Fukushima Disaster: Are We Told The Truth?: Stephen Lendman

By Stephen Lendman

08 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

On April 6, Reuters reported that "the core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel," Rep. Edward Markey told a House hearing on the disaster, saying:

"I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the core has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel."

However, the NRC is denying this. Reuters subsequently reported:

A top official from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Wednesday it was not clear that Japan’s Fukushima No. 2 nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel.

Earlier, Democratic lawmaker Edward Markey told a House of Representatives hearing on the nuclear disaster that the NRC had told him the core had melted through the vessel.

“That’s not clear to us, nor is it clear to us that the reactor has penetrated the vessel,” said Martin Virgilio, deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs at the NRC.

Recklessly promoting nuclear proliferation, America's NRC is notorious for coverup and denial of its harmful effects.

Nonetheless, on April 6, New York Times writers Matthew Wald and Andrew Pollack headlined, "Core of Stricken Reactor Probably Leaked, US Says," stating:

America's NRC "said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought."

Far worse, in fact, because molten core material then burns uncontrollably through the concrete foundation, meaning all bets are off.

On April 5, Times writers James Glanz and William Broad headlined, "US Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant," saying:

American engineers warned "that the troubled nuclear plant....is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential" NRC assessment.

Identified threats include:

-- Possible further explosions because of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater used to cool the reactors that may have done more harm than good. According to former GE reactor designer Margaret Harding:

"If I were in the Japanese's shoes, I'd be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn't been checked since the earthquake," and very likely is seriously damaged.

-- Because of concern about severe reactor core damage, NRC recommended boron be added to cooling water as a moderator to absorb neutrons.

-- Exposed/unprotected spent fuel rods in Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 pose extreme dangers. Moreover, explosions blew nuclear material "up to one mile from the units" into the atmosphere, indicating much greater damage than previously disclosed.

As a result, David Lochbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes:

"This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don't work out for them....They've got a lot of nasty things to (handle), and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse."

Other experts believe criticality was reached, posing far greater dangers than revealed.

Yet government and Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) officials still claim "no immediate risk of a hydrogen explosion occurring" or serious harm to human health. In fact, danger levels now are extreme. More on that below.

Even the NRC admitted that salt water "severely restricted" and likely blocked circulation pathways. Moreover, inside the core, "there is likely no water level (so it's) difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel." Perhaps none, and three or more reactors are affected, one or more in meltdown.

Independent Expert Opinions

On April 4, geoscientist/international radiation expert Leuren Moret told interviewer Alfred Lambremont Webre that Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are concealing the effects of tectonic nuclear war on North America from Fukushima's fallout. In fact, Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) radiation maps confirm contamination on America's West Coast, Midwest, and Western Canada, in some areas as high as Japan's.

Radioactive Iodine-131 in rainwater sampled near San Francisco was found to be over 18,000 times above federal drinking water standards. Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts rainwater samples showed Iodine-131 up to 181 times above normal, expected to rise. It's also showing up in milk.

As a result, mobile measures in parts of America and Canada were suspended until further notice to conceal the disaster's gravity.

Moret cited two distinguished nuclear scientists who've publicly said northern Japan (one-third of the country) is uninhabitable and should be evacuated. Marion Fulk is one, a Manhattan Project scientist who helped develop the hydrogen bomb. He also was America's atmospheric fallout expert when above-ground tests were conducted.

Dr. Chris Busby is the other, an ionizing radiation expert. On March 30, he told Russia Today television that Fukushima contamination will cause at least 417,000 new cancers.

Moret called Fukushima a false flag operation to weaken an economic rival, harm its economy, agriculture and fisheries, and compromise its detente with China. Compared to Chernobyl, Fukushima's releasing multiple times more radiation, perhaps amounts too enormous to imagine with potentially catastrophic global effects.

In response, Japan, America and Canada are in denial. Permissible radiation exposure levels have been raised. Legitimate reporting was halted. US and Canadian atmospheric testing was suspended. State authorities told California physicians not to give iodine to concerned patients. Measuring radiation in milk was also stopped.

