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Tepco Confirms Meltdown of Reactors No. 2 and 3 — No. 3 in worse condition

Published: May 24th, 2011 at 4:20 am ET
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Tepco Confirms Meltdown of Reactors, Bloomberg By Takeshi Awaji and Yuji Okada, May 23, 2011:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. confirmed a meltdown of fuel rods in two more reactors at its Fukushima nuclear plant, which has been emitting radiation since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and cooling systems. [...]

Tepco’s analysis is catching up with U.S. assessments in early days of the crisis that indicated damage to the station was more severe than Japan officials suggested.

The meltdown of the cores is the “greatest at the No. 1 reactor, followed by the No. 3 unit and then No. 2,” [Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman at the company known as Tepco] said. [...]

UPDATE 2-Tepco confirms meltdowns at 2 more Fukushima reactors, Reuters By Shinichi Saoshiro, May 24, 2011:

[...] Some analysts said the delay in confirming the meltdowns at Fukushima suggested the utility feared touching off a panic by disclosing the severity of the accident earlier.

“Now people are used to the situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University. [...] The word “meltdown” has such a strong connotation that when the situation was more uncertain more people would likely have fled Tokyo, he said. [...]

Published: May 24th, 2011 at 4:20 am ET
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68 comments

Related Posts

  1. Japan confirms “full meltdown” at all 3 reactors June 6, 2011
  2. WaPo: “Surprise!” Two more reactors melted down and TEPCO conveniently left that part out of story — “Now people are used to the situation” says professor May 24, 2011
  3. Rapid meltdown happened at Reactors No. 2 and 3 — Indicated by black smoke at No. 3 May 17, 2011
  4. Tepco says fuel in Reactors No. 2 and 3 may have melted — Announcement about the two reactors “will be made later” May 16, 2011
  5. Moody’s cuts TEPCO credit rating after today’s news about Reactors No. 2 and 3, saying damage at plant “appears worse than previously indicated” May 16, 2011
May 24th, 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Coverups?, Reactor No. 2, Reactor No. 3
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68 comments to Tepco Confirms Meltdown of Reactors No. 2 and 3 — No. 3 in worse condition

  • Cindy
    May 24, 2011 at 4:47 am

    It’s all looking pretty bad .
    TEPCO really must come up with something to stop the radiation from continuously spewing out .

    Check this out , The earlier graph of reactor #1 has been changed, 201 sieverts per hour are coming from the ‘dry well’ area of the reactor …

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:je596MhhMWUJ:atmc.jp/plant/rad/%3Fn%3D1+http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/%3Fn%3D1&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com


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  • cossack55
    May 24, 2011 at 5:13 am

    Its all OK. Go back to sleep. Buy stocks and bonds. Know the big banks are your friends. Politicians work for you. Sleep…sleep…sleep.


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  • noodles and cheese
    May 24, 2011 at 5:40 am

    The reading on Cindy’s chart has dropped precipitously as of today. It’s well below what it was reading yesterday. Can anyone explain?


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    • Novamind
      May 24, 2011 at 5:45 am

      Very strange, not sure,You?


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      • Curious
        May 24, 2011 at 6:03 am

        @Novamind
        You were wondering how there could be info for May 24. That’s because Japan’s time is ahead of yours. It’s not dawn, it’s dusk.

        No wonder they get things so screwed in the US, like when the NZ newspapers announced Oswald’s death half a day or so ahead of the event.


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    • Blue
      May 24, 2011 at 8:16 am

      This happened about a month ago when it jumped to 100 or so and then went back down. It’s either a faulty gauge of corium is dripping out in blobs thus raising the level? I don’t know but I don’t think these gauges are reliable and would not read too much into them. IMHO


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      • mothra
        May 24, 2011 at 9:43 am

        I don’t read anything into TEPCo statements either. Months of lies – massive hours of press false releases do that to me. Governments too.


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  • Ramaswami Kumar
    May 24, 2011 at 6:10 am

    No confirmation of the Russian Radio breeaking news:
    Boris Veltshen
    May 23, 2011 at 6:25 am · Reply

    Massive underground event at Fukushima, 5/23/2011. Breaking news, Russian Radio.


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    • Pu239
      May 24, 2011 at 8:56 am

      Thanks for the update. Was curious about that. There have been several level 5.0 and slightly above earthquakes off E Honshu (main island) in the last few days.

      Maybe that was it?

