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"We detected a small rise in radiation levels inside the reactor buildings, and are trying to find the locations of the leaks," a Tohoku Electric official said. "We see no change in radiation levels outside the reactor buildings."
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Previously, one of the pumps had been used to encase the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl with concrete after the 1986 nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union.
Duh zajednistva, odanosti zemlji, ali i firmi, nicim izazvana pomoc nepoznatom coveku i sl. stvari su tako strane nama Srbima. To je ono sto je na delu u Japanu sada, ali sto bi sigurno bilo jako izrazeno i u drugim civilizovanijim zemljama.
There is conflicting information over what details U.S. officials know about a damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan and the threat it poses.
On Wednesday, Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) raised alarm bells when he claimed that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes the core of Fukushima's Unit Two had "gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel."
If the reactor vessel has in fact been breached, it removes a line of defense in a set of barriers aimed at protecting the public. Shortly after Markey made this claim during a House hearing, however, a top U.S. nuclear official disputed the claim.
"That's not in the situation report that we have from the team in Japan," said Martin Virgilio, deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, while speaking to reporters Wednesday. " And that [report is] as of this morning."
Markey, a vocal critic of nuclear power, says a member of his staff received an e-mail Tuesday from an NRC official stating the core "may be out of the reactor pressure vessel."
"Based on radiation readings in the drywell and the torus ... the NRC staff speculates that part of the Unit 2 core may be out of the reactor pressure vessel and may be in the lower space of the drywell," according to a copy of the e-mail provided to Dow Jones. "Lower radiation readings in the torus suggest that there is not core material in the torus."
The e-mail was sent by Timothy Riley, a congressional affairs officer with the NRC.
It is unclear whether Virgilio or other NRC officials are aware of the e-mail Riley sent Markey's staff. An NRC spokesman didn't respond to immediate requests for comment.
Markey "obviously received the information from somebody or some source and from the NRC," Virgilio told reporters. "So we'll have to sort that out."
The NRC, Virgilio said, believes there was significant fuel damage in three reactors and four spent-fuel pools, "but we don't believe at this point in time that core has left the vessel."
The people who lived and worked near the Fukushima Daiishi plant were in danger of some kind of disaster befalling them from the day the facility was built — and a similar future could be on the cards for people all over the US.
The US is the largest producer of nuclear power in the world, with nearly a quarter of all the world’s reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said 23 US plants have the same reactor and containment design as at the Fukushima plant.
In another parallel to the Fukushima nightmare, nearly half of the nuclear reactors operating in the US are close to major fault lines, including the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre plants near California’s San Andreas Fault.
Some are also within spitting distance of an ocean — San Onofre in San Diego County sits on the beach, with a breakwater as its only defense against a tidal wave.
Many reactors are near densely populated areas. Twenty-nine reactors are within 25 miles of metropolitan areas.
Almost half of US nuclear reactors are within 50 miles of metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people. Fifty miles is the evacuation zone that the NRC advised for US citizens near the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Japan may raise nuke accident severity level to highest 7 from 5
TOKYO, April 12, Kyodo
The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident's severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.
According to an evaluation by the INES, level 7 accidents correspond with a release into the external environment radioactive materials equal to more than tens of thousands terabecquerels of radioactive iodine 131. One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.............
The commission used the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) to calculate the spread of radiation.
Ne bih da mračim, ali mi ovo ne zvuči baš optimistično.
"Based on radiation readings in the drywell and the torus ... the NRC staff speculates that part of the Unit 2 core may be out of the reactor pressure vessel and may be in the lower space of the drywell," according to a copy of the e-mail provided to Dow Jones. "Lower radiation readings in the torus suggest that there is not core material in the torus."
Odličan članak, hvala!United States: A Fukushima-style disaster is waiting to happen
Pre svega sam mislio na informacije iz prve ruke, snimke, vesti, i slicno. Nema potrebe da ovde pisemo nagadjanjima Ekoloskog Drustva iz Novog Sada. Ako ste primetili, informacija iz Japana ima sve manje, vesti nisu na udarnim stranicama medija, cak je i Libija skinuta sa naslovnih strana. Jedino iz cega mozemo nesto vise da saznamo o katastrofi u Japanu su izvestaji IEAE i izvestaji nezavisnih medija iz Japana.
Zelimo da ova tema bude mesto gde se posetioci mogu informisati o realnoj situaciji u Japanu. Misljenja o vetrenjacama, termoelektranama, hidroelektranama, "eksploziji fuzione bombe koja bi pocistila radijaciju", itd. ne zelimo na ovim stranama. Ne zelimo da ova tema lici na specijalno izdanje treceg oka.
Nadam se da sada razumete.
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