Japan’s Fukushima Meltdowns (New Video): Much Still Unknown 10 Years Later
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By The Fairewinds Crew
As we approach the 10th commemoration of Japan’s March 11, 2011, Fukushima Dai-ichi triple meltdowns, organizations around the globe, including environmental groups, nonprofits (like Fairewinds Energy Education), engineering and pronuclear organizations, and media organizations like Japan’s Nippon TV, will release new information.
Some of this information is really new and recently uncovered. Other media events will bring people together to share and discuss what these major meltdowns meant to the people of Japan and communities worldwide. And sometimes, these media events are just a corporation or an agency marketing new nukes by putting their positive spin on nuclear power rather than acknowledging its dangers. For example, nuclear zealots continue to claim that atomic power reactors are safer for workers than working at Toys R Us, and reactors cannot meltdown and certainly will never blow up. The Fukushima disaster proved them wrong, but yet they persist!
As Fukushima Daichi Units One, Two, and Three were melting down, Nippon TV, the largest and flagship station of the Nippon Television Network System, dispatched television film crews to monitor the events as they unfolded. No one in the world has ever captured the core melting down, but Nippon TV captured two meltdown-induced explosions on film.
Now, Nippon TV has just released a new digital copy of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit One and Unit Three explosions (see video below).
At Fairewinds, we congratulate Nippon for the excellent work they did to create the original initial explosion footage in 2011 and on this essential remastered copy just completed in 2021. Nippon’s newly released digital footage is important historically and technically.
That said, the new video footage and Nippon’s ensuing interview with Tokyo Electric Company (TEPCO), the atomic power corporation that owns all six Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants, contain three glaring technical errors.
First, Fairewinds continues to have significant concerns about TEPCO’s technical interpretations of these explosions' cause.
Second, TEPCO is blaming newly uncovered lethal radioactivity sitting at the top of the containment structure on the supersonic shockwave.
Third, TEPCO does not discuss that there likely was a second explosion that occurred 3 seconds after the first.
Understanding the mechanics behind explosions is critical to understanding what happened at Fukushima and what such a danger means to nuclear power anywhere in the world.
There are two explosion methods: a deflagration shock wave, which happened at Fukushima Unit One and Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. While still destructive, a deflagration shockwave travels at subsonic speeds (less than 760 miles an hour, the speed of sound).
The second type of explosion is called a detonation shockwave. It is much more destructive because it travels at supersonic speeds.
In 2011, with Geoff Sutton's assistance from the United Kingdom, Fairewinds clearly showed that the Unit Three explosion was the more destructive detonation shockwave while Unit One’s was a deflagration.
Does it matter whether or not an explosion at Fukushima was a detonation or a deflagration? Absolutely! Hydrogen gas at room (atmospheric) pressure cannot create a supersonic shockwave. Fairewinds's 2011 findings that a detonation shockwave occurred should have changed the scientific and nuclear engineering analyses of such events worldwide.
No nuclear power radioactive release containment system built anywhere in the world will withstand a detonation shockwave!
The fact that a detonation shockwave did occur is something the nuclear industry has ignored since Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen and Geoff Sutton identified it did happen at Fukushima Unit Three in 2011.
The nuke industry and its regulatory handlers do not believe that a supersonic shockwave explosion will ever happen in a nuclear power plant. If they admitted that an atomic reactor containment system would fail by detonation, the nuke industry would also have to acknowledge that nuke plants' containment systems are not failsafe. Nuclear power containment systems will fail when there is a supersonic shockwave explosion.
The supposedly failsafe containment system at Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit Three failed and released massive amounts of radioactivity into the local environment and the worldwide atmosphere. Such an enormous human tragedy will happen again at an atomic power reactor somewhere in the world.
Think about that. No nuke in the world can withstand a supersonic shockwave, and here is the evidence on international TV and across the Internet that it occurred in 2011, as Fairewinds said.
Fairewinds second area of concern about TEPCO’s analysis on this latest NIPPON video is the linkage of recently discovered lethal radiation levels at the top of the containment to the supersonic detonation. Ten years ago, immediately following the three meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011, Fairewinds identified superheated highly radioactive gases escaping from this same area that TEPCO suddenly claims it has just uncovered in 2021. The containment was leaking before the explosion and continued to spread radioactivity after the blast. Still, no nuclear engineer or scientist is surprised that significant contamination continues to leak from the damaged containment system. The containment was breached, which allowed this radiation to leak! However, there is no evidence to suggest that the explosion is the cause of that leak since the containment was leaking before the supersonic shockwave.
Finally, Nippon’s remastered video vividly shows Fairewinds’ third concern. The eye is drawn to the detonation's sudden flash and the ensuing upward-moving black cloud of rubble. Now, look again. About three seconds after the initial vertical blast, a white cloud suddenly moves horizontally at ground level to the north.
Photo Credit: Geoff Sutton, 2011 (UK).
Community-volunteer citizen-scientists Arnie met while collecting radioactive samples in Fukushima prefecture say they heard more than one explosion. They said it sounded like the snapping of bamboo burning in a fire. This new video shows that there were at least two explosions, one vertically and one horizontally. As more data becomes available, Fairewinds Energy Education will put forward the reasons why, but as of now, the entire explosion sequence at Fukushima Unit Three is something the nuclear industry zealots want to ignore. They continue to hope that history will not repeat itself while they continue to build and operate more lethally radioactive and highly risky atomic reactors.
Throughout the Nippon video, the announcer reverentially refers to TEPCO and the Japanese Regulators as “the authorities” and “officials”. This kind of public propaganda occurs because TEPCO, the Japanese Government and its regulators, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have successfully captured the Japanese media.
What was called for in 2011 and is still desperately required in 2021 are independent experts. These would be people from outside TEPCO, its captive regulators, or its allies embedded in the nuclear industry. Once again, Fairewinds calls for an independent consortium of experts who would be able to give a frank assessment of the magnitude and extent of the problems that lie ahead for the failed Fukushima cleanup.
Did you know that in 2013, Fairewinds and 16 other international experts coauthored a letter to the United Nations (UN) asking it to establish this independent panel? The UN never had the courtesy even to acknowledge that it received these serious requests and recommendations. Such machinations by TEPCO, the Japanese Government, and the international nuclear industry are indeed a human rights and environmental injustice issue!
Ten years have passed, yet Japan's citizens still wait for independent oversight of the Fukushima disaster. The people of Japan deserve better than the authorities covering up the truth and lying to them.
Fairewinds will keep you informed!
