Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Fukushima radioactive leak is 'the greatest threat humanity ever faced' - expert
Photo: EPA
Among
the latest measures to tackle the problem of Fukushima there are
creation of a decommissioning agency and the merger of Nuclear
Regulation Authority with Japan’s Nuclear Energy Safety Organization. Do
you think that such bureaucratic procedures can be effective for
tacking the issue?
I
think we should keep in mind that TEPCO declared plants 1, 2 and 3 to
be in cold shut-down. And of course we now know that was not the case.
Other people were pointing out that the cores had melted down through
the facility. We now know that is the case.
This
problem with radioactive water was an inevitability. So, this has been
known for 2 years. So, I think it does point out that the time had
passed to allow the people in government there and TEPCO to address the
situation. This calls for international cooperation.
The
leakage of water from these cores is bad enough but the most dangerous
thing is the cooling pool of unit 4. Now it is terribly dangerous
because the entire hot core of reactor 4 had been removed and put in
this cooling pool shortly before the tsunami. So, there was a hot core
in this cooling pool the entire superstructure building was blown off in
a hydrogen explosion.
The
entire area is weakened and there is a great risk of an aftershock. Now
this pool contains something on the order of 400.000 kg of hot
plutonium. So, the thing that people should be aware of is that TEPCO is
going to begin attempting to remove these rods from this pool to some
other type of storage. This has never been done with plutonium rods that
have been out of a core for such a short period of time.
There
is a great danger of a thermonuclear reaction if these rods become
exposed to the air and the cooling pool itself is just barely containing
the temperature levels of the core as it is.
When you are saying about international effort, how could other countries help with that?
I
think it is imperative that this is not looked at as a contracting
opportunity and opportunity to make money out of this situation. This
has to be dealt with something like a space race, like with the funding
of a space program and all the technology and resources brought there
for that kind of an effort. The inertia that we have seen with this, we
are not seeing that kind of focus internationally. That needs to be
brought to bear.
The
media coverage of the situation has been almost non-existent. The
public must become engaged and the governments must become engaged
because this is a global threat. They say that one microgram of
plutonium could theoretically kill a person.
There
are billion micrograms in a kilogram and there are 400.000 hot
kilograms in this pool. So, if these rods combust, if the set of rods
begins a thermonuclear reaction, it will vaporize the water in the pool
and the entire pool can become an uncontrolled nuclear reaction open to
the air. These particles will be spread through the northern hemisphere.
This
is perhaps the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. And I think you
would acknowledge there has been far too little attention given to this
at this point and the measures that the Japanese government is
discussing at this point are not sufficient, I believe. Other
governments must become engaged in this.
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