Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Peter Lemkin]

More and slightly greater detailed information was just released....one reactor has had at least 75 of its nuclear core melted; two reactors are breached [containment broken open to environment]; Reactors 5 and 6 are up to 85C and by tomorrow should be about to explode [as have all the others due to hydrogen explosions due to heat and catalysis of the zirconium oxide casing on the fuel rods with water. The skeleton crew was brought back and no water is being put on the fires [one reactor is burning] and no water is currently being pumped into the reactors to cool them...so they will all get hotter and more dangerous. They are pinning their hopes now on a high-voltage line they are building to the plant in the hopes of starting up the pumps again......sounds like wishful thinking to me......I give it little chance of success, even if completed in time. So, each and ever reactor has degraded since yesterday......and it won't be many days more before it will be time to evacuate all and kiss thousands a fond farewell, with hundreds of thousands having increased cancers and other diseases, malformed children, etc. Very sad. Not one bit of good news on the topic can be found.....sorry.

[Peter Lemkin]

Red Alert in Japan: An Unfolding Nuclear Catastrophe
Submitted by Stephen Lendman on Wed, 2011-03-16 09:06 Environment

Red Alert in Japan: An Unfolding Nuclear Catastrophe - by Stephen Lendman

Since March 12, a potentially unprecedented catastrophe has been unfolding in Japan, despite official denials and corroborating media reports - managed, not real news. Believe none of them. Nonetheless, on March 15, Reuters suggested what's ongoing, headlining: "Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe," saying:

"Japan faced potential catastrophe on Tuesday" after a fourth Fukushima reactor explosion, fire, and high-level radiation release, posing grave human health risks to an expanding area, including Toyko's 20 million population 170 miles south.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority rated the disaster a six on the international seven-point nuclear accident scale. Clearly, it's the worst ever. Europe's energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger called it an "apocalypse," telling the European Parliament that Toyko lost control of events.

Independent experts agree. It's an unprecedented disaster spreading globally. All six Fukushima reactors are crippled, four of them spewing unknown amounts of radiation.

On March 15, city officials said levels were 20 times above normal, later stating they'd dropped, downplaying the risk. Government authorities also claimed Fukushima levels were falling. For residents throughout the country, believing them is hazardous to their health, given the gravity of the situation, likely deteriorating, not improving.

In Maebashi, 60 miles north of Tokyo and Chiba prefecture further south, Kyodo News reported radiation levels 10 times normal, perhaps downplaying much higher ones. Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan was alarmed, saying "(t)he possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening," meaning very likely it reached extremely hazardous levels. Earlier official reports downplayed the danger.

According to Hokkaido University Professor Koji Yamazaki, "Radioactive material will reach Tokyo but it is not harmful to human bodies because it will be dissipated by the time it gets" there.

False! Any amount of radiation is harmful. Moreover, it's cumulative, causing cancer if one human gene is affected. Depending on the type and amount, it damages chromosomes and DNA. In her landmark book, "Nuclear Madness," Helen Caldicott said:

"Lower doses of radiation can cause abnormalities of the immune system and can also cause leukemia five to ten years after exposure; (other) cancer(s), twelve to sixty years later; and genetic diseases and congenital anomalies in future generations."

Moreover, "nuclear radiation is forever," says Caldicott. It doesn't dissipate or disappear. Downplaying its danger is hypocritical and outrageous. For a scientist like Yamazaki, it's scandalous.

In 1953, Nobel laureate George Wald told students (including this writer) that "no amount of radiation is safe," explaining that "Every dose is an overdose."

Radiation is unforgiving. Exposure to elevated levels for short periods is harmful. If longer, cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses may develop. It's why using nuclear reactors to generate power is irresponsible, in fact, crazy.

On March 15, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, David Sanger and Keith Bradsher headlined, "Fire and Damage at Japanese Plant Raise Risk of Nuclear Disaster," saying:

Fukushima's operator Toyko Electric Power (TEPCO), a notorious industry scofflaw, "expressed extreme concern that (they) were close to losing control over the fuel melting that has been ongoing in three (Daiichi) reactors...." After Unit 2 exploded, "pressure had dropped in the 'suppression pool" - a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected."

Afterward, radiation levels soared. According to Hiroaki Koide, senior reactor engineering specialist at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute:

"We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released."

Moreover, a plant official said breaching would make it hard to impossible to maintain emergency seawater cooling for an extended period, and if workers are evacuated, "nuclear fuel in all three reactors (will likely) melt down," causing "wholesale releases of radioactive material...."

