Japan's fears of nuclear mayhem recede as nuclear reactor starts to cool [View All]

[abqmufc]

Source: The Guardian

"For a few unnerving hours, Japan faced a bleak and unsettling prospect. The devastation wreaked by Friday's earthquake and tsunami seemed set to be followed by a nuclear meltdown that could have spread radioactive waste over large parts of the country.

The nation was one short step away from enduring genpatsu-shinsai – an atomic disaster triggered by earthquake that leading Japanese seismologists had been predicting for several years."

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"For several hours, observers feared the worst: loss of coolant inside one of the plant's six reactors had caused a dangerous build-up of heat. A second, more deadly explosion – one that would have released a vast radioactive plume over the nation – seemed a real prospect until it was announced that, although the outer structure of the 40-year-old reactor building had been blown off by the blast, the actual reactor inside had not been breached.

Disaster had been avoided – but by the narrowest of margins. It was confirmed last night that radioactive caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, had been detected around the plant. The discovery indicates that meltdown, caused by a nuclear reaction running out of control, had indeed affected the reactor's fuel rods – although possibly only to a limited extent. The revelation did little to reassure local people."

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"The operators of the Fukushima plant announced they had started to fill the containment vessels in which the reactor rests with sea water in a bid to cool it down, a process that would take from five to 10 hours, an official told reporters."

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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/12/japan-nuclear-meltdown-fukushima-reactor

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Well written, good timeline given, AND the part about it taking 5 to 10 hours to fill the containment vessels with sea water to cool down the core is key info we'd been missing. Who ever came up with that idea, is a true McGyver.