. Although the radiological containment structures around the Units 1, 2, and 3 reactor cores were too small, too weak, and were either severely damaged or even outright destroyed -- releasing catastrophic amounts of radioactvity -- supposedly the motherlode of radioactivity is still contained within those wrecked structures. However, the storage pools had very little radiological containment to begin with -- industrial grade reactor buildings. But after the hydrogen explosions that wrecked the reactor buildings, the storage pools are Units 1, 3, and 4 have been "open air."