Radioactivity level spikes 6,500 times at Fukushima well after TEPCO said on Friday they detected 400,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances, including strontium.
Robert Jacobs, a professor at Hiroshima Peace University :
“Nobody knows how to solve the unprecedented problems at Fukushima. There is no solution that other countries have that they can come in and fix the reactors, or rather, shut down the contamination, shut down the leaks.”
“They have a thousand tanks that are held together with a plastic pipe, in a moderate earthquake the plastic pipes fail and all that material will run across the ground surface and into the ocean,” said nuclear power expert Arnold Gundersen.
“The four reactors that are the most damaged had a series of explosions internally, so a moderate earthquake can do a lot of serious damage there.”
He added that the health risks are great and continue to increase every year. “Somewhere between 100,000 to 1,000,000 [people] will over the next thirty years get cancer from this accident...1,000 additional cancers a year from eating fish from the Pacific.”
Tepco is in fact pushing to reopen its Kashiwazaki Kariwa facility – the world's largest nuclear power station – which was shut down in 2007 following reports of radioactive leaks in the wake of an earthquake.
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Nuclear report warns of apocalyptic scenario at Fukushima in weeks ahead — Ambassador: “The Unit 4 contains 10 times more Cesium-137 than Chernobyl. So in case the worst occurs, this can be considered as the beginning of the ultimate catastrophe of the world and the planet, two-and-a-half years of struggling by the state and by TEPCO have proven that nuclear accidents cannot be coped with by electric companies or by a single state.”
The World Nuclear Report said the nuclear fuel rods removal operation in November had the potential to cause “the most serious radiological disaster to date”. Possible apocalyptic scenarios includes the evacuation of 10 million people in the area, including Tokyo. 400 tonnes of irradiated spent fuel from reactor 4 which needs to be removed from the highly unstable structure carry so many risks and unknowns, including whether the fuel assemblies have been damaged, which could lead to the radiation risks if the casings have been breached. The worst case scenario is if the fuel assemblies are dropped, which could ultimately lead to a meltdown.
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