(OT) Dr. Chris Busby Says 1,800 mSv/Hr Radiation Spike and Pacific Ocean Steaming Because of Open Air Fissioning

It looks as if the news hasn't reached Dr. Busby yet.

In the interview with RT below, he doesn't seem to know "1,800 mSv/Hr radiation" is almost all beta radiation (dose equivalent), and doesn't seem to be aware of what's inside the leaky tanks (hardly any gamma nuclides).

He also sees the Pacific Ocean boiling, or steaming.

And it's all because of an underground fissioning, he says.

From RT (9/2/2013; emphasis is mine):

Fukushima open air fission? Radiation surge can’t be blamed just on random leaks

The latest surge in radiation at Fukushima nuclear plant may suggest not only additional water leaks at the site, but could also mean fission is occurring outside the crippled reactor, explains Chris Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

The increase in radiation reading is too significant to be blamed on random water leaks, believes Busby.

RT: Just how serious is the situation now in Japan?

Chris Busby: I think this is an indication that it has actually deteriorated significantly, very suddenly in the last week. What they are not saying and what is the missing piece of evidence here is that radiation suddenly cannot increase unless something happens and that something cannot be leakage from a tank, because gamma radiation goes straight through a tank. The tank has got very thin metal walls. These walls will only attenuate gamma radiation by 5 per cent, even when it is 1 cm thick.

Although they may think this is a leak from the tank, and there may well be leaks from the tank, this sudden increase of 1.8 Sieverts per hour is an enormously big doze that can probably kill somebody in 2 to 4 hours.

Today there was another leak found at 1.7 Sieverts per hour in more or less the same place. This huge radiation increase, in my mind means something going on outside the tanks, some radioactive fission is occurring, like an open air reactor, if you like, under the ground.

RT: What impact will this have on the clean-up operation and those who are involved in that operation?

CB: First of all it is clearly out of control and secondly no one can go anywhere near it. Nobody can go in to measure where these leaks are or do anything about them, because anybody who is to approach that sort of area would be dead quite quickly. They would be seriously harmed.

....

I’ve seen a photograph taken from the air recently, in which the water in the Pacific Ocean is actually appearing to boil. Well, it is not boiling. You can see that it’s hot. Steam is coming off the surface. There is a fog condensing over the area of the ocean close to the reactors, which means that hot water is getting into the Pacific that means something is fissioning very close to the Pacific and it is not inside the reactors, it must be outside the reactors in my opinion.

(Full article at the link)

Again, what we know so far is:

• 1800 mSv/hr is not gamma radiation but beta radiation, expressed in 70 micrometer dose equivalent to show the effect on skin and eye lens, with effective dose 1/100 of that amount.

• It is not "sudden increase" in radiation. This waste water has that order of beta radiation all along, as evidenced by the measurement in the leak in February 2012.

• The water leaking is very high in all-beta including strontium but almost devoid of gamma nuclides including radioactive cesium, incapable of giving off gamma radiation to the tune of 1,800 mSv/hr.

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Christopher Busby's Talk in Japan, July 17: From Air Filters, Plutonium in Fukushima, Uranium in Tokyo

It is ongoing right now, netcast live on USTREAM here.

I will watch the recording tomorrow (it's way past midnight here) and report to you in detail, but here's some of the things I caught in the beginning:

Shukan Gendai (Japanese weekly magazine) sent (I think) the air filters of the cars from Japan, one from Fukushima, the other from Tokyo. From the air filter from Fukushima, plutonium-239 was detected. From the air filter from Tokyo, uranium-235, tellurium-129.

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Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: "No One Knows How Fukushima Could Be Wound Down" As the Corium May Be Melting Through the Foundation

So says Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, in a telephone interview on May 19 with independent video-journalist Tetsuo Jinbo of Videonews.com (who did the video report of the 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone back in April, showing cows and dogs prowling the deserted towns).

Koide is practically agreeing with Christopher Busby that there's not much anyone can do to stop the release of radioactive materials and further contamination of air, soil and water, other than somehow "entomb" the reactors (a.k.a. Chernobyl solution).

Koide reiterates his view that the corium (he says "melted fuel" and "melted core" in the interview for lay people, but it is melted fuel, and anything else that melted with the fuel inside the RPV) may have already escaped the Containment Vessel in the Reactor 1.

