Fukushima: Tepco Admits That Stabilizing Reactors by Year’s End May Be Impossible
May 30th, 2011Via: Japan Times / Kyodo:
Stabilizing the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant by the end of the year may be impossible, senior officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, throwing a monkey wrench into plans to let evacuees return to their homes near the plant.
The confirmation of core meltdowns hitting reactors 1 through 3, accompanied by breaches to the critical pressure vessels that hold the nuclear fuel, has led officials to believe that “there will be a major delay to work” to contain the situation, one official said.
i would say “Doh!” but this is MUCH more malicious than that. lying and obfuscation is THE MO for TEPCO, NISA and METI.
and the rainy season just kicked off here, almost 2 weeks ahead of the average start date. so, more water flowing in and out of these wrecked, ultra-radioactive structures. the best summary of the situation is: they don’t have a clue on what to do, it’s all just reacting to the next obvious thing going wrong. there is no viable plan to decommission the plant and decontaminate what they have contaminated already, let alone likely future contamination.
The Engineering community is horrified and fascinated by the unfolding Fukishima disaster. I must admit, we are seeing long postulated theories being “field tested” by these reactor disasters. I am ashamed at my own fascination with the technical details. It’s a throwback to Trinity and Beyond. I constantly need to remind myself that so many lives are being destroyed. This weekend, I came to the realization that I may be a very bad man. Sorry, Tochigi. It’s engineers like me that justified inventing bombs so scientists could “study physics”. I must “re-evaluate before returning to launch point.”
Well said, folks. Now what are we gonna do when the US defaults and stiffs China and they get so pissed off that they decide to slither up to the US mainland coasts and suddenly launch…in concert with their friends to the north? I only wish people in the US would take this whole radiation thing seriously and learn how to deal with it BEFORE that happens.