Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[Joao]

It has occured to me that maybe there is no one that can sort it out.

it is still not clear where the melted fuel cores are, or in what state.

[Iamwhomiam]

I'd have to disagree, Joao we do know that the fuel has melted together, penetrated the Mark 2's containment vessel, and has fallen into the earth. It seems to have reached the water table some time ago.

When I mentioned the certainty of the failure of the "ice wall" to retain the radioactive water from entering the ocean, that was based upon the fact that the below-ground solid wall built at West Valley NY site to contain the highly radioactive strontium plume, failed to retain it.

[Joao]

We must've read that WSJ quote differently, since I thought its implication wasn't so far off from what you wrote. I understood it to say the cores had melted through their containment and disappeared into the ground, but I see now that I could've misread it. Are the PR teams still pushing the possibility that the melted cores are sitting at the bottom of the containment vessels?

I'm not familiar with West Valley. I find nuclear accidents deeply disturbing so I'm not sure if I'll have the fortitude to read up on it. It's hard to deny that the ice wall seems ridiculous, though.

[Iamwhomiam]

Are the PR teams still pushing the possibility that the melted cores are sitting at the bottom of the containment vessels?

I'm not familiar with West Valley. I find nuclear accidents deeply disturbing so I'm not sure if I'll have the fortitude to read up on it. It's hard to deny that the ice wall seems ridiculous, though.

Yes, Joao. To be truthful would more immediately damage the industry overall. At this point in time, no one seems to be sharing its present depth underground. Theoretically, a hydrogen explosion can be expected after it plunges into the groundwater. Personally, I believe it has penetrated far deeper.

If those rods begin to become more exposed to the air, they will ignite and then we all will know the horrors more than a few Japanese are now suffering.

Here are a few links, the first to my recent posting in another thread:

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=521145#p521145

And this to NYS DEC web page for West Valley:

http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/43501.html

Our work: http://www.cectoxic.org/

I hope all will sign...

Help us stop the radioactive discharges from Fukushima by signing this petition now!

Deadline is 10-9-13!

Urgent international petition calling for immediate action on the uncontrolled radioactive discharges at Tepco’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

This is clearly not an appropriate time for Japan to restart nuclear plants or export nuclear technology
The ocean, the source of life, must not be contaminated further.

We hereby petition the Japanese national government and related entities to undertake the following commitments. Click here to read commitments and to sign petition.

Sometimes I wish I remained ignorant and illiterate, the horrors I've witnessed.

[Joao]

Thanks for the links. I will look at them... eventually. The arrogance and carelessness of the nuclear industry is so frustrating to me, though, that it may take me a while to get around to them.

[Nordic]

The utter lack of response from the "international community" just shows what a joke the "international community" is. In fact there isn't one, except for loan sharking and war profiteering.

If there was ever a situation where we needed a genuine one, this is it.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Friday, September 13, 2013 by Common Dreams
TEPCO Official: Fukushima is Out of Control
Statement contradicts assurances of Japanese PM, comes as fresh steam is spotted billowing from reactor

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Fukushima nuclear plant in the immediate aftermath of Japan's March 2011 tsunami (Photo: AP)
"I’m sorry, but we consider the situation is not under control."

Those were the words of Kazuhiko Yamashita, executive-level fellow for Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company when he was pressed by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

His statements directly contradict the claims of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who assured the International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires Saturday that the situation is under control.

TEPCO officials moved quickly to cover Yamashita's tracks, releasing a statement Friday declaring

It is our understanding that the Prime Minister intended his statement ‘the situation is under control’ to mean that the impact of radioactive materials is limited to the area within the port of the power station, and that the densities of radioactive materials on the surrounding waters are far below the referential densities and have not been on continuous upward trends. According to this understanding, we share the same views.
Yet, all evidence suggests that the crisis is far beyond the current abilities of the Japanese government and operator TEPCO to contain it.

Each day brings new disasters, with fresh reports on Friday that steam is billowing from a reactor. Radiation levels at the plant were found to be 18 times higher than TEPCO previously claimed, climbing to a high of 1800 millisieverts per hour—enough to kill a person in just four hours.

TEPCO has poured thousands of tons of water to cool the melted reactors, yet has no sustainable plan for storing it once contaminated. The temporary tanks where the radioactive water is currently being held are springing leaks, releasing the water into the groundwater, and by extension, the sea. TEPCO says it has resorted to patching tank leaks with plastic tape.

The Japanese government announced in early September it will invest $500 million to build a giant 'wall of ice' surrounding the plant. Yet, experts predict it will take at least 2 years to complete, and there is no evidence that this is enough to stem what has become a ballooning crisis.

