Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Peter Lemkin]

After a very long period of silence to the public, there has just been tests of the levels of radiation at the Fukashima plant. It was released five days ago. [that was the good news]. ::

The radiation levels at the Fukishima Plant are the HIGHEST EVER recorded! [i.e. things are getting worse and worse, not slowly better as we have been told!]. One scientist said the radiation levels now were ABSOLUTELY 'UNIMAGINABLE'!!!!....[i.e. time to really worry...these reactors could 'blow' or 'melt-down' at anytime now - not to mention local effects - this now again threatens everyone Worldwide]. No reason to believe that the radiation levels will not continue to further increase, as they obviously have continuously for six years!
Relax, the current readings are 'only' 726% higher than the last readings!!!! :tampfeet::

[Trump is all in favor of new nuclear plants...after all the oil and coal interests have been to the feeding trough]

I've not seen the full report yet [will try to and report], but my educated guess is that over time, super-heated nuclear fuel in molten form has slowly been pooling and collecting in larger and larger pools...this would cause increased heat and increased dangers of new breaches and/or blow-outs/melt-downs. ::pullhairout:: When the temperature and/or pressure get high enough, the nuclear fuel can vaporize into the air or slither into the sea - ready to spread Worldwide. The quantities 'available' are much greater than at Chernobyl.

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Friday 3 February 2017 10.19 GMTLast modified on Friday 3 February 201722.00 GMT

Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are at their highest since the plant suffered a triple meltdown almost six years ago.

The facility's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said atmospheric readings as high as 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded inside the containment vessel of reactor No 2, one of three reactors that experienced a meltdown when the plant was crippled by a huge tsunami that struck the north-east coast of Japan in March 2011.
The extraordinary radiation readings highlight the scale of the task confrontingthousands of workers, as pressure builds on Tepco to begin decommissioning the plant a process that is expected to take about four decades.
The recent reading, described by some experts as "unimaginable", is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.
A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.
Tepco also said image analysis had revealed a hole in metal grating beneath the same reactor's pressure vessel. The one-metre-wide hole was probably created by nuclear fuel that melted and then penetrated the vessel after the tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi's back-up cooling system.
"It may have been caused by nuclear fuel that would have melted and made a hole in the vessel, but it is only a hypothesis at this stage," Tepco's spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi told AFP.
"We believe the captured images offer very useful information, but we still need to investigate given that it is very difficult to assume the actual condition inside."
The presence of dangerously high radiation will complicate efforts to safely dismantle the plant.
A remote-controlled robot that Tepco intends to send into the No 2 reactor's containment vessel is designed to withstand exposure to a total of 1,000 sieverts, meaning it would survive for less than two hours before malfunctioning.
The firm said radiation was not leaking outside the reactor, adding that the robot would still prove useful since it would move from one spot to the other and encounter radiation of varying levels.
Tepco and its network of partner companies at Fukushima Daiichi have yet to identify the location and condition of melted fuel in the three most seriously damaged reactors. Removing it safely represents a challenge unprecedented in the history of nuclear power.
Quantities of melted fuel are believed to have accumulated at the bottom of the damaged reactors' containment vessels, but dangerously high radiation has prevented engineers from accurately gauging the state of the fuel deposits.
Earlier this week, the utility released images of dark lumps found beneath reactor No 2 that it believes could be melted uranium fuel rods the first such discovery since the disaster.
In December, the government said the estimated cost of decommissioning the plant and decontaminating the surrounding area, as well as paying compensation and storing radioactive waste, had risen to 21.5tn yen (£150bn), nearly double an estimate released in 2013.

NHK World, Feb 3, 2017 (emphasis added): The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is examining if it can go ahead with a plan to deploy a robot into one of the damaged reactors at the facility… An analysis of the images found that the radiation level inside the vessel was up to 530 sieverts per hour. Officials speculate that fuel debrisa mixture of nuclear fuel and melted parts of the reactor's facilitymay be emitting strong radiation inside the vessel… Last week's probe found that part of a metal grating just beneath the reactor was missing. The robot was supposed to move around on the grating. Theimage analysis also found that an around one square-meter section near the missing segment is about to collapse.
NHK World transcript, Feb 3, 2017: "[Tepco] is facing more setbacks.Tepco has found unstable grating near a rector that will make it difficult to conduct further surveillance to help it decommission the plant… They found a section the size of a square meter is about to collapse. They had already found holes in other sections… A nuclear power expert suggests that will make it difficult for workers to locate the fuel."
NHK World transcript, Feb 3, 2017 (at 1:30 in): "Engineers were able to get a glimpse inside Reactor No. 2… They found that a section one meter square is about to collapse. They had already found holes in other sections."
Asahi, Feb 3, 2017: TEPCO said it will consider a different route for the robot… Fumiya Tanabe, an expert on nuclear safety… said the findings show that both the preparation for and the actual decommissioning process at the plant will likely prove much more difficult than expected. "We have few clues on the exact locations, the sizes and the shapes of the nuclear fuel debris," he said. "The planned investigation by the robot needs a rethink. Work to decommission the plant will require even more time."
CNET, Feb 3, 2017: High radiation levels at Fukushima reactor is bad, bad news Time to reconsider that trip to the east coast of Japan. A containment vessel at the destroyed Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached off-the-chart radiation levels, reported the Japan Times… Experts believe that escaped melted fuel can account for the spiked reading.