What's happening at Fukushima?

[FBaggins]

75. No they aren't.

The highest readings yet were just reported after the earlier hurricane's rains.

It's amazing that even you fall for that nonsense.

Take a look at the readings... tell us what they are. And they declare that you haven't seen anything higher reported.

Go ahead... I dare you.

And those reports only because the science was taken out of the hands of the nuke die-hards.

Nope. Those reports are coming from the same people (Tepco) that have been releasing pretty much all of the numbers at the plant for three and a half years now.

Where are the cores?

Right where they've been for three and a half years now. Some proportion above the fuel plates, some at the bottom of the reactor vessel, and some at the bottom of the primary containment. It's unknown how much is in each position in each of the three reactors, and unless the muon tomography works well, we may not know for years. There may be a tiny amount that burned through the side steel of the primary containment (a 2cm hole last I read), but nothing has been found so far.

If they are not hot, why can't they dig them out and stop the pollution?

Seriously? You think if it wasn't hot they could just "dig it up"?

It would be pretty stupid to try that if it really were well into the ground (which it isn't). Since 99+% (perhaps 99.99+%) of the corium is still in the primary containment... the right thing to do is to wait until they can flood the containment before trying to remove the fuel.


ENEnews.com, you should read it sometime.

I read it all the time. I can always use a good belly laugh. Some pretty nutty characters over there.