Reply #10: Barriers that safeguard the public

[divvy]

Here are the barriers that safeguard the public. 1) Cladding on the fuel. Large scale fuel failure has occurred at all 3 plants. Radioactive sampling around the plant would confirm this by the types of radiation contamination found. The presence of a lot of hydrogen exploding in buildings is indirect evidence that clad melted. Uncovering th core would cause extensive damage to he core. 2) The reactor vessel. At least 1 plant was reported to have a coolant leak. Another plant may have a stuck open relief valve. 3) the primary containment vessel (drywell) and the valves to isolate it. Primary containment was really lost with the emergency diesels. Nuclear plants have 2 separate and independent emergency A/C systems ( ESS I and II). There are redundant isolation valves in the leak pathes from the primary containment that are powered from each division. Each division is powered from different emergency generators. No A/C power, no primary containment. The containment vessel is there, but it is not leak tight, like it is supposed to be. Valves that should be closed aren't. 4) the secondary containment. This is the reactor building that blew up at 2 Units. That's it! All the barriers to a release are degraded. All these Units are operating way beyond where we can say for certainty what will happen. The core that is uncovered is probably exposing the Operators at the plant to large doses of radiation. I hope they have relief workers that can cycle in and out relieving the on duty crews and prevent lethal doses. We have at least 3 TMI's at the same site. I think it will be worse than TMI, because TMI was able to restore virtually all of their systems once they figured out their human errors. These plants don't seem to be getting their systems back. They need external A/C power. The last gasp is to drain the vessel and flood containment. They need to look at the containment configuration to see if any valve failures would prevent the flooding. They have been putting sea water into the reactor... They would have to switch to filling the containment... And that would require some improvising. Today, government officials are not ruling out anything... Yesterday, everything was under control. These politicians should just let the engineers talk. These plants are in a status we would classify as a General Emergency.