Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 34

Japanese officials are now finally admitting to the scenario I warned about nearly three months ago:  that not only have reactors 1, 2, and 3 at Fukushima Daiichi gone through total meltdowns, but that the slagged fuel rods have melted through the reactor pressure containment vessels and have most likely been contaminating the area around the plant for months.

Molten nuclear fuel in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is likely to have burned through pressure vessels, not just the cores, Japan has said in a report in which it also acknowledges it was unprepared for an accident of the severity of Fukushima.

It is the first time Japanese authorities have admitted the possibility that the fuel suffered "melt-through" – a more serious scenario than a core meltdown.

The report, which is to be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said fuel rods in reactors No 1, 2 and 3 had probably not only melted, but also breached their inner containment vessels and accumulated in the outer steel containment vessels.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), says it believes the molten fuel is being cooled by water that has built up in the bottom of the three reactor buildings.

In other words, only the seawater flooding the reactor areas, now highly radioactive and largely uncontainable, is keeping the molten fuel from melting through the outer steel containment vessels and going directly into the environment.

This situation is now near absolute worst case scenario.  The molten reactor fuel and the contaminated seawater will somehow have to be dealt with, removed, contained, or sealed up.  Meanwhile, every day that passes assures more radioactive material leaks into Japan's ecosystem.  The cumulative damage from this mess could take generations to repair. 

I don't see any way to deal with the water or the heavily damaged containment vessels short of entombing the entire facility...and that's if the steel outer containment shells for the reactor aren't breached in some way, which, given the amount of radiation in the reactor areas has to be the case.  If that's the reality, then the whole place will have to be buried under tons and tons of concrete and the area around the plant will have to be written off.

The worst part is that the plant's proximity to seawater means the concrete option may not be 100% effective if the radioactive material has gotten into the ground and the adjacent ocean, meaning that whole area of the Pacific may have to be put off limits for an indefinite time period.

TEPCO stock has fallen to a new low and the stock is in trouble of being delisted from the Tokyo exchange.  Bankruptcy and recievership cannot be far behind, and that means Japanese taxpayers are going to be footing a tremendous cleanup effort.

I initially put the total damage to Japan's economy at the $1 trillion mark.  I may be closer to the real total than anyone imagined, including myself.