ah, mephistophelis.: Fukushima Fuel Breached Containment? You Don't Say! (An Update)

"It Got Out? You Don't Say" a faustian original meme

This post is an UPDATE to this one.

Energy News just published an excerpt from an interview with Arnie Gundersen in Capitol Forum on July 1, 2012, that deals specifically with the somehow-still-ongoing debate over whether nuclear fuel actually breached its containment:

Gundersen: Latest probe at Unit 1 indicates nuclear fuel has left containment.

At 2:30 in

Tokyo Electric ran a probe into the basement of Unit 1. This is not inside the containment, this is outside the containment. On the top of the water surface they found lethal radiation, 1000 rem an hour.
But then they put the probe down into the water and what’s even worse is the bottom, the sediment on the bottom, was thousand of times hotter than that. And what that indicates is that fuel, nuclear fuel, has left the containment, as particles, and settled out on the bottom outside the containment. So, I think that’s a pretty clear indication that the containment was breached. It just makes decommissioning these plants… it was going too be hard already, but this information makes it worse.

The full podcast interview here.

The containment was breached. The fuel got out. Ex-vessel. An "excursion," I hear it is called in the industry. For an overview of how obvious the truth of this fact has been, have a look at the 'related links' section at the bottom of the Energy News page. A sample:

“Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima” —
TEPCO worried fuel burned a hole through bottom of containment vessel May 12, 2011

NHK: Plant operators trying to find nuclear cores —
All fuel has melted through, much of it into containment vessel… So where’s the rest? (VIDEO) December 10, 2011

AUDIO: US gov’t experts think melted fuel rods landed in water under Reactor No. 2, causing STEAM explosion —
Pressure dropped dramatically at same time —
Clear indications primary containment lostMarch 2, 2012

I find this one especially interesting...

Gundersen’s Latest: 60 holes in bottom of Fukushima-type reactors make core melt-through easier — Fuel only had to get through a thin pipe, not inches of steel (VIDEO) September 20, 2011

....as it is clearly what we see, in the stills I have enlarged here.....

From the comment I posted:

the fuel is VISIBLE OUTSIDE THE BUILDING in an aerial survey: http://tinyurl.com/itgotout(shot around 3/24/11:). I slowed it down and enlarged the stills, it is clearly oozing out of some sort of pipe. all this is available at the above link for download or view.

I am surely not targeting Arnie Gundersen with the meme that opens this post; I do not think he is only just now coming to the conclusion that the containment was breached. I am taking aim at all the people who have lied to us, and lied repeatedly, in this regard -- people in power in government, in industry, in regulatory agencies. People who should know better. People who, as we can now in many cases prove, did know better. People who knew exactly what they were doing. People like Jaczko, Yamashita, and Jim Al-Khalili. The anchormen and -women for NHK, TBS, CNN, NBC, NPR, CBS, ABC, FOX, and the BBC; The author of that Fukushima-is-no-China-Syndrome article for Time Magazine. The list is too, too long.

And it includes anyone, everyone, who, eager to believe, disparaged, discouraged, or stifled opposition.

It includes all of us who avoid asking questions of whose answers we are afraid.

The Nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was, it has been decided, an act not of Nature but of Man.