TEPCO Reveals More Lies about Fukushima Meltdowns

By Andy Tully, Oilprice.com

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) now says the meltdown of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011 involved all the fuel rods in the affected reactor, causing them to fall to the bottom of the containment vessel.

Eight months after the massive tsunami caused the accident, Tepco said the meltdown had affected only about two-thirds of the rods. Its revised estimate, issued Aug. 6, said Reactor 3’s emergency cooling system stopped working six hours earlier than previously believed, and that the meltdown had begun between four and five hours earlier, as well.

The previous report, issued in November 2011, said the cooling system, called HPCI, had shut down at 2:42 a.m. on March 13, 2011. But the new study learned that the cooling system appeared to have lost its cooling function at about 8 p.m. the night before.

The new report also said all the melted fuel rods, not just the previously reported 63 percent, penetrated the reactor’s pressure chamber and containment vessel that holds the pressure chamber. They fell to the bottom of the containment vessel and melted nearly 27 inches down into its concrete floor.

Two days after the tsunami struck, at 9:25 a.m. on March 13, 2011, Tepco began using a fire truck to pump water into the No. 3 reactor in an effort to cool it down. Nearly 26 hours later, though, there was a hydrogen explosion in the building housing the reactor, blowing off the top of the structure.

Tepco says these new conclusions on when the accident began and the number of rods involved in the meltdown show that it will now be harder to extract the melted fuel and dispose of it.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News calculates that Tepco appears likely to miss a deadline to remove a radioactive isotope linked to leukemia from the water stored at the ruined plant. Tepco President Naomi Hirose had promised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that all the water would be cleaned by March 31, 2015.

When a Bloomberg reporter showed a Tepco spokeswoman the new estimate that more time is needed to rid the water of strontium because of equipment delays and a failed effort to stop radioactive contamination of nearby groundwater, Mayumi Yoshida replied that Tepco would do its best to get the job done on time.

Strontium can enter the food chain by depositing into the bones of fish, and further delays could prolong South Korea’s ban on imports of Japanese seafood. By Andy Tully, Oilprice.com

Rising exports and trade surpluses have always been vital to Japan. And reconstituting them is a cornerstone of Abenomics. But that plan has totally gone to heck. Read….. The Flame-Out Of Abenomics, in One Crucial Chart

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  5 comments for “TEPCO Reveals More Lies about Fukushima Meltdowns

  1. Nah, Wolf, you and this writer have the story all wrong. You see, this is the 4th (5th?) of Abe’s arrows to restore Japan’s economy to greatness. You see, the radioactive water is leaking into the ocean, as it is, right now. With this new admission, TEPCO plans on filtering this water (that’s leaking into the ocean) and then dumping it into the ocean. By use of the Filtration Process, Japan can now claim that this radioactive water is an Energy Export and add that to the export figures for Japan.

    Ya gotta admit, this is pure genius.

    • NotSoSure says:

      Nah you are all wrong. The 4th arrow is really …. Godzilla. When it wakes up and causes massive destruction, the ensuing rebuilding will cause GDP to shoot to the moon. Keynesian Broken Window on steroids!!!!

  2. Les Francis says:

    Why are we not surprised about this news?

    Tepco admits that the cleanup will now be harder and dispose of it.
    This is code for : The cleanup process has now gone from an estimated 40 years to 100 years – or more.

    Have a look at these hi res picture of Fukashima not long after the disaster started.
    To say the top of the building blew off unit three is an understatement – more like blew the building apart.

    http://pinktentacle.com/2011/04/high-resolution-photos-of-fukushima-daiichi/

  3. Adam says:

    TEPCO was told that the sea walls weren’t high enough but the boss said, “well, it looks high enough to me” — and nothing happened.

    The Japanese (and, actually, the USA and Canada, too) are determined to keep the Fukushima cancers off the main stream news and they’ve been pretty successful so far.

    Whenever I see one of the endless “heartfelt” and “touching” stories related to 3/11 on the main stream media, I yell at the TV, “where are the stories of anger and outrage related to 3/11?”

    Watch this must-see video here on WolfStreet: Wolf’s video http://wolfstreet.com/2012/07/12/frying-dutchman-humanerror/

  4. sharonsj says:

    And now, under another name, TEPCO will be building a nuclear facility in Atlanta, GA, thanks to Congress (which apparently never reads a newspaper).

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