Crisis in Japan Seen from Korea - Part 7

The Guardian published an article today suggesting that nuclear fuel had melted out of its containment vessel at one of the Fukushima reactors.  At first, I thought that the article was a news report, and it rattled me.  But, I found no other reports of a meltdown anywhere else, and so I returned to the Guardian article and reread it.  This is when I understood that no melted fuel has been observed outside of its containment vessel at any of the Fukushima reactors, but that a nuclear scientist from the US thought that this may have already occurred given the observation of specific radioactive elements in the air, soil and water in the vicinity of the reactors.

A total nuclear meltdown at Fukushima would indeed be a very serious development.  So what is truly going on at Fukushima?  Well, it has been suspected that the fuel in the reactors had been partially melted for some time, and Japanese officials recently confirmed that the presence of plutonium in the soil in the vicinity of the reactors is evidence of this.  However, a total nuclear meltdown has so-far been averted by watering the reactors with sea water, at first using fire trucks and helicopters, and more recently using electric pumps.  Unfortunately, highly radio-active water has been found in and around the reactors, and even in the ocean in the vicinity of Fukushima, suggesting that water may be flowing into the reactor containment vessels, picking up radio-active materials, and then leaking out.  Yesterday, it was confirmed that the reactor containment vessels are probably breached as water is not rising inside of them as expected now that some of their cooling pumps have been reactivated.  And today, it was necessary to halt the pumping of water into the reactors because too much radio-active water is accumulating underneath them. 

So the situation at Fukushima is dire.  The fuel in the reactors must be continuously cooled to prevent a meltdown, but the containment vessels are probably breached, and radio-active water is leaking out of them.  When too much polluted water accumulates in the reactors, the cooling process must be interrupted in order for it to be pumped away.  Otherwise, highly radio-active water would leak into the environment.  This is bad news, because today, the president of the company that owns the reactors admitted that the fuel of the Fukushima reactors continues to generate a lot of heat.  Therefore, I can't help but wonder if a total nuclear meltdown could occur at these reactors.


And so, Japanese officials find themselves in a rather macabre situation.  They must basically decide what they think is the worst scenario, a possible nuclear meltdown, or the certain emission of large quantities of dangerous radio-active pollution into the environment.  Neither represents a pleasant turn of events.  At the moment, they seem to believe that the probability that a total nuclear meltdown could occur is small, and so are opting to safely dispose of the radio-active water that accumulates under the reactors when they are cooled.  I hope that they are not incorrect in their evaluation of the situation.