Scientific American: Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger

Exacerbating widespread suspicions of a cover-up, this February Tepco admitted it had waited for two months after the accident before announcing the meltdowns—which possibly delayed evacuations and endangered lives. The uranium fuel in three of the six reactors eventually melted, and explosions blew holes in the roofs of three reactor buildings, releasing radioactive iodine, cesium and other fission products over land and sea. Emergency managers on site, desperately trying to cool the molten cores, poured water into the damaged reactor buildings using fire-hoses. As a result, highly contaminated water flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean.
Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger, Five Years after the Accident

In case anyone was not aware, this is yet another confession by Tepco that they lied about the seriousness of the Fukushima disaster. I've been saying it for years, anyone trusting Tepco is foolish beyond belief. I use Tepco as a source from time to time simply because there usually isn't any other source available. My thinking is that anything Tepco admits to is probably downplayed so if what they're saying is frightening, I think it's a good bet that the truth is even worse.

When you consider Japan's State Secrecy Law together with Tepco's propensity for lying, I'm of the opinion that we probably don't know much about Fukushima at all.

it appears the fuku problem will be with us forever as no one knows what to do except cover up and lie it away.

originally posted by: autopat51
it appears the fuku problem will be with us forever as no one knows what to do except cover up and lie it away.

With Hillary Clinton on the verge of becoming POTUS, I wonder if it's a sign that humanity has lost touch with what truth and lies even are.

be happy everything is fine!!
repeat..repeat..repeat.

Does anyone really think it might not be a continuing huge problem?

I mean, Chernobyl is still an ongoing problem now- they are currently building a dome there to try to limit some of the radiation, after all these years.
This is a worse catastrophy when you figure in what is being done with all that radioactive water.

Reality, does anyone ever think it will be safe for a few thousand years
I can see the pacific dying off almost completely

One more tsunami and all the contained waste is in the ocean, forever

No turning back
A third of the oceans will die

As we speak, a thousand people are working on the site, so it's not like they are not doing anything.

I don't think Tepco realized the seriousness of the disaster at first, they thought they could save the reactors, no body knew how bad it was in the first month after the quake, so i wouldn't say they were lying.

a reply to: Raggedyman

The pacific is very very big, the fukushima is very very small compared, locally it's bad but the pacific ocean will be fine.

We can look at Chernobyl to compare, and the wild live is thriving unaffected from the disaster.

originally posted by: Mianeye
As we speak, a thousand people are working on the site, so it's not like they are not doing anything.

I don't think Tepco realized the seriousness of the disaster at first, they thought they could save the reactors, no body knew how bad it was in the first month after the quake, so i wouldn't say they were lying.

'Worst case' scenario planing should have taken place emediately, not sit there warming your office chair for a month, waiting for someone else to sort it out.

originally posted by: Mianeye
a reply to: Raggedyman

The pacific is very very big, the fukushima is very very small compared, locally it's bad but the pacific ocean will be fine.

We can look at Chernobyl to compare, and the wild live is thriving unaffected from the disaster.

The wild life does not live long enough to develop cancers, humans do, otherwise, why the huge dome?

originally posted by: Mianeye

We can look at Chernobyl to compare, and the wild live is thriving unaffected from the disaster.

I don't know where you get your information, but it is false.

The absence of humans allowed high numbers of animals to populate the area, but they are highly radioactive.
That damages their DNA. That is not unaffected.

The dome is being built because animals as far as Germany are turning out to be radioactive from it. This is still spreading and affecting people and animals!

a reply to: pikestaff

Cancer from radiation is pretty much instant, so yes, the wild life can develop cancer in their short life span.

Chernobyl is still a danger, therefore the dome.

This nice informational video is about the wild life and cancer from Chernobyl

a reply to: Bluesma

The radiation in animals in Germany and Polen, is from when the disaster happened and the following fallout, it isn't continuent.

SOURCE

The Exclusion Zone encompasses an area that crosses the border between Ukraine to Belarus that is now teeming with wildlife in the absence of people. There are lots of wild boar, tested to be highly radioactive since they feed on mushrooms and truffles in the contaminated ground. The radioactive fallout from Chernobyl didn't just affect Ukraine — wild boar as far away as Germany have been found to be radioactive.

And some more info on Chernobyl and wild life.

SOURCE

The findings run counter to previous hypothesises that chronic long-term exposure to radiation would hit animal populations.

Wolves in Chernobyl exclusion zone

“What we do, our everyday habitation of an area – agriculture, forestry – they’ve damaged wildlife more than the world’s worst nuclear accident,” said Prof Jim Smith, professor of environmental science, University of Portsmouth, and one of the paper’s authors.

“It doesn’t say that nuclear accidents aren’t bad, of course they are. But it illustrates that the things we do everyday, the human population pressure, damages the environment. It’s kind of obvious but it’s an amazing illustration of it.”

The explosion of reactor four on 26 April 1986 killed dozens of plant staff and rescue workers, and led to high radiation doses in the first weeks and months that had significant effects on animal health and reproduction around Chernobyl.

But after analysing previously unpublished animal track records and aerial surveys from Belarusian authorities and scientists, the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Current Biology, found no long-term impact to population numbers from the radiation released by the accident.

“Chernobyl caused a lot of human damage. The social and economical problems were huge. If you set that aside – if you can set that aside – it’s hard to argue that it’s really damaged the ecosystem as a whole,” said Smith.

Did it ever occur to anyone this is a mutation event which can be controlled by those who are responsible? Just think of a global mutation under the controll of a corporation and there we ahve our current reality for the next 1000 years or so.

originally posted by: autopat51
it appears the fuku problem will be with us forever as no one knows what to do except cover up and lie it away.

I don't think it will be with us forever. In 100,000 years the danger will be reduced and after some millions of years you might not even know it happened.

science.time.com...

As I reported last week, there are four kidns of carcinogenic isotopes released when a nuke plant blows: iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239. Plutonium is not only the most lethal of the four (“extrordinarily toxic” is how Dr. Ira Helfand, a board member for Physicians for Social Responsibility, describes it), it also hangs around the longest. It’s half life is a whopping 24,000 years, and since radioactive contamination is dangerous for 10 to 20 times the length of the isotope’s half.life, that means plutonium emitted in Fukushima today will still be around in close to half a million years.

To the OP, the operators in the three major commercial disasters of three mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima have not been immediately forthcoming with information about the disaster. This doesn't let Tepco off the hook for their lax reporting, however it's an indication of a systemic problem that apparently the operators are biased to under-report disasters immediately after they happen.