Nuclear Nightmare Getting Worse, Yet Propaganda Continues

Image via WikipediaMark Sircus
Japan said it is considering expanding the area covered by a compulsory evacuation order, with no immediate end in sight to the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. At this point we should all sit up and take notice of what is happening and what could all so easily happen.

Emergency workers were pumping nitrogen into the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant to prevent further explosions. Now we hear things are getting so hot inside the destroyed reactor buildings that they cannot approach. On April 6, Reuters reported, “The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel,” Rep. Edward Markey told a House hearing on the disaster. “I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the core has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel.” America’s NRC said that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought.

Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian that at least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel “lower head” of the pressure vessel around reactor no. 2. “The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell,” Lahey said.

On April 5, Times writers James Glanz and William Broad headlined, “U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant,” saying: American engineers warned “that the troubled nuclear plant… is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable,” according to a confidential NRC assessment.

According to former GE reactor designer Margaret Harding, “Exposed/unprotected spent fuel rods in Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 pose extreme dangers. Moreover, explosions blew nuclear material ‘up to one mile from the units’ into the atmosphere, indicating much greater damage than previously disclosed. As a result, David Lochbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes, “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them… They’ve got a lot of nasty things to (handle), and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”

On March 29, Dr. Chris Busby said, “In fact, Fukushima already way exceeds Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and will get increasingly worse ahead as radiation releases continue and spread. I believe that (the array of) phony experts are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths… I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs (showing) their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air.”

Dr. Busby cited John Gofman, a senior U.S. Atomic Energy Commission expert who resigned, saying: “The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.” Busby calls it “the greatest public health scandal in human history,” which can be witnessed in the present as the government and press continue to mislead the public. More...