Why did the IAEA cover up the meltdownS at Fukushima?

[robdogbucky]

Everyone should ask themselves, why would the international body charged with overseeing nuclear power worldwide not publish what they were told by this laboratory?

Does this get covered by the "Too many crises to follow, I can't take anymore news," reasoning?

Does anyone care that the foxes appear to be guarding the proverbial hen house?

I got your crisis overload right here:



Fukushima reactor had meltdown 3.5 hours after cooling system collapsed: U.S. researcher

"A meltdown occurred at one of the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant three and a half hours after its cooling system started malfunctioning, according to the result of a simulation using "severe accident" analyzing software developed by the Idaho National Laboratory.

Chris Allison, who had actually developed the analysis and simulation software, reported the result to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late March. It was only May 15 when Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) admitted for the first time that a meltdown had occurred at the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

According to Allison's report obtained by the Mainichi, the simulation was based on basic data on light-water nuclear reactors at the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Mexico that are about the same size as that of the No. 1, 2, and 3 reactors in Fukushima.

According to the simulation, the reactor core started melting about 50 minutes after the emergency core cooling system of the No. 1 reactor stopped functioning and the injection of water into the reactor pressure vessel came to a halt. About an hour and 20 minutes later, the control rod and pipes used to gauge neutrons started melting and falling onto the bottom of the pressure vessel. After about three hours and 20 minutes, most of the melted fuel had piled up on the bottom of the pressure vessel. At the four hour and 20 minute mark, the temperature of the bottom of the pressure vessel had risen to 1,642 degrees Celsius, close to the melting point for the stainless steel lining, probably damaging the pressure vessel..."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110523p2a00m0na019000c.html



"...reported the result to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late March. It was only May 15 when Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) admitted for the first time..."


I'm confused now, because the article continues and asserts that TEPCO abandoned the idea of filling #1 with water when it "discovered," a meltdown had occurred. When did they know that again? I thought they had been continually, up until now, been trying to fill and keep filled those reactors with water.


I feel real safe :sarcasm:

Can any of the shills explain the reasoning of this?



Does this all add up?


TEPCO says it continued seawater injection at reactor without interruption

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday it had continued injecting seawater into its No. 1 reactor at its crisis-stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture, reversing its earlier story that it had suspended the work after receiving information that the prime minister's office was concerned about it.

The utility, known as TEPCO, said it learned of the move after questioning the head of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, who told company officials this week that he had gone ahead in continuing seawater injection into the No. 1 reactor despite the firm's decision to suspend the work.

TEPCO had earlier said it began injecting seawater to cool nuclear fuel inside the reactor on the evening of March 12, one day after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, but that it suspended the work 21 minutes later before resuming it another 55 minutes afterward.

A crisis management office consisting of government and TEPCO officials had said the initial injection was suspended after the prime minister's office conveyed its concern that seawater injection could cause fuel rods to resume fission, a phenomenon otherwise called "recriticality." The work was resumed after Prime Minister Naoto Kan gave a directive for the seawater injection, according to the office...

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110526p2g00m0dm079000c.html


Now hold on. Who's Zooming Who here?


"...reversing its earlier story..."

"...continuing seawater injection into the No. 1 reactor despite the firm's decision to suspend the work..."


Doesn't anyone else care at all?


Thank dog the Keysone Cops have things under control. We are supposed to believe anything TEPCO, IAEA, government of Japan says at this point?


TEPCO = Fucking Weasels

IAEA = Not much better



rdb

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I got no answer to this in the last thread about this, so I'll try again:

Public told March 14th

Nuclear rods melting inside three Fukushima reactors, Japan admits

The country’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said that although staff at the nuclear facility – where two containment buildings have been destroyed by hydrogen explosions – were unable to check for certain, it was “highly likely” that the nuclear cores at reactors, 1 2 and 3 at Fukushima I nuclear station had begun to melt.

Reuters had earlier reported that the cooling mixture of seawater and boron in the number 2 reactor had totally evaporated, with the reactor’s nuclear rods therefore totally exposed for a significant period of time.

The plant operator TEPCO had earlier said it couldn’t rule out the possibility of a nuclear meltdown in the reactor – and had admitted that a partial meltdown could already be underway.

TEPCO had previously said it believed a partial meltdown had occurred at the number 1 reactor, where a hydrogen explosion occurred at a containment building on Saturday, but retracted reports that a similar meltdown had occurred following another hydrogen blast today at the number 3 reactor.

http://www.thejournal.ie/nuclear-rods-melting-inside-three-fukushima-reactors-japan-admits-2011-03/

So, why is being told that a simulation, run after March 14th when the Japanese government said the assumption is that the cores melted in all 3 reactors, anything bad about the IAEA?

