Comment: This plant uses MOX which is plutonium and uranium mix from Russia. I am watching TV and this has never happened, an explosion from plutonium, never happen (that we know of) before! They are also slamming the truth what the Japanese electric companies are telling us! Just pray for Japan, my family lives north of the mess! Maybe the local uranium mining company should be made to visit this place, breathe deeply the radiated air and see what their uranium product will doing to my family and the people of Japan! Pray Japan will look closer at Solar, water, they use Windmills already and stop the cycle of death: Nuke Power!
CTV.ca News Staff
Date: Mon. Mar. 14 2011 7:44 PM ET
Yet another explosion has rocked a Japanese nuclear power plant where engineers have been struggling to avert a meltdown after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Japan's nuclear agency reported early Tuesday that a blast was heard at the Unit 2 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant at 6:10 a.m. local time.
A spokesperson for the agency did not provide further details.
The explosion is the third to hit the stricken plant since last Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that washed away entire towns in northeast Japan.
Earlier Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced a new response headquarters to help the plant's operator manage the ongoing crisis.
Kan told reporters that he will direct operations the headquarters, which will be a joint venture with Tokyo Electric Power Co.
The announcement followed word late Monday that the white-hot nuclear fuel rods inside all three of the most troubled nuclear reactors at the badly damaged Fukushima plant appear to be melting.
"Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Monday.
The level of coolant water dropped precipitously Monday inside the most badly damaged reactor, leaving the uranium fuel rods completely exposed just hours after a hydrogen explosion tore through a nearby building housing another reactor.
The explosion at the Dai-ichi plant's Unit 3 sent a towering cloud of smoke into the air and injured 11 workers.
The plant's outer shell was damaged when a tsunami struck the area soon after Friday's quake.
The series of accidents that followed, the worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, sparked criticism that authorities were ill-prepared.
Norm Rubin, director of nuclear power research at Energy Probe, said the engineers and staff at the plant "are scrambling and doing Hail Mary passes to try to keep the fuel rods inside those reactors cool enough that they don't run dry, fail and melt."
"That's the worst case scenario at this point," he told CTV News Channel.
Rubin said as much as three-quarters of the 3.7-metre high bundles of nuclear fuel rods were completely exposed when the coolant leaked away, allowing them to heat to almost unimaginable temperatures.
"That's a serious no-no, because unless this material is cooled it is generating enough heat … an amazing amount of heat," he said. "And if you don't take that heat away the stuff that's producing the heat overheats: it just keeps getting hotter."
He added: "Something has to take this heat away or else things go very badly …
Rubin said that this is the first time so many reactors in one place have threatened to melt down at the same time, adding another layer of danger to the equation.
"This is uncharted territory … we've never been in a situation where more than one reactor is in crisis at the same time at the same facility. This is new."
Rubin said the Dai-ichi plant is almost 40 years old and had only been designed to withstand a quake of 6.5 magnitude.
"In hindsight, a few days after an 8.9 earthquake, that really seems like cutting corners … it seems nuts."
The cascading troubles in the Dai-ichi plant compounded the immense challenges faced by Japanese authorities, already struggling to send relief to hundreds of thousands of people along the country's quake- and tsunami-ravaged coast where as many as 10,000 people are believed to have died.
"The nuclear plants have been shaken, flooded and cut off from electricity. Operators have suffered personal tragedies," he said. But "the reactor vessels have held and radioactive release is limited."
Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, said Japan has now responded to the IAEA's offer to assist with the crippled nuclear plants and said his staff are working "around the clock" to help.
"Japan and all our member states can be assured that all resources put at our disposal are fully mobilised. That will remain the case until this crisis has been resolved."
Plant workers have been pumping sea water into the reactors in hopes of cooling them down -- a method that will make the reactors forever unusable.
Normally, the series of metal rods containing pellets of uranium fuel inside a nuclear reactor's core are kept cool with purified water that is pumped between the pipes. The resulting steam then drives an electricity-generating turbine, and the heat is then removed by coolant pumps.
But those pumps at the Fukushima plant, as well as back-up power supply, were knocked out by Friday's earthquake and tsunami.
The Dai-ichi complex sits just off the Pacific coast and was badly hammered by the tsunami.
While a partial meltdown may be occurring inside the reactor itself, Japanese authorities say it's unlikely a total meltdown will occur as long as thick protective steel walls around the reactor cores remain intact.
If there is a partial or total meltdown, it could become impossible to remove the fuel. That's what happened in 1979 at Three Mile Island, which remains sealed off to this day.
Japanese officials have evacuated 180,000 people from the around the Dai-ishi plant in recent days. It is believed that as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation.
On Saturday, local fire officials evacuated the town in which Ayotte was living, just south of the plant, and so he began the journey to Tokyo and then on home to Canada.
According to Ayotte, the fact that workers are pumping seawater into the reactors means it is "just about the end of the line for as far as salvaging anything. I think they're looking at, ‘We can't save the reactor but we can save the people.'"
Japan's meteorological agency did report one good sign. It said the prevailing wind in the area of the stricken plant was heading east into the Pacific, which experts said would help carry away any radiation
Read more:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110313/japan-nuclear-reactors-monday-110314/
