Fukushima reactor No. 4 vulnerable to catastrophic collapse
“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No.4 reactor.” – Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics
Mr. Murata’s stunning statement should be front-page news everywhere around the world. Why? Becausehe’s right. If reactor No. 4 suffers even a minor earthquake, it could set off a chain reaction of events that quickly lead to North America becoming uninhabitable by humans for centuries to come. Imagine California, Oregon and Washington states being inundated with radiation — up to 85 times the radiation release from Chernobyl. We’re talking about the end of human life on the scale of continents.
Here’s how this could happen, according to 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:
“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.”(http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/nuclear-expert-fukushima-spent-…)
Note: He says “10 times” the Cesium-137 of Chernobyl. Others say up to 85 times. Nobody is 100% certain of what would actually occur because this has never happened before. We are in uncharted territory as a civilization, facing a unique and imminent threat to our continued survival. And both governments and the corporations that assured us nuclear power was safe are playing their “cover my ass” games while the world waits in the crosshairs of a nuclear apocalypse...
Fukushima Facts: Facts about Fukushima reactor No. 4 assembled from available news sources:
• Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive.
• These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation.
• Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air.
• The pool holding these fuel rods is “structurally damaged.”
• “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.” – 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.
• “The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors.” – Mr. Alvarez.
• Just 50 meters from reactor No. 4, a much larger pool of spent fuel rods contains 6,375 fuel rods, all of which remain highly radioactive.
• All these fuel rods are, astonishingly, exposed to the open air. They are not held inside any containment vessel.
• The total number of spent fuel rods across all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site is 11,421.
• If reactor No. 4 suffers a structural failure, the release of radiation from the 1,535 spent fuel rods would make it virtually impossible for work to continue on the site, potentially resulting in an inability to halt a massive radiation release from all the other rods.
• In all, the 11,421 fuel rods held at the Fukushima Daiichi facility contain roughly 336 million curies of “long-lived radioactivity.” Roughly 134 million curies of that is Cesium-137.
• “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.” – Mr. Robert Alvarez, U.S. Dept. of Energy
• This amount of Cesium-137 radioactivity held in the full collection of fuel rods at Fukushima is 85 times the amount released at Chernobyl.
• The release of this amount of Cesium-137 would “destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is an issue of human survival.” (http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html)
• The mainstream media operates in a total blackout of this news, refusing to even acknowledge the existence of this immediate threat to human civilization.
• The mainstream media is, in large part, owned by General Electric, the very company that designed the Fukushima reactors in the first place. It is clear that GE is diligently running a total media blackout on this news in order to cover its own ass and prevent people from asking questions about the faulty engineering and nuclear facility site selection that led to this catastrophe...
