Unit 3 blowing up Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi doesn't make radioactive waste storage pools safe

Shattered Unit 4 as it appeared on March 24th, 9 days after its "mysterious" explosionIn the earliest days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, the prevailing storyline on the explosion which destroyed the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building was that the high-level radioactive waste storage pool had boiled dry, its wastes had caught fire, explosive hydgrogen gas was generated, which then blew up the building. But as posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, at the end of May, a U.S. Dept. of Energy spokesman revealed that the actual culprit may have been the Unit 3 reactor meltdown. The Mainichi Daily News now reports that Tokyo Electric Power Company is asserting just that, that hydrogen gas from the Unit 3 meltdown(s), rather than being vented out the stack shared with Unit 4, flowed instead into the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building, blowing it up.

The likes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will likely spin such news into a message of "pools are safe." This is not true. Fukushima Daiichi's pools storing high-level radioactive waste at Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 have had to be repeatedly re-filled with water, through various ad hoc, desperate, and dangerous means (such as failed helicopter water drops, as well as fire trucks, riot control water cannons, concrete pump trucks, etc. firing water from a radiologically safe(r) distance), due to the cooling water continually boiling away for lack of operable circulation systems.

No emergency procedures if problems arise in high-level radioactive waste storage pools

In a video entitled "Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Dont Want You to Know" posted at the Fairewinds Associates website, nuclear engineers Dave Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists and Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds explain what went wrong at Fukushima Daiichi, then show how similar catastrophes can happen right here in the U.S., not only in General Electric boiling water reactors of the Mark 1 containment design, but in any atomic reactor. The event, sponsored by C-10 and other environmental groups, took place in June 2011 at the Boston Public Library.

At one point, Dave Lochbaum explains that there are no procedures in place for nuclear power plant personnel to follow during a crisis involving a high-level radioactive waste storage pool. The upside, he joked, is if such safety regulations don't exist, then at least the industy can't violate them. The downside, of course, is a pool accident could unleash catastrophic quantities of hazardous radioactivity onto the waves and winds, to contaminate people and ecosystems downwind and downstream.

Fairewinds warns Japan against burning Fukushima fallout radioactive contamination

In a Fairewinds Associates video dated August 21st, Arnie Gundersen warns against the current practice in Japan of burning radioactively contaminated substances with the high radiation level of 8,000 bequerels per kilogram or less -- including the trick of "blending" more contaminated materials with less contaminated in order to average out to "burnable" levels. The problem? Fukushima fallout that has settled on the land and objects is re-suspended in the air, to re-contaminate areas that have been checked and declared to be of low contamination or contamination free, increasing their contamination levels.

Arnie also explains how high levels of radioactive sulfur were formed at Fukushima Daiichi, to then show up in the atmosphere in California, as a recent scientific study confirms (Gundersen misspeaks -- chlorine, not sodium, in seawater absorbing neutrons forms radioactive sulfur). The vast amount of neutrons needed to generate so much radioactive sulfur, Gundersen explains, is evidence that nuclear criticality or chain reactions continued long after the March 11 earthquake caused control rods to snuff out the nuclear reactions in the Units 1, 2 and 3 cores before the melt downs began.

Fairewinds re-asserts severe damage at Fukushima Daiichi high-level radioactive waste storage pools

In Fairewinds Associates' latest video entitled "Newly Released TEPCO Data Proves Fairewinds Assertions of Significant Fuel Pool Failures at Fukushima Daiichi," dated August 26th, Arnie Gundersen explains that Tokyo Electric Power Company's own documentation of radioactive cesium contamination of high-level radioactive waste pool water shows severe damage has occurred in the irradiated nuclear fuel stored there. Arnie bolsters his assertion that the high-level radioactive waste storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 is severely damaged by pointing to a recent high-resolution photo, shown here.

Wildfires at INL threaten radioactive wastes

INL photo of fire crews battling a July 2010 blaze that grew to 170 square miles in size overnightJust a few months ago, wildfires threatened a large inventory of plutonium-contaminated radioactive wastes at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexcio. Now, reports Reuters, high-level radioactive waste storage, handling, and even experimentation facilities at Idaho National Lab (INL) are in harm's way, amidst fast-spreading wildfires. INL is a catch-all "interim storage site" for irradiated nuclear fuel, including from U.S. Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers; "Atoms for Peace" high-enriched uranium (HEU) foreign research reactor fuel, originally supplied by to the U.S. to 41 countries overseas, but returned here as a nuclear weapons non-proliferation precaution; and even melted down nuclear fuel from the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry, including from the 1966 "We Almost Lost Detroit" Fermi 1 partial meltdown, and the 1979 Three Mile Island 50% meltdown. INL has published a map and emergency updates on the wildfire; the map contains links with more detailed information about what risky activities take place where on the INL site. As MSNBC reported, a July 2010 wildfire at INL (photo, left) burned power lines, forcing radioactive waste facilities to rely on emergency diesel generators.