Mike Curtiss (9
Apr 2012)
"A Third of Waters
Turned Bitter, or Wormwood"
Dear Doves,
While we are
watching Washington DC, the coming war in the Middle East;
relatively few
concerned voices are being heard outside of Japan. What's coming
to pass will create a
northern hemisphere, which shall become radioactive and
uninhabitable region. If we don't
prepare to leave now, we'll not find room after the great
populations of incoming foreigners will
be welcome.
Of
course, we could all stay and await the return of Jesus Christ
at the Rapture or the Second Advent.
Agape,
Mike Curtiss
The Largest Short-Term Threat to Humanity: The Fuel Pools of
Fukushima
The Greatest Single Threat to Humanity: Fuel Pool Number 4
We noted days after the Japanese earthquake that the biggest
threat was from the spent fuel rods in the fuel pool at
Fukushima unit number 4, and not from the reactors themselves.
See this and this.
We noted in February:
Scientists say that there is a 70% chance of
a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hitting Fukushima this year, and a
98% chance within the next 3 years.
Given that nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen
says that an earthquake of 7.0 or larger could cause the entire
fuel pool structure collapse, it is urgent that everything
humanly possible is done to stabilize the structure housing the
fuel pools at reactor number 4.
Tepco is doing some construction at the
building … it is a race against time under very difficult
circumstances, and hopefully Tepco will win.
As AP points out:
The structural
integrity of the damaged Unit 4 reactor building has long been a
major concern among experts because a collapse of its spent fuel
cooling poolcould cause a disaster worse than the three reactor
meltdowns.
***
Gundersen (who used to build spent fuel
pools) explains that there is no protection surrounding the
radioactive fuel in the pools. He warns that – if the fuel pools
at reactor 4 collapse due to an earthquake – people should get
out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and
Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside for a
while.
The fuel pool number 4 is apparently not in
great shape, and there have already been countless earthquakes
near the Fukushima region since the 9.0 earthquake last March.
Germany's ZDF tv quotes nuclear engineer Yukitero Naka as
saying:
If another earthquake occurs then the
building [number 4] could collapse and another chain reaction
could very likely occur.
(Unit 4 contains plutonium as well as other radioactive wastes.)
Mainchi reported on Monday:
The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor
building has a total of 1,535 fuel rods, or 460 tons of nuclear
fuel, in it. The 7-story building itself has suffered great
damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s
third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the
storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will
overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive
substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company
Areva have warned about this risk.
A report released in February by the
Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi
Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No.
4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the
parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The
worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only
the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration
of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this
were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would
be forced to evacuate.
Former Minister of Land, Infrastructure,
Transport and Tourism Sumio Mabuchi, who was appointed to the
post of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisor on the nuclear
disaster immediately after its outbreak, proposed the injection
of concrete from below the No. 4 reactor to the bottom of the
storage pool, Chernobyl-style.
***
“Because sea water was being pumped into the
reactor, the soundness of the structure (concrete corrosion and
deterioration) was questionable. There also were doubts about
the calculations made on earthquake resistance as well,” said
one government source familiar with what took place at the time.
“[F]uel rod removal will take three years. Will the structure
remain standing for that long?
Asahi noted last month that - if Unit 4 pool gets a crack from
an earthquake and leaks, it would be the end for Tokyo.
Kevin Kamps said last month:
Unit 4 storage pool… The entire building is
listing including the pool. What they have is steel jacks
underneath the pool to try to keep the floor from falling out or
the pool from flipping over.
If that cooling water supply is lost, it will
be just a few hours at most before that waste is on fire. 135
tons outside of any radioactive containment. They would be
direct releases into the environment. 100% of cesium-137 could
be released to the environment.
Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura - whose praises have been
sung by Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and
Glenn Olds, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and
Goldman Sachs co-chair John C. Whitehead - notes:
The unit suffered enormous damage during the
tsunami—a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off, leaving the
highly radioactive fuel pool exposed to the open air. If another
high level earthquake hits the area, the building will certainly
collapse. Japanese and American meteorologists have predicted
that such a strong earthquake is indeed likely to hit this year.
The meltdown and unprecedented release of
radiation that would ensue is the worst case scenario that
then-Prime Minister Kan and other former officials have
discussed in the past months. He warned during his speech at the
World Economic Forum in Davos that such an accident would force
the evacuation of the 35 million people in Tokyo, close half of
Japan and compromise the nation’s sovereignty. Such a
humanitarian and environmental catastrophe is unimaginable.
Hiroshi Tasaka, a nuclear engineer and special adviser to Prime
Minister Kan immediately following the crisis, said the crisis
“just opened Pandora’s Box.”
The current Japanese government has not yet
mentioned the looming disaster, ostensibly to not incite panic
in the public. Nevertheless, action must be taken quickly. This
website over the last year has published a running commentary
from scientists explaining why Reactor 4 must be stabilized
immediately, who might be able to accomplish such a task, and
why the situation has largely gone unnoticed. We believe an
independent, international team of structural engineers and
other advisers must be assembled and deployed immediately.
Mounting public pressure would force the Japanese government to
take action. We hope these resources are helpful in educating
the public about the crisis that we face.
As the eminent German physicist Dr.
Hans-Peter Durr said ten months ago, if the spent fuel pool
spills, we will be in a situation where science never imagined
we could be.
Matsumura was told that if the fuel pool at unit 4 collapses or
the water spills out, so much radiation will spew out for 50
years that no one will be able to approach Fukushima:
Even more dramatically, Matsumura writes:
Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr.
Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of
the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22,
2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the
Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the
crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the
spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses,
not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will
also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel
rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the
radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel;
dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly
cause a global catastrophe like we have never before
experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the
rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would
affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that
the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima
Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421
(396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).
I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr.
Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary
and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the
Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation
of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.
I received an astounding response from Mr.
Alvarez [updated 4/5/12]:
In recent times, more
information about the spent fuel situation at the
Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding
that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304
assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231
irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly
37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived
radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is
structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an
earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this
could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving
nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl
accident.
The infrastructure to
safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other
three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into
the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to
prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible
explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and
heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never
been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools
at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major
and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting
in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the
Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel
appear to be unscathed.
Based on U.S. Energy
Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel
assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all,
which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2
E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies
is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released
at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National
Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor
fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half
of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been
released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl,
and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9
E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for
the public to understand that reactors that have been operating
for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have
generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on
the planet.
Many of our readers might find it difficult
to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp
what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It
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.
There was a Nuclear Security Summit
Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata
and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the
participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe
of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the
idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad
group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.
I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s
letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this
urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the
statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this
unprecedented challenge.
Ambassador Murata’s letter says:
It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of
Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor. This is
confirmed by most reliable experts like Dr. Arnie Gundersen or
Dr. Fumiaki Koide.
Anti-nuclear physician Dr. Helen Caldicott says that if fuel
pool 4 collapses, she will evacuate her family from Boston and
move them to the Southern Hemisphere. This is an especially
dramatic statement given that the West Coast is much more
directly in the path of Fukushima radiation than the East Coast.
Will humanity rise to the occasion, and figure out how to
stabilize fuel pool number 4 before catastrophe strikes?
Or will modern civilization win a Darwin award for failing to
pay attention to the real threats?