Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Despite extensive melting of the fuel, “we do not believe there is massive damage to the reactor pressure vessel,” Sakae Muto, Tokyo Electric’s chief nuclear officer told reporters this evening. Last week workers found that an estimated 3000 tons of water has leaked from the unit 1 containment vessel into a basement. In its 17 April roadmap, Tokyo Electric envisioned flooding the containment vessel and building a new cooling system to lower the temperature of the core. But the containment vessel now appears to be too leaky for that scheme to work. Instead they will collect water from the basement, purify it, and inject it back into the reactor pressure vessel, from where it will leak back into the basement. It is simpler than a new cooling system, but it will also require additional measures to watch for and counter leaks of contaminated water into the environment, Muto said. They may still build new cooling systems to supplement or replace the water injection scheme.

BBC

In recent days the plant’s operator has revealed that the damage sustained by the reactors immediately after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami was far more severe than initially thought.

Officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) say fuel rods at the plant began to melt down as early as six hours after the 11 March tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems.

Within 16 hours most of the fuel in reactor 1 had melted to the floor of the pressurised chamber housing the reactor, creating a hole that allowed 3,000 tonnes of contaminated water to leak into the basement of the building.

Officials said the fuel in reactors number 2 and 3 was also exposed to the air and might have largely melted too.