TEPCO CanNOT Handle Fukushima, What Are the SOLUTIONS? Arnie Gundersen & Akio Matsumura

TEPCO CanNOT Handle Fukushima, What Are the SOLUTIONS? Arnie Gundersen & Akio Matsumura
July 18, 2013 | MsMilkytheclown1



In this video, Arnie Gundersen and Akio Matsumura, former Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, discuss the continuing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi site, and come to the conclusion that Tokyo Electric must be removed from the clean-up process. Arnie also discusses his 40 years in the nuclear industry, and how the worst day of that career led him to conclude that a nuclear power plant can have "Forty Good Years and One Bad Day."

Full transcript here:

http://tinyurl.com/mbczkys

Note: I moved the first 4:07 minutes to the Ending.

AM: This is really serious crisis catastrophe, not only for Japan, but the rest of the world. So that's number one. Now since the accident, you also are warning of danger of reactor number 4 which we understand is a huge contaminated water spent fuel in a pool. Now you also recently raised the issue, concern about reactor number 3. Would you kindly explain to me what is your new concern of reactor number 3 compared to reactor number 4?

AG: The condition of the site right now is precarious. As long as there's no earthquake, it'll be okay. But that's a big if where you're sort of counting on an earthquake not occurring in a country that's prone to earthquakes. And by an earthquake, I'm talking about a Richter 7 at or near the site. Now there's three problems with the site right now. The first is the enormous amount of water that's stored on the site in hundreds of tanks. Tokyo Electric isn't letting us know exactly what the radioactive material is in those sites but there's so much radiation in those tanks, we do know that the exposure to people who are outside of the plant boundary is very, very high. That tells us -- there's this phenomenon called Bremsstrahlung and the decay of radioactive material in those tanks is releasing x-rays in very high quantities off site. That means that those tanks are extraordinarily radioactive and if there is an earthquake, none of them are seismically qualified. So we could easily have a situation where 700 tanks spring leaks, it runs across the surface of the site and into the Pacific Ocean. That's more contamination in those tanks than has already been released into the Pacific Ocean.

So number one is an earthquake destroying the tanks and causing them to leak. Number two is the concern I've had for years, which is the structural condition of unit 4. Unit 4's fuel pool has the most fuel and the hottest fuel. It was recently changed out. So a loss of cooling in the unit 4 fuel pool can still lead to a fuel pool fire and contamination of vast amounts of the country. The chance of a fuel pool fire diminishes with time because the fuel becomes cooler. It's not there yet but it is approaching the point where if the pool were to lose water, it's likely that the fuel would not catch on fire. That assumes the fuel stays intact. If the earthquake is significant enough to distort the fuel and cause it to collapse, all bets are off and you can still get heating to the point of creating a fire if the fuel were to break and not be cooled.

But the third thing, Akio, is what you referred to as the unit 3 problem. Unit 3 has less fuel in it than unit 4. That's good. The bad news, though, is that unit 3 is much more severely damaged than unit 4. So if unit 4 could ride out a Richter 7 earthquake, it's likely unit 3 will not. So the risk of a structural failure in unit 3 is higher, although there's somewhat less nuclear fuel in the fuel pool, it still presents in my mind now rapidly becoming the single biggest risk on the site is a structural failure of the unit 3 building because of all the damage from the massive detonation shockwave that hit the building. The magnitude of this problem is huge. It's as if we -- the Japanese should be fighting this as if it were a war. And you don't fight a war on a budget.

And I think that's what's happening in Fukushima. Tokyo Electric has minimal funds and they're doing the best they can with minimal funds. And the Japanese government, it's easier for them to blame the problems on Tokyo Electric rather than face the fact that at the root of this problem is that there's not enough money being spent. So if you're going to solve the biggest industrial accident in history, you're going to need the funds required to do that. And I don't think either party -- Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government -- want the Japanese people to understand just how deeply in debt the Fukushima Daiichi disaster has put them. I think it's about a half a trillion to three quarters of a trillion dollars in debt to clean up the site and to clean up the prefecture....

The first problem is the ground water is continuing to leak into these reactors 400 tons a day.... after the earthquake, the entire Pacific side of Japan dropped by three feet. ... that causes the floor to crack...

Full transcript here:

http://tinyurl.com/mbczkys

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