[robdogbucky]

5. I guess I'm saying they all knew but said nothing for so long

I'm trying to figure out why, after they had the information, they did not make it known:


"...I decided to report the facts because of a probe conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and because various international appraisals are forthcoming," Yoshida was quoted by a TEPCO official as telling the company.

While defending Yoshida's decision to continue injecting seawater as "technically reasonable," TEPCO's Vice President Sakae Muto said at a news conference that his company is considering punishing Yoshida for not promptly reporting the facts.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano criticized TEPCO for the latest turn of events, telling a separate news conference, "The public will harbor mistrust unless facts are reported accurately."

Seawater injection was deemed necessary to cool fuel inside the reactor after the injection of fresh water stopped in the aftermath of the quake and tsunami, which knocked out key cooling systems at the plant..."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110526p2g00m0dm079000c.html


As I recall everyone associated with the utility, the government and all the shills never admitted that meltdowns had occured until long after the fact. After all the non-government/industry spokespersons denied this and assured all that everything was hunky-dory over there. I mean I could go back and re-construct the last 2+ months of disinformation but I don't have the time. I merely report what the press reported, as in this Mainichi article of yesterday.

In other words, the IAEA knew in late March that there was a meltdown. The IAEA informs all of its member states of important nuclear developments.

Government agencies sat on this information, and the world didn't learn the truth until the operator of the stricken reactors itself made the announcement a month and a half later.


rdb

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. And yet, I've shown they were publicly assuming a meltdown had occurred

by postign a typical news story from March 14th. Your recall seems faulty, doesn't it?

Here, try a typical DU thread - March 12th:

Meltdown Caused Nuke Plant Explosion: Safety Body (Nekkei.com)


http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110312D12JFF03.htm

TOKYO (Nikkei)--The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Saturday afternoon the explosion at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core.

The same day, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), which runs the plant, began to flood the damaged reactor with seawater to cool it down, resorting to measures that could rust the reactor and force the utility to scrap it.

Cesium and iodine, by-products of nuclear fission, were detected around the plant, which would make the explosion the worst accident in the roughly 50-year history of Japanese nuclear power generation.

An explosion was heard near the plant's No. 1 reactor about 3:30 p.m. and plumes of white smoke went up 10 minutes later. The ceiling of the building housing the reactor collapsed, according to information obtained by Fukushima prefectural authorities.

<more>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=278026

Your link just above doesn't have anything at all to say about a meltdown. It's about when water was pumped in.

So, apart from an American complaining that no-one acknowledged his simulation he did a bit later, where is the sitting on information?

[jberryhill]

9. A lot of it is different cognitive styles

A scientific body is typically not going to confirm a fact until there is an adequate level of confidence in that fact.

The point about the simulation providing after-the-fact confirmation does jump out of the OP, rendering the situation relatively clear.

So it would seem that, at the time, they weren't claiming a meltdown because they didn't know, and now they do.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. But a simulation didn't let them *know*

Yes, they *know* now, because of evidence at the plant. The guy running the simulation (based on another reactor) just told them what they'd already said - a meltdown probably happened.

[jberryhill]

13. The point being

....that everybody defines their threshold of confidence in any proposition.

"Looks like dog shit... Smells like dog shit... Tastes like dog shit... Hmmm, it must be dog shit."

But, yeah, I love the assertion that the IAEA was saying "everything was hunky-dory".

[kristopher]

15. I think this thread is more typical of the content on DU at that time

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x622018

There was an extremely strong presence here that was engaged in damage control and trying to manage public opinion. IMO this is almost certainly a result of a nuclear industry created crisis response network that has recruited and trained thousands of nuclear industry employees specifically as a mechanism to influence public opinion in the event accidents involving nuclear power find their way into the headlines.

Using benign terminology I'll say that the industry recruits from this employee pool on the assumption that their technical expertise will serve to inform the public of the real risks as defined by and perceived within the industry.

These individuals undergo some training in public outreach organized by and conducted under the auspices of trade groups and professional associations connected with the industry, but they are not specialists by any stretch of the imagination. When they actually encounter public opinion that threatens their world-view, they soon feel justified in using social tactics like ridicule and bullying instead of adhering to the role of impartial technical adviser that was used to justify creation of the network. Their goal becomes, quite simply, to shut down public inquiry rather than to inform it.

The consequence looks to me be one that takes a confusing situation and makes it worse by obfuscating bad information, thereby obscuring what the actual developing trend of known facts actually is.

[enough]

2. That is the question.

I recced this, but it added up to zero recs.

[robdogbucky]

3. I really don' know whether or not to believe anything they are saying anymore

TEPCO fears leaks after level of contaminated water in disposal facility drops

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said on May 26 that it had discovered a drop in the level of contaminated water kept in the basement of a building near troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, but the utility said the possibility was low of the toxic water leaking out of the facility.

