Dr. Gordon Edwards on the dangers posed by tilting Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4

Photo of severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 reactor building. For perspective, note workers in white radiation suits standing beside the high-level radioactive waste storage pool's surface towards the top of the building.The tilting of the Unit 4 building, the bulging of two of its four outer walls, the total absence of a roof, the twisted metal members in the devastated upper portions of the building, the fact that over a thousand irradiated fuel assemblies are perched in a pool 100 feet above ground level -- all these should be a matter of great concern for Japan and for the world, for there is no doubt that severe damage to the pool or its contents will lead to further disastrous episodes of radioactive emissions into the atmosphere.

Yet Tepco refuses to regard the situation as "risky", and has repeatedly refused to allow an international team of experts to come and inspect the Unit 4 building so as to devise a plan of immediate action to protect the pool from multiple dangers -- the possibility of the pool collapsing or toppling following another powerful earthquake (now anticipated with very high probability); the possibility of a falling object damaging the pool, causing drainage of the water, leading to overheating of the fuel and a blast of gamma radiation that will bring all work at Fukushima Dai-ichi to a halt; the possibility of slumping of the fuel leading to recriticality (restart of the nuclear chain reaction); the possibility that the hastily assembled and unprotected interim cooling system in Unit 4 will be disabled, leading to overheating of the irradiated fuel; the possibility of a zirconium fire breaking out in the partially or fully drained spent fuel pool....

The world community cannot afford to put its trust in Tepco, a corporation that has repeatedly shown that it puts its own corporate interests ahead of safety and is unwilling to accept a policy of honesty and full disclosure, nor in the Japanese government, which has apparently abdicated its responsibility to the people by allowing Tepco to monopolize information and exclude all other expert intervenors from the Fukushima Dai-ichi site.