Why Is TEPCO ‘Speeding Up’ The Fukushima Reactor No. 4 SFP Fuel Rod Removal?

Why are they ‘speeding up’ at Unit 4? — Expert in 2010: Megathrust quake to hit Fukushima ~Nov. 2013… Recurrence interval of 75 years with last rupture Nov. 1938 — Planet’s most powerful type of seismic event — WSJ: Top official concerned quake to destabilize fuel pool (ENENews, Oct 31, 2013):

Wall St. Journal, October 30, 2013 (Emphasis Added): Tepco will remove about 1,300 spent fuel rods and 200 new fuel rods […] the 4 meter-long rods will be pulled out of the pool at a time, is considered unprecedented in its scale. Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, has expressed concerns about the fragile state of the nuclear fuel left in three reactors and the spent fuel pool in the No.4 building. If improperly handled or destabilized by another major earthquake at the site, the fuel could discharge large amounts of radiation into the environment. […]

  • Kyodo, Oct. 2013: “Tepco plans to start removing nuclear fuel from the spent-fuel pool at the top of the reactor 4 building at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant as early as Nov. 8, about a week earlier than scheduled
  • Euronews, June 2013: “The Japanese government along with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) are aiming to speed up the removal of spent fuel rods”
  • NHK, Dec. 2012: “Due to concerns over the ability of the destroyed reactor building to withstand earthquake activity as well as emergency operations, TEPCO has decided to speed up operations one year ahead of schedule to remove the spent nuclear fuel”

Ravi V. S. Kanda, California Institute of Technology (Emphasis Added), May 28, 2010: Fukuyshima-oki — ruptures of 1938 […] In the megathrust interface off Fukushima, three large events – Mw7.4 (May, 1938), Mw 7.7 and Mw 7.8 (both in Nov 1938) — occurred in close succession. […] combining the moment release from these three events […] yields a […] moment-magnitude, Mw, of 8.1. […] Since there hasn’t been a Mw>7 earthquake off Fukushima since 1938, we assume a recurrence interval of ~ 75 yrs for a characteristic earth similar to the value assumed for the Tokachi-Oki region [Yamanaka and Kikuchi, 2003]. […]

Science Magazine, June 17, 2011: The only previously recorded large events offshore Fukushima and Ibaraki occurred as a sequence in 1938, which taken together correspond to about an Mw 8.1 event  […]  the slip budget on the megathrust and the surface velocity data suggest that an earthquake similar to the 2011 event is possible offshore Ibaraki and Fukushima […] area could experience much greater slip than has been documented for previous events, similar to what just occurred offshore Miyagi.

See also: quake

1 thought on “Why Is TEPCO ‘Speeding Up’ The Fukushima Reactor No. 4 SFP Fuel Rod Removal?”

  1. From the videos you have placed on this site, and other information I have been able to glean from other sites, it is too little too late. What angers me is that Japan has continued to get away with this….all the other countries are letting it kill our ocean, and destroy our food chain.
    As a 4th generation San Franciscan (Great grandfather came around the horn from Boston in 1849), I am enraged and heartbroken at what mankind is doing to this magnificent planet. Interesting that Oppenheimer and Einstein both felt bad about their discoveries……..technology that allows man to split the atom, or develop a neutron bomb that will kill people while leaving the buildings intact is too powerful for such a warlike and destructive race as mankind.
    2016 the Pacific ocean will be 100% toxic. As one who grew up going to the Cliff Hotel for lunch, (even remembers going to Playland by the Beach), going to Fisherman’s wharf for dinner, seeing live crabs to be chosen for eating……..a world where that no longer exists…..I cannot bear it.
    I think for many of us, suicide will be the wiser action. Radiation poison cooks one from the inside, it is a painful and odious death. I don’t want to die that way. I also don’t want to move to the southern hemisphere. Perhaps there are people who would……..I am not one of them. 60% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere for a reason………climate, soil, and more.
    Can anyone imagine living in a world where totalitarian rule will be the way? Food shortages will be endless, because the planet spins, and I don’t believe the plumes of radioactive matter will stay in the west…..it will kill all or most of us. A land where safe food will be for the richest, and the people will eat the rest of it and die anyway.
    I won’t be around for it, that is for sure. For once, my illness is a blessing. I am so disgusted with a system that doesn’t acknowledge or advise people of the dreadful situation we’ll face.
    Everywhere I go, I see women with babies. What an awful world they will grow up in.
    Thanks for digging for the truth, it is getting harder to find each day. Yesterday, the UK signed away a free press, making it harder for anyone to get to the real stories.

    Reply

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