The disaster was touched off by Japan's March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the meltdown of fuel-rods at several reactors and continues to unleash toxic radiation into the air and sea. Over 160,000 people have been evacuated, transforming nearby areas into ghost towns in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The Japanese government has been criticized for moving to re-start other nuclear facilities as the Fukushima crisis spirals.

[beeline]

Link

Japan Times: Fukushima may be inundated by typhoon on Monday
— Center of storm forecast to pass over nuclear plant
— Over 15 inches of rain predicted in region
— Flood and mudslide warnings issued for Pacific coast

Typhoon Man-yi heads for Chubu

AFP-JIJI, Kyodo
Sep 15, 2013


Typhoon Man-yi advanced toward central Japan on Sunday, bringing heavy rains as officials warned of floods and strong winds, the Meteorological Agency said.

The season’s 18th storm, swirling in Pacific waters south of the archipelago, was packing gusts up to 108 kph and moving north-northwest, the agency said.

It was on a direct course to hit Monday morning, possibly around 9 a.m. in Shizuoka Prefecture, the agency said.

The typhoon was then expected to head northeast toward the capital and surrounding areas, according to projections.

In the 24 hours until Monday evening, 500 mm of rain is expected in the Kanto, Tokai and Kinki regions, 400 mm in Tohoku and 250 mm in Hokuriku and Shikoku.

Man-yi might also inundate Fukushima, where utility crews are struggling to contain highly radioactive water leaking from and flowing under the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and into the Pacific Ocean at an estimated rate of 300 tons a day.

The agency issued flood, mudslide and heavy rain and wave warnings for areas along the Pacific coast.

“Please keep yourselves updated on the latest weather information and, if necessary, evacuate before the weather gets really rough,” senior weather forecaster Hiroyuki Uchida said.

Coastal areas have already received a pounding.

In Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, strong winds ripped roof tiles off houses Sunday morning that slightly injured two women, local police said.

Later in the day, some 2,900 residents from 1,400 households were advised to evacuate in Nachikatsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, after torrential rains lashed the Pacific town.

Meanwhile, 71.5 mm of rain an hour was logged in Ebina, Kanagawa Prefecture, suspending the Tokaido Shinkansen Line between Shinyokohama and Odawara stations.

In nearby Chigasaki, a 44-year-old surfer drowned at the venue where a surfing competition was planned for Sunday, local police said.

Satoshi Tabara, a bus driver from the western Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa, arrived at the beach early in the morning but was told by the event organizer that the contest had been cancelled because of the storm.

He went surfing anyway, the police said.


AFP, Sept. 15, 2013: Typhoon Man-yi advanced towards central Japan on Sunday, bringing heavy rains as officials warned of floods and strong winds [...] packing gusts up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) per hour [...] Man-yi might also hit Fukushima, where crews have struggled to contain a crippled nuclear plant that has contaminated groundwater with radioactive materials as it flows to the Pacific Ocean. [...] The weather agency issued warnings for flooding, heavy rain, mudslides and high ocean waves to areas along the Pacific coast.

[Joao]

Interesting discussion in this podcast.

Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
September 11, 2013

Kate Brown’s Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a tale of two atomic cities—one in the US (Richland, Washington) and one in the Soviet Union (Ozersk, Russia)—united by their production of plutonium. Seeking the security they believed could come only from settlements of middle class, nuclear families, the governments of the US and the USSR created plutopias: highly-subsidized communities in hard-to-reach places that provided workers excellent salaries and handsome benefits, like first-class health care and great schools. But a dark bargain was struck in Plutopia.

These sites’ hermetic isolation was part of a unique social geography that divided the areas in which the plants were situated into nuclear and non-nuclear zones. Outside the healthy confines of Plutopia, plant officials freely polluted, dumping radioactive waste into local rivers and dispersing it into the air. Over a period of four decades, the Hanford and Maiak plutonium plants released an amount of radiation equivalent to four Chernobyls. This is not only a story of plutonium production and the creation of sleek “cities of the future.” It is also a history of intelligence and nuclear security; the environment and public health; and of risk distributed unevenly across lines of race, class, and gender. It is a story about people’s willingness to forgo aspects of freedom, like private property or local governance, for a state-sponsored and highly insular form of paternalism, and also about their readiness to trade some kinds of rights—civil and biological—for consumer plenty. It is also a story of how “corporate contractors … privatized … tremendous profits from nuclear weapons production while socializing the risks to health and environment.” Kate Brown’s Plutopia is the product of serious archival spadework, oral interviews, and an ethnographer’s alertness to the telling or ironic detail. It is equally rich in insight and indignation.

