From BBC's Envrioment correspondent, Richard Black:
Quote:
It appears that for the first time, the containment system around one of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors has been breached.
Officials have referred to a possible crack in the suppression chamber of reactor 2 - a large doughnut-shaped structure below the reactor housing. That would allow steam, containing radioactive substances, to escape continuously.
This is the most likely source of the high radioactivity readings seen near the site. Another possible source is the fire in reactor 4 building - believed to have started when a pool storing old fuel rods dried up.
The readings at the site rose beyond safe limits - 400 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr), when the average person's exposure is 3mSv in a year.
A key question is whether this is just a transient spike, which might be expected if number 2 is the source, or whether the high levels are sustained.
In the meantime, the key task for workers at the plant remains to get enough water into the reactors - and, now, into the spent fuel pools - with the poor resources at their disposal.
|
Lets hope a major nuclear disaster is avioded, as this latest incident in the spent fuel rods pool is really going to stretch already limited resources.
(Would the fuel rods in the spent rods pool actually burn through if they were not kept cooled?)