Contamination is spreading from the Arctic to the Equator. Long-lived radioactive isotopes will cause environmental and human health havoc for generations. Moret said life forms developed over billions of years are being destroyed in a century.

On March 29, Chris Busby's Rense.com article headlined, "Deconstructing Nuclear Experts," saying:

"What these people have in common is ignorance. (Most) who appear (in the major media) and pontificate have not actually done any research on the issue of radiation and health. Or if they have, they....missed all the key studies and references. (Others are) real baddies" who say Fukushima is nothing to worry about, nothing like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (TMI).

In fact, Fukushima already way exceeds both and will get increasingly worse ahead as radiation releases continue and spread. Busby quoted Joseph Conrad saying, "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain."

"I believe that (the array of) phony experts," said Busby, "are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths....I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs (showing) their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air."

He cited the late Professor John Gofman, a senior US Atomic Energy Commission expert who resigned, saying:

"(T)he nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity."

So far, in fact, it's winning. It's entered an endgame that will decide whether or not humanity will survive. "Not from sudden nuclear war," said Busby. "But from the ongoing and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which continued inexorably since (to this day), accompanied by parallel increases in cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race."

Busby calls it "the greatest public health scandal in human history...." Who can disagree.

A Final Comment

In a personal email, environmental researcher Dr. Ilya Perlingieri explained the dangers of Japan dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water in the Pacific, saying:

"We are all in grave danger! This was insanity! This radioactive water will come here (to America). There is no question about that. The currents will bring it to the west coast and contaminate the entire area: beaches and all sealife between the coast and Japan. What evaporates naturally will then come on the air currents around the rest of the US and then the rest of the planet!""This is epic, and it was not an accident."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant

By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: April 5, 2011

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis inJapan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station are dealing with new challenges.

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• Company Says Radioactive Water Leak at Japan Plant Is Plugged (April 6, 2011)

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Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.

While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.

The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.

Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain.

“I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.”

The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality.

Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment.

The document was prepared for the commission’s Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant. It says it is based on the “most recent available data” from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group.

The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant’s six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking.

The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.

Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.

A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”

Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.

Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, “If I were in the Japanese’s shoes, I’d be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn’t been checked since the earthquake.”

The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a “hazardous atmosphere” in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment.

Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.

Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. “If so,” Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, “you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods.”

Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems.

The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls “a major source term release.”

Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. “They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”

Three Mile Island Haunts US Nuclear Policy

32 Years Later, Industry Still Recovering From Its Worst US Nuclear Disaster

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

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THREE MILE ISLAND Map: Three Mile Island Survey: Do You Remember?

Updated: 6:17 am PDT March 28, 2011

At about dawn on March 28, 1979, Pete Velez was cruising through Middletown, Pa., past the Blue Room saloon where some of the guys from work drank after their shifts.

Velez was headed to work at Three Mile Island nuclear plant, where four 370-foot cooling towers stood proudly over the countryside, signs of a new age of technological progress, according to the 1982 book "The Warning -- Accident At Three Mile Island," by Mike Gray and Ira Rosen, an inside account of America's worst nuclear accident.

The book describes how Velez arrived to find cars backed up and figured it must be a security issue -- maybe someone left a door open. He chatted with the gate guard.

"What's the matter, you lose somebody?" Velez smiled.

"No."

"Well, what's going on?"

"Radiation emergency."

"A drill? At 6 o'clock in the morning?"

"It's no drill."

As radiation-protection foreman, Valez's job was to make sure no one was unnecessarily exposed. Fueled by adrenaline, he raced up stairs to the Unit Two control room and threw open the door to startling chaos. Packs of engineers, technicians and plant managers were huddled in the cavernous room, all talking over each other. The 90-foot long arching wall of lights and gauges, along with a shorter console that followed the same arc, were lit up like Christmas trees. Radiation alarms went off one after another, jangling the nerves of the trouble-shooters.

Velez carried a little green notebook for scribbling notes about anything that he thought might be important. At that moment he simply wrote, "Aw [expletive]."

