Just for the sake of not being total misinformation, this is nothing like Chernobyl. Chernobyl was effectively a dirty bomb, an entire reactor's worth of nuclear fuel being thrown up into the atmosphere and left to settle for hundreds of miles around. It was literally the worst case of worst cases.

For putting everything into a bit of scale: In order to go above safe radioactive limits, you cannot take a banana into a reactor chamber. Not because you might get things dirty, but because the banana is radioactive enough to go over the safe limits. If you open a banana in the reactor room on a nuclear submarine, you have to get a decontamination team in there. Eating one banana every day for a year irradiates you more than living in immediate proximity to three mile island after the meltdown. Radioactive safety measures are incredibly strict, and breaking them does not mean Chernobyl. Chernobyl is a literal impossibility here - it can go badly, but it's not out of control yet, and even the worst case will not come anywhere near Chernobyl.

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.

Alarm Over Spent Fuel Rods Threatens Chernobyl on Steroids 150311top2

According to Arnie Gundersen, 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. One “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.”

Mireluks? :whistling:

I wish more people would read and actually try to understand posts like these. But of course ignoring them and crying doom and destruction is much simpler.

But of course ignoring them and crying doom and destruction is much simpler.

You are missing the point, the point of the "scaremongering" is criticizing the Japanese for not doing all they can to end this ASAP. It appears to me that they are still trying to balance relief cost with destruction, I don't think they are doing everything technology allows to rescue this situation from a total disaster.

It's not the contained rods in the reactor I'm worried about, it's the twenty years worth of spent feul rods they store right under the roof of the reactors that worry me.



“Chernobyl on steroids.” don't sound good no matter what planet you're from..

Disgusting creatures . . .

And thus, Godzilla was created.

I wish more people would read and actually try to understand posts like these. But of course ignoring them and crying doom and destruction is much simpler.

And more fun. Yay media!

Indeed. We're doomed! DOOMED! Doomed i tells ya! :ahhh:

Indeed. We're doomed! DOOMED! Doomed i tells ya! :ahhh:

And thus, Godzilla was created.

11, 500 tons is literally a drop in the water. If it is as lowly radioactive as they claim, once the water disperses it the radiation will be no worse than the background radiation we experience every day.

Although the government eventually authorized the dumping of the less-radioactive water, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said officials were growing concerned about the sheer volume of radioactive materials spilling into the Pacific. It is not clear how much water has leaked in addition to what is being dumped purposely.

"Even if they say the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer this continues, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean," Edano said. "We are strongly urging TEPCO that they have to take immediate action to deal with this."

Also Monday, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Novikov, told reporters that Japan has requested Russia send it a vessel used to decommission nuclear submarines, and that Moscow was considering the request.

"If the Japanese side arranges answers to the questions we sent them, it can be transferred ... within a very short period," Novikov said, according to a statement on Rosatom's website. The nature of the questions wasn't specified.

Novikov said the vessel, called the Landysh, was built with Japanese funds under the "Global Partnership" program to help dispose of liquid nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines.

What, no opening up a plant and bottling it for Nuka-Cola?

dangit... you beat me to it..

I don't think what they are doing is that smart, but then again, they can do what they want! Just stay away from sushi from now on. I have gone without it for 19 years. You can do it!

edit: had to take out my godzilla reference.... :meh:

Most of the radioactivity is iodine, with a half life of 8 days. The lifetime of the radioactivity is small, the amount dumped is small. It is almost impossible for there to be any long term ecological effects from this.