Exploded Reactor 1
The 8.9 earthquake in Japan, which generated a tsunami wave that reached the west coast of the United States has resulted in severe damage to several of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in the Daiichi prefecture. It appears that trouble started when cooling water pumps failed to operate, leading to runaway conditions within the cores of reactors #1, #2, #3, and #4. (update: reactors #5 and #6 are now threatened) These reactors are all relatively early boiling water reactor designs built in the 1970′s by General Electric and Toshiba. Toshiba’s reactor #3 utilized 75 TONS (150,000 pounds, or 68,182 kilograms) of MOX (recycled nuclear weapons material in the form of Uranium and Plutonium Oxides (Metal Oxide-MOX)) fuel in the core which contains Plutonium-239. The critical mass of a pure sphere of Plutonium 239 is 10.2 kilograms and a mass of 56.8 kilograms undergoing complete fission would produce a 1 Megaton explosion. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years so it remains in the environment for a very long time. Explosions have occurred in three reactors and several cooling ponds are now overheating leading to a release of radiation. Japanese officials have resorted to trying to cool the reactor cores and fuel rod pools with seawater which Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy, considers a desperate measure (a desparate measure which promises to deliver plenty of highly contaminated water directly to the ocean waters nearby. ) According to Mr. Alvarez, sattelite imagery shows the roof blown off the fuel rod pool next to reactor #4. He and other experts are warning that any release of radioactivity from the spent-fuel pool could make the releases from the reactors themselves pale in comparison.
As the situation worsens, it is possible that crews will have to pull back and the entire complex may meltdown with the result being an unimaginable environmental catastrophe of unparallelled magnitude.
Fires in the fuel rod pools (rectangular basins about 40 feet deep, made of four- to five-foot-thick reinforced concrete lined with stainless steel) where used fuel from the reactors are stored pose a greater environmental hazard as they are not encased in cement as the reactor cores are and will vent directly to the atmosphere. Each reactor has its own fuel rod pool sitting atop the main concrete structure and surrounded by thin metal roofs and walls. According to one expert, the fuel rods rest at the pool’s bottom and typically rise no higher than 15 feet from the bottom. Depending on the freshness of the spent fuel, the water in an uncooled pool would start to boil in anywhere from days to a week and would boil off to a dangerous level in another week or two. Once exposed, it can catch fire. Fresh fuel rods have more of the most deadly and short lived Iodine-131, whereas Cesium-137, which still contaminates much of the land in the Ukrain around Chernoble, has a half life of 30 years. A much cited 1997 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island described a worst-case disaster from uncovered spent fuel in a single reactor cooling pool, estimating 100 quick deaths would occur within a range of 500 miles followed by 138,000 eventual deaths. The study also found that land over 2,170 miles would be contaminated and damages would hit $546 billion.
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there are almost 100 spent-fuel pools in the United States.
US Military aid forces have been pulled back from Japan’s coast after encountering radioactive plumes.
If significant amounts of radioactive material is lofted into the jet stream from the damaged reactors, it could arrive on America’s western coast within several days.
Japan had 54 nuclear reactors online before the quake and 8 more in construction.
According to the August 22nd, 2010 publication of Japan Today, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 plant is the third in Japan to use highly toxic and long-lasting reutilized Plutonium fuel. The other two are the No. 3 reactor of Kyushu Electric Power Co’s Genkai plant in Saga Prefecture and the No. 3 reactor of Shikoku Electric Power Co’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture.
Update:
As predicted, the situation continues to worsen but major news coverage has all but evaporated. According to latest reports, much of which are speculation, reactor cores #1, #2, and #3 have all breached their pressure vessels and are still held within the steel containments for the time being. Analysis of reactor #1 breach predicts that the core has eroded through 2/3 of the containment vessel so far.
Is it the fickle finger of fate or karmic law on a national scale that threatens to return radioactive terror to the country which first wielded it? Who first delivered to the Japanese people the deadly force of the atom on August 6, 1945, then later repackaged and sold it to them as a panacea for a burgeoning, intensely proud and nationalistic population, desparately yearning for first world status, and requiring huge amounts of otherwise unavailable energy to power their manufacturing monster into competition with the other comparatively huge and well resourced first world nations.
What wisdom, if any, held sway during the many years of construction, deployment, and devoted reliance on nuclear power to the extent of constructing the staggering number of 54 separate reactors in a country the size of the state of Montana and situated upon some of the most seismically volatile land on Earth, a tiny landmass balanced at the convergence of four tectonic plates and producing 1/5th of all the world’s earthquakes? Who would have imagined that a people raised with such an acute understanding of the tempermental and devastatingly deadly nature of the earth beneath them, whose art and language reflects their intimate surrender to it, could have been convinced of the logic to risk everything for temporary gain?
One need only look back in recent recorded history to realize how obviously unsuitable such a region is for any such developments:
Mino-Owari, Japan – October 28, 1891
A powerful quake caused the earth to open along a 60-mile-long line, sometimes moving as much as 40 feet.
Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan – September 1, 1923
A huge 8.3 magnitude tremor displaced land 15 feet horizontally and 6 feet vertically and caused the sea bed to fall 300 meters (1,000 feet) off a nearby bay. More than half a million buildings collapsed, and a 36-foot-high tsunami swept over the coast. The two cities burned for two days and 150,000 people died.
Tango, Japan – March 7, 1927
A quake struck which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale
Ito, Japan – November 25, 1930
Over a period of several weeks, 4,880 moderate shocks were recorded with a record of 690 in one day.
Hopefully this horrific tragedy may at least serve as a much needed and belated wake-up-call for a world in the white-knuckled grip of hyper-consumerism wherein an ever-increasing amount of energy and resources must be consumed in order to maintain profitability. It should be remembered that the great civilisations of the past, whose monumental creations still fill us with awe, accomplished these marvels without reliance upon earth-threatening energy resources. How can humanity be so easily lured to race blindly towards self-destruction at an ever-increasing rate, unwilling to wait-out the maturation of efficient, truly green energy technology?