Further, already over 200 magnitude five or greater aftershocks have occurred, and authorities warned of a 70% chance of a magnitude seven or greater one in days, perhaps making a bad situation much worse. In addition, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said previous radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts - 1,000 times stronger. Earlier he said the situation isn't similar to Chernobyl. In fact, potentially it's far graver, unprecedented.

Nuclear experts also explained that even without a full meltdown (perhaps ongoing), today's emergency will last a year or longer because of problems cooling the affected cores. As a result, long-term evacuations will be necessary. Already, nearly 500,000 people are affected, a total likely to grow, besides vast destruction, spreading contamination, growing threat to human health, and tens of thousands still missing, by now presumed dead, though not reported.

"Red Alert: Radiation Rising and Heading South in Japan"

On March 15, Stratfor Global Intelligence headlined that danger, saying:

After more explosions and risk of one or more full meltdowns (perhaps ongoing though unreported), "(t)he nuclear reactor situation in Japan had deteriorated significantly." Even Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Fukushima's No. 2 reactor radiation level rose 163-fold in three hours. At No. 3, it was 400-fold.

Muted Japanese media report rising radiation levels south and southwest, already reaching Tokyo and numerous prefectures. "The government says radiation levels have reached levels hazardous to human health," omitting that any level causes harm.

Reports "suggest a dramatic worsening as well as a wider spread than at any time since the emergency began." All Japan and the Pacific rim are threatened. "The situation at the (affected) facility is uncertain, but clearly deteriorating." How gravely, the fullness of time will determine.

A Final Comment

On March 12, nuclear expert Mark Grossman headlined, "Hydrogen, Zirconium, Flashbulbs - and Nuclear Craziness," saying:

Coolant loss causes hydrogen gas eruptions "because of a highly volatile substance called zirconium," chosen "in the 1940's and 50's" to build nuclear plants, "as the material (for) rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded."

Each plant has "30,000 to 40,000 rods - composed of twenty tones of zirconium." It alone works well, allowing "neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained."

But not without "a huge problem...." Zirconium "is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam." With tons used in nuclear plants, in "a compound called 'zircaloy,' it "clads tens of thousands of fuel rods."

Any interruption of coolant builds quickly. However, because of zirconium's explosive power, the equivalent of nitroglycerine, it catches fire and explodes "at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown."

Before it happens, it can cause hydrogen explosions "by drawing oxygen from water and steam letting it off," what happened at Fukushima. They, in turn, create more heat, "bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level," what may, in fact, have happened, perhaps bad enough to cause a full meltdown.

Using tons of explosive material like zirconium is "absolutely crazy." Doing it makes every nuclear plant a ticking time bomb, vulnerable to explode, spewing lethal poisons into the atmosphere.

[Peter Lemkin]

It is a total ROUT! The helicopters yesterday morning were especially lined with lead and the crew wearing radiation suits, but the radiation was too high for them to hit their targets [get close enough]...so it was abandoned. For two days they have tried to move in water cannons, but they now admit that the ground they'd have to cover is too radioactive for anyone but a robot to work in...and no such robot exists. It is now released that three [they had been saying one] reactors spent fuel rod pools are uncovered [and contain NO water]...... Spent fuel rods are MORE radioactive than the 'new' fuel rods in the reactor proper!!!...and more dangerous and more apt to overheat and meltdown. At least three reactors are cracked and one seems to have had its bottom melted through by molten nuclear fuel [which will slowly heat up to 5000C...at which time NOTHING [absolutely nothing!] can stop it...and it will melt down into the Earths Mantle [through the crust of the Earth like a hot knife through butter!]. While [a bit late] the head of the IAEA is coming today, as are some American Nuclear Experts, I think - I'm sorry to say - it is all too late now..... this is a catastrophe now and the only unknown is how bad.....I believe they will raise the level to 7 [the highest and worst] on the international scale. I presume they will soon increase the exclusion zone to 50 or more Km....but even that is useless, the winds will bring it to all Japan and, in fact, the whole World. The only question is how much - due to a variety of scenarios that can play out...but humans will not be making the decisions - Nature will. I see it as 'Blowback' - a term usually used for things deep political - but here hubris over Nature.

The ONLY card they now have to play [short of evacuating the Planet] is their fight to bring in new electric lines....which should have been done from the start - BUT I rather doubt that the motors are working; the pipes are intact and that the last connections are even possible, due to the high radiation - now at levels that can make a person weaken in a matter of hours or minutes [they are NOT telling the correct levels and may not even know - the main meters were blown up in the hydrogen explosions!]....although very simple hand-held or robot moved meters exist - so the fact they are not fully telling is 'telling'. If, as in the article just above, they have been calling milli-Seiverts micro-Seiverts, then they have been purposely lying about the levels of radiation by a factor of 1,000! Stunning, if true! Anyway you 'slice' it, it is now a disaster of epic proportions and will go down in radioactive books alongside Three Mile Island; but closer to Chernobyl, I fear.

