Major seismic aftershock at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 could unleash 8 times Chernobyl's Cs-137

Recent photo of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 reactor building ruins. Note workers, wearing white protective suits, near pool's surface (beneath topmost girders).Robert Alvarez at the Institute for Policy Studies warns that a major seismic aftershock at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could be the straw that breaks the camel's back at the precarious Unit 4 pool storing high-level radioactive waste. If the pool's cooling water drains away, its 135 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel could catch fire, releasing 8 times more hazardous radioactive Cesium-137 than was released by the Chernobyl Nuclear Catastrophe in 1986. Read more.

Beyond Nuclear recently published a backgrounder on the risks of high-level radioactive waste storage pools in General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, as part of its Freeze Our Fukushimas campaign.