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Dissident Voice reports
After a week of limited coverage of "unimaginable levels" of radiation inside the remains of collapsed Unit 2 at Fukushima[...], Nuclear-News.net reported February 11 that radiation levels are actually significantly higher than "unimaginable".
Continuous, intense radiation at 530 sieverts an hour (4 sieverts is a lethal level), was widely reported in early February 2017--as if this were a new phenomenon. It's not. Three reactors at Fukushima melted down during the earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 3, 2011, and the meltdowns never stopped. Radiation levels have been out of control ever since. As Fairewinds Energy Education noted in an email February 10:
Although this robotic measurement just occurred, this high radiation reading was anticipated and has existed inside the damaged Unit 2 atomic reactor since the disaster began nearly 6 years ago.... As Fairewinds has said for 6 years, there are no easy solutions because groundwater is in direct contact with the nuclear corium (melted fuel) at Fukushima Daiichi.
What's new (and not very new, at that) is the official acknowledgment of the highest radiation levels yet measured there, by a factor of seven (the previously measured high was 73 sieverts an hour in 2012). The highest radiation level measured at Chernobyl was 300 sieverts an hour.
[...] This coverage relates only to Unit 2's melted reactor core. There is no reliable news of the condition of the melted reactor cores in two other units.
[...] Whatever is actually going on at Fukushima is not good, and has horrifying possibilities. It is little comfort to have the perpetrator of the catastrophe, TEPCO, in charge of fixing it, especially when the Japanese government is more an enabler of cover-up and denial than any kind of seeker of truth or protector of its people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 22 2017, @08:43AM
What they do know is that the radiation is so intense that the robots that they send in keep getting fried before those get very deep into the structure. ONE robot has lasted long enough to get ONE reading on ONE reactor and that said that it was 132x a lethal dose for a human.
Ok, so it sounds like we probably shouldn't run marathons through the place. That solves the problem here. It really doesn't matter if Tokyo is 100 miles away or 100 light-years. It's far enough.
Almost daily, water flows from the mountain range beneath the nuclear plant, liquefying the ground, a sure-fire setup for cascading buildings when the next big one hits.
The mountain range was doing that when the last big one hit (the next big one, let us note, not being due for a few more centuries). And the results weren't cascading buildings.
...and the eating of any vegetation grown anywhere near there. The smart (but poor) people are trying to avoid both. The folks with some wealth have left the region forever. The area's economy is ruined.
Sounds ideal for more nuclear plant development then.
Of course it would. It would still be designed, built, and operated by entities looking to maximize profits. The ONLY way you could possibly avoid them cutting corners would be to require everyone involved to live within 100 yards of the plant and let them know that in the event of an incident they can't evacuate.
Or we could continue to regulate nuclear plants like we have for the past half century. It's been pretty successful with only a few accidents to point to. Shouldn't there be an actual history of failure to justify your post?