[Magda Hassan]

The nuclear industry seem to be pulling out all the stops to push their toxic wares in the third world. Indonesia has said that they are still going ahead with their 4 reactors, also on a known earthquake fault line. And in Chile the government there has said that because they will generate billions of dollars they must go ahead 'for the good of the nation' for the poor and orphans etc. Chile as you may remember from recent events is also on a known fault line.......

Grand idiots are in charge of the world and I fear for our collective safety. I hope they are all removed asap.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yeah, Grand Idiot is a must on the CV of any leader - corporate or governmental, etc.

They are so desperate now, I just heard they have asked old retired nuclear plant workers to come back to work [with large monetary incentive] immediately - the 'theory' being that they will die of natural causes soon, and not from the high radiation, as will all the younger workers. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.... They are now making people into Nuclear Kamokazis!

[Peter Lemkin]

They have despite the high radiation near the plant [I would imagine VERY VERY high!] brought in some riot-water trucks to try to pump sea water through them and shoot streams into the reactor holding tanks [open to the sky now, after the hydrogen explosions].....those workers doing that are both brave and not very likely to live long lives. I wish them luck....but this does NOT deal with the reactor containment vessels below [the spent fuel storage is above the reactor containments], which are heating up, 3 of six having failed [cracked open, or worse], the other three at risk in the next hours or days. Radiation levels in and near the reactor site is now SO high, that workers are being allowed to only work for short periods of time [being kept secret] and then rotated by others - those exposed not allowed to try again for a few minutes to hours for several days.....if the radiation levels go up [likely], it will really be a 'commitment' to even enter and work for a short period of time.....at high levels nausea and weakness can happen in hours or even minutes; at the highest levels death occurs in minutes.

......it is like a 'B' horror story by a bad and overly dramatic writer. Godzilla meets the Nuke.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZALEZ: Japan's nuclear crisis is intensifying. A second reactor unit at the damaged Fukushima plant may have ruptured and appears to be releasing radioactive steam. According to the New York Times, it is not clear how serious the breach may be, but the vessel that possibly ruptured is the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material.

The plant has been hit by several explosions after a devastating earthquake and tsunami last Friday damaged its cooling functions. It has sent low levels of radiation wafting into Tokyo more than 130 miles away.

The radiation levels around the plant are so high that Japanese authorities abandoned a plan on Wednesday to dump water from military helicopters in an attempt to cool the reactors. The plan was made after the company operating the reactors withdrew at least 750 workers, leaving a crew of 50 struggling to lower temperatures. And even those workers were briefly moved to a bunker because of a rise in radiation levels.

Meanwhile, Japanese Emperor Akihito made an extremely rare appearance on live TV to say he is deeply worried about the situation and is praying for the people.

The nuclear crisis has sparked international alarm. France is urging its citizens in Tokyo to move further south or to leave the country. Australia is also advising its citizens to consider leaving the capital, and Turkey has warned against travel to Japan.

We go now to Japan, where we are joined by Philip White of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo. We're also joined in Washington, D.C., by Peter Bradford, a former commissioner at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let's go first to Philip White in Tokyo. Can you tell us what's the latest, from what you can tell?

PHILIP WHITE: You seem to have covered it fairly well, but certainly, at least three plants have had a significant amount of melting fuel. And certainly one has breachedthe containment has been breached. And the question is whether that has also happened in reactor three. And the fourth reactor, which was actuallyhad actually gone into awhat do you call it?a periodic inspection at the time the earthquake struck, so it was supposed to be stable, thatbecause of loss of off-site power, loss of power supply, and inability to cool the spent fuel pool, that spent fuel pool has now gone up into flames and smoke has come out and breached the roof, and a large amount of radioactivity has spewed into the sky. So, that's a general summary ofas far as the reactors are concerned.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And this issue of the breach in one of the reactorsand there were conflicting reports last night here in terms of whether all the workers had been pulled out. They had been pulled back to a bunker. The importance of keeping workers there at the site to keep thoseall of the reactors there, the six reactors, under control?

