2017 PT Update from Prof. Takahashi in Osaka: “At the Fukushima reactor #3 and #4, helicopters started to spray sea water from sky, repeatedly, a few minutes ago. Some of the water hit the right place of reactor #3 which is still ejecting steam.

ORIGINAL POST:
The good news at the Fukushima nuclear facility is that there is no evidence of fires in the fuel storage pools at the moment.

Residents within a 50-mile perimeter, and to some extent, all of Japan, are still in a crisis situation with local radiation risks, on top of the earthquake and tsunami problems. But if the fuel pools are not burning, at least this means the stored fuel is not contributing major emissions to the atmosphere, which then might travel long distances.

Physicist Akito Takahashi reports from Osaka, Japan:

“From TV news, we see there are ejections of mild white steam-clouds from reactors #3 and #4. The steam is thought to be from spent fuel storage pools at or near water-boiling temperature, 100C. They will soon start to feed water into the storage-pools by a special police car of water-jet ejection. Another way to try will be water-spray from sky by helicopters. It looks like there are no fires there now.”

Minimization of airborne radioactive materials certainly will aid containment. The Fukushima site itself will likely be contaminated for a very long time. However, contaminated water used to cool the fuel and plants could end up in local water supplies or the ocean and cause long-term damage.

Japanese physicist Yamaguchi Eiichi, a professor at Doshisha University, is not happy with what he sees right now with the Japanese reactor crisis.

According to his analysis today, poor planning and design are major contributors to the failure.

“This means that this is a human disaster,” Eiichi wrote, “But they’ve hidden it in a devastating earthquake and tsunami that occurred unexpectedly.”