Commander of U.S. Military Forces in the Pacific On Prospect of Reactors Being Abandoned to Melt Down: ‘That Can’t Happen’
March 18th, 2011Reminder: Voice of America is the official propaganda outlet of the U.S. Government.
Via: Voice of America:
The commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific says he is sending his troops into the danger zone near the Japan’s crippled nuclear power plants as needed, and if necessary he will send more to help prevent a meltdown of the reactors’ fuel and the release of large amounts of harmful radiation.
In a phone call from his headquarters in Hawaii, Admiral Robert Willard told reporters at the Pentagon everything possible must be done to avoid the worst case scenario.
“That would be a situation where the recovery effort to keep the cores covered in these reactors would ever be abandoned. And we believe that that can’t happen, that we must do everything required to keep water and cooling affecting these reactors,” said Willard.
Japanese engineers working in and near the reactors have had difficulty keeping the reactor cores cooled and spent fuel rods covered with water. If they fail in that effort, large amounts of radiation would be released, creating a contamination cloud that could affect millions of people in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
But Admiral Willard says reports he has received indicate the team at the reactors had more success on Thursday and he is “cautiously optimistic” a full meltdown of the nuclear fuel will be avoided. He indicated he will send more forces into the most dangerous area near the reactors to help if necessary.
“We, when necessary, will conduct operations inside that radius, when they’re in support of the Japanese Defense Forces,” he said. “So while U.S. citizens are constrained from operating in there, my forces are not, when they’re needed to conduct humanitarian assistance, disaster response or logistics support to our Japanese friends or to our own forces or any other forces that we happen to be supporting.”