PHILIP WHITE: Well, that's right. I mean, if they're not being cooledand you need water to cool them, and there's not powernormal power supply to provide that water, then somehow or other you've got to have some people in there ensuring that the water supply is provided in some way or another, and were supplying it from the sea. I guess they were pumping it up in some way. And that required human beings to be involved. And if those people are pulled out, then I guess it just goes into naturalwhatever escalation or whatever there is. And it's hard to imagine how it will stop, because there are spent fuel pools in all six of the reactors.

And certainly, the first three reactors, which were operating when the earthquake struck, have very hot fuel loads inside of them. So it's a massive amount of radioactivity. If you just consider the quantity of radioactivity that's in all those reactors, it far exceeds what was in Chernobyl, because that was just a single reactor. The question is, how far does it get spewed out into the environment? But even if it doesn't get spewed out, it's sort of still sitting there, dribbling away or whatever, and it's leaving a totally contaminated site.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined also by Peter Bradford, who was a commissioner on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Welcome to Democracy Now!

PETER BRADFORD: Thank you.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. Bradford, can you tell us, in terms of being able to, in real time, as folks who are dealing with this crisis, have an accurate handle of what is actually happening in those reactorsin your own experience during the time of Three Mile Island, can you talk about the difficulty officials have in knowing exactly what is going on?

PETER BRADFORD: It's extremely difficult. And, in fact, it's impossible to know exactly what's going on. The barriers to accurate information flow are very large, to start with, especially given the chaos resulting from the tsunami and the earthquake. On top of that, a lot of the monitoring equipment, the transmitting equipment, has probably been damaged. The people who are at the site, trying to deal with things that they've never seen and never been trained to deal with, have very little time to spend communicating and discussing with the outside world. And so, whenever one hears assertions made with a high degree of confidence, it's important to remember that the unknowable just can't be stated with certainty. The figures regarding radiation emissions are subject to all the inaccuracies of monitoring, plus the predilection of the government not to want to create panic. The situation in the reactor itself is infinitely complicated by the fact that this is not a situation that has been trained for and analyzed. So, there are no manuals that people not on the site can consult in order to figure out what's going on and what will happen next.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We're also joined by Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor, Beijing bureau chief, who's been reporting on the ground from Sendai, the city closest to the epicenter of last Friday's earthquake. Peter, what is your sense ofand especially in the northern part of the country, which is still in the midst of trying to deal with the devastating earthquake and tsunami, what iswhat are people feeling as they're hearing these reports of what is going on in the nuclear reactors?

PETER FORD: Well, it's just one more thing to worry about. But it's not, at the moment, the most immediate concern for the people who are in shelters or trying to find shelters or looking for food or gas or water, all of which are in very, very short supply up here. The situation complicated and made even more miserable by the fact that today it started snowing, and temperatures are close to zero. But, of course, in the back of everybody's minds, and on the front ofand on their television screens are all the images of what's happening in the reactor and all the uncertainties that Mr. Bradford talked about. And as you said, this is really unknowable. Nobody really knows what to think up here.

At least for the time being, the wind is blowing southeast, away from here, so there is no immediate danger of any radiation that might leak contaminating people up here. But, of course, winds can change, and the radiation levels, which, as the government says at the moment, are not an immediate hazard to human health outside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, those radiation levels could rise if things go wrong. And it certainly seems, from what we've seen todaythe failed effort, for example, to send a helicopter in to drop water onto one of the reactors to cool it, because the radiation levels directly above the reactor are too highit certainly seems that, from what we've seen today, the situation is far from being under control.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the government being able to continue the rescue of those directly affected, whose homes were destroyed, and, as you say, supplying these basic necessitieswe've heard of 100,000 of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces being mobilizedhow efficient has that effort been, from what you can tell?

PETER FORD: Well, it's certainly not been efficient enough, almost by the government's own admission. They asked today that private businesses start helping to distribute food, as well, to people. But most people are in shelters. There are, I think, still a hundred, perhaps more than that, people who are still cut off in the most remote villages in the areas that were affected by the tsunami, but there are 400,000more than 400,000people in shelters now, between those who were evacuated from villages that have been destroyed, towns that have been destroyed, and those who have been moved out of the exclusion zone around the Fukushima power plant. Now, that's an awful lot of people to look after. Not all of them are being fed and watered and sheltered and kept as warm as they might like, but most of them are at least tolerably comfortable. But this is an enormous task. And the government is going to need help from private forces, as well, to try and meet it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask Philip Whiteyou're familiar with the record of Tokyo Electric, the main operator of these plants, and there have been reports in recent days of an increasing rift or conflict between the government and the officials of Tokyo Electric. At one point, the Prime Minister was overheard saying, "What the hell is going on? Why haven't you given us certain information?" Your sense of the history of Tokyo Electric in handling problems at its plants?