      Magnitude
      5.2
      Date-Time
      Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 11:49:23 UTC
      Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 08:49:23 PM at epicenter
      Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
      Location
      36.392°N, 140.992°E
      Depth
      34 km (21.1 miles)
      Region
      NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
      Distances
      45 km (27 miles) E of Mito, Honshu, Japan
      73 km (45 miles) S of Iwaki, Honshu, Japan
      100 km (62 miles) E of Utsunomiya, Honshu, Japan
      136 km (84 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan
      Location Uncertainty
      horizontal +/- 15.4 km (9.6 miles); depth +/- 7.4 km (4.6 miles)
      Parameters
      NST=122, Nph=124, Dmin=250.5 km, Rmss=0.94 sec, Gp=101°,
      M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=6
      Source
      USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
      Event ID
      usc0003mkf


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  • noodles and cheese
    May 24, 2011 at 6:26 am

    The fog has cleared, though there is still some. I can see the buildings but do not see any obvious steam rising from them.


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  • mark V
    May 24, 2011 at 7:21 am

    It’s like breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday looking at these charts, mag 4-5. Or was it just that last bit for pool at #4?


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  • Ramaswami Kumar
    May 24, 2011 at 7:28 am

    We can connect an underground nuclear explosion to earthquake data near Fukushima for depths near zero kilometers initially.


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  • anne
    May 24, 2011 at 7:53 am

    Building the Global Seismographic Network for Nuclear Test Ban Monitoring (1999)

    “Depending on one’s political perspective, one might want to check the events on U.S. territory (three of them, all in the Aleutians), or events in the Indian Ocean and in far western China (see Fig. 2). For the latter event, a click on the PIDC web pages produces the map of Figure 3, showing the location in China at the center and also the 18 IMS stations which acquired seismic signals from this event, whose yield if nuclear would likely be very small — somewhat less than a thousand tons of TNT. But 13 of these stations recorded seismic waves that were reflected at the Earth’s surface above the source itself, enabling the PIDC to assign a depth estimate of 29 km with high confidence (uncertainty = ± 3.2 km). A seismic event at this depth could only be an earthquake.

    “Could the event that day in the Indian Ocean be a nuclear explosion? Figure 4 indicates four IMS stations that acquired data; another three stations in North America also detected this very small event, whose yield, if it were nuclear, would be on the order of a hundred tons of TNT equivalent. The best way to tell if this was an earthquake or an explosion, would be to look at the hydroacoustic record for the IMS station on the island of Diego Garcia (a huge hydroacoustic signal would be expected at this location from any Indian Ocean explosion bigger than one ton in the water column) — but that station is not yet installed. We can still have confidence that this is an earthquake and not an explosion, because the two seismographic stations in Africa (BOSA and BGCA) and the one in Thailand (CMAR) all recorded seismic surface waves — which a small nuclear explosion would not generate. So in this case it is the mix of different seismic waves that enables discrimination, and the mix is characteristic of an earthquake.

    “Since the PIDC began operations in 1995 it has documented several nuclear explosions: six by France and four by China, prior to their signing the CTBT in September 1996; and a series of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998. Figure 5 shows the stations of the IMS that supplied 72 different seismic signals of the May 11, 1998, Indian nuclear test (announced as consisting of three near-simultaneous separate explosions). In this case, again, identification of the event as a nuclear test had to be done in the context of a seismically active background: there were 58 seismic events reported by the PIDC that day. This Indian event was easily identifiable as nuclear — though not a treaty violation because India has not yet signed either the CTBT or the Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Whether India and Pakistan will sign the CTBT prior to its third anniversary continues to be debated and will likely be part of front page news stories later this year.)”
    http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~richards/EARTHmat.html


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  • anne
    May 24, 2011 at 8:01 am

    Sensors detecting nuclear tests detect tsunamis, too
    Published 14 March 2011

    “In 2009 the CTBT’s scientists reported that their station on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia had picked up infrasound from big quakes in Sumatra in 2004, and Mantawi and Nias Island in 2005. The first two produced tsunamis; Nias did not. The first two also made a characteristic groan at 60 hertz near their epicentres. Nias did not.
    “In 2009 the CTBT’s scientists reported that their station on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia had picked up infrasound from big quakes in Sumatra in 2004, and Mantawi and Nias Island in 2005. The first two produced tsunamis; Nias did not. The first two also made a characteristic groan at 60 hertz near their epicentres. Nias did not.

    “Milton Garces of the University of Hawaii at Manoa thinks this might be used to make a tsunami warning system. The infrasound signals generated by the tsunami-making quakes travel at up to 330 meters per second, while the tsunamis themselves propagate at about 260 meters per second. So the sound signal should arrive at a monitoring station before the wave hits.

    “He recorded these sounds from the 2004 Boxing Day quake. The first sound is the earth moving. The second is an echo of the sound of the earth that travelled through the ocean. The third is the signal generated by the production of a tsunami. No one knows yet what process gives rise to the noise.

