Showing all the stubbornness of a cross-eyed mule, the Tokyo Electric Power Company sticks to the untenable argument that hydrogen gas caused the blasts at two nuclear reactors at its Fukushima No.1 plant as well as the raging fires in the spent fuel pool of Reactor 4. This preposterous claim has recently gained credence from a memo by Spain’s nuclear authority (posted at ENE News, October 17).

The hydrogen “theory” - which should be preceded by “conspiracy” - is part of an official cover-up by the European Union, the U.S. Department of Energy and the toothless watchdog IAEA in cooperation with Japan’s Economy Ministry that aims to trivialize the dangers posed by nuclear reactors and planned fusion-energy plants.

In contrast to the spotless corridors of the pro-nuclear bureaucracy, on the grimy factory floor hydrogen gas (H2) is of no use to welders against metal, since it burns at a mere 300 degrees Celsius. Other gases catch fire at far higher temperatures: Acetylene (C2H2) used in cutting torches flames at 3,300 C and plasma arc welding starts at 20,000 C. High heat is what it takes to cut through steel alloys and to pierce the shrouds of reactors.

Simply put, hydrogen gas, even under high pressure, lacks the combustion potential to blow the lid off Reactor 1. Nor can flaming hydrogen jump, as claimed by TEPCO, from Reactor 3 over a wide distance to ignite the R4 spent fuel pool. Who are these clowns trying to fool? Obviously, those government bureaucrats who cheated on their science exams.

Giving Away the Game

The memo from the Spanish Science Ministry’s CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas) states that H2, or hydrogen gas, accumulated inside the drywell head, which “could lose its hermicity” under high internal pressure, and thereby escaped into the concrete building around the reactor.

A hermetic barrier is airtight, and the top of the reactor is covered by a double set of steel domes. Reactor 1 was operating at the time of the March 11 earthquake, so its drywell covers could not have been inadvertently left ajar by human error. Whatever broke through the reactor shield had immensely greater energy potential than hydrogen gas.

A clue for an alternate and more plausible explanation can be gained from examining the professional backgrounds of the memo writers, Enrique Gonzales and Luis Enrique Herranz, with the CIEMAT Nuclear Fission Division. Senor Herranz works at the nuclear security division, fair enough, since it is in charge of crisis response.

The co-writer Gonzales, however, has served as the Spanish representative to the planning committee for the Jules Horowitz Research Reactor, under construction in Cadarance, France, near Nice. The vast facility also produces fast-flux neutron reactors for the French Navy’s nuclear fleet. The research project is formally titled International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), slated for completion within this decade.

Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency is one of several non-European sponsors of the ITER reactor. Its namesake is the late Jules Horowiz, a Polish-French physicist who provided key support for the start-up of Israeli warhead production at Dimona. (source: the journal of Israel Studies) Horowitz’s work at Dimona and his other illegal acts of nuclear proliferation were coordinated under the late nuclear chemist Bernard Goldschmidt, husband of heiress Naomi Nina Rothschild.

Star Power

One of the objectives at Cadarance will be to test new materials against extreme temperatures and chemical damage inside reactors. This research is especially important toward selecting the metal cladding for curved fuel rods in the next-generation of plasma fusion reactors.

Fusion is achieved by the bonding, under extreme temperatures, of two types of heavy water: deuterium (water in which the hydrogen proton contains an extra neutron) and tritium (hydrogen proton with two additional neutrons). The end products are helium gas and a free neutron, the latter providing the desired heat energy for power production. Artificial fusion is achieved inside nuclear plasma, a gas-like cloud of ions, at a temperature of 100 million Celsius, which is hotter than the interior of a star.

The fusion process is obviously dangerous since the plasma can instantaneously vaporize the steel, molybdenum and other materials of a reactor, leaving only a large hole in the ground. To control the high-energy plasma, rings of magnets encase the donut-shaped reactor, known as a torus or tokamak. The plasma, separated from the chamber walls by magnetic repulsion, races around in a circular path, generating more heat energy as deuterium and tritium are added.

Accidental  releases of plasma can be catastrophic, but the few suspected incidents have gone unreported under a total cover-up by the scientific establishment and intelligence agencies. The devastating effects of free-flowing plasma can be surmised from the quick work done by a relatively puny plasma torch in demolishing the upper levels of the Reactor 4 building.

Specter of Destruction

It can be argued that the Fukushima facilities are light-water reactors, cooled by normal water instead of deuterium, and therefore safe from fusion reactions and plasma formation. During a meltdown, however, deuterium and tritium can be readily produced through neutron bombardment of water by overheated fuel rods.  Neutron penetration of the hydrogen atom in water can transform that water into deuterium, and a second neutron strike will result in the creation of tritium.

Whenever a threshold quantity of deuterium and tritium build up inside a damaged reactor, the possible scenarios include the rupture of a reactor, a mushroom cloud blast and unstoppable fires inside spent fuel pools.

At the time of these shocking events, witnesses reported seeing blue flashes in the vapors escaping Reactor 3. These bright filaments, similar to wavy rays from a Tesla coil, are a type of birkeland current, caused when plasma starts to cool and interact with ions in the atmosphere.

Inside every nuclear reactor lurks the specter of plasma that can trigger its destruction. Given the grim precedent of fusion-driven, plasma-powered events at the TEPCO reactors, it is no wonder that the CIEMAT staffers went on a “fishing expedition,” under the cover of researching “hydrogen gas” releases at Fukushima. Unfortunately for CIEMAT security official Harranz, water pumps and firefighting equipment will be just as helpless against future plasma blasts as they were at Fukushima No.1. Plasma cannot be quenched, it just runs out of stuff to burn.

The Spanish science ministry has cause for worry because much of the European research in fusion energy is being conducted at its TJ-2 Stellarator at the National Fusion Laboratory in Madrid. While fusion accidents are less dangerous to the general population than the radioactive fallout from nuclear plants, the entire staff of engineers and workers on site will simply vanish into thin air along with the structure.

In the now-lengthy time span since 311, not a single nuclear physicist has acted on ethical principle to expose the hydrogen fraud and disclose the truth behind the Fukushima blasts. (Only a notable brave few nuclear engineers have tried to disclose the truth.) The collective cowardice and pro-industry hucksterism of the physicists have served to encourage the continuance and future development of a fundamentally flawed and fatally risky technology.

The unforgettable catastrophe at Fukushima shows, in contrast, that every nuclear reactor across the planet must be shut down and relegated to history as man’s greatest folly. The booming silence exposes the fact that nuclear physics is a discredited field, an accessory to mass murder and war, and therefore unworthy to be deemed a science.  With its bigoted mumbo-jumbo about cosmological origins and sanctimonious justification of the terror and death inflicted upon its victims, nuclear physics stands as a crime against humanity.

Yoichi Shimatsu is a science writer based in Hong Kong and former editor of The Japan Times Weekly.