[Occupymendocino] Fukishima petition: radiation threatens us all

[ELLEN ROSSER]

Humankind’s Most Dangerous Moment: Fukushima Fuel Pool at Unit 4. “This is
an Issue of Human Survival.”The world community must now take charge at
Fukushima
By Harvey Wasserman <http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/harvey-wasserman>
Global Research, September 20, 2013
freepress.org <http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/1985>
Region: Asia <http://www.globalresearch.ca/region/asia>
Theme: Environment <http://www.globalresearch.ca/theme/environment>
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[image: plutonium]

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous
moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster
must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60
days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a
badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly
damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the
next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as
much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the
scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the
Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort
of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

Why is this so serious?

We already know that thousands of tons of heavily contaminated water are
pouring through the Fukushima site, carrying a devil’s brew of long-lived
poisonous isotopes into the Pacific. Tuna irradiated with fallout traceable
to Fukushima have already been caught off the coast of California. We can
expect far worse.

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted
reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may
still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where
those cores actually are.

Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but
fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site.
Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake,
releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific.

The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant
structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit
Four.

More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters
from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over
it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building,
another earthquake, another tsunami and more.

Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the
Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of
Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal
cesium on site as was released at
Chernobyl<http://www.nukefree.org/akio-matsumura-terrifying-numbers-fukushima>
.

Radioactive hot spots continue to be found around Japan. There are
indications of heightened rates of thyroid damage among local children.

The immediate bottom line is that those fuel rods must somehow come safely
out of the Unit Four fuel pool as soon as possible.

Just prior to the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami that shattered the
Fukushima site, the core of Unit Four was removed for routine maintenance
and refueling. Like some two dozen reactors in the US and too many more
around the world, the General Electric-designed pool into which that core
now sits is 100 feet in the
air<http://www.nukefree.org/ultimate-moment-fukushima-may-come-november>
.

Spent fuel must somehow be kept under water. It’s clad in zirconium alloy
which will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Long used in flash
bulbs for cameras, zirconium burns with an extremely bright hot flame.

 Each uncovered rod emits enough radiation to kill someone standing nearby
in a matter of minutes. A conflagration could force all personnel to flee
the site and render electronic machinery unworkable.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with forty years in an
industry for which he once manufactured fuel rods, the ones in the Unit 4
core are bent, damaged and embrittled to the point of crumbling. Cameras
have shown troubling quantities of debris in the fuel pool, which itself is
damaged.

The engineering and scientific barriers to emptying the Unit Four fuel pool
are unique and daunting, says Gundersen. But it must be done to 100%
perfection.

Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire,
releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool
could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile
that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud
would threaten the health and safety of all us.

Chernobyl’s first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days.
Fukushima’s in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4
would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for
centuries<http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/keep-harmful-radioactive-1.fb26?source=c.fb&r_by=7470505>
.

 Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima
“would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not
rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear
power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There
is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the
planet’s best scientists and engineers.

We have two months or less to act <https://fs220.xbit.jp/n362/form2/>.

For now, we are petitioning the United Nations and President Obama to
mobilize the global scientific and engineering community to take charge at
Fukushima and the job of moving these fuel rods to
safety<http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/the-world-community-must>
.

 You can sign the petition at:
http://www.nukefree.org/crisis-fukushima-4-petition-un-us-global-response

If you have a better idea, please follow it. But do something and do it now.

The clock is ticking. The hand of global nuclear disaster is painfully
close to midnight.*Harvey Wasserman is Senior Editor of the Columbus Free
Press and Free Press<http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/www.freepress.org>.
He edits Nuke Free <http://www.nukefree.org/>.*

For now, we are petitioning the United Nations and President Obama to
mobilize the global scientific and engineering community to take charge at
Fukushima and the job of moving these fuel rods to safety.


- See more at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/humankinds-most-dangerous-moment-fukushima-fuel-pool-at-unit-4/5350779#sthash.3WNwbNCN.dpuf
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