Reactor No. 4 - Counselling caution

This is the latest comment from Michael Ruppert -

WHAT IS UTTERLY AMAZING to me is the UNBELIEVABLE SPEED with which we got a reaction to what I posted earlier today from the NRC FOIA releases. That's a sign that we hit really close to home.
As I read this attempt to "contain" me I ask, "Where's the byline?" "Who wrote this?" "Why will they not put their name on it?"

And as I read further I ask, "Why is the only thing this person is saying is essentially, "Well yeah, they said that at first but later on they determined that it was actually different?" Have we ever heard anything like that before?

You mean they got their lies straight???? And we are supposed to believe that? Do we trust them?

This is the way 9-11 started unraveling. I broke the stories about insider trading and within hours, well crafted but really flimsy spin control and ad hominem attacks appeared. Read this and judge for yourselves. So much of the work to discredit the U.S. government account of 9-11 was done using the fresh stories, the fresh records, the fresh transcripts. With each passing day and month the story evolved into the Keane Commission Report. SO it was with the Warren Commission Report.

I can see that there is a gaping hole in the version of events we are being fed and the documents point to the fuel pool at Reactor #4 running dry.

The other possibility is that there was, indeed confusion in the hours after the explosion as well as conflicting information (that continues to this day).

That is what the following article is suggesting.

But it may all be damage control.

NRC documents show all nuclear material had been released from Fukushima reactors - or maybe not

David Herron

Radiation Risks,

26 November, 2013

A newly released document from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a transcript dated March 16, 2011 concerning phone calls between US Officials who were dealing with the Fukushima crisis.  I've uploaded a copy to my Google Drive account in case the original copy on the NRC website is mysteriously removed.  My source of knowing about this comes from Michael Ruppert, in Facebook posts that I've embedded below.

A transcript of a critical part is here: NRC Transcript – TEPCO relayed information Unit 4 SFP Dry – Walls collapsed and incapable of holding inventory – Unit 3 “everything else gone” 

My reading of the transcript sounds like the speakers were in a state of confusion and dealing with conflicting evidence.  However, it clearly says that at that moment they believed the spent fuel pools in reactors 2, 3 and 4 were completely emptied, and perhaps unit 1 as well, meaning that there was a complete release of all nuclear material from both spent fuel pools.  In each case the spent fuel pools had a huge amount of highly toxic stuff in them.

According to fukuleaks.org the transcript was one of a group of transcripts released by the NRC in February 2012.

Enformable Nuclear News has a complete list of FOIA Documents Related to Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 4

A blog post from that time period discussing the documents says 

The transcripts document two things that this blog, and others, reported months ago.  First, the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Reactor #4 was never empty of water.  Second, remote sensing platforms, both aerial and in low earth orbit, were able to establish the status of the pool and that it had water in it.

If the pool had been empty of water, the infra red heat signature of the pool would have been a white hot spot visible even in the surrounding wreckage caused by a hydrogen explosion.  The Japanese government has declined to reveal their low earth orbit remote sensing data about Fukushima citing national security reasons.

He went on to connect the transcripts with the 50 mile exclusion zone ordered for all American Citizens, prohibiting approach by Americans to the reactor site.  With the documents it's clear the NRC made this order in reaction to reports that "the spent fuel pool at reactor #4 had lost all of its water and was spewing huge amounts of radiation as a result."  It's that part of the transcript that Ruppert is focusing on.  However, it's clear later in the transcripts, according to this report, that "NRC transcripts report that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flew over the reactor persuading NRC executive Chuck Casto, who was the NRC's man in Tokyo, that there was after all some water in the pool."

A Washington Post news report from Feb 2012 agrees with that blog post:

The transcripts also include lengthy discussions justifying NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s controversial decision to urge Americans within a 50-mile radius of the Japanese nuclear plant to evacuate. They show that the decision was based in part on an assessment, now thought to be false, that one of the Fukushima Daiichi spent fuel pools was dry and that its walls had, in the words of one official, “crumbled,”

A NY Times news report on the documents also focus on the confusion apparent in them.