PHILIP WHITE: [inaudible] is basically wired to conceal things. It doesn't want to give information. We, as an organization that deals with TEPCO directly in negotiations, particularly since the Kashiwazaki-Kariwathe earthquake that hit that plant three years ago, and you have to extract information as you extract hen's teeth. They had a massive scandal about 10 yearsnearly 10 years ago, in which they concealed cracking within a certain piece of equipment, some equipment in their reactors, and that led to them having been forced to shut down all 17 of their reactors. Since then, they have been under tremendous pressure to improve their performance. And to some extent, they have. But it's really a fight all the way to get them to change their natural nature, as it were.

In this case, as II mean, I've been doing lots of interviews and things, so I actually missed many of the press conferences that go on, but the ones that I've heard, I mean, what I would notice, firstly, they give very technical reports that no layperson could possibly understand. Then you get an interpreter from the television station telling you what that all meant. And that information, itself, has probably been accurate, butI assume; we might find that otherwise laterbut it has the problem that they haven't given real-time data on things. And our scientists and engineers have been calling for real-time, much more detailed information, not only on things like the radiation levels, but also on the temperatures of the reactor and the pressure levels and all that sort of technical detail, to help them analyze the situation.

And as for theboth TEPCO and the government, I suppose, are involved in thisbut presentation of the risks associated with this radiation, there's been downplaying of the risks. Now, Mr. Bradford talked about avoiding panic, and that's a real issue, and I don't think you should present information in a way that's going to cause panic, because that will make it much harder to handle the situation. But I think that they have not been frank about the risks with the radiation.

In particular, they have repeatedly said that belowthis is a technical figure, but below a dose of 100 millisievert, there is no risk. Sometimes they qualify it by saying there's no immediate risk, which is perhaps technically accurate. But they have completely refused to point out that these lower levels of radiation are scientifically recognizedthere's maybe some debatebut basically, the consensus is that there'syour risk is proportional to your dose. And that goes right down, you know, right down to the lowest doses. So, this notion that you're somehow or other safe below 100 millisieverts isit's not recognized in the scientific community. The difference is that there's noyou're not going to get acute radiation sickness; you're looking more at long-term effects, such as cancer. But they have just refused to give that perspective, whichyou know, that's getting to the point of being outright deceptive, I think.

And today, for the first time, I heard a spokesman of theand the TV station is involved in this, too. The NHK, the national broadcaster, I heard the person who had been putting forward that view and supporting the view of the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the first time, I heard him actually say that there was this risk from lower doses. But you could see that that was in response to ourorganizations like minesaying, "This is inaccurate. You can't go out and say this." Yeah, [inaudible].

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Peter Bradford, former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, you said that it's clearlythere's not enough accurate information to be able to give a sense of whathow this will develop. But can you talk about a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario, given what we know now, as to how this might end up?

PETER BRADFORD: I have no idea what the worst-case scenario is. It would involve a breach of one or more of the containments in such a way that the radiation was released in a way that propelled it up and out into the atmosphere. But at that point, the direction of the wind still makes a big difference in terms of the consequences.

The best-case scenario at this point is not a good one, not a good one for the public, not a good one for the nuclear industry. There is not going to be a happy ending to this story.

But let me also say, on this question of TEPCO's corporate character, you know, we had that problem with the licensee at Three Mile Island also, in terms of whether the information was accurate, whether there had been falsification of some relevant records beforehand. And it will be important, in the context of subsequent investigations. Right now, my sense is that if TEPCO's people were replaced by a band of angels, they still could not give very accurate information with regard to what's going on within the damaged reactors, because much of the area is inaccessible, a lot of the equipment is disabled, and there are no manuals that describe this situation. So, the problem of inaccurate information has moved past the point at which TEPCO's corporate character is the driving factor.

As to off-site measurements, both as to emissions levels and as to health effects, it's certainly true that the conservative assumption that most regulators, public health officials go by is that the risk is proportional to the dose. Much of the measurement is probably not being done by TEPCO at this point. Certainly at Three Mile Island, the off-site measurements done by helicopters in the air were being done by various government agencies, state and federal. And the disagreements over the amounts released, the dosages received, are going on to this day. So, when you hear a particular number stated with great confidence, you have to put very large uncertainty bands on it in the context of what's happening in Japan now.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Peter Bradford, in terms of thesome of the statements from the nuclear industry that this could not happen here in the United States, obviously as the Obama administration and others in Congress are seeking to ramp up the development of nuclear plants here in the United States, your response?

