Ron Wyden's nuclear field trip

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http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/04/ron_wydens_nuclear_field_trip.html#repete

Ron Wyden's nuclear field trip

Published: Sunday, April 22, 2012, 7:18 PM

By The Oregonian Editorial Board

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden's recent daylong field trip from Tokyo to the zone of Japan's nuclear devastation is worth at least a week in the telling. Bunny-suited with a breathing device for protection against radiation exposure, Wyden walked through the ruined Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and saw what few from the West have seen: another bomb waiting to go off.

The senator is not typically alarmist. But his field notes, followed by letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, signal alarm. They paint a picture of extreme nuclear vulnerability, especially in Reactor No. 4, inactive at the time of the quake and tsunami but wrecked by explosion. The reactor now warehouses Fukushima's hottest inventory of radioactive fuel rods in a seismically jittery part of the world.

Wyden completed his tour by asking Japan, with written urgings for help from Clinton and Chu, to sharply speed up a cleanup expected to take 10 more years. His fear is that another big seismic event will trigger another disaster before the cleanup is completed -- exposing Oregon and the West Coast to potentially lethal risk.

"What we learned the first time is that radioactivity leaks out quickly," he told The Oregonian Friday. "If (No. 4) ruptures now, it gets into the air, and that's very troubling to us in Oregon. This must not happen."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-alvarez/the-fukushima-nuclear-dis_b_1444146.html

Robert Alvarez.Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over

Posted: 04/22/2012 3:45 pm

More than a year after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster began, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world are far from over. After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it's sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins pose far greater dangers than the molten cores. This is why:

• Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl

• Several pools are 100 feet above the ground and are completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were demolished by explosions. The pools could possibly topple or collapse from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake.

• The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating and can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding resulting in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over hundreds, if not thousands of miles.