Audio MP3 (54 minutes)

[Luther Blissett]

There's also some sort of rumor now about a 5.1 earthquake off the coast of Japan, with aftershocks expected.

Typhoon hits Japan as Fukushima operator releases water into sea | GlobalPost
Typhoon Man-yi hit Japan Monday, leaving two people dead and forcing the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to release rainwater with low levels of radiation into the ocean.

The powerful typhoon made landfall in Toyohashi, Aichi prefecture, shortly before 8:00 am (2300 GMT Sunday), packing gusts of up to 162 kilometres (100 miles) per hour, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Public broadcaster NHK said a 71-year-old woman was found dead as a landslide engulfed her house in Shiga prefecture, while a 77-year-old woman was also confirmed dead in a separate mudslide in Fukui prefecture, near Shiga.

Four people were still missing while 128 others were injured with more than 4,000 houses flooded and at least 270 houses damaged by strong wind or landslides, NHK said.

The typhoon, losing strength slightly, left Japan's main island by Monday evening after the eye of the storm passed within 50 kilometres north of the capital at around noon.

The typhoon also hit the northeast, including the Fukushima area, bringing heavy rain to areas near the broken plant run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO).

Workers were pumping out water from areas near tanks storing radioactive water, from which leaks are believed to have seeped into groundwater.

"But we decided to release the water into sea as we reached a conclusion that it can be regarded as rainfall after we monitored levels of radiation," TEPCO spokesman Yo Koshimizu said.

According to the spokesman, one litre of the water contained up to 24 becquerels of strontium and other radioactive materials -- below the 30 becquerel per litre safety limit imposed by Japanese authorities for a possible release to the environment.

However, it was unknown how much water was released to sea under the "emergency measure," Koshimizu said.

The typhoon also forced the operator to cancel part of outdoor operations scheduled for Monday, although there was no damage to the plant following the typhoon, he added.

Around 300 tonnes of mildly contaminated groundwater is entering the ocean every day having passed under the reactors, according to TEPCO.

Earlier in the day, the meteorological agency issued the highest alert for "possibly unprecedented heavy rain" in Kyoto and neighbouring prefectures, while Kyoto and other local authorities advised some 340,000 households to evacuate.

Television footage showed the banks of the Katsura river in the ancient capital's scenic tourist area of Arashiyama overflowing and inundating nearby hotels and souvenir shops.

Rescue workers and hotel employees were towing a small rowboat with four tourists on board in knee-deep water.

The Kyoto prefectural government requested the Self-Defence Forces to deploy troops to join sandbagging and rescue operations.

In Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, strong winds ripped off roofs and overturned cars.

About 600 domestic flights scheduled for Monday, a public holiday, were cancelled, mainly those departing Tokyo, NHK reported.

Railway companies temporarily suspended services on many lines in central and eastern Japan, including the Shinkansen bullet trains between Shizuoka and Mishima.

si/jta


Copyright AFP, 2013.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... -water-sea

[seemslikeadream]

Japan Warned U.S. of Blackouts in Appeal for LNG Supply
By Jacob Adelman - Sep 16, 2013 11:05 PM CT

The U.S. Department of Energy was informed by Japanese officials that the world’s third-largest economy risked a catastrophic power failure as it prepared to close its last operating atomic reactor last year.

Those warnings, detailed in redacted documents released to Bloomberg News by the U.S. Energy Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, reverberate today after Japan idled its only operating nuclear plant for routine repairs.
Enlarge image Japan Warned U.S. of Blackouts in Appeal for LNG Supply: Energy

Tokyo Electric Power Co. branded safety helmets. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

The initial caution came in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, and Japan was about to switch off the last of its 50 undamaged reactors and turn on natural gas-fired power plants to keep the economy running. Those plants would depend on a caravan of liquefied natural gas tankers steaming across the oceans, leaving the country vulnerable to supply disruptions.

“Geopolitical risk: Not economically feasible for Japan to stockpile LNG. Japan has 2-3 weeks supply stored, that’s it,” the documents show. “1/3 of Japan would face quick blackout,” a handwritten note in the 151 pages says.

Japan conveyed concern about blackouts to U.S. Energy Department officials in meetings in March of last year with Hirohide Hirai, then head of the trade ministry’s petroleum and natural gas division, and others.

E-mails to Hirai seeking comment and details of the meeting during which the notes were taken weren’t answered.

Reports of radioactive water leaks in recent weeks at the wrecked Fukushima station indicate utilities seeking approval to switch on other reactors face a tougher task this time around.
Nuclear Free, Again

“After the Fukushima leak and the fact that it does look like a very fragile situation, I actually think the prospects of nuclear reactors coming back online have diminished considerably,” said Izumi Devalier, a Japan economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong.

