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  • 2017-02-06 (xsd:date)
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  • Is a Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Reactor About to Fall Into the Ocean? (en)
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  • On 3 February 2017, the disreputable web site YourNewsWire posted a story with the alarming but false claim that one of the reactors damaged in the 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was on the verge of falling into the ocean: No credible news reports have stated that a Fukushima reactor is about to fall into the ocean, nor has any Japanese government agency announced a state of emergency. YourNewsWire's exaggerated news seems to have been derived from media reports in early February 2017 about high levels of radiation found inside the containment vessel for reactor No. 2 at Fukushima power plant No. 1. The Japan Times reported of the situation that: In a statement they sent to us, Tepco confirmed the high radiation levels inside the reactor but noted no changes to radiation levels outside the unit: Will Davis, a consultant and author in the nuclear energy field and former US Navy Nuclear Reactor Operator, told us the alarm raised in many media reports about the finding is unwarranted. Radiation levels are not spiking -- Tepco has been searching for damaged fuel and found it, so a high reading at the specific location was to be expected and further, it is safely contained: Tepco announced on their official Facebook page that while conducting a survey of the containment unit, they found that some deposits had adhered to the structures directly below the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and that a part of the grating had sunken in at the center of the pedestal (the concrete base supporting the RPV). One possible explanation for the high radiation reading in the specific spot, San Diego State business professor Dr. Murray Jennex told us, is that crud, a term used to mean radioactive particles, had settled into that depression: Jennex, an expert on nuclear containment who has commented in-depth on the disaster, said exposure to radiation levels that high would be almost instantly fatal and surmised that Tepco would ultimately be forced to build a concrete sarcophagus around the unit like the one that encapsulates reactor no. 4 at Chernobyl. He added that they may have to let nature take its course for a while. The Guardian, which has a reporter posted in Tokyo, noted that Tepco says none of that radiation has leaked outside the containment unit. However, plans to send a robot in to survey the vessel seem to have been scuttled, as radiation at that level would destroy even a robot in less than two hours: The Fukushima Daiichi disaster was the worst nuclear disaster since the explosion of a reactor at Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. Both incidents have been rated level 7, the most serious category for nuclear incidents according to an international scale used to measure such accidents. (en)
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