Some may remember back last March when the Great Honshu Quake and resulting tsunami started events at the Fukushima-I Daiichi nuclear facility that are still dumping and making news 10 months from when the melting and exploding reactors grabbed everyone's attention.
Some may not recall so clearly that Fukushima prefecture - and TEPCO - has yet another nuclear reservation, Fukushima-II Daini, located about 12 kilometers south of Daiichi. It boasts only 4 reactors instead of 6, all BWRs with Mark-II containments. Which are a bit more sturdy than the Mark-I's that exploded so impressively at Daiichi. Most people probably don't remember that residents within 10 km of Fukushima-II [Daini] were evacuated at the same time residents that close to Daiichi were evacuated.
We were never treated to spectacular images of exploding reactor buildings from Daini, and everyone was assured by March 12 that all reactors were fine and in "cold shutdown." But Daini apparently had some venting troubles too, and ended up with 3,000 tons of radioactive water flooding its reactor buildings. The TEPCO president officially apologized for the accidents at both Daiichi and Daini on November 4th.
On January 8 (this past Sunday) an expert at an Osaka citizens' group workshop - Hiromitsu Ino, professor emeritus at Tokyo University in metallic materials science, said that at least one of the containment vessels at Daini was breached. Probably by the earthquake and not by the tsunami, which was not as devastating at that reservation as it was when it came over the seawall at Daiichi.
So it looks as if we may have to add another reactor to the 3 at Daiichi with containments that no longer contain much, But at least the spent fuel pools at Daini aren't wide open to the elements (that we know of). The declaration of emergency for Daini was ended on December 26. Which doesn't mean much to the evacuees, since Daini is still within the Daiichi forbidden zone. We will never know how much of the radioactive contamination emitted from the area since March 11 of 2011 was from Daini, but with a breached containment, it certainly has amounted to some.
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NOTE: Lucas Hixson has posted more of the NRC internals, some of which help to round out the picture of what was known early in the disaster at Fukushima, and what was (or was not) done about it, per my DKos series on the documents. But at this point the task seems to be tracking the Keystone Kops of Koverup around in circles to try and figure out which lies were served up as distraction from more serious events next door, and which lies were simply lies for the sake of lies. Positively maddening, so I took time off to enjoy family and friends over the holidays and am slowly getting back into gear.
For a teaser, check out this doozy - March 16, 2011 - Japan reports 5 persons have received lethal radiation doses.
And for a little taste of what national nuclear regulatory agencies NEED to do (but won't) in response to what's been learned from Fukushima, France 'imagines the unimaginable'.