    “Further research is under way — but the infrasound network being used to do it is under threat: the longer the CTBT remains unratified, the less enthusiastic governments are to keep funding it.”
    http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/sensors-detecting-nuclear-tests-detect-tsunamis-too


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  • Buck-O
    May 24, 2011 at 8:38 am

    Thanks Whoopie, great links


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  • Whoopie
    May 24, 2011 at 8:57 am

    I don’t know if you guys follow HAARP and Chemtrails. Here’s a new video up at Aircrap:
    http://aircrap.org/chemtrail-song-plane-trail-deadly-deception/331494/


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  • kx
    May 24, 2011 at 8:59 am

    Is it impossible that today radiation drop is because the corium already eaten through cement and getting lower into the ground and away from then sensor?


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  • Joviation
    May 24, 2011 at 9:06 am

    Whoopie’s nuclear survey defaults to a data mine, but you can work around it to take the survey by pasting over the /s/DPHH2NK part in the default URL. Survey is rather bland. Of course Yes to phase out nuclear in the next 50 years. Now if they said 50 days that *might* mean something.


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  • credibility
    May 24, 2011 at 9:52 am

    TEPCO, Japan, and the US have taught all of us a valuable lesson. Corporations and the governments can not be trusted with nuclear power. Their credibility is zero. Lies and coverups are the normal mode of operation.


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  • ronaldragen
    May 24, 2011 at 10:10 am

    here we go again.what you were seeing was fog ffs.why turn it into an event? please print facts and not rubbish ok.every day the live cam shows fog near the plant,its on the coast for gods sake its going to have fog and sea mist!! cut the scaremongering crap and let us see whats going to develop im getting sick of it.


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  • Ramaswami Kumar
    May 24, 2011 at 10:22 am

    Excellent and useful info on explosion and quakes and tsunami detection interconnections.
    Ms Tanner’s ref to a 4.6 MM quake triggered me into action. The data on least depth quakes near Fukushima from 11 March makes for some initial data:
    Y M D TimeUTC,Latitude,Long,Mag,Depth Km
    2011,03,11,060829.66, 38.969, 143.370,6.7, 2
    2011,03,11,074809.77, 36.951, 142.162,5.1, 3
    2011,03,11,075948.97, 37.012, 142.780,5.7, 0
    2011,03,11,093704.61, 35.912, 141.601,5.5, 5
    2011,03,11,101015.33, 38.830, 142.703,4.9, 5
    2011,03,11,133430.60, 36.162, 141.840,5.5, 4
    2011,03,11,171723.61, 35.331, 141.391,5.5, 1
    2011,03,11,180443.16, 37.148, 144.646,4.5, 5
    2011,03,11,185511.36, 35.800, 141.741,5.0, 4
    2011,03,11,192424.51, 35.685, 140.658,5.5, 2
    2011,03,11,195246.17, 35.981, 141.286,4.9, 4
    2011,03,11,232614.88, 38.399, 143.354,4.5, 5
    2011,03,12,020624.11, 36.672, 142.340,4.6, 5
    2011,03,12,034746.81, 36.759, 141.739,4.2, 3
    2011,03,12,191157.05, 37.713, 142.608,5.1, 4
    2011,03,12,201432.08, 38.892, 144.751,5.0, 4
    2011,03,12,203715.85, 38.994, 144.634,4.4, 4
    2011,03,13,000324.87, 37.565, 143.723,4.3, 5
    2011,03,13,091224.54, 37.306, 143.478,4.6, 2
    2011,03,13,094219 , 37.163, 143.732,4.9, 3
    2011,03,13,111158.41, 37.398, 142.153,4.7, 5
    2011,03,13,125617.91, 37.355, 143.701,4.7, 4
    2011,03,13,135125.81, 39.122, 144.806,4.3, 0
    2011,03,13,141639.40, 36.147, 141.908,4.5, 5
    2011,03,13,144639.74, 37.977, 143.085,4.3, 4
    2011,03,13,163945.83, 37.212, 143.637,4.5, 5
    2011,03,13,222604.67, 35.933, 141.861,5.0, 2
    2011,03,13,232437.50, 37.012, 143.731,4.1, 2
    2011,03,13,232938.66, 37.632, 144.509,4.4, 3
    2011,03,13,235346.39, 35.763, 140.997,4.9, 4
    2011,03,14,014020.78, 38.108, 143.847,4.9, 4
    2011,03,14,030220.96, 38.370, 144.464,4.6, 2
    2011,03,14,045622.89, 36.763, 143.552,4.7, 4
    2011,03,14,124527.92, 36.637, 144.548,4.8, 4
    2011,03,14,183536.73, 37.357, 141.256,4.6, 1
    2011,03,15,082825.71, 37.164, 143.693,4.8, 5
    2011,03,15,150351.15, 37.228, 142.106,4.6, 3
    2011,03,15,160934.34, 37.811, 143.915,4.7, 0
    2011,03,15,204440.90, 38.791, 142.422,4.7, 3
    2011,03,16,150401.58, 38.998, 144.633,4.6, 2
    2011,03,17,211103.74, 37.733, 143.624,4.0, 2
    2011,03,17,225522.50, 37.676, 144.895,4.3, 2
    2011,03,18,174844.69, 36.861, 143.306,4.7, 2
    2011,03,18,210932.34, 37.491, 145.020,5.2, 1
    2011,03,19,093226.06, 37.329, 144.761,4.5, 5
    2011,03,19,220644.01, 37.567, 144.399,4.8, 5
    2011,03,21,173815.80, 37.794, 144.502,4.4, 2
    2011,03,22,080518.43, 35.598, 141.829,4.6, 5
    2011,03,24,043521.12, 37.336, 143.783,4.8, 5
    2011,03,24,202859.07, 36.957, 143.806,4.6, 2
    2011,03,25,034204.01, 36.432, 142.003,4.2, 5
    2011,03,31,191724.83, 38.017, 144.246,4.5, 5
    2011,04,03,115712.02, 35.898, 141.057,4.4, 2
    2011,04,19,144706.90, 36.898, 140.843,4.6, 2
    Which of these count as caused by the lava breaching the dry well depth and escaping into the bowels of mother earth reaching the water table and journeying farther? Or the spent fuel pool exploded and missiles and rockets flew hither and thither breaching the RPV and the containers? It is interesting to ponder the initial observation that as one proceeds farther away from 31111 the hypocenter at which the 142 longitude band quake occurs becomes deeper. Also we have plenty of data telling us meltdoen occurred on day 1 itself!


