Frontline offered a documentary about FUKUSHIMA that's worth watching and doesn't seem currently available for a link.
Once again, this highlights why PBS is crucial. The chronology and complexity is explained in easily understood terms.
Fukushima is the same design and age as Pilgrim Nuclear in Plymouth, MA and Vermont Yankee, both operated by Entergy.
The demand for a global take-over at Fukushima has hit critical
mass
September 30, 2013
More than 48,000 global citizens have
now signed a petition at www.nukefree.org asking the United Nations and the
world community to take charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. The
petition was first linked at Nukefree
Another 25,000 have signed at Roots
Action. An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in
formation.
The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By
November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.
The corporate
media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global
health and safety in decades.
The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has
turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the
falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are
shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.
This lessens the
radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more
dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing
workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial
reactors still licensed to operate worldwide.
All of which pales before
the crisis at Fukushima. Since the 3/11/2011 earthquake and tsunami, the
six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.
For decades the
atomic industry claimed vehemently that a commercial reactor could not explode.
When Chernobyl blew, it blamed “inferior” Soviet technology.
But
Fukushima’s designs are from General Electric (some two dozen similar reactors
are licensed in the US). At least four explosions have rocked the site. One
might have involved nuclear fission. Three cores have melted into the ground.
Massive quantities of water have been poured where the owner, Tokyo Electric
(Tepco), and the Japanese government think they might be, but nobody knows for
sure.
As the Free Press has reported, steam emissions indicate one or
more may still be hot. Contaminated water is leaking from hastily-constructed
tanks. Room for more is running out. The inevitable next earthquake could
rupture them all and send untold quantities of poisons pouring into the ocean.
The worst immediate threat at Fukushima lies in the spent fuel pool at
Unit Four. That reactor had been shut for routine maintenance when the
earthquake and tsunami hit. The 400-ton core, with more than 1300 fuel rods, sat
in its pool 100 feet in the air.
Spent fuel rods are the most lethal
items our species has ever created. A human standing within a few feet of one
would die in a matter of minutes. With more than 11,000 scattered around the
Daichi site, radiation levels could rise high enough to force the evacuation of
all workers and immobilize much vital electronic equipment.
Spent fuel
rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy
cladding will ignite, the rods will burn and huge quantities of radiation will
be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big
enough pile, an explosion is possible. By some estimates there’s enough
radioactivity embodied in the rods to create a fallout cloud 15,000 times
greater than the one from the Hiroshima bombing.
The rods perched in the
Unit 4 pool are in an extremely dangerous position. The building is tipping and
sinking into the sodden ground. The fuel pool itself may have deteriorated. The
rods are embrittled and prone to crumbling. Just 50 meters from the base is a
common spent fuel pool containing some 6,000 fuel rods that could be seriously
compromised should it lose coolant. Overall there are some 11,000 spent rods
scattered around the Fukushima Daichi site.
Dangerous as the process
might be, the rods in the Unit Four fuel pool must come down in an orderly
fashion. Another earthquake could easily cause the building to crumble and
collapse. Should those rods crash to the ground and be left uncooled, the
consequences would be catastrophic.
Tepco has said it will begin trying
to remove the rods from that pool in November. The petitions circulating through
www.nukefree.org and www.moveon.org , as well as at rootsaction.org and
avaaz.org, ask that the United Nations take over. They ask the world scientific
and engineering communities to step in. The Rootsaction petition also asks that
$8.3 billion slated in loan guarantees for a new US nuke be shifted instead to
dealing with the Fukushima site.
It’s a call with mixed blessings. The
UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is notoriously pro-nuclear, charged with
promoting atomic power as well as regulating it. Critics have found the IAEA to
be secretive and unresponsive.
But Tepco is a private utility with
limited resources. The Japanese government has an obvious stake in downplaying
Fukushima’s dangers. These were the two entities that approved and built these
reactors.
While the IAEA is imperfect, its resources are more
substantial and its stake at Fukushima somewhat less direct. An ad hoc global
network of scientists and engineers would be intellectually ideal, but would
lack the resources for direct intervention.
Ultimately the petitions
call for a combination of the two.
It’s also hoped the petitions will
arouse the global media. The moving of the fuel rods from Unit Four must be
televised. We need to see what’s happening as it happens. Only this kind of
coverage can allow global experts to analyze and advise as needed.
Let’s
all hope that this operation proves successful, that the site be neutralized and
the massive leaks of radioactive water and gasses be somehow stopped.
As
former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata has put it: full-scale releases from Fukushima
“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.”
----------------------
Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of
the Columbus Free Press and www.freepress.org. He edits Nuke Free, where all factual material in this
article can be linked. He hosts the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness radio
show at www.prn.fm, and is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth (Harvey Wasserman).
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/1986
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
The demand for a global take-over at Fukushima has hit critical mass
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