Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 33

Now that major radiation spikes from the Fukushima Daiichi plant are being detected some nearly three months after the disaster, the jig is now officially up as Japan is now admitting that all three reactors involved in the nuclear crisis achieved complete meltdown.

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.


The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

So why didn't they explode?  They nearly did.  As I said at the time on the very first of this series of posts, using seawater to flood the reactors was an untested, last ditch effort to stop a complete meltdown scenario.  Physicist and nuclear expert Michio Kaku admits that the evidence means that seawater flooding was the only thing that prevented three Chrenobyl style explosions.




As it is, the contamination is still at lethal levels, and only barely was prevented from literally covering northern Japan in a radioactive cloud that would have killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions.  The downside is that the radioactive mess at Fukushima Daiichi will remain lethal for a very, very long time.  Over the next several weeks and months, we'll find out just how bad the contamination in Japan is.  They'll be living with it for generations.