Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Unit 3 at Fukushima Daiichi Looking Much Worse


Atmospheric emissions from unit 3 have been increasing markedly over the last few days. Check previous posts on my blog.


 
I don't know if it came through on the blog but there are ephemeral patches of red, purple and green evident in the emission streaming upwards. I'm sure something must have have happened with the fuel.

Notice that we have had quite a few admissions of ongoing problems at Fukushima Daiichi over the last couple of weeks:
http://enenews.com/japan-tv-failure-fukushima-cement-stopping-highly-contaminated-nuclear-waste-flowing-reactor-buildings-iaea-radioactive-releases-plant-ocean-challenging-issue-officials-dont-next-will-affect

http://enenews.com/japan-official-fuel-fukushima-reactors-melting-down-daily-ap-confirming-melted-fuel-bottom-containment-vessels-tepco-adviser-schedule-decommissioning-plant-pure-supposition

http://enenews.com/study-fukushima-plume-dispersed-worldwide-exceeding-hundreds-miles-mentioned-previously-100-quadrillion-becquerels-cs-137-released-tops-chernobyl-implicates-radiological-hazard-distances-overloo

Fukushima Diary informed us that TEPCO reported Cesium 134/137 levels increased 17X in groundwater sampled from a well on the seaside of Reactor 3 building:

Cs-134/137 density jumped up 17 × in groundwater of Reactor 3 seaside / Potential leakage from underground wall February 7, 2015

Strontium also spiked, but in the ground water measured from the seaside of Reactor 2:

590,000,000 Bq/m3 of Strontium-90 measured from groundwater of Reactor 2 seaside February 6, 2015

Essentially what is happening is that the dissolution of the nuclear fuel in contact with the underground river at the site is freeing very high levels of radionuclides. Early in the disaster a number of observers pointed out that at least some of the the melted reactor fuel might be in powder form while the German risk analysis found strontium dissolution in melted fuel spiked around 3 years after criticality.

Ongoing ocean contamination is actually easier to explain than the episodic emission events. Maybe some of the melted fuel is indeed experiencing criticalities that are frantically de-escalated using boron and nitrogen injections.

I have source citations for everything I write here but I don't have the time at the moment to pull them all up. You can find relevant citations in my published work on Fukushima.

Let me just say this: We are now almost 4 years into the disaster and the contamination of the ocean and atmosphere remain UNMITIGATED.  

Meanwhile there is growing evidence of eco-collapse in the North Pacific Ocean. Scientists have been discussing tipping points and mass extinction events quite extensively over the last 15 years. Many eco-system were on the verge of tipping points before Fukushima. 

Years of toxic effluents from that ruined plant may be the capstone disaster for the Pacific and, perhaps, for us as well.  

On the other hand, I imagine that we are more likely to extinguish ourselves nearly instantaneously in outright nuclear war than die more slowly from exponential genomic decline wrought by toxins produced knowingly by psychopathic complexes.

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