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Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think Reference Sott.net post 3 Jun 2011.
Transcript of Part 1 of interview with Arnie Gundersen conducted by Chris Martenson
Some extracts:
Chris Martenson: So we have these four units and each of them has sort of had their own crisis and each of them has released contamination into the environment – first how much contamination really got released here? Second, we see that a bunch of it is headed into the ocean, although we’re still questioning I think how much and where it all is – so my question is around how much contamination is around these buildings at this point in time and what are the challenges and what happens when – not if – but when typhoon season comes up? Say, we had sort of a large bunch or kind of a storm, would that create issues? I am just trying to play out how much has been released, how much might be released, and what it actually implies at this point in time.
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 hot particles.
Chris Martenson: So what do they do, do you think?
Arnie Gundersen: I think they will be forced to build a building around the building and then, because you need heavy lifting cranes – cranes that lift a hundred and fifty tons, which are massive cranes, to put the put the nuclear fuel into canisters, which then can get removed. That is sort of what happened at TMI, but all of the fuel at TMI was still at the bottom of the vessel. But it was a three-year process to get the molten fuel out of Three Mile Island – four years actually. So the problem here is that all of the cranes that do that have been destroyed, at least on units 1, 3, and 4. And you can’t do it in the air. It has to be done under water. So my guess is that they will have to build a building around the building to provide enough shielding and water, so that they can then go in and put this fuel into a heavy lift canister.
The complete transaction , including Part 2 can be reached here.
Chris Martenson’s website is here.
Related articles
- Martenson for The Week (economicnoise.com)
- The Fukushima Disaster Is Not Over (lewrockwell.com)
- Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 2nd June 2011 (thepressnet.com)
