Friday, December 02, 2011

China Syndrome

Just how close did we come to a "china syndrome" at Japan's Fukushima plant?
With each report, it just gets worse. Early on they reported the possibility of some meltdown but now we find that we came damn close to a complete melt through. Or at least that is the story so far. I won't be surprised to learn that we did, in fact, melt down completely once more of the truth comes out. So far TEPCO has been rather timid about telling the whole truth about what they know.
Molten nuclear fuel at Japan's Fukushima plant might have eaten two thirds of the way through a concrete containment base, its operator said, citing a new simulation of the extent of the March disaster. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said their latest calculations showed the fuel inside the No. 1 reactor at the tsunami-hit plant could have melted entirely, dropping through its inner casing and eroding a concrete base. [...]
Until now, TEPCO had said some fuel melted through the inner pressure vessel and dropped to the containment vessel, without saying how much and what it did to the concrete, citing a lack of data.
"Almost no fuel remains at its original position," TEPCO said in the report.

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