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  • Mark
    May 24, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    So if the cores started meltdown 311 including #3 with plutonium what is their state now? How can operators control meltdown and what have they done besides operating garden hose? Shouldn’t dry ice have been used? Just asking, some of you out there know more about the technology then me, for sure. P.S TEPCO using duct-tape to fix reactors. Officials say they are on track and forecast a solution in 6 to 9 months…


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  • Aji Jakarta
    May 24, 2011 at 12:05 pm

    I think they knew,sooner or later totally melt down will happen to four reactors.And they knew, the process happened weeks before this day ..I think, best thing to do IS calculating the best ‘amount’to release ..into the sea, into the ground water, and explosions to the air …
    LOnger time will reduce the density of waste, but they also have to prepare for the wind blows character …which may change the dominant blowing direction soon …


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  • toots
    May 24, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    PREGNANT women and animals should stay inside. Take medical leave and just stay indoors!!…..


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  • Jack
    May 24, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    toots– ? forever? or what?


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  • jed
    May 24, 2011 at 6:55 pm

    Is time travel possible? Is Time Linear? What is Time! One thing I do know is that this is our “TIME”

    Question 1. How did one of the most successful bands in the world “The Killers” write and release a song about the Tiger Woods saga well over a year before the story broke???

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBDncB-AGuc

    Question 2. How did the biggest band in the world, “U2″ write a song over 20 years ago about Tokyo Electric Co?
    “Earthquake 4. Nice and Slow. Useless scenes in old Tokyo. Useless scenes near Tokyo”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrlPoiv8TrU

    After the Rain the Sun comes out!!!!


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    • Cassie
      May 24, 2011 at 7:19 pm

      Yes various artists, writers, composers over the ages have been prescient, as in the cases you mention, or the author who wrote a detailed account of an unsinkable ship years prior to the building of the Titanic.

      The explanation is not usually linked to time travel, but to the existence of a universal data base which exists in the ethers. A celestial google or wikipedia if you will, or what some call the creative Muse.

      Cassie


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      • Ramaswami Kumar
        May 24, 2011 at 10:32 pm

        I agree. Thats the basis of all our timeless authorless vedas and vedanta and the Gita… Great! The breath of Ishwara..Yet we have evil..The good arise every now and then to push back the evil … Fukushima what depths!Lets get to see the path of the good and fight!


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  • Cindy
    May 24, 2011 at 5:24 am

    Maybe if they keep it cool it will stop in there ?


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  • cossack55
    May 24, 2011 at 8:01 am

    Apt analogy. I assume since it is seashore that the bedrock is rock. Maybe a little delay.


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  • mothra
    May 24, 2011 at 9:40 am

    The concrete was only 2 feet at the change out juncture. It’s slopped in thickness design so that usually intact rods can be removed from below through convertible zirconium alloy plugged holes at the bottom.The concrete ranges from 2 to 6 feet.


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