This one goes under the heading “better late than never.”  Tepco is now admitting that the containment buildings may very likely be leaking.  No kidding.

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We are fortunate to have a new video analysis from Arnie Gundersen  examining the implications of the Fukushima crisis for reactors located in the U.S.;  and another excellent informational video in which our own Maggie Gundersen, president and founder of Fairewinds Associates, interviews Marco Kaltofen, of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester Mass.

Mr. Kaltofen is an expert in radiation chemistry and monitoring. He answers some of the questions Fairewinds has been receiving about the nature and pathways of radiation as it spreads, and how exposure can be minimized.

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The Implications of the Fukushima Accident on the World’s Operating Reactors from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Where is all that Fukushima radiation going, and why does it matter? from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Some key points that Arnie raises:



1) Hot water reactors such as those at Fukushima and at Vermont Yankee were not designed to have vents. The vents represent a “bandaid” that was applied later in an attempt to address original design flaws.

2)Those vent systems have been tested in the reactors three times now, courtesy of Fukushima; and three times they failed.  That is a 100% failure rate and strongly suggests those failures can happen here in the U.S. in similar reactors.

3) The NRC admits that despite their insistence that there is no chance of containment failure here in the U.S.,  they don’t have the capacity to effectively evaluate that capacity and have simply abandoned the effort to do so.

4) Failures at Fukushima 1 and the cracked fuel pool at Unit 4 were the result of the earthquake, not the tsunami.  Those systems should have been able to withstand that level of seismic activity. Similarly, in the U.S. nuclear plants are not adequately designed to withstand major seismic loads, and there is no capability to even analyze such capacity.



5) The affected area that has been assumed for emergency planning in the U.S. has now been demonstrated, also courtesy of Fukushima, to be wholly inadequate.  If an accident continues for weeks at a time as at Fukushima, a “meandering” plume of radiation will go on for many, many miles.

Current preparedness is only for a 10-mile radius, the experience at Fukushima suggests that radius should be expanded to 50 miles, which has some serious implications for major metropolises such as Chicago and New York which have huge populations in effective range of reactors that could fail.

6) Clustering nuclear reactors as at Fukushima and at some U.S. locations increases the danger from an accident because such an accident can impede operators’ ability to resolve problems arising at other units.

7)The insurance coverage employed by the industry, the Price Anderson Insurance Program is woefully inadequate.  With an event ceiling of just $10 million in coverage,  the cost of the Fukushima accident alone will come to $200 billion!!

In conclusion, says Arnie, the information coming from the industry, upon which we all have been relying, simply has not been true.

If you can still sleep after watching the first video, I strongly suggest you listen to Maggie’s interview with Mr. Kaltofen.