Special Report: Fuel storage, safety issues vexed Japan plant
TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.
The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.
At the time of the March 11 earthquake, the reactor buildings at Fukushima held the equivalent of almost six years of the highly radioactive uranium fuel rods produced by the plant, according to a presentation by Tokyo Electric Power Co to a conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Okay, my thought and hope now is that I'm hoping some enterprising newspaper staff--or maybe a bunch of them--starts going around to their own local nuclear power plant and doing some hard research on how that plant is doing at what they do. I'd like to think they'll go start asking questions.
Do they store their nuclear materials properly?
Do they do their safety checks?
Are their backup power generators in great working order?
Have they had any radioactive releases lately?
Are all their checks done, regularly and on time?
Is everything in order?
Are all their i's dotted and t's crossed?
I don't think it will happen but I hope it does. I hope some newspaper staffs out there in this country are, right now, prepping their reporters to go do a check on their local nuclear reactor(s), its staff and their operations.
A challenge to newspapers, all across the country.
How about you, Kansas City Star?
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2 comments:
Part of the narrative being developed is that, all TEPCO needs to do is restore power to the site and the situation will be manageable. Indeed, the efforts of Japanese firefighters from Tokyo and members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to bring in a mile-long, high-voltage transmission line have been heroic. Sadly, dozens of these workers, even by TEPCO’s admission, have been exposed to un-safe levels of radiation. They are likely to pay for their actions with serious, potentially life-threatening health consequences in the short and long-term.
Yes, they're doing really important, heroic and self-sacrificing work. I was afraid someone would end up in this situation--having to do this kind of work and get far too much exposure and here it is, at minimum.
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