I love how these articles are written.
“...admits...”
They got a sea full of water dumped in on their heads, electrical instrumentation doubtless failed. Now that they’re getting instrumentation back online and replaced/repaired/supplanted, data that comes out from the new instrumentation is an “admission.”
What a pantload of fertilizer these liberal arts majors are in the press. They couldn’t even describe to me (or any other engineer or physicist) what the difference between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation is, and now they’re acting all prosecutorial in the press.
Morons.
BTW - this development is consistent with what happened in Three Mile Island: The TMI core slagged down in the early hours of the situation, and all the henny-penny run-in-circles-scream-and-shout for days afterwards was utterly superfluous. When they got the reactor vessel out to Idaho Falls, they found that there was a wad of material on the bottom of the reactor vessel and that it was nowhere near the point of breaching the vessel.
I also pointed this out here on FR - ie, that TMI’s reactor had slagged down and was resting on the bottom of the vessel, and came nowhere close to melting through.
Incorrect. TMI broke out of the RPV at one of the seals for the control rod box assemblies. It was contained within the control rod box and did not breach. What we have here is 3 reactors that have broken out at those seals. They are the same seals (silver welds actually) and the corium is flowing down below the RPV's. That is a given now.