PETER BRADFORD: Well, the statement, "This could not happen here," has a troubled history in the nuclear industry. The Soviet Union came to Three Mile Island and said that accident can't happen in the Soviet Union. And of course they got Chernobyl. The Japanese, among others, went to Chernobyl and said, "Oh, we don't have that kind of reactor in Japan," so now they have this. I mean, of course it's true that particular nuclear accidents are somewhere between unlikely and simply will not repeat themselves from one decade to the next, but the underlying problem of regulators and plant builders, plant operators, deeming certain events to be impossible and therefore not something that has to be designed against and guarded against, it does seem to have a way of recurring at long intervals and rarely, thank heavens. But if you see the sentence "This cannot happen here" in that context, you ought not to believe it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I want to thank all of our guests: Peter Bradford, formerly of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Peter Ford, a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor, who is in Sendai; and Philip White of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo.

[Magda Hassan]

Yeah, Grand Idiot is a must on the CV of any leader - corporate or governmental, etc.

They are so desperate now, I just heard they have asked old retired nuclear plant workers to come back to work [with large monetary incentive] immediately - the 'theory' being that they will die of natural causes soon, and not from the high radiation, as will all the younger workers. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.... They are now making people into Nuclear Kamokazis!

It is the shareholders and managers and the people responsible for building this insane death emitting clusterfuck who should be there cleaning up. Give them a radiation proof suit and 'Nuclear Catastrophe Clean Up for Idiots' instruction book and drop them in the zone and let them go for it. There are limits to company loyalty.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZALEZ: Japanese authorities have begun using military helicopters and water cannon to dump water on the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in an attempt to help cool the plant's reactors and spent fuel rods. But fears of a full-scale nuclear meltdown are increasing as the initial attempts appear to have failed. Water dropped from the helicopters blew off course, and the water from the cannon has failed to reach its target.

There appears to be growing division between Japan and the United States on the severity of the nuclear crisis. On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, warned that water in the spent fuel pool at one of the plant's six nuclear reactors had boiled away entirely, leaving extremely high radiation levels. Japan disputed his account.

Meanwhile, the United States has urged all Americans living within 50 miles of the plant to evacuate. So far Japan has only issued evacuation orders for residents living within 12 miles of the plant. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner explained the U.S. response.

MARK TONER: We've been continuing to assess the situation, obviously. And consistent, obviously, with the guidelines of the Nationalor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we're now telling American citizens who live within 50 miles or 80 kilometers of the Fukushima nuclear power plant to evacuate the area and to take shelters indoors if safe evacuation is not practical. Again, this isthis is based on our most current assessment. We've got nuclear experts on the ground. And it'sfrankly, it's what we would adviseit's based on what we would advise U.S. citizens here to do in a similar situation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Japan is facing an unprecedented triple crisis caused by the earthquake, tsunami and the partial nuclear meltdown. The official death toll has now risen to above 5,000, while 9,400 people remain missing. Fears of radioactivity have severely hampered relief efforts in parts of northern Japan, which was hit with a snow storm on Wednesday.

Some 850,000 households are without power, and 1.5 million homes with no running water. Food and gas supplies have been nearly exhausted in the ravaged northern part of the country. A 21-year-old Japanese mother named Ayumi Yamazaki says she has had trouble finding enough food to feed her child.

AYUMI YAMAZAKI: [translated] We get one bowl of soup or one piece of bread to share among three people, and get a few snacks. We rarely get white rice. So I'm a little concerned about my daughter not getting enough nutrition. But it's better than not eating at all.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We will go to Japan soon for a report on the recovery efforts, but first we discuss the latest news from the crippled Japanese nuclear plant.

Joining me here in New York is Karl Grossman. He's an investigative journalist and professor of journalism at SUNY College at Old Westbury. He's author of several books on the nuclear industry.

And with us in Washington, D.C., is Paul Gunter. He's a reactor oversight project director at the nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. He's also a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance, an anti-nuclear group.

Paul, I want to begin with you. The latest reports that we got overnight and early this morning about the situation in the reactors of Fukushima, could you give us your sense of what's happening there?

PAUL GUNTER: Well, obviously, right now, there is a lot of contradictory information. I think that what's most important to understand is that among these six units at Fukushima Daiichi, Units 4, 5 and 6, the fuel in the reactor core was taken out of the reactor vessel, taken out of containment, and placed in these rooftop spent fuel pools. So all of the radioactive inventory was moved. We're very concerned about this very large volume of radioactive material that is now in a conflict of information in its state of, you know, no water or water. But clearly, right now, there is a serious danger of a full core meltdown outside of containment at Unit 4. This could occur at Unit 5 and 6, and we still have the crippled reactors at 1, 2 and 3.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the crippled reactor 3, which has also been releasing, pretty regularly now, radioactive steam, there are reports that there has been a breach in the containment vessel there. And that, of course, is the only reactor that had the more toxic mixed oxide fuel that was brought into it in the last couple of years as fuel. Your sense of reactor 3?