Following is my notes as I jotted down the salient points Koide made in the interview:

• (Assuming that TEPCO is telling the truth) the worst-case scenario of a hydrogen explosion inside the reactor caused by the melted fuel seems to have been avoided.

• I believe the Reactor Pressure Vessel has a large hole, not the small holes that TEPCO says.

• TEPCO cites the pressure and the temperature data as the reasons to believe the melted fuel still stays inside the RPV. However, I wonder if the pressure and the temperature data of the Reactor 1 is accurate. After all, the data on the water level was completely wrong.

• That much water has leaked (4,000 tons in the reactor building basement) and yet TEPCO says there's still pressure inside the RPV. It is impossible, given the structure of the reactor.

• There is no definite data as to whether there is any water in the Containment Vessel. Considering the reactor building basement is flooded with water, I think it is possible that the melted fuel already damaged the Containment Vessel.

• Outside the Containment Vessel, what's left as containment is the concrete foundation of the building.

• In order to have a reactor in "cold shutdown", you need to have the RPV intact so that the cooling water can circulate. No point in talking about cold shutdown when we don't even know whether the fuel is still inside the reactor.

• We're in the uncharted territory that we enter for the first time ever since the human race started to use nuclear power.

• As to whether the radioactive materials are going to be released into the atmosphere [from the meltdown and breach of RPV and Containment Vessel], I don't think it is likely as of now. The concrete foundation of the reactor building may have sustained some damage, but as a whole I don't think it is completely broken.

• I cannot properly assess the possibility of the corium melting through the concrete foundation and reaching the water table. If that should happen, the radioactive materials will flow into the ground water and contaminate the ocean even more.

• As to the the corium, I think the inside of the corium is not solid even if there's water in the reactor.

• The Suppression Chamber in the reactor building basement is torus-shaped. The location where the corium may have dropped is the center of the torus, and it is concrete. The thing to worry about is how far down the concrete the corium will go.

• The water circulation system using water in the building proposed by TEPCO is tantamount to admitting that the Containment Vessel is broken. It is a much more serious situation than I envisioned, and there's no other way to cool [the corium] other than the one proposed by TEPCO.
  
  [Koide was proposing a system that circulate water inside the Containment Vessel back into the RPV, as he had assumed correctly that the RPV had been breached.]
  

• However, if the corium goes into the concrete, no point in talking about circulating water to cool. There will be nothing you can do. The only way may be to entomb the whole building in a concrete coffin.

• I suspect that TEPCO's "roadmap" was created by the TEPCO headquarters under political pressure, and not by the TEPCO people in Fukushima I Nuke Plant who struggle everyday to contain the situation. If anything, the "roadmap" should be created by them, not by the headquarters.

• According to TEPCO's data, even now the fuel rods in the Reactors 2 and 3 are soaked in water up to half the height.

• Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Fukushima is still on-going. There is a possibility of further hydrogen explosion, and it is still possible that Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl in terms of magnitude of the disaster.
  

For those of you who understand Japanese, here's the interview:

If you are curious about this maverick nuclear researcher, here's a good interview of him done in 2007 (translated from original Japanese). Koide entered the field of nuclear science full of hope for the peaceful use of nuclear technology in 1968, only to see the reality two years later when he saw Onagawa Nuke Plant being forced upon the residents and understood why. Ever since, he has continued to research nuclear energy as an opponent of nuclear energy.

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Busby: One of the #Fukushima Explosions Was Nuclear

Christopher Busby speaking with Russia Today on April 25.

He thinks one of the "hydrogen" explosions that took place in Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant was not hydrogen but nuclear. He thinks it was the Reactor 3; the explosion was not inside the Containment Vessel but in the Spent Fuel Pool.

He sticks by his words that Fukushima is much worse than Chernobyl.

He's been having a shouting match (figuratively) with his fellow British nuclear scientists over the gravity of the Fukushima accident, whom he accuses of being in the pocket of the powerful nuclear industry and downplaying the accident.

Busby also called the Guardian writer George Monbiot "criminally irresponsible" for downplaying the Fukushima accident. George Monbiot is the one who wholeheartedly embraced nuclear power BECAUSE OF FUKUSHIMA, back in March 21 in his Guardian article:

As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

Mr. Monbiot should have a PR job waiting for him at the Japan's Prime Minister's Office with his pro-nuclear, anti-CO2 stance, a perfect fit for the embattled PM.

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