**Declassified U.S. government report prepared a week after Fukushima accident: “100 percent of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from Unit 4” — GlobalResearch; RT

GlobalResearch:

” We reported in 2011 that the International Atomic Energy Agency knew within weeks that Fukushima had melted down … but failed and refused to tell the public.

The same year, we reported in 2011 that the U.S. knew within days of the Fukushima accident that Fukushima had melted down … but failed to tell the public.

We noted in 2012:

The fuel pools and rods at Fukushima appear to have “boiled”, caught fire and/or exploded soon after the earthquake knocked out power systems. See this, this, this, this and this.

Now, a declassified report written by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 18, 2011 – one week after the tidal wave hit Fukushima – states:

The source term provided to NARAC was: (1) 25% of the total fuel in unit 2 released to the atmosphere, (2) 50% of the total spent fuel from unit 3 was released to the atmosphere, and (3) 100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4.

NARAC is the the U.S. National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, located at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. NARAC “provides tools and services that map the probable spread of hazardous material accidentally or intentionally released into the atmosphere“.

The fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 contained enormous amounts of radiation.

For example, there was “more cesium in that [Unit 4] fuel pool than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground.”

source

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RT:

” Fukushima nuclear power plant is still experiencing major contamination issues nearly five years after the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent meltdown.

A new declassified report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, written on March 18, 2011 just days after the disaster, sheds light on just how bad it was.

We now know that “100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4.”

According to nuclear expert and whistleblower Arnie Gundersen in an interview with WBAI in New York, unit four contained more cesium “than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground”.

Cesium has been linked to thyroid cancer, which is on the increase in the Fukushima area since the tsunami, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

The chemical is highly soluble in water and can find its way into foodstuffs that have been prepared in contaminated areas.

Another report this week revealed there are more than nine million bags of nuclear material piling up in Japan, according to the Fukushima Prefecture and the Environment Ministry.

Anti-nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott said during the crisis that if unit four collapsed, she was going to move her family from Boston to the southern hemisphere.

The declassified report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the 2011 thyroid dose estimates ‘downstream’ from Japan in the US were within guidelines “except for Alaska”.

Engineers at Fukushima are still dealing with fallout from four years ago. Last week, the radioactivity at Reactor 1 was measured at 482,000 becquerels per liter of radioactive cesium, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said.

This is 4,000 times higher than last year and the company believes the contaminated water stored at a nearby building may have leaked into the duct, according to The Asahi Shimbun.

Increases in other areas have not been registered, the company said.

400 to 500 tons of radioactive seawater that washed ashore in the 2011 tsunami is pooled in the tunnels, which lie next to a temporary storage facility for radioactive water being used to cool nuclear fuel inside the damaged reactors.

TEPCO said they plan to investigate the spike in radiation. ”

source with videos

The Real Fukushima danger: Spent fuel pools — Washington’s Blog

” The fact that the Fukushima reactors have been leaking huge amounts of radioactive water ever since the 2011 earthquake is certainly newsworthy.  As are the facts that:

• Tepco doesn’t know how to stop the leaks 
  

• Scientists have no idea where the cores of the nuclear reactors are

• Radiation could hit Korea, China and the West Coast of North America  fairly hard

But the real problem is that the idiots who caused this mess are probably about to cause a much bigger problem.

Specifically, the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima.

If one of the pools collapsed or caught fire, it could have severe adverse impacts not only on Japan … but the rest of the world, including the United States.   Indeed, a Senator called it a national security concern for the U.S.:  

The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen and physician Helen Caldicott  have both said that people should evacuate the Northern Hemisphere if one of the Fukushima fuel pools collapses. Gundersen said:

Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that’s probably the lesson there.

Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura calls removing the radioactive materials from the Fukushima fuel pools “an issue of human survival.” … ”

read more

Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’ — RT

” Even the tiniest mistake during an operation to extract over 1,300 fuel rods at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan could lead to a series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome, fallout researcher Christina Consolo told RT.

Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top store of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.

In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said. … ”

read RT interview with Christina Consolo