[Reader-list] Alert: Fukushima Coverup, 40 Years of Spent Nuclear Rods Blown Sky High

[Jeebesh]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23848

Alert: Fukushima Coverup, 40 Years of Spent Nuclear Rods Blown Sky High

by Paul Joseph Watson and Kurt Nimmo

In addition to under reporting the fires at Fukushima, the Japanese  
government has not told the people about the ominous fact that the  
nuclear plant site is a hellish repository where a staggering number  
of spent fuel rods have accumulated for 40 years.

A contributor to the Occupational and Environmental Medicine list who  
once worked on nuclear waste issues provided additional information  
about Fukushima’s spent fuel rod assemblies, according to a post on  
the FDL website.

“NIRS has a Nov 2010 powerpoint from Tokyo Electric Power Company (in  
English) detailing the modes and quantities of spent fuel stored at  
the Fukushima Daiichi plant where containment buildings #1 and #3 have  
exploded,” he wrote on March 14.

The Powerpoint is entitled Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks  
and Spent Fuels at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and can be  
read in full here.
The document adds a new and frightening dimension to the unfolding  
disaster.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools dedicated to spent fuel  
rods. These are located at the top of six reactor buildings - or were  
until explosions and fires ravaged the plant.

On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building that  
was critically damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool  
holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel  
rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods. In short,  
the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000 spent fuel rods - a  
massive amount of radiation that will soon be released into the  
atmosphere.

It should be obvious by now that the authorities in Japan are lying  
about the effort to contain the situation in order to mollify the  
public. It is highly likely there are no workers on the site  
attempting to contain the disaster.
Earlier today, a report was issued indicating that over 70% of these  
spent fuel rods are now damaged - in other words, they are emitting  
radiation or will soon. The disclosure reveals that authorities in  
Japan - who have consistently played down the danger and issued  
conflicting information - are guilty of criminal behavior and  
endangering the lives of countless people.

On Tuesday, it was finally admitted that meltdowns of the No. 1 and  
No. 2 reactor cores are responsible for the release of a massive  
amount of radiation.

After reporting that a fire at the No. 4 reactor was contained, the  
media is reporting this evening that it has resumed. The media  
predictably does not bother to point out why the fire is uncontainable  
- the fuel rods are no longer submerged in water and are exposed to  
the atmosphere and that is why they are burning and cannot be  
extinguished.

It cannot be stressed enough that the situation at Fukushima  
represents the greatest environmental disaster in the history of  
humanity, far more dangerous that Chernobyl, and the government of  
that country is responsible.
Perhaps the most underreported and deadliest aspect of the three  
explosions and numerous fires to hit the stricken Fukushima nuclear  
reactor since Saturday is the fact that highly radioactive spent fuel  
rods which are stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment  
facility are likely to have been massively compromised by the blasts,  
an elevation in the crisis that would represent “Chernobyl on  
steroids,” according to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen.

As you can see from the NPR graphic below, the spent fuel rods are  
stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment casing and close  
to the roof of the reactor complex. Video from Saturday’s explosion  
and subsequent images clearly indicate that the spent fuel rods at  
Fukushima unit number one could easily have been compromised by the  
blast.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds  
Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont  
Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit  
1, the failure to maintain pools of water that keep the 20 years worth  
of spent fuel rods cool could cause “catastrophic fires” and turn the  
crisis into “Chernobyl on steroids.”

The BBC is now reporting that “spent fuel rods in reactors five and  
six are also now believed to be heating up,” with a new fire at  
reactor 4, where more spent rods are stored, causing smoke to pour  
from the facility.

“Japanese news agency Kyodo reports that the storage pool in reactor  
four - where the spent fuel rods are kept - may be boiling. Tepco says  
readings are showing high levels of radiation in the building, so it  
is inaccessible,” adds the report.

“At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion  
Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel  
pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above  
the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to  
maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety  
systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels  
in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts,  
some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside,” reports the  
Washington Post.

The rods must be kept cool because otherwise they start to burn and,  
in the case of reactor number 3, would release plutonium and uranium  
in the form of vapor into the atmosphere.

“That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is  
even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without  
plutonium,” writes Kirk James Murphy.

“We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods from  
a single holding pool.

We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools for  
spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six  
reactor buildings. nulle “common pool” is at ground level in a  
separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450 fuel rod  
assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies. [The  
common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly  
destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods.  
This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent  
fuel rods.”

There have been massive design issues with the Mark 1 nuclear reactor  
stretching back three decades.

As ABC News reports today, “Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh  
and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs  
after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design  
they were reviewing — the Mark 1 — was so flawed it could lead to a  
devastating accident.”

The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of  
the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that  
could be experienced with a loss of coolant,” Bridenbaugh told ABC  
News in an interview. “The impact loads the containment would receive  
by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart  
and create an uncontrolled release.”