It's been more than three decades since the worst nuclear plant crisis in the nation's history, and U.S. nuclear plants have boasted a mostly spotless safety record since then. But anxiety over radiation leaks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan have have again renewed fear over nuclear plant safety.

Ultimately, it was deemed that the Three Mile Island accident was caused by faulty equipment and bad decisions made amid chaos -- "a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures," as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission summed it up.

Investigations and cleanup revealed that the core of the plant partially melted down, unbeknownst to the harried officials working feverishly inside the plant at the time. The plant was dangerously close to a total meltdown -- a full-scale national disaster.

Remarkably, most of the radioactivity released by the partial meltdown was contained inside the plant and it resulted in no long-term health effects or environmental damage, most experts agree.

But five days of panic in Pennsylvania left lasting legacies. Three Mile Island became synonymous with nuclear catastrophe, stoked public fear of nuclear power, led to an overhaul of plant safety rules and effectively drained the steam from an entire industry – no new nuclear plants were ordered for 28 years.

Three Mile Island "remains the single most important event in the fifty-year history of nuclear power regulation in the United States," leading Three Mile Island expert J. Samuel Walker, says in his 2004 book "Three Mile Island – A Nuclear Crisis In Historical Perspective."

What Went Wrong

Nuclear power plants generate energy by boiling water into steam that turns turbines, which produce electricity. To generate steam, nuclear plants use heat from fission – the splitting of atoms of uranium fuel. More than 36,000 zirconium alloy rods packed with about 100 tons of uranium pellets were bundled and placed inside the reactor core.

The chaos that Velez found when he arrived at work was set in motion inside Unit Two at about 4 a.m.

Media reports and books that chronicle the inside story of the crisis – including reports by PBS, in the Washington Post and the books by Walker, Gray and Rosen, and "TMI: 25 Years Later" by Bonnie Osif, Anthony Baratta and Thomas Conkling -- explain how it unfolded.

Pumps that move water through the reactor failed, prompting the plant's massive steam-powered turbines and the reactor itself to shut down.

When heat and pressure inside the reactor increased, a relief valve popped open. But the valve malfunctioned and did not automatically close when the pressure decreased.

Cooling water flowed out of the valve, and that led to partial meltdown – the zirconium rods failed and uranium pellets melted, releasing highly radioactive vapor, some of which was vented into the atmosphere in the following hours.

Communications Fail Amid Chaos

Plant managers and technicians tried to diagnose the fast-multiplying problems as instruments showed conflicting information about the temperature and pressure in the core. Radiation meters started clicking and officials at times were awkwardly communicating through respirators. They missed clues that would have tipped them to the source of the trouble. They made mistakes that made problems worse.

It wasn't until late in the day that plant officials circulated enough water through the reactor that it covered the melting core that had been exposed for hours. The temperature began to decrease.

But public fear was growing fast as officials tried to regain control of the plant. By March 30, concern was spiking about the radiation that had been leaked into the atmosphere. Panic spread as scientists fretted over a hydrogen bubble that built up inside the reactor, which officials initially were worried could burn or explode.

Communications broke down. Politicians, health officials, federal bureaucrats, plant officials and executives with Babcock and Wilcox, which designed the plant, initially did not have their stories straight, which fed public anxiety.

Solid information was scarce. Increasingly hostile journalists couldn't get straight answers.

In the early hours, it was hard for officials outside the plant to get a direct phone line to the control room. Even President Jimmy Carter couldn't get through and ordered that direct lines be established.

"There was just the most bizarre flow and lack of information," Susan Stranahan, who was part of a Philadelphia Inquirer team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its Three Mile Island coverage, said at a 20-year anniversary event.

'The China Syndrome'

Public fear was further stoked by a bizarre coincidence. The movie "The China Syndrome," the fictional story of a nuclear plant accident cover-up starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon, had been released just 12 days before the Three Mile Island incident. The title is a reference to the suggestion that if a nuclear plant core ever melted down it would burn a hole through the Earth all the way to China. In the movie, a scientist says that a meltdown would make "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable. In combination with the real-life drama, the film became a blockbuster.

