Japan Atomic Energy Commission - Fukushima an unprecedented, and deepening, crisis

[JohnyCanuck]

3. If 3 spent fuel assemblies at reactor #4 being damaged was bad news...

because the damaged assemblies significantly increases the risk of another catastrophe occurring when removing the spent reactor #4 fuel from the "temporary" storage pool (perched 100ft in the air) to a safer and more secure location - How does a total of 80 damaged spent fuel assemblies across the entire plant complex sound?

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Admits Total 80 Spent Fuel Assemblies Had Damages Before the Nuclear Accident, 70 of Them in Reactor 1 Spent Fuel Pool

According to Kahoku Shinpo, a Fukushima local paper, TEPCO admitted on November 15, 2013 that there are 70 fuel assemblies with damaged fuel rods in the Reactor 1 Spent Fuel Pool, located on the operating floor (top floor) of the reactor building whose air radiation levels are measured in millisievert/hour and sievert/hour (first floor).

There are also three such fuel assemblies in the Reactor 2 SFP, and four of them in the Reactor 3 SFP.

Total 80 spent fuel assemblies in the SFPs in Reactors 1 - 4 are damaged.

The damages had been there long before the March 11, 2011 accident, and TEPCO claims it properly notified the national government as they discovered the damages. But the company has come clean in public only now.

Kahoku Shinpo article below suggests that the oldest of such damaged fuels may have been there for 40 years in the Reactor 1 Spent Fuel Pool. (Reactor 1 started generating electricity in 1971.)

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/11/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-tepco-admits.html