On June 15, 2011, the professional staff at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission provided a brief to the commission. It was the second of three planned status updates on the Task Force Review of NRC Processes and Regulations Following Events in Japan. The briefing started with a report by Bill Borchardt the NRC’s Executive Director for Operations (EDO). Mr. Borchardt described the NRC’s current understanding of the condition of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, including the condition of the spent fuel pool for unit four. You can find the full 1 hour 45 minute video on the NRC’s public meeting archive. Here is the key segment regarding the condition of the facility.
An Associated Press reporter who watched the brief heard the Executive Director of Operations state that recently released video and water samples indicate that the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 never went completely dry despite all previous words to the contrary. He stated that this contradicted previously released statements. The reporter, who has obviously been following the story or at least doing up to date research put the restrained language of the technical staff into perspective. He reminded readers of the context and the history that made the statement more interesting that it might appear to anyone who has not been paying much attention.
U.S. officials, most notably Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, had warned that all the water was gone from one of the
spent fuel pools at Japan’s troubled nuclear plant, raising the possibility of widespread nuclear fallout. Loss of cooling water in the reactor core could have exposed highly radioactive spent fuel rods, increasing the threat of a complete fuel meltdown and a catastrophic release of radiation.
Japanese officials denied the pool was dry and reported that the plant’s condition was stable.
On Wednesday, U.S. officials said newly obtained video shows that the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex probably did not go dry, as Jaczko had insisted in March.
Bill Borchardt, the NRC’s executive director for operations, said U.S. officials welcomed the video evidence as “good news” and one indication that the meltdown at the Fukushima plant’s Unit 4 reactor “may not have been as serious as was believed.”
Though I have no way of knowing exactly what the people who were manning the NRC’s emergency response center thought they had heard or seen to indicate that the Japanese report was wrong, I have been questioning the statements that the Chairman has made, claiming special information from that staff, since the day they were made. There were many indications available that the team in the response center, which had been personally approved by the Chairman to be in that center, were operating without any sources of information that were better than those available to the rest of the world. More >>>
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