Nuclear Engineer: My biggest concern is Fukushima plant will collapse… Concrete under reactors is being “eaten away”… “There’s ongoing chemical attacks” — Containment structures are tilting, in jeopardy of falling over (AUDIO)
Published: March 17th, 2017 at 6:19 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/nuclear-engineer-my-biggest-concern-is-fukushima-plant-will-collapse-concrete-under-reactors-is-being-eaten-away-theres-ongoing-chemical-attacks-containment-structures-are-t?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
KGO 810 AM, Feb 9, 2017 (at 9:15 in):
Pat Thurston, host (emphasis added): “There’s a story that’s going around the internet, Snopes says there’s nothing to verify that this is true — I guess Tepco is denying it — but there’s a story going around that the containment structure is in jeopardy — its tilting — it’s in jeopardy of falling over, so we’ll talk about that too — if that is even a possibility. Were that to happen, what would that mean?… First, to the issue of the potential for a collapse of the building — for the building to topple over — for it to somehow to collapse. Is that a thing? Can that happen?”
Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer: “Yeah, it can happen — and that’s my biggest concern. Tepco is building a wall along the ocean… it’s trapping all this groundwater onsite, and essentially making the ground mushy… There’s already significant damage [to the reactor buildings] — the entire coast of Japan dropped three feet during that earthquake and never rebounded… But the Fukushima site didn’t fall straight, it fell at an angle, it’s about a two inch incline across the site now. So the buildings are in mushy ground and they’re not quite straight. The other part is that there’s a toxic brew of radioactive chemicals inside there, but there’s also just chemicals – they’re eating away at the concrete and they’re eating away at the steel. It’s a nasty chemical broth inside these plants. My fear is that if there’s a Richter 7 quake, not the Richter 9 that happened 6 years ago, if there’s a Richter 7 quake on that site it could breach those containments… The horse is out of the barn at that point… (discussion continues at 32:00 in) On toppling over… probably half the concrete inside the containment that was originally there has been eaten away by the hot radioactive fuel — and there’s ongoing chemical attacks — so I really think the concrete under the containment is pretty darn punky [“resembling punk in being soft or rotted”] right now, and is getting punkier as time goes on.”
Manifest Injustice 