Nuclear Damage Control (Fukushima)

businessinsider.com ^ | 2/10/2012 | Russ Baker

[ransomnote]

What if you were promoting an industry that had the potential to kill and injure enormous numbers of people as well as contaminate large areas of land for tens of thousands of years? What if this industry created vast stockpiles of deadly waste but nevertheless required massive amounts of public funding to keep it going? My guess is that you might want to hide that information.

From the heyday of the environmental movement in the late 1960s through the late 1970s, many people were openly skeptical about the destructive potential of the nuclear power industry. After the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in central Pennsylvania in March 1979 and the explosion of Chernobyl’s unit four reactor in the Ukraine in April 1986, few would have predicted that nuclear power could ever shake off its global pariah status.

Yet, thanks to diligent lobbying efforts, strong government support, and a full public-relations blitz over the past decade, the once-reviled nuclear industry succeeded in recasting itself in the public mind as an essential, affordable, clean (low carbon emission), and safe energy option in a warming world. In fact, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just cleared the way for granting the first two licenses for any new reactors in more than 30 years. The new reactors will be built at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, southeast of Augusta.

SNIP

In response, the nuclear industry and its supporters have employed sophisticated press manipulation to move the public conversation away from these thorny issues. One example is PBS’s recent Frontline documentary, Nuclear Aftershocks, which examines the viability of nuclear power in a post-Fukushima world.

What follows is a detailed critique of many of the issues raised in the program, which initially aired January 17, 2012.

[justa-hairyape]

Yep. Cold Shutdown is no more. There was a rumor that they were considering distributing Iodide tablets. They had a quake shake up the site on the 9th. That always causes the temperatures to rise up a little bit. Shake and bake. So it was inevitable.

The real concern is what the temperature is down where the main mass of melted corium is located. If this temperature reading near the bottom of the RPV, is due to heat from the corium sinking down into the concrete base. Then the middle game crisis has begun. And they do not have enough water to stop that.

[justa-hairyape]

Tepco has been showing some very misleading diagrams on the location of the temp sensors. They claim that two still reading low are at the same height in the RPV as the one reading high. Therefore the one reading high is faulty. That is not the diagram I saw about a week ago when they first starting having this problem. The high reading sensor was located low and the low reading temp sensors were higher up in the RPV.

At this point in time, watch their actions again, not their words. Especially if they distribute Iodide tablets and start dumping mass quantities of boric acid into the #2 hole in the ground.

And from someone who trouble shooted complex electro mechanical digital gear for over 10 years, never assume the sensors with readings you like, are the functional ones. Yes, the odds say they are, but the odds can work against you.