Maybe some of my older readers remember that 70s movie: The China Syndrome. I'm young enough that I watched it only on TV... yet it impacted my then young mind the (wrong) idea of a nuclear device of some sort could go through the center of Earth and reappear at the other side of the World.
That's why the misleading name of China Syndrome, otherwise a very real danger of nuclear reactors: a danger of permanent contamination of underground soil and water as the melted core makes its way downwards, slowly but steadily, being impossible to control - at all, ever.
It would seem that Fukushima is approaching or even fully in that worst case scenario: as awareness of the total dry meltdowns on at least one and probably all three reactors at Fukushima since day one has caught, several articles have appeared recently all around discussing the possibility, quite serious in my opinion, of a China Syndrome (E. Harrell at Times, M. Holland at the Herald Sun, J. Koury at The Examiner).
Meanwhile, for TEPCO, whose behavior (as well as that of the Japanese government) is criminal towards its own people and the wider World (because radioactivity knows no borders), is still in denial and has announced continuity of the same old failed plans to bring the reactors to a full cold shutdown by January 2012 by means of pumping water and more water, that is only evaporating in the heat or spilling to the ground.
What?!
Anything but admitting this is worse than Chernobyl. Anything but solving the problem. Anything but facing reality. Who put those useless criminals in charge?
Update: Prof. Christopher Busby of the European Commission on Radiation Risks is quite merciless and hopeless about the situation at Japan, which is, in his opinion out of control and cannot be solved. He makes an appeal to at least contain the atmospheric releases (implying Chernoby sarcophagus) and for the Japanese government to take over TEPCO with international help.
From Russia Today.
Update (May 18): triple total meltdown is official.
TEPCO acknowledges total meltdown in all three reactors (ongoing from unknown time, maybe since soon after the earthquake) and also reveals that at least part of the water leakage (that was previously acknowledged as a problem) has gone through the holes perforated by the very meltdown cores themselves at the bottom of the reactor.
Former senior nuclear researcher, Fumiya Tanabe, criticized the best case scenario approach that TEPCO has got all this time, causing, among other things unnecessary radiation exposure to workers and allowed further radiation leakage than unavoidable.
Source: Asahi.
Update (May 19): Workers getting extremely high doses of radiation.
Update: Prof. Christopher Busby of the European Commission on Radiation Risks is quite merciless and hopeless about the situation at Japan, which is, in his opinion out of control and cannot be solved. He makes an appeal to at least contain the atmospheric releases (implying Chernoby sarcophagus) and for the Japanese government to take over TEPCO with international help.
From Russia Today.
Update (May 18): triple total meltdown is official.
TEPCO acknowledges total meltdown in all three reactors (ongoing from unknown time, maybe since soon after the earthquake) and also reveals that at least part of the water leakage (that was previously acknowledged as a problem) has gone through the holes perforated by the very meltdown cores themselves at the bottom of the reactor.
Former senior nuclear researcher, Fumiya Tanabe, criticized the best case scenario approach that TEPCO has got all this time, causing, among other things unnecessary radiation exposure to workers and allowed further radiation leakage than unavoidable.
Source: Asahi.
Update (May 19): Workers getting extremely high doses of radiation.
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