MEDIA ROOTS- Every time I read an article about TEPCO, the Japanese government and their handling of the Fukushima nuclear plant, the situation appears progressively more bleak. For months, Japanese officials refused to admit that any meltdowns were occurring. Finally, they admitted that all three reactors incurred full meltdowns in the immediate wake of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
The levels of radiation have also been substantially downplayed by corporate news outlets and government officials worldwide, putting millions at risk of radiation poisoning. The lack of accurate coverage might be due to the fact that General Electric (GE), the company that built the failed reactors, also owns 23 (near identical) sister reactors in the United States. GE also owns NBC news, which could explain why there is such little discussion in the corporate media about the extraordinarily dangerous risks involved with nuclear energy.
Disturbingly, the operator of the TEPCO plant has admitted to deliberately falsifying safety records to prevent the inspection of faulty components within the reactors at the Daiichi facility for the last decade. Just nine days before the devastating meltdown, the Nuclear Industrial Safety Industry warned TEPCO of its continued failure to inspect the critical pieces of equipment, and urged immediate repairs. Moreover, new testimony and evidence reveals that the plant’s reactors were so faulty that a meltdown was imminent regardless of whether or not the earthquake and tsunami hit.
Abby
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RT– Workers at Japan’s Fukushima plant say the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the fissures. They also say pipes and at least one reactor were seriously damaged before the tsunami hit the area in March.
The allegations raise concerns that the facility was doomed even before the earthquake triggered the disaster. Problems with deteriorating pipes at the plant had been reported for years. The cooling system failed to stop reactors going into meltdown after it was hit by the 40-metre-high waves. The plant has been leaking radioactive material ever since, despite efforts to clean it up.
Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute says that the evidence calls into question Japan’s nuclear safety.
“There’s certainly a great deal of evidence that appears to suggest that the first reactor, reactor number one, was melting down by the time the tsunami hit,” he told RT. “So, if that’s the case that the reactor was melting down as a result of the earthquake, and not as a result of the tsunami, a nine-point earthquake is something that has the potential to happen throughout Japan, and that would put the reliability and the design safety of all of these reactors in question,” he said.
Reports of decreasing levels of radiation at the facility, Dr. Jacobs went on to explain, are no reason for optimism. It is more likely to mean that the radioactive material is moving away, making its way through the building structures:
“When you have a fragile structure that’s already suffered a great deal of damage and when you have continual aftershocks at the level of six-point, or there’s been some even higher, what we have now is we have the radioactive core that has melted down into the basement, into the bottom of the containment vessel of these reactors, and if the radiation level is going down, where it’s been monitored inside the buildings, and if the water pressure is going down, and the temperature is going down, it’s not that the radiation is just suddenly going away, it means that the radioactive material, the melted core, is simply moving further away from where it’s been measured,” he explained.
Watch the video:
Read the full article about Fukushima in Meltdown Before Tsunami Hit.
© 2011 RT
Photo by Flickr user 3StepsCrew
