Alert: Fukushima Coverup, 40 Years of Spent Nuclear Rods Blown Sky High

Paul Joseph Watson and Kurt Nimmo

Infowars.com

March 15, 2011

Infowars analysis: In addition to under reporting
the fires at Fukushima, the Japanese government has not told the people
about the ominous fact that the nuclear plant site is a hellish
repository where a staggering number of spent fuel rods have accumulated
for 40 years.

A
contributor to the Occupational and Environmental Medicine list who
once worked on nuclear waste issues provided additional information
about Fukushima’s spent fuel rod assemblies, according to a post on the
FDL website.

“NIRS has a Nov 2010 powerpoint from Tokyo Electric Power Company (in
english) detailing the modes and quantities of spent fuel stored at the
Fukushima Daiichi plant where containment buildings #1 and #3 have
exploded,” he wrote on March 14.

The Powerpoint is entitled Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks and Spent Fuels at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and can be read in full here. The document adds a new and frightening dimension to the unfolding disaster.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools
dedicated to spent fuel rods. These are located at the top of six
reactor buildings – or were until explosions and fires ravaged the
plant. On the ground level there is a common pool in a separate building
that was critical damaged by the tsunami. Each reactor building pool
holds 3,450 fuel rod assemblies and the common pool holds 6,291 fuel
rod assemblies. Each assembly holds sixty-three
fuel rods. In short, the Fukushima Daiichi plant contains over 600,000
spent fuel rods – a massive amount of radiation that will soon be
released into the atmosphere.

It should be obvious by now that the authorities in Japan are lying
about the effort to contain the situation in order to mollify the
public. It is highly likely there are no workers on the site attempting
to contain the disaster.

Earlier today, a report
was issued indicating that over 70% of these spent fuel rods are now
damaged – in other words, they are emitting radiation or will soon. The
disclosure reveals that authorities in Japan – who have consistently
played down the danger and issued conflicting information – are guilty
of criminal behavior and endangering the lives of countless people.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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On Tuesday, it was finally admitted that meltdowns of the No. 1 and
No. 2 reactor cores are responsible for the release of a massive amount
of radiation.

After reporting that a fire at the No. 4 reactor was contained, the media is reporting this evening that it has resumed.
The media predictably does not bother to point out why the fire is
uncontainable – the fuel rods are no longer submerged in water and are
exposed to the atmosphere and that is why they are burning and cannot be extinguished.

It cannot be stressed enough that the situation at Fukushima
represents the greatest environmental disaster in the history of
humanity, far more dangerous that Chernobyl, and the government of that
country is responsible.

—

Perhaps the most underreported and deadliest aspect of the three
explosions and numerous fires to hit the stricken Fukushima nuclear
reactor since Saturday is the fact that highly radioactive spent fuel
rods which are stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment
facility are likely to have been massively compromised by the blasts,
an elevation in the crisis that would represent “Chernobyl on
steroids,” according to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen.

As you can see from the NPR graphic below, the spent fuel rods are
stored outside of the active nuclear rod containment casing and close
to the roof of the reactor complex. Video from Saturday’s explosion and
subsequent images clearly indicate that the spent fuel rods at
Fukushima unit number one could easily have been compromised by the
blast.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds
Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont
Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit
1, the failure to maintain pools of water that keep the 20 years worth
of spent fuel rods cool could cause “catastrophic fires” and turn the
crisis into “Chernobyl on steroids.”

The BBC is now reporting that “spent fuel rods in reactors five and
six are also now believed to be heating up,” with a new fire at reactor
4, where more spent rods are stored, causing smoke to pour from the
facility.

“Japanese news agency Kyodo reports that the storage pool in reactor
four – where the spent fuel rods are kept – may be boiling. Tepco says
readings are showing high levels of radiation in the building, so it
is inaccessible,” adds the report.

“At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion
Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool,
in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the
reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain
water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems
there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool
would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom
think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside,” reports the Washington Post.

The rods must be kept cool because otherwise they start to burn and,
in the case of reactor number 3, would release plutonium and uranium
in the form of vapor into the atmosphere.

“That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is
even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without
plutonium,” writes Kirk James Murphy.

“We’d be lucky if we only had to worry about the spent fuel rods
from a single holding pool. We’re not that lucky. The Fukushima Daiichi
plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were)
located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at
ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450
fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies.
[The common pool has windows on one wall which were almost certainly
destroyed by the tsunami.] Each assembly holds sixty-three fuel rods.
This means the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent
fuel rods.”

There have been massive design issues with the Mark 1 nuclear reactor stretching back three decades.

As ABC News reports today,
“Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues
at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming
increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were
reviewing — the Mark 1 — was so flawed it could lead to a devastating
accident.”

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“The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design
of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads
that could be experienced with a loss of coolant,” Bridenbaugh told ABC
News in an interview. “The impact loads the containment would receive
by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart
and create an uncontrolled release.”