If Fukushima Unit 4 Falls, Hazardous Radioactive Cesium-137 Release Could be 8x Worse Than Chernobyl [View all]

[FourScore]

If Fukushima Unit 4 Falls, Hazardous Radioactive Cesium-137 Release Could be Eight Times Worse Than Chernobyl

TAKOMA PARK, MD--(ENWESPF)--May 4 - Beyond Nuclear today joined with concerned Japanese citizen groups and US Senator, Ron Wyden (D-OR), urging that swift international action be taken to prevent a catastrophic high-level radioactive waste fire at the precarious Unit 4 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

Unit 4 is leaning and could topple if hit with another earthquake or tsunami, resulting in a deadly high-level radioactive waste fire. The ability for the unit to withstand another seismic event is rated at zero.

Today, a coalition of concerned Japanese citizens is urging United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, to properly inform the Japanese people of the perilous situation at Fukushima Daiichi, and to work together to prevent what would be an irreversible disaster that would release huge amounts of lethal radiation, dwarfing the scale of the original disaster.

Since the nuclear catastrophe began in March 2011, Beyond Nuclear has called attention to the ongoing risks of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi high-level radioactive waste storage pools. A similar danger persists at the 23 identical GE Mark I boiling water reactors still operating in the US.

“If the cooling water supply is lost to the high-level radioactive waste storage pool in Unit 4, it could be just a matter of hours before the irradiated nuclear fuel is on fire,” warned Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “A fire in the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool could release up to eight times more hazardous cesium-137 than the Chernobyl reactor explosion. That in turn would mean the site would have to be evacuated, risking the potential for all seven high-level radioactive waste storage pools at the site to ignite. If that happened, Fukushima Daiichi would release 85 times the levels of cesium released by Chernobyl, potentially forcing an evacuation, and permanent condemnation, of hundreds to thousands of square miles,” Kamps added...

http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/science-a-environmental/33192-if-fukushima-unit-4-falls-hazardous-radioactive-cesium-137-release-could-be-eight-times-worse-than-chernobyl.html