When Japanese officials aired their concerns to the U.S. last year, they were six weeks away from the May 5 idling of a Hokkaido Electric Power Co. reactor for scheduled maintenance. After that date, the country had no operating reactors until July 2012, when two units run by Kansai Electric Power Co. were allowed to restart.

With Japan again nuclear-free from this week, similar concerns about power shortages are being raised, as its former fleet of 54 reactors provided more than 25 percent of the country’s electricity, prior to Fukushima. The country now has 50 operational reactors as four at Fukushima have been written off.
Global Economy Threat

Japan may not have enough capacity in winter without nuclear power, Makoto Yagi, chairman of the Federation of Electric Power Cos., told reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Japan’s 10 regional power companies are still assessing winter power demand and supply, Yagi said.

The energy department documents also show Japan requested LNG imports from the U.S. to diversify its supply. The blackout risk in Japan, the largest economy after the U.S. and China, would in turn be a threat to the global economy.

At least nine meetings took place between agency staff and Japanese officials after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, wrecked Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic station. As reactors shut following the disaster for regular maintenance, safety concerns kept all but two offline.

Meetings involved executives with such companies as Tokyo Gas Co. (9531), Osaka Gas Co., Inpex Corp. (1605) and Marubeni Corp. (8002)

Osaka Gas, Chubu Electric Power Co., Sumitomo Corp, Mitsui & Co., Mitsubishi Corp. and Nippon Yusen K.K. have since April 2012 announced deals to buy LNG from U.S. plants, two of which have been granted provisional export licenses.
Middle East

LNG supply from the U.S. would help mitigate security concerns about shipments from the Middle East. Last year, Iran had threatened to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions aimed at the country’s nuclear program. About 25 percent of the world’s LNG supply sails on tankers through Hormuz.

This year, the civil war in Syria threatens stability in the Middle East, which supplied 31 percent of Japan’s LNG in June, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the most recently available finance ministry data.

Any conflict that drives up oil prices would also affect natural gas, since most of the country’s LNG contracts are linked to oil costs.
Blackout Risk

“A crisis in the Middle East is not going to stop the imports of all natural gas,” Hiroshi Takahashi, an energy policy specialist at the Fujitsu Research Institute, said by telephone. “However, if we lack even 10 percent of our electricity supply it’s going to be a serious situation in the summer. There might have been a large scale blackout.”

While the current idling of all reactors is less of a blackout threat because winter power demand is lower than in summer, utilities now have to meet tougher safety standards for restarting atomic plants.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, which introduced the tougher rules after Fukushima, said in July that reactors operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co., Shikoku Electric Power Co. and Hokkaido Electric Power Co. were eligible for inspection.
Anti-Nuclear

Since then, Tokyo Electric’s struggle to manage radioactive water at the Fukushima station has shifted the focus of the regulator from restarts to monitoring the plant’s disaster response. The leaks are also fodder for Japan’s anti-nuclear activists.

“The goal is to stop the restart of nuclear power plants,” Hidemichi Kano, a member of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs, which helped organize the protests, said by phone. “And the phasing out of all nuclear energy in Japan.”

Devalier said she had expected to see as many as 10 reactors come back on line in 2014. Now she doesn’t foresee any until 2015, which she said could set back Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to revive the economy.

“We’re going to continue to have a dependence on fossil fuels,” Devalier said. “It erodes manufacturers bottom lines but in terms of consumer sentiment these are costs that have to be passed down.”

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima Operator Dumps 1,000 Tons Of Polluted Water In Sea
Polluted water poured into the sea after a typhoon raked the facility on Tuesday.

September 19, 2013 |

The operator of the leaking Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after a typhoon raked the facility.

Typhoon Man-yi smashed into Japan on Monday, bringing with it heavy rain that caused flooding in some parts of the country, including the ancient city of Kyoto.

The rain also lashed near the broken plant run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), swamping enclosure walls around clusters of water tanks containing toxic water that was used to cool broken reactors.

Some of the tanks were earlier found to be leaking contaminated water.

"Workers measured the radioactive levels of the water collected in the enclosure walls, pumping it back into tanks when the levels were high," said a TEPCO official.

"Once finding it was mostly rain water they released it from the enclosure, because there is a limit on how much water we can store."

The utility said about 1,130 tons of water with low levels of radiation -- below the 30 becquerels of strontium per litre safety limit imposed by Japanese authorities -- were released into the ground.