PAUL GUNTER: Well, Unit 3 is burning what they call plutonium oxide. They like to call it MOX as an acronym rather than POX, but in fact it's plutonium oxide. This fuel has a lower melting point, for one, and it's just loaded with plutonium, which is highly toxic at micro levels.

The containment, which is a Mark I General Electric boiling water reactorwe have 23 of these reactors in the United States, dead ringers for Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 through 6it's right now in this state ofit's ruptured. Unit 2 has also compromised its containment. These have all been documented. So, you know, the walls of defense are falling, with the melting of the cores, the collapsing of thewe're expecting the collapsing of the vessels. And then, with these damaged containments, these are all open windows to the atmosphere.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Karl Grossman, you have been following now for decades the claims of the industry, the politicians, about nuclear energy, both in the United States and around the world. Your assessment of what has happened here and what it will mean in terms of nuclear power in the future?

KARL GROSSMAN: What has happened here is an enormous nuclear power tragedy, and we're on the cusp, I fear, of an even more horrific tragedy, with a loss of cool down accidentand we have multiple loss of cool down accidents underwayand, importantly, breach of containment. And as Paul said, that's quite possible now. Just the most enormous disaster, except for a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, where you have tons upon tons of nuclear poisonsno containment, except for some corrugated steel ceiling. That stuff gets out in a loss of water accident, and it would get out explosively, because of the fuel rods being made of zirconium. And I could explain that. It will just burst into the environment, become airborne, affect not only Japan but much of the world.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Karl, in the reporting that you've done in the past on the battles over the siting of nuclear plants in the United States, because, obviously, all of the reports are saying, "Well, that's all happening in Japan; here in the United States, we're in a much better situation with our plants." But one of the things that you uncovered was an assessment that the government did back in the 1980s of the potentialthe potential deaths and injuries that might occur from a reactor accident and a breach of containment in the United States. Could you talk about that memo?

KARL GROSSMAN: Yeah. They have known the consequences all along. This is a reportit's called "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2"done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not Greenpeace, and it projects peak early fatalities, peak injuries, peak cancer deaths, scale cost in billions in terms of property damage, and a large hunk of the earth being rendered uninhabitable for millennia. And just, for example, for the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant, which is about 35 miles from where we sit now in New York, 50,000 peak early fatalities; 167,000 peak early injuries; cancer deaths, 14,000; scale cost of billions, they say $314 billionin 1980s dollars, we're talking about a trillion.

As to the likelihood of a severe core melt accident, in 1985 the NRC acknowledged that, over a 20-year period, the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be basically 50/50 among the 100 nuclear power plantsthere's 104 nowin the United States. They've known all along here in this country that disaster could come, and there's a good likelihood of it coming, and they've known the consequences.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You're saying that the NRC itself estimated a 50/50 chance of a meltdown in our plants here within 20 years?

KARL GROSSMAN: Over a 20-year period. That was formal testimony provided to a watchdog committee in Congress chaired by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, when he asked the question, "What does the NRC and its staff believe the likelihood to be of a severe core meltdown?" So, you know, when you hear these lines about, "Oh, the chances of a severe core meltdown, infinitesimal," and if there is, like you're hearing these reports out of Japan, an accident, "Oh, just some minor effects among the population"not at all.

You go to the documents. And many of them were, well, secret for years. In my bookI did a book in 1980, Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know about Nuclear Powerthere's a line in a Atomic Energy Commission report, "WASH-740-Update": "The possible size of the area of such a disaster"this is a meltdown with loss of containment"might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania"in other words, covering the whole state of what would be the state of Pennsylvania, which almost occurred with the Three Mile Island accident. We're talking about huge disasters here. And with a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, because you've got much more nuclear garbageand again, no containmentit would be even worse.

