As reported by one very brave BBC reporter, on the scene of the disabled Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Japan; during a delicate and dangerous fuel-rod recovery operation by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which is now just beginning ...
Fukushima's fuel rod removal plan
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from inside Reactor Building 4 at Fukushima [Video, Photos]
-- bbc.co.uk/news -- 8 November 2013
[...]
On Thursday I was one of a small number of journalists allowed inside reactor building four for the first time since the disaster. These trips are gruelling. Hours are spent on buses, in waiting rooms, being lectured, all for a few minutes looking in to a dark green pool.
So what can I report? Mainly that I feel somewhat reassured by what I have seen. The preparations for the fuel removal appear meticulous.
[...]
As our bus left reactor four and drove along the sea front, I pointed my new monitor out of the window towards reactor building three. Suddenly the needle started to spike -- 1,000 counts per second, then 2,000, 3,000, finally it went off the scale.
There, outside the bus, just a few dozen meters away is the real dead zone, a place where it is still far too dangerous for anyone to go. No human has been inside reactor three since the disaster. To do so would be suicide. No-one knows when it will be possible to go in.
[...]
Which should lead a thinking, environmentally-concerned person (
or even a nominally-concerned "Newsy" Media organization) to ask a question or two of Tokyo Power, about
their other reactors -- that are not being so "meticulously" handled ...
Because that is how Change Begins --
By asking them, TPTB (the Powers that Be), a few questions along the lines of the CNN's 4th question, of Five Biggies:
Fukushima's nuclear power mess: Five big questions
by Paula Hancocks, CNN, cnn.com -- Nov 7, 2013
4. How do you remove molten fuel in melted down reactors?
The radiation levels in reactors 1, 2 and 3 are so high that the area is inaccessible to humans. No one knows for sure where the molten core is resting within the basements of the buildings and how far it has penetrated through their floors. The technology does not exist to remove this molten fuel.
Aah ...
Good Question!
Because when BCC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes posed to them such questions yesterday -- the answers he got were far from reassuring:
[...]
When I asked the same experts how long it would be until reactors one, two and three could be dismantled, they shook their heads. When I asked them where they thought the melted reactor cores were, they shook their heads again.
[...]
Why is it the stuff -- we don't see and/or they don't let us see -- that always seems to be the most problematic, for us mere mortals ... caught up in their "no-comment" slipstreams?
Could that be the simple secret, behind the TPTB?
Just.Feign.Ignorance. And then follow-up with ... Refuse.to.Discuss?