``Rarely has my father Claud's admonition `never to believe anything till it's officially denied been given such powerful buttress. Comforting phrases and words in italic.
`We are now trying to analyze what is behind the explosion,' said government spokesman Yukio Edano, stressing that people should quickly evacuate a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius. `We ask everyone to take action to secure safety.'
...
A `meltdown' is not a technical term. Rather, it is an informal way of referring to a very serious collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to manage temperatures.''
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03112011.html
First laugh. What was behind the explosion? What caused the explosion was hydrogen gas. Where did the hydrogen gas come from? Water, H2O <-> H2 + O, get it?
Second laugh. Meltdown is not a technical term. When did we need a technical term to describe a nuclear reaction that melts the reactor core?
The `meltdown' quote evidently came from Wikipedia, Nuclear Meltdown. Go here to read it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown#Standard_failure_modes
I am most of the way through the article. It reads heavily doctored to me. For each of the possible failures, there is a counter statement that gives the impression such a failure is unlikely.
`` A partial meltdown is an INES Level 4 or 5 accident, depending on the degree of damage. If the primary pressure boundary is substantially breached by corium, the accident is described as a `full meltdown', which is an INES Level 5 accident and can escalate to INES Level 6 if events progress in a highly prejudicial fashion.''
The whole article is about as informative as BP's and US government coverage of their Gulf disaster. About the only people who lie more than big oil are the nuclear crowd.
Going on this theory I tracked down one study cited (Haskin, Camp, Hodge, Powers).
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/contract/cr6042/#intro
Of course I couldn't download it from the page, well because something something bullshit. It's probably blocked by the government. Anyway, you see where the authors work, which are the federal nuclear science labs, like Sandia, Oakridge, etc.
So I headed over to the sometimes truthful and sometimes helpful, Union of Concerned Scientists here:
``The Mark I is unusually vulnerable to containment failure in the event of a core-melt accident. A recent study by Sandia National Laboratories shows that the likelihood of containment failure in this case is nearly 42% (see Table 4-7 on page 97). The most likely failure scenario involves the molten fuel burning through the reactor vessel, spilling onto the containment floor, and spreading until it contacts and breeches the steel containment-vessel wall. ''
I would say we are in a massive nuclear power plant disaster and probably a giant radioactive cloud that hopefully gets turned into rain over the Pacific before it gets to the California coast.
Another nice detail is that the latest reactor to blow used MOX which is recycled fuel mixed with plutonium.
There is a debate going on about the explosions. I saw both on AJE. The latest explosion was many times larger and blew up faster. The first one looked like the roof blew off so at a guess that could be from steam. But the second one could be from blowing up the drywell or secondary containment. This seems like INES level 5-6 where the first one seemed like the 4-5 range.
>From the comments section at UCS:
``1) Having run the numbers, I don't believe a hydrogen explosion between the concrete and steel containment was the cause of the #1 reactor blowout - not enough energy or velocity in an explosive hydrogen wavefront to crack the concrete containment building AND the containment building was overdesigned to withstand such an event.
Having analyzed the video in slow motion and looking at the transonic wavefront exiting the top of the building, it is much more likely that it was a primary steel containment rupture and a secondary failure of the concrete containment. In order to get a wavefront as directional and powerful, you need some type of a burst mechanism. Pesky physics..
2) But here's the bad part - reactor #3 is fueled with NOX which is an experimental fuel and a Uranium-Plutonium alloy.
If there is a meltdown there and the plutonium gets into the air and on to the land and sea, we have a totally different class of problem, as plutonium is one of the most toxic (both chemically and radiologically) substances on earth with a VERY long half-life - 80 M years.
3) It is my understanding here are no functional video systems left in #1 - they really have no idea what is going on, other than the few remaining pressure, temperature, and radiation sensors. So there is a lot of guessing and public minimization.
4) We'll know soon enough.''
My thought was we definitely will not know soon enough. Japan and the US will do everything they can to block information. That seems to be number one priority. Number two is limiting the liability by denying victim claims, and parsing arguments to confuse simple reasoning. Number three is creating a dis-information campaign. And number four is prosecuting the whisleblowers and any potentially reliable news sources.
CG