Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Fairewinds: Radiation release during massive power failure at Fukushima Daiichi — 24-hour outage is unconscionable, shows plant unstable


Fairewinds: Radiation release during massive power failure at Fukushima Daiichi — 24-hour outage is unconscionable, shows plant unstable

Published: March 20th, 2013 at 11:45 am ET
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Title: Fairewinds Responds to Power Failure at Fukushima Daiichi
Source: Fairewinds Energy Education
Date: March 19, 2013
[...] Is TEPCO doing an adequate job of keeping the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power site safe?
We don’t think so. [...] to have such a massive power failure last almost 24 hours is unconscionable. Because this problem lasted almost one day, and because several cooling systems were simultaneously disabled, Fairewinds believes that a common electrical component is the equipment that failed, likely a junction box or a transformer. Nuclear plants are supposed to be built to be single failure proof, meaning that if one component fails the systems still remain operational via other equipment. The loss of spent fuel pool cooling simultaneously in three nuclear reactors means that a common mode failure, or worse yet a single failure, was somehow allowed to occur in TEPCO’s jury-rigged design. This simply should never happen.
TEPCO claims that there was no radiation release from this recent power failure, but that is a scientific impossibility. When power is lost in a spent fuel pool, the radioactive fuel rods heat the pools up. As the pools heat up, evaporation increases resulting in a white “smoke” (steam). That steam is radioactive, containing some of the radiation that was previously in the pool. [...]
Yesterday’s power loss is further proof that the conditions at Fukushima Daiichi are still unstable, despite what TEPCO and the Japanese and US governments say. [...]

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See also: Kyodo: No 'major' changes in radioactivity levels during Fukushima Daiichi power outage

Published: March 20th, 2013 at 11:45 am ET
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