Fukushima - they are planning to move fuel rods from the hottest spent storage pool in Nov. (scary)

[RobertEarl]

35. Reactor #4

The building lost it's top two floors to an explosion and fire. No video of that exists that I have seen.

The reactor was not running at the time of 3/11. It had just had its fuel removed to the spent fuel pool, so that was some very reactive fuel on 3/11.

The fuel pool must have lost its cooling waters after 3/11, either from leaks or boiling away what little water was left, as the pumps could not replace or circulate the cooling water.

A main concern was that the building holding the pool 3 stories above ground was about to collapse, spilling the rods all over the place. There is now a new structure over the pool which contains the apparatus required to remove the rods.

The feeling is that since the rods in the pool already overheated, the rods may have disintegrated and not be intact, as when placed. If that is true, then any movement may lead to another catastrophic sequence of events.

Keep your fingers crossed and know that we do live in interesting times, where actions half a world away could still result in injury to you and your loved ones.

Indeed, the webcam from the plant showed a foggy atmosphere at 3 in the afternoon JST. Something is overheating there now.