China Syndrome? Japan Times on Melt Through: “Molten ‘lava’ melted bottom of containment vessel,” says nuclear engineer given access by top official — Huge amounts of fission materials released into environment
By ENENews
April 18th, 2012
Yomiuri: “The worst-case scenario is a China syndrome” […] A China syndrome refers to a situation in which nuclear fuel in a reactor melts and goes through a containment vessel -Masao Yoshida, former chief of the Fukushima Daiichi plant
Title: Fukushima: Probability theory is unsafe
Source: The Japan Times Online
Author: Kenichi Ohmae, Nuclear engineer
Date: Apr. 18, 2012
Emphasis Added
[…] As a nuclear core designer and someone who earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in nuclear engineering, I volunteered to look into the situation at Fukushima No. 1 in June of 2011. Mr. Goushi Hosono, minister of nuclear power and environment, personally gave me access to the information and personnel who were directly involved in the containment operations of the postdisaster nuclear plants. After three months of investigation, I analyzed and wrote a long report detailing minute by minute how the nuclear reactors were actually disabled (pr.bbt757.com/eng/)
Here are the highlights of my findings:
1. Three of the six reactors of Fukushima No. 1 had a complete core meltdown a few days after the tsunami hit. The molten fuel penetrated not only through the bottom of the thick pressure vessel, but also poked holes at the bottom of the containment vessel, thus releasing fission materials into the environment. The meltdown itself started at 11p.m. on the day of the tsunami, March 11, 2011.
The Rest…HERE