And just let me mention one other thing. Everybody should, when you hear about these hydrogen explosions, understand that the fuel rods are composed of a substance called zircaloy. It's based on something called zirconium. And way back in the late '40s and '50s, they were looking for something to build thesenot control rodsfuel rods with, and they decided to use zirconium, because it allowed the neutrons to move from fuel rod to fuel rod and keep the chain reaction going. Problem was zirconium, the other major industrial use is the speck on a flashbulb. Zirconium is explosive; at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it explodes. Before that, it emits hydrogen gases, which have exploded in several of these plants. There's, in a nuclear plant itselfthis is in my book20 tons of zirconium. At spent fuel pool, you're talking about, because there's all these old fuel rods, hundreds of tons. That stuff, again, as things get hot, explodes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I also wanted to talk about the history of the type of nuclear reactors. There have been warnings about the design going back for decades. The organization Nuclear Information and Resource Service recently released and posted online three memos [11/11/71, 9/20/71, 9/25/72] from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on the GE Mark I reactor design. The memos show that the Commission knew of serious problems with the design of these reactors as early as the 1970s. Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service spoke with us last evening.

DIANE D'ARRIGO: Back in 1971, Stephen Hanauer of the Atomic Energy Commission did a memo to the Atomic Energy Commission outlining serious problems with the design of the kind of reactors that are operating, and are failing and melting, in Japan right now. In September of 1971, he did a memo that recommended that the United States stop licensing reactors using this pressure suppression system. But his recommendation was rejected by the upper-level Atomic Energy Commission safety officials. The top safety official, Joseph Hendrie, he agreed with the recommendation, but he rejected it, saying that it could well mean the end of nuclear power. Now, the problems that were raised in those earlier memos are what led to the disaster here in Japan. And I wanted to point out that the United States has, since those memos were written and then ignored or rejected, licensed and has operating 23 of this type of nuclear reactor.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I also wanted tothat was Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, who spoke with us last night. Paul Gunter, I'd like to ask you about thethe news has been worse each day in the efforts to try to get control of these crippled reactors. But if the government is able now to finally bring electricity back, as they've been saying they've been trying to string a new line, and to begin bringing water back into these reactors and into the spent fuel pools, do you envision any problems if they're ablecontinuing problems, if they're able to get the water back on?

PAUL GUNTER: Well, let's first of all realize that what's been demonstrated at this catastrophe is that nuclear power is going to be more of a liability than it is an asset during natural disaster or national crisis. We sincerely hope that the Tokyo Electric Power Company can restore power. But these six units are history. The best we can do right now is see them buried under concrete, and hopefully that can contain it. That's the best scenario right now.

But clearly, if you want to actually have civil defense, the real issue here is to prevent this from happening. And we believe that means to bemean you promptly shut down these most dangerous reactor designs all over the world, and then we begin the rapid phase-out of this inherently dangerous technology and phase in a 21st century energy policy of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Paul Gunter of the nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear, I want to thank you for being with us. Karl Grossman, a professor at SUNY-Old Westbury, thank you, and a continuing investigative journalist on the issue of nuclear power. I want to thank both of you for being with us. We'll be back in a moment with reports on what is going on in Japan right now.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yeah, Grand Idiot is a must on the CV of any leader - corporate or governmental, etc.

They are so desperate now, I just heard they have asked old retired nuclear plant workers to come back to work [with large monetary incentive] immediately - the 'theory' being that they will die of natural causes soon, and not from the high radiation, as will all the younger workers. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.... They are now making people into Nuclear Kamokazis!

It is the shareholders and managers and the people responsible for building this insane death emitting clusterfuck who should be there cleaning up. Give them a radiation proof suit and 'Nuclear Catastrophe Clean Up for Idiots' instruction book and drop them in the zone and let them go for it. There are limits to company loyalty.

I'm afraid the Corporate Masters don't have a 'the Captain must go down with the ship' mentality. It would be significant to see the head of the Power company involved and his board of Directors and any big shareholders actually at the Nuclear Plant working on it - I'm quite sure the best you can hope for [sic] is after the meltdown and a number of immediate radiation deaths a Japanese bow of contrition and a few mumbled words of 'sorry Charlie' in Japanese.......

...as far as 'news' on the nuclear plant, they are as I type using riot-control water cannons to try to spray water onto the tops of the most endangered reactors. Watching it, it looks like it will, at best, be only mildly successful. They also think that by the end of today they will have the electric power back on....but I'd not hold my breath. Even if they do get power back, it remains to be see if any of the pumps and other equipment is still in working condition, after all it has now been through [earthquakes, tsunami, overheating from partial meltdowns, who-knows-what-else]. Nuclear Plant equipment is sensitive to all of those and as Pallast pointed out [above] the emergency generators are well known [when they start or work at all] to breakdown soon after, due to lack of maintenance and testing [as they usually remain off continuously from installation until emergency. If they haven't been maintained properly, they may not start or soon break down. Ditto if damaged by overheating. I have NOT seen any reliable figures on radiation levels near the plant or in the plume coming from the Plant. I pity those workers now on site there!.....