The issue of water in the spent fuel pond is important because "If the pool had been empty of water, the infra red heat signature of the pool would have been a white hot spot visible even in the surrounding wreckage caused by a hydrogen explosion."  Further emptied fuel ponds would indicate the nuclear material had been released into the wild.

That's ultimately what we're all concerned about - how much of the nuclear material has been released, and just how big is the problem we're all facing?

Here is the NY Times article

Records Show Confusion in U.S. at Start of Japan’s Atomic Crisis

NYT,

21 February, 2013

Something resembling a “fog of war” prevailed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s headquarters in the first hours and days after the Fukushima accident began last March, the N.R.C.’s chairman said Tuesday, as the agency released a cache of transcripts of internal conference calls beginning hours after the earthquake.

The N.R.C. got some of its information from the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the utility whose Fukushima Daiichi reactors were stricken by the tsunami after the quake, but a great deal of the information came from news accounts, according to various officials whose contemporaneous assessments were captured in the transcripts.

For example, on the second day of the crisis, one official referred to “unconfirmed reports of boiling” in spent fuel pools, but the reports did not say which of the six reactors were involved, a maddening ambiguity for officials who oversaw similar reactors in the United States.

In hindsight, some of the information was simply wrong. John D. Monninger, an engineer at the N.R.C., reported that an explosion at Unit 4 had broken open the spent fuel pool, which had more radioactive materials in it than the Unit 4 reactor, and that “there’s no water in there whatsoever.” He added, “Somebody has talked about dropping sand in there, et cetera.”

The belief that the pool in Unit 4 was dry led the N.R.C. chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, to recommend that Americans be evacuated to a radius of 50 miles — far larger than the area the Japanese government was recommending. But N.R.C. officials said on Tuesday that given the actual releases of radioactive material, that move was sound.

In one of several instances where frustration is evident among experienced regulators and engineers groping with fragmentary information half a world away, Mr. Monninger said, “To us, I mean the simple, obvious answer, of course, is water, water, water.” Even though the pool was not dry, Tepco eventually did what he was calling for, using fire trucks to squirt water into the pools through the wreckage of the exploded buildings.

There were also discussions of related frustrations, including reports that American companies had assembled and shipped water pumps to Japan, but that Tepco was not picking them up.

An undercurrent of the transcripts is how the United States would handle such an event.

On Day 7, a participant who is not identified by name said that the Japanese had asked the N.R.C. “how we deal with extending dose,” or allowing workers to soak up higher amounts of radiation in an emergency. “We just told them for emergencies and a condition like this, we have guidelines that let us go to a certain limit. But in this case, you need to do what you need to do to get it done,” said the unidentified N.R.C. voice on the line.

“This government has got tremendous, tremendous, I mean, unfathomable challenges,” said another official, Charles Casto, the deputy administrator for the N.R.C. region that covers the western United States.

Speaking from Tokyo, he predicted that rising levels of radioactivity might stop airliners from coming to Tokyo. (This did not happen.) He remarked on his own tiredness, and rambled a bit. “When you’ve got a thousand dead bodies washing up on the shore, you know, it’s — you know, these people — I don’t know, I mean, we — you know, I think we’d be prepared for it, but it’s — this is — it is a tough time for them, and we’re over here barking at them.”

He also remarked that there would be questions about the safety of reactors in the United States with the same design. “I think we have to take the position that we’re safe,” he said. “We were safe yesterday, we’re safe today, and we’re going to be safer tomorrow based on what we’ve learned.”

At that point, an unidentified participant responded: “This is good. I mean, the president is calling for an assessment of the safety of nuclear power in this country. And I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but I think we have an opportunity to shape it. And I would jump in and shape it in roughly the same direction you’re pointing.”