From The Mainichi Daily News today we are treated to several articles about conditions at the plant technically and for workers on the day after TEPCO was finally forced to admit that the core of unit-1 is in a state of "total meltdown."
First up is an article suggesting that the revelation casts doubt on TEPCO's credibility across the board on technical issues. The people of Japan and the rest of the world have considered TEPCO's credibility in matters of releases and dangers to the exposed public all along.
Meanwhile, workers at the reservation complain of slipping safety standards and heat exhaustion among subcontractors. Even worse, workers who get contaminated on the job are being sent back to work without adequate decontamination by means of dishonest paper-shuffling by subcontractors seeking to get around safety regulations. That the Japanese regulators are apparently not enforcing. Who is surprised?
On a sad note, a 60-year old worker dropped dead at a waste disposal processing facility on-site. It has not been determined if the death was caused by heat stroke or perhaps a heart attack, but TEPCO insists he did not die of acute radiation exposure.
A more positive article confirms that Chuba Electric Power Company has completed the shutdown of the last reactor still operating at Hamaoka, which Prime Minister Kan 'requested' be closed due to earthquake dangers. Chuba insists that it will reopen the facility in two or three years after it has constructed a seawall to protect the reactors from possible tsunamis.
If you can read past the apologetics on Nature's news blog, it offers a fairly good description of the newly reported condition of unit-1's reactor and core, along with some projections of what it means and what TEPCO may do now that it's original plan for 'cold shutdown' within 6-9 months is kaput.
These updates and the amount of international coverage of TEPCO's confirmation of what most 'experts' were saying way back in March demonstrate convincingly that even though the media has slacked off it's constant coverage of the ongoing disaster, new information that does manage to leak out immediately refocuses attention. The world hasn't dismissed or forgotten about the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima despite some rather heavy-handed efforts by governments and pro-nuclear interests to limit information made available to the public.
As a final note, it's semi-amazing to me day after day, week after week, how stubborn the industry-serving denials of nuclear apologists can be in the face of their worst nightmares and forced admission that they've been flat out wrong. Thus says Geoff Brumfiel of Nature.com's news blog…
By the way, does this mean our article titled "The meltdown that wasn't" was mistitled? Pretty much, yes. But the point of the article stands: it could have been a lot worse.
Oy.