Study Shows Worse Picture of Meltdown in Japan
Nuclear power plants are far too dangerous to keep operational past their closure dates. It is a crime against humanity to continue to use a technology that has so much destructive potential.
With children in Japan now showing serious health issues because of exposure to radiation after the Fukushima meltdowns, now is the time to demand a nuclear free future.
TOKYO (AP) — Radioactive debris from melted fuel rods may have seeped deeper into the floor of one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant than had previously been thought, perhaps to within a foot of breaching a crucial steel barrier, a new simulation showed Wednesday.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that its latest simulation showed overheated nuclear fuel at the No. 1 reactor may have eroded part of the primary containment vessel’s thick concrete floor. The vessel is a beaker-shaped steel container set into the floor. A concrete foundation below that is the last barrier before the fuel would begin to penetrate the earth.
In the worst-case scenario, according to the company’s simulation, the reactor’s fuel came to within a foot of the container’s steel bottom.
Nuclear power plants are far too dangerous to keep operational past their closure dates. It is a crime against humanity to continue to use a technology that has so much destructive potential.
With children in Japan now showing serious health issues because of exposure to radiation after the Fukushima meltdowns, now is the time to demand a nuclear free future.