This crisis was an early test for Pennsylvania's Republican Gov. Richard Thornburgh, who had been on the job just 68 days, he has recalled in media interviews.

"The minute I heard that there had been an accident at a nuclear facility, I knew we were in another dimension," Thornburgh told PBS for a 1999 special on Three Mile Island.

The governor quickly grew frustrated with conflicting information from officials at the plant, its owner Metropolitan Edison, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The following day, Thornburgh ordered the evacuation of pregnant women and preschool-age children within a five-mile radius. About 140,000 fled.

Carter watched developments closely. The president was a nuclear engineer and understood the potential danger. On April 1, Carter and his wife Rosalynn went to the plant to help restore calm. The visit was brief but eased public fear and marked the end of the immediate crisis.

Health, Environmental Effects

Unit Two never operated again. It had cost about $700 million to construct but was open just three months. Cleanup, which continued until 1993, cost about $1 billion, the New York Times reported. The reactor's two cooling towers stand quiet to this day, in contrast to the two steam-belching Unit One towers.

Operations of the Unit One reactor were halted after the meltdown but restarted in 1985. The NRC is considering relicensing it through 2034.

It is generally agreed that the radiation released by Unit Two caused no lasting harm.

According to the NRC, among the agencies that did detailed studies of the radiological effects of the meltdown were the NRC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, and the state of Pennsylvania. Studies suggest that the average radiation dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem -- a safe dose, according to the NRC. A chest X-ray delivers about 6 millirem.

Among the recent follow-up studies was a University of Pittsburgh study of 32,100 people who lived within five miles of the plant. It found no significant difference in the rate of cancer deaths compared to the general population, the New York Times reported.

The NRC also says that investigators believe the environment was not damaged. The agency says that thousands of samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil and food were collected in the months following the meltdown and only "very low" levels of radionuclides were attributed to the plant.

Three Mile Island's Legacy

Nuclear power in its early days was hailed as a brilliant, futuristic answer to the nation's energy woes. The plants would produce power that was "too cheap to meter" with no greenhouse gases, industry advocates claimed.

But Three Mile Island left a legacy of public skepticism and fear that lingers a generation later. Industry advocates say that anxiety had largely faded -- at least until the disaster in Japan -- but the crisis at Three Mile Island dramatically altered the way Americans think about nuclear energy.

Three Mile Island effectively halted the advance of nuclear power in the energy-hungry U.S. In the wake of the crisis, plans that were under way for 74 new plants were canceled, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Since 1979, a number of plants have been decommissioned and no new plants were ordered for nearly a generation.

Today, 104 aging U.S. reactors produce about 20 percent of the nation's energy. In recent years, amid a race to develop "clean" energy and reduce oil dependence, nuclear power has enjoyed a renaissance, with powerful lawmakers singing its praises. In the last two years, nuclear utilities have filed license applications with the NRC to construct up to 26 new plants, although it would take years for the new reactors to be approved and constructed.

Proponents note that, unlike coal plants, nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. They cite an excellent safety record since 1979. New plants also generate jobs, advocates say.

But the industry still faces obstacles, including heightened fears about safety renewed by the disaster in Japan.

The industry also is mired in a long-standing toxic debate over waste storage. Because it's extremely expensive to build nuclear plants, economic forces also remain a hurdle to industry expansion.

So does the ghost of Unit Two.

"Three Mile Island was almost 30 years ago, so perhaps the industry and the NRC have forgotten about it," Dave Lochbaum, a director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at a 29th anniversary event last year. "But you can bet that even the people who welcome new plants in their communities will want to know if what happened at Three Mile Island could happen to them. As of right now, the industry and the NRC haven't done enough to ensure them it won't."

Related Sites:

• Map: U.S. Nuclear Plant Locations
• 2002 Study On Health Effects Of Three Mile Island
• Washington Post: Three Mile Island Chronology
• PBS: Nuclear Technology Timeline