Nuclear Engineer: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-Lived Than We Think, Tokyo in Danger

“‘I have said it’s worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan – it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed.’

So cautions Arnie Gundersen, widely-regarded to be the best nuclear analyst covering Japan’s Fukushima disaster. The situation on the ground at the crippled reactors remains precarious and at a minimum it will be years before it can be hoped to be truly contained. In the near term, the reactors remain particularly vulnerable to sizable aftershocks, which still have decent probability of occuring. On top of this is a growing threat of ‘hot particle’ contamination risk to more populated areas as weather patterns shift with the typhoon season and groundwater seepage.”  Read more.  Download interview here.

High levels of radiation found at Japan nuclear plant – “Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it sent a robot into the building of reactor 1 Friday and detected up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour at the south-east corner of the building. That means staying in that area for four minutes makes a worker exposed to the maximum annual limit of 250 millisieverts per year though no worker plans to work there, the operator said.” Read more.