Closing Ranks: The NRC, the Nuclear Industry, and TEPCO are Limiting the Flow of Information
;
Arnie Gundersen discusses inconstancies between what the NRC, TEPCo, and the
Nuclear Industry are saying privately and publicly. Documents from the french
nuclear firm, Areva, and the NRC reveal what the industry knows about the
Fukushima disaster.
Transcript:\
Hi, I’m Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, and it’s Wednesday, April 6th.
In my previous update I talked about the possibility of an inadvertent criticality
occurring at Fukushima [Unit] 1. That was based on four things. It was based
on a neutron beam being detected thirteen times; it was based on the
presence of chlorine-38; it was based on tellurium-129 being detected;
and it was based on iodine-131 and [iodine]-132 being detected. Since
I made that update to you, TEPCO, Tokyo Electric, has pulled the report
upon which I based it. They, uh, the tellurium data, they say, is no longer accurate.
When you’re in a mode like Tokyo Electric is in, you would hope that the
information you’re using is accurate. That’s a serious concern: that
inaccurate information is being used in decision making at TEPCO.
This isn’t the only time; there’s a couple of these instances. When the neutron
beam came out, TEPCO denied that despite the fact that the quote was from
their own spokesman. There was a report of incredibly high radiation in the
ocean, and TEPCO denied that and lowered the report [to an amount that was]
still incredibly high, but a hundred times lower. And Dr. Richard Lahey, a General
Electric scientist of great renown, was quoted [as saying] that Unit 2 had had
a meltdown. Again, TEPCO denied that. So I guess I’m concerned about,
one, the reliability of information coming out of TEPCO, but also that the
information that’s happening in private at TEPCO is not being relayed to the public.
It’s not just TEPCO that this is occurring with. Today the New York Times
ran a story about a report circulated within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
[NRC] dating back to March 26 where the NRC staff has identified significant
problems and dangers at Fukushima; basically, we’re not out of the woods yet.
The problems that the staff is aware of, but not really sharing with Congress
or the general public, include the fact that there’s an awful lot of mud inside
this nuclear reactor. Now, we’ve been talking about that for a week or more
because of the seawater that’s been injected into the reactor. It’s not coming out,
and it’s building up inside. The NRC is concerned about that too, they just didn’t
tell you and I. They’re concerned that the weight of the building, with all this water
in it, might make it unstable in the case of an earthquake. They’re concerned that
a re-criticality like we talked about last time might occur. They’re also concerned
about hydrogen being recreated and another explosion occurring. And finally,
they’re also concerned about plutonium which likely was ejected from the fuel
pools during the explosions. The NRC believes that this plutonium was ejected
several miles away from the reactor, and is also onsite and may have been
bulldozed into the soil. Well, all of this is happening inside the NRC;
they’re telling Congress, and you and I, that the situation is difficult, but under control.
It’s not just the NRC that’s saying this, it’s [also] large nuclear corporations,
including one called Areva, which is a French nuclear conglomerate, probably
one of the largest in the industry. As reported in the New York Times on
March 23rd: there was an invitation-only meeting at Stanford University
on the 21st of March, this is ten days after the accident, where Areva presented
some pretty significant problems that the public was not being made aware of.
We’ve been able to get a hold of the Areva report that was presented there.
Now, the Areva report is pretty damning, but in fact there’s information in it that’s
wrong. I will, next time, be discussing [the] problems with the Areva report that
actually make the situation worse. The Areva report talks about the fact that it’s
known that the nuclear fuel in all three reactors reached five thousand degrees
[5,000 degrees Celsius]. That’s beyond the melting point of stainless steel,
and beyond the melting point of zircalloy which means that a disintegration
of the core is pretty obvious. The Areva report talks about Unit 2 in particular
and identifies that the core, [correction] that the containment was breached by a
hydrogen explosion. We look at Units 1, 3 and 4 and see the roofs blown off,
and [Unit] 2 looks pretty good. What happened at Unit 2, though, was that the
hydrogen built up inside then somehow ignited. It’s unknown why. Sort of like a
sneeze with your nose closed, you’re going to pop your eardrums. Well, that’s
what happened at Unit 2, but it likely breached the containment. Areva and the
nuclear industry know that, and really haven’t been sharing it with us.
The other thing that the Areva report talks about is that they recommend control
of crops and dairy products out to fifty kilometers (50 km). That’s about thirty miles
(30 mi.) away from the plant. That means that they believe that radiation has exceeded
well beyond what the emergency evacuation zone is, and that both crops and
dairy products may be contaminated.
Areva also spends a lot of time talking about Unit 4. That’s the one that has no fuel
in the reactor, but exploded anyway. They basically said that this was a core
melt in fresh air. The reason the core melted on Unit 4, Areva believes, is that
the fuel pool cracked from the earthquake. So the water didn’t boil out of Unit 4
like we’ve been led to believe. There was a crack in the fuel pool from the
earthquake and now, with no water, a zircalloy-hydrogen reaction was inevitable.
The last thing that the Areva report notices is that, this was, probably the largest release is
coming from Unit 4 because there’s no containment. And, they basically say that all of
the fission products can be volatilized.
Finally, industry insiders who are aware of the Areva presentation have told me that the
person who presented the presentation said this, it’s almost an exact quote: “Clearly,
we are witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.” Well, in the
private meetings Areva is saying that this is a serious issue, but in public the nuclear
renaissance continues to move forward both within the nuclear industry and
within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I will update you on this Areva report and identify the problems within it in
my next presentation, but I wanted to let you know that I will be trying to
filter out, from all of these sources, reliable information to pass on to you
in the future.
Fairewinds Associates Inc.
http://www.fairewinds.com
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