Fukushima beyond point of no return as radioactive core melts through containment vessel
The battle to save the Fukushima nuclear power plant now appears lost as the radioactive core from Reactor No. 2 has melted through the containment vessel and dropped into the concrete basement of the reactor structure. This is “raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site,” reports The Guardian, which broke the story (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/201…). A former General Electric nuclear expert told The Guardian that Japan appears to have “lost the race” to save the reactor.
The only feasible interpretation from this analysis is that radiation emissions from Fukushima could suddenly become much greater. It is also now obvious that the radioactive fallout from Fukushima will last for decades, if not centuries.
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan last night admitted the situation at Fukushima remains “unpredictable.” Meanwhile, the presence of plutonium in soil samples is proof that the nuclear fuel rods have been compromised and are releasing material into the open atmosphere.(http://www.breitbart.com/article.ph…)
But don’t worry (and don’t prepare)
How many times were we told over the last two weeks that the Fukushima situation was solved? How many times were we assured there was “no danger” to the world? President Obama even went out of his way to tell Americans they should not prepare for anything, since there was nothing to worry about.
Don’t acquire any potassium iodide, people were told. The situation is completely under control and nuclear power is safe, clean and green!
That’s the GE spin machine talking, of course, and I don’t mean the spin cycle on your rusty old washing machine. It’s the network of corporate lies that has characterized the nuclear power industry for at least the last three decades. And now those lies are coming back to haunt us all.
What’s next: Radioactive gas
So what happens now that the fuel core from Reactor No. 2 has burned its way through the containment vessel and dropped to the concrete floor? It follows the laws of physics, of course: The super-heated nuclear fuel reacts with the concrete material in the floor, producing highly radioactive gas which now runs the risk of escaping into the atmosphere if it gets through the outer containment wall.
But that’s precisely the problem, you see. The outer containment wall was partially destroyed by the original hydrogen gas explosion that rocked Reactors 2 and 3. So we may be looking at a situation right now where there is nothing in the way of a massive release of radioactive gas from Fukushima. It all has the makings of a ticking (dirty) time bomb.
When should Americans actually start preparing? Never!
It makes you wonder: At what point will the worsening situation in Fukushima cross the threshold of President Obama’s resistance to urge Americans to take prudent precautions against the possibility of serious radioactive fallout? The policy in Washington today seems to be that no event is serious enough to warrant preparedness actions among the American people.
Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning President seems to be too busy declaring illegal wars in Libya to spend even five minutes urging people on the West Coast to take sensible precautions against the increasing possibility of increased radiation exposure.
That’s what the alternative press is for, of course: Bringing people the news and information they won’t get from “official” sources that have strong financial ties to the nuclear power industry. While Obama tells Americans to do nothing, NaturalNews urges Americans to take basic preparedness precautions to be ready for any event the world may throw our way.
Preparedness is a rarity in modern cities
As the citizens of Japan have recently learned the hard way, virtually no one has any extra stored water, food or medicine in the cities these days. Very few people are prepared for even small disruptions in basic infrastructure and supply lines. The average American living in a city today would die in less than 7 days if cut off from the grid supply of food and water. Their entire preparedness plan is to “trust the government.”
That’s what the Japanese people did, too. And now they’re paying for that misplaced trust with what may soon become the most catastrophic nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization.
Although Fukushima doesn’t look likely to suffer a large, one-time radiation explosion like Chernobyl, it’s now clear that the Fukushima nuclear complex is going to emit radiation for a very, very long time. It now seems almost certain that Japan must bury the facility under millions of tons of concrete and sand.
How do you bury Fukushima for good?
The problem is that there’s not even enough concrete in Japan to handle the job. To accomplish such a task, Japan would have to import not only thousands of pieces of industrial concrete-handling trucks and machinery; it would also have to import concrete materials by the ship-load. We’re talking about millions of tons of concrete materials, shipped in by ocean, from all over the world.
Has anybody done the math on how long that will take to coordinate? Just getting the materials shipped to Japan within 30 days would be a miracle. And you can’t just plop down concrete and hope it sticks: You have to engineer the concrete effort so that it can resist future tsunamis and earthquakes. Normally, this would be at least a five-year project.
Essentially, you have to build a whole new massive concrete containment structure on top of the existing nuclear complex. And remember: It was the corruption and cover-ups from the first such engineering project that helped cause this situation in the first place!
That’s why this situation in Fukushima looks a lot more like Fubar than Fukushima. Fubar, of course, is an endearing snippet from American slang which means “don’t worry; the government is here to save you!”
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March 30th, 2011 at 4:52 am
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