Humankind’s Most Dangerous Moment: Fukushima Fuel Pool at Unit 4 [View all]

[Junkdrawer]

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

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http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/1985

As Arnie Gundersen has said, TEPCO has taken a bad situation and has consistently made it worse. They are not a professional engineering firm: they are reactor operators trying to clean up a mess they made as cheaply as possible. Time after time the Pros from Dover have told them what to do and they have IGNORED the advice as being too expensive...only to find they have to spend even MORE money to fix up their half-assed solutions.

It's like a bad "Rescue My Renovation" episode with the world's health on the line.