But the company also said at one site where water was found contaminated beyond the safety limit workers could not start the water pump quick enough in the torrential rain, and toxic water had leaked from the enclosure for several minutes.

Strontium is a potentially cancer-causing substance that accumulates in bones if consumed.

Thousands of tonnes of water that was poured on the reactors to tame meltdowns is being stored in temporary tanks at the plant, and TEPCO has so far revealed no clear plan for it.

The problem has been worsened by leaks in some of those tanks that are believed to have seeped into groundwater and run out to sea.

Separately, around 300 tonnes of mildly contaminated groundwater is entering the ocean every day having passed under the reactors, TEPCO says.

[seemslikeadream]

5.3-MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE HITS JAPAN'S FUKUSHIMA
By The Associated Press
— Sep. 19 2:15 PM EDT


Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, in a red helmet, looks at an impervious wall made of steel pipe sheet pile installed along the coast during his inspection tour to the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. During his three-hour tour, Abe was shown some of the 1,000 tanks containing radioactive water, a water treatment equipment and a chemical dam being installed along the coast — steps meant to contain the radiation-contaminated water leakage. (AP Photo/Japan Pool) JAPAN OUT

DENVER (AP) — A 5.3-magnitude earthquake has hit the Japanese prefecture that is home to the nuclear power plant crippled in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake struck early Friday at a depth of about 13 miles (22 kilometers) under Fukushima Prefecture and about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue an alert.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported that the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., observed no abnormality in radiation or equipment after the quake.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday ordered TEPCO to scrap all six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and concentrate on tackling pressing issues like leaks of radioactive water.

The 2011 disaster caused three reactors to melt and damaged a fuel cooling pool at another. Officials have acknowledged that radiation-contaminated groundwater has been seeping into the Pacific Ocean since soon after the meltdowns.

The region lies on the "Ring of Fire" — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim. About 90 percent of the world's quakes occur in the region.

[Joao]

Rumors on Tuesday of a quake that hit Thursday (or Friday, Japan time). Unless there really was one earlier in the week, too?

There's also some sort of rumor now about a 5.1 earthquake off the coast of Japan, with aftershocks expected.

A 5.3-magnitude earthquake has hit the Japanese prefecture that is home to the nuclear power plant crippled in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake struck early Friday at a depth of about 13 miles (22 kilometers) under Fukushima Prefecture and about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo..

[seemslikeadream]

Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

Weekend Edition September 20-22, 2013
Time for a Global Takeover
The Crisis at Fukushima 4
by HARVEY WASSERMAN

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

Why is this so serious?

We already know that thousands of tons of heavily contaminated water are pouring through the Fukushima site, carrying a devil’s brew of long-lived poisonous isotopes into the Pacific. Tuna irradiated with fallout traceable to Fukushima have already been caught off the coast of California. We can expect far worse.

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.

Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific. Fresh reports show that Tepco has just dumped another thousand tons of contaminated liquids into the sea ( http://www.alternet.org/environment/ ).

The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.

More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.

Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl.

Radioactive hot spots continue to be found around Japan. There are indications of heightened rates of thyroid damage among local children.

The immediate bottom line is that those fuel rods must somehow come safely out of the Unit Four fuel pool as soon as possible.

Just prior to the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami that shattered the Fukushima site, the core of Unit Four was removed for routine maintenance and refueling. Like some two dozen reactors in the US and too many more around the world, the General Electric-designed pool into which that core now sits is 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel must somehow be kept under water. It’s clad in zirconium alloy which will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Long used in flash bulbs for cameras, zirconium burns with an extremely bright hot flame.

Each uncovered rod emits enough radiation to kill someone standing nearby in a matter of minutes. A conflagration could force all personnel to flee the site and render electronic machinery unworkable.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with forty years in an industry for which he once manufactured fuel rods, the ones in the Unit 4 core are bent, damaged and embrittled to the point of crumbling. Cameras have shown troubling quantities of debris in the fuel pool, which itself is damaged.

The engineering and scientific barriers to emptying the Unit Four fuel pool are unique and daunting, says Gundersen. But it must be done to 100% perfection.

Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire, releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the health and safety of all us.

Chernobyl’s first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima’s in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.

Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet’s best scientists and engineers.

We have two months or less to act.

For now, we are petitioning the United Nations and President Obama to mobilize the global scientific and engineering community to take charge at Fukushima and the job of moving these fuel rods to safety.

You can sign the petition at: http://www.nukefree.org/crisis-fukushim ... l-response

If you have a better idea, please follow it. But do something and do it now.

The clock is ticking. The hand of global nuclear disaster is painfully close to midnight.