- Arnie Gundersen: Well, I am in touch with some scientists
now who have been monitoring the air on the West Coast and in Seattle for
instance, in April, the average person in Seattle breathed in 10 hot
particles a day.
-
- Chris Martenson: What? I did not know that.
-
- Arnie Gundersen: Well, the report takes some time to
make its way into the literature. The average human being breathes
about 10 meters a day of air, cubic meters of air. And the air out
in the Seattle area are detecting, when they pull 10 cubic meters through
them, this is in April now, so we are in the end of May so it is a better
situation now. That air filter will have 10 hot particles on it. And
that was before the Unit Four issue. Clearly we all can't run south
of the equator to our second homes in Rio or something like that. But
it will stay north of the equator for anyone who has a Leer jet and can
get out. But I guess what I am advising at that point is keep your
windows closed. I would definitely wear some sort of a filter if I was
outside. I certainly wouldn't run and exercise until I was sure the
plume had dissipated. This isn't now. This is, as you were saying,
this is worst case.
-
- If Unit Four were to topple, I would close my windows,
turn the air conditioner on, replace the filters frequently, damp mop,
put a HEPA filter in the house and try to avoid as much of the hot particles
as possible. You are not going to walk out with a Geiger counter and be
in a plume that is going to tell you the meter. The issue will be
on the West Coast, hot particles. And the solution there is HEPA filters
and avoiding them.
-
- There is also potentially some medical issues Maggie
and I have been working with a couple of doctors to look at ways to mitigate
to help your body cleanse particles if you know you have been exposed to
them. But that is a little bit premature to go into much more detail
on that.
-
- Gunderson Feels Bottom Of Reactor 3 (MOX) Could Fall
Out...
- Now, Unit 3 has another problem and the NRC mentioned
it yesterday for the first time and it gets back to that saltwater and
the effect on iron. They are afraid that the reactor bottom will break,
literally just break right out and dump everything. Because it's now hot
and it's got salt on it and it's got the ideal conditions for corrosion.
So the big fear on Unit 3 is that it will break at the bottom and whatever
else remains in it, which could be the entire core, could fall out suddenly.
-
- Gunderson Sees West Coast Fish, Water Contamination By
2013...
-
- So eventually though we are going to see top of the food
chain animals like tuna and salmon and things like that that have this
process bio accumulates. The bigger fish gradually get higher and higher
concentrations. And I am concerned that the FDA is not monitoring fish
entering the United States because sooner or later a tuna is going to set
off a radiation alarm at some part and people are going to think it's a
dirty bomb or something like that. So that's not here yet because the tuna
haven't migrated across the Pacific. But I am thinking by 2013 we might
see contamination of the water and of the top of the food chain fishes
on the West Coast.
-
- Gunderson Advises People Leave Tokyo If Reactor 4 Building
Falls...
-
- The winds have turned, so they are heading to the south
toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there
is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are
well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel
lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has
ever analyzed.
-
- ....mainly, cesium and strontium those are going
to head south, whether or not there is a tropical hurricane. The wind is
going to push it south this time and so the issue is not the total radiation
you might measure with a Geiger counter in your hand, but hot particles.
-
- Gundersen thinks the melted fuel is at the bottom of
the containment vessels in Reactors 1 and 2, and that there are ongoing
nuclear reactions in what's left of Reactor 3...
-
- Arnie Gundersen: Yes, once the uranium melts into
a blob at these low enrichments, four and five percent, it can't make a
new criticality. If criticality is occurring on the site - and there might
be, because there is still iodine 131, which is a good indication - it
is not coming from the Unit 1 core and it's not coming from the Unit 2
core, because those are both blobs at the bottom of the containment.
-
- Chris Martenson: All right, so we have these blobs,
they've somehow escaped the primary reactor pressure vessel, which is that
big steel thing and now they are on the relatively flat floor of the containment
they concrete piece and you say Unit 2 is roughly the same
story as Unit 1 where's Unit 3 in this story?
-
- Arnie Gundersen: Unit 3 may not have melted through
and that means that some of the fuel certainly is lying on the bottom,
but it may not have melted through and some of the fuel may still look
like fuel, although it is certainly brittle. And it's possible that when
the fuel is in that configuration that you can get a re-criticality. It's
also possible in any of the fuel pools, one, two, three, and four pools,
that you could get a criticality, as well. So there's been frequent enough
high iodine indications to lead me to believe that either one of the four
fuel pools or the Unit 3 reactor is in fact, every once in a while starting
itself up and then it gets to a point where it gets so hot that it shuts
itself down and it kind of cycles. It kind of breathes, if you will.
-
- Gunderson says flatly that Fukushima is worse than Chernobil...
-
- Arnie Gundersen: Well, this event is I have
said it's worse than Chernobyl and I'll stand by that. There was an enormous
amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event.
And add the wind and blowing in-land. This could be it could very
well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees, I mean there is so
much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared
to across the nation of Japan. It could have cut Japan in half. But now
the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and
now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock
and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any
science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground
and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed.
-
- So the plants, you will see them steaming and as summer
goes on, you will see them steaming less, because the air is warmer, but
it's not because they are not steaming, you just don't see it. Because
this event occurred in March and it was cool there, so you will see the
steam a lot easier. Those plants are still omitting a lot of radiation.
Nowhere near as much as on the first two weeks, but a lot of radiation:
cesium, strontium, and mainly cesium and strontium those are going
to head south, whether or not there is a tropical hurricane. The wind is
going to push it south this time and so the issue is not the total radiation
you might measure with a Geiger counter in your hand, but hGunderson states
concrete cannot be used to cover Fukushima...
-
- Chris Martenson: So talk about -- realistically
I mean this is going to be months, years, whatever, it's going to
take a long time. What do they do at this point, are they going to entomb
these things, are they required to just keep dumping water on these things
until they finally cool down, capturing water all the way through? Or is
there some way that they can maybe just throw up their hands and just pour
a bunch of concrete on it and call it a day?
-
- Arnie Gundersen: I think eventually they may get
to the point of throwing up their hands and pouring the concrete on. They
can't do that yet, because the cores are still too hot. So we are going
to see the dance we're in for another year or so, until the cores cool
down. At that point, there's not anywhere near as much decay heat and you
probably could consider filling them with concrete and just letting sit
there, like we have it at Chernobyl, as a giant mausoleum. That would work
for units 1, 2, and 3. Unit 4 is still a problem, because again all the
fuel is at the top and you can't put the concrete at the top because you
will collapse the building and it's so radioactive, you can't lift the
nuclear fuel out. I used to do this as a living and Unit 4 has me stumped.
-
-
- For more, go to...
-
- Interview Part 1 http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-
fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689
-
- Interview Part 2 http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/part-2-
arnie-gundersen-interview-protecting-yourself-if-situation-worsens
|
