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UPDATE:
According to NYT reporter Hiroko Tabuchi some workers remains at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and reports otherwise were a translation error.
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Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference just under an hour ago that all personnel have been evacuated from Fukushima Daiichi 1 – 4 nuclear plants due to excessive radiation levels.
The fire in reactor 4 was confirmed as being in the spent fuel pool, and though the fire was suppressed earlier, it resumed later in the day. A proposed plan to air-drop water/cooling materials on it had to be scrapped due to the likely deadly risk to the helicopter crew.
The Secretary also mentioned that reactor cores 1 and 3 have been breached, and there appears to be steam coming from the breach in reactor core 3.
the worst has happened. CNN hasn’t shown confirmation yet.
It’s almost beyond belief.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.
AP Report posted in New Orleans, of all places…
I particularly like the hedge being reported: “radiation level is not immediately harmful.”
Um, yeah, that’s why there were only a couple score killed immediately at Chernobyl, with thousands dying over the years. Oy.
You might find this opinion piece in the Independent interesting, “A Cloud of Nuclear Mistrust Spreads Around the World: After decades of lies, nuclear reassurances now fall on deaf ears.” http://www.independent.co.uk/n…
Here is my takeaway:
“The scale of the alarm is the remarkable thing: how it has gone round the world (Angela Merkel has imposed a moratorium on nuclear energy; in France, there are calls for a referendum); how it’s even displaced the terrible story of Japan’s tsunami itself from the front-page headlines. But then, public alarm about nuclear safety, as the Fukushima emergency proves, is very easy to raise – and, as the Japanese authorities are now discovering, very hard to calm.
The reason is an industry which from its inception, more than half a century ago, has taken secrecy to be its watchword; and once that happens, cover-ups and downright lies often follow close behind. The sense of crisis surrounding Japan’s stricken nuclear reactors is exacerbated a hundredfold by the fact that, in an emergency, public trust in the promoters of atomic power is virtually non-existent. On too many occasions in Britain, in America, in Russia, in Japan – pick your country – people have not been told the truth (and have frequently been told nothing at all) about nuclear misadventures.”
I know that there is no magic alternative to nuclear power, but nuclear power itself is proving to be no magic alternative either. Everything has its costs and downsides. Yet, for me, the super-sized consequences of accidents weigh heavily. In this case, it truly is a matter of what I don’t know or, rather, what they don’t tell me may very well hurt me.
Remember it wasn’t the earthquake that did this, is was the flooding that knocked out their diesel power generators that started all this.
Vermont Yankee is exactly the same dangerous design as Fukushima. What happens when the CT river floods like it did in 1927? What happens when VT Yankee loses it’s backup power? We are seeing in Japan exactly what to expect WHEN, not if, VT Yankee goes bad.
Well the nuclear engineers all say that this will never happen because… because they said so! The same engineers that on Saturday said Fukushima will be fine and can’t get worse. The same engineers that said not to worry about the spent fuel. The same engineers that are being proven wrong with every passing minute by the reality of Fukushima.
VT Yankee’s backup batteries are 1/2 of the ones in Japan, VT Yankee’s backup generators are just as prone to flooding. VT Yankee has a direct line to a hydro dam and they say that could never stop working. If there’s another 1927 flood on the CT river, would those dams survive?
What is VT Yankee’s plan for losing the hydro connection after their generators are flooded and their batteries die? They don’t have a plan because ‘that could never happen’, just like they said that what is occurring right now at Fukushima could ‘never happen’!
When VT Yankee starts pumping CT river water into their damaged reactor, where is that water going to go? Right back into the river.
Why can’t nuclear power lover be intellectually honest about the inherent danger of nuclear technology?
Just like the Republican Party could never get elected without lying and cheating, if nuclear engineers and the NRC actually told the truth, nuclear power plants would never be built.
there is no water in the spent fuel pool at Fukushima #4. Fox will be analyzing this momentarily & will be having an expert to discuss it.
They said that we get 70% of our power from nuclear energy!!
Of course they hardly ever give Vermont a passing reference, and probably could barely locate it on the map.