Posted on 03/18/2011 12:58:31 PM PDT by NRG1973
- Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as happened at Chernobyl
- Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters
- Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three Mile Island
- We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister
- Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California
- Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day
The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy. Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down. After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis. He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said: 'The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Already posted prominently in Breaking News sidebar.
Yes.
Many thousands of people are dead and all the media (and most people it seems) can talk about is the potential for a few deaths due to radiation leakage. Pathetic.
Why post this stuff. Do you work for GE or the nuclear power industry?
It’s news because 1. It’s still a developing story, and 2. It has staggering economic consequences not just for them but for anyone in the world who gets power from nukes.
An incident where there were no fatalities
While I sympathize with TEPCO’s Managing Director it is time for another managing director.
Oh so now the rating of just beneath the Chernobyl incident is supposed to mean nothing?
The first ‘plume’ hit the west coast today. That’s the first one, how long, how many days, how many weeks will it continue?
There was also very little radiation released at Three Mile Island. This is far worse than Three Mile Island in that regard.
All I’ll say is if the wind shifts direction towards Tokyo you will see the evacuation of a huge city - and that will be a major disaster in itself with real suffering involved.
It isn’t nice having such a big issues depend on which way the wind blows...
Even the absolute worst case scenario (realistically because of reactor design) isn't that bad since it will simply fizzle away into the ground unlike Chernobyl where “10 tons” of fissile material was blasted into the country side and atmosphere.
Media hype, public ignorance, some willing to make a quick buck and yet others with a Luddite agenda are converging on this issue.
But we're worried about the West Coast being exposed to about as much radiation you can get off a watch.
Three Mile Island was essentially a non story that only became a story because of the public sensitivity to this issue caused by a previously released movie (12 days prior) called “The China Syndrome.”
Exactly. The cost in human suffering in terms of energy shortages and deprivation and reduced standards of living will be exponentially greater than anything that physically occurs at Fukushima.
The totalitarians figured out a while ago that privation is their friend. People who can't afford cars and can only afford dense urban housing are easy to rule because they are so dependent. Cheap, abundant energy = freedom.
Corruption is so ingrained into the TEPCO corporate culture that I don't think they could find another managing director who isn't already compromised. They need to look outside the company for a new leader.
From what I’m reading, the spent fuel pool has 1,700 tons of fuel that would spew into the atmosphere if it seriously catches on fire. Fortunately, you don’t have the graphite fuel coating to burn like you had in Chernobyl. But the fuel mass in that pool is many times larger than Chernobyl.
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