TEPCO, the operator of the crippled nuclear power plant, said the level of contaminated water kept in the basement of a building within the central waste disposal facility near the crippled nuclear reactors had dropped by about five centimeters in one day. The water was transported to the building from the No. 3 nuclear reactor. TEPCO said its analysis showed no change in ground water on the premises, and therefore it said, "The possibility is low of the water leaking out of the facility."

The contaminated water in the No. 3 reactor had been transported to the building in the waste disposal facility since May 17, but TEPCO stopped transferring the water to the building because the volume of the water approached the building's capacity soon after 9 a.m. on May 25.

The water level dropped about 48 millimeters during the period between 11 a.m. on May 25 and 7 a.m. on May 26. The quantity of the water is believed to be about 50 cubic meters. TEPCO said, "It is possible that the water is leaking from part of the second basement of the building that is not fully watertight into the access way to another building..."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110526p2a00m0na014000c.html


The most chilling part of the aboves is: "It is possible that the water is leaking...not fully watertight..."

Who or what do we believe? Tell me this is over? Get real. They don't know what they are doing.



Not to mention the heat generated:

"Also Thursday, TEPCO said fuel inside the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors at the plant is expected to continue producing total heat equivalent to roughly 3,000 kilowatts of thermal output even six months after the quake.

The operator estimates that each of the three reactors produced between 1,000 and 2,000 kilowatts of heat on May 20, indicating the need to swiftly establish a stable cooling system to bring them into a stable condition called "cold shutdown."

Even if reactors are suspended, nuclear fuel inside them continues to emit heat as radioactive elements decay, and the rate at which the level of heat decreases becomes more gradual over time."

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110526p2g00m0dm079000c.html

[NNN0LHI]

4. They were just repeating what Tepco told them to say

Because they were too scared to go near the place themselves to actually find out what was going on.

I still don't think the IAEA has found anyone brave stupid enough to go there for an on site inspection.

Don

[ChicagoRonin]

6. Ignorance and cover-your-ass-ism

I think there might be no mystery. The situation is exactly as it appears: TEPCO did not and does not know what is happening and what is going on. So, they're trying to cover their ass by minimizing the news, being enabled by both the Japanese government, industry organizations and international monitoring groups. No one in authority at any part of the chain wants to admit that they don't know what to do. How can they? Although there have been past nuclear accidents, there has never been one exactly like this before. And it appears that all emergency measures (the few that there are) taken were constructed based on best-case scenarios and Hail Mary passes. This is what happens when you monkey with an energy source whose poisonous by-product no one knows how to properly process, dispose or even easily detect.

[leveymg]

7. Don't panic, be quiet, keep a straight line, walk calmly through those doors . . . ignore what you

see inside . . ."

That seems to be the message we've been getting from all the official sources.

"Doors closing, stay clear of the doors."

What happened to all the folks who were telling us everything is okay, containment will hold, nothing to worry about, and we didn't know what we were talking about?

[robdogbucky]

10. File this in the "Not as bad as Chernobly," box bandied by the shills:

Is Fukushima now ten Chernobyls into the sea?
May 26, 2011
Harvey Wasserman


"New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl.

"When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl."

The news comes amidst a tsunami of devastating revelations about the Fukushima disaster and the crumbling future of atomic power, along with a critical Senate funding vote today:

Fukushima's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has confirmed that fuel at Unit One melted BEFORE the arrival of the March 11 tsunami..."

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2011/1888



What was that about not as bad as Chernobyl again?


Crap

[izquierdista]

11. You're expecting FAR too much from the IAEA

It's like expecting great-grandma to babysit while the toddlers go swimming. The IAEA is only a consensus making body with no real authority. Anything that they do is based on a request from their members to check something out. Remember them scouring Iraq for traces of WMDs? And then Dubya telling them they've wasted enough time, get the fuck out so we can bomb the place? They went in and came out based on requests by the US. When they didn't find what George wanted them to find, and he couldn't get the consensus from them to attack Iraq, they quit being useful.

They are the Rodney Dangerfield of the international community. If TEPCO sends them some clearly erroneous data, they pretty much just put it out for everyone to see with the comment "this might need to be looked at again". Don't get me wrong, they clearly have smart people working for them, but like a lot of subject matter experts, they tend to get ignored.

[jberryhill]

14. Not only that, but they charge so much for furniture you put together yourself!

[flamingdem]

16. To me it is CLEAR, all parties are working to control the terrible image of this

and this includes the trip Hillary made to visit Japan which lead to the ending of the EPA testing of milk and air related to the Fukushima disaster. The timing was exact, an announcement was made to make it quarterly right after her visit.

This matches up with the statements by the Japanese that they wanted to control the news and all the other actions that show they put their economy and reputation over health.

Save face, but kill children. How nice.