At Least Two Nuclear Reactors Were Damaged by the Earthquake, BEFORE the Tsunami Hit

A radiation alarm went off at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power plant before the tsunami hit on March 11, suggesting that contrary to earlier assumptions the reactors were damaged by the earthquake that spawned the wall of water.

A monitoring post on the perimeter of the plant about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami that knocked out backup power that kept reactor cooling systems running, according to documents supplied by the company. The monitor was set to go off at high levels of radiation, an official said.

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http://www.bellona.no/bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/japan_whistleblower

Fukushima reactor designer turned whistleblower says he knew reactor No 4 has been unsound for 40 years

A former Fukushima Daiichi reactor designer turned whistle blower today said the crippled plant’s reactor No 4 had been relying on flawed steel to hold radiation in its core, and that he himself helped hide the defect when the reactor – which he called a "time bomb” – was built four decades ago.

Charles Digges, 24/03-2011

Three technicians meanwhile were rushed to hospital after receiving severe radiation burns, triggering a second evacuation of workers in as many days, as anxiety over the safety of Tokyo’s tap water persisted. Official readings indicated that radiation levels in the metropolis’s water had returned to “normal,” but that readings were coming back high for tap water in two neighboring prefectures, Chiba and Saitama.

The former reactor engineer, Mitsuhiko Tanaka, who says he turned his back on the nuclear industry after Chernobyl, told Japan Today that he had assisted in covering up the critical design flaw while working for a unit of Hitachi in 1974.

Reactor No 4 was shut down for maintenance when the catastrophic 9.0 scale earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, and disabled all of the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s reactor cooling systems.

Reactor No 4 has since suffered critic lacks of coolant in its open spent nuclear fuel storage pond which has been ablaze off again and on again since last week, releasing massive doses of radioactivity into the environment. Rescue workers resorted to bombing it with seawater dropped from helicopters with questionable success.

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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110516a3.html

Monday, May 16, 2011

Tepco detected sharp rise in radiation in reactor 1 immediately after temblor struck
Quake 'hurt reactors before tsunami'
Kyodo

High radiation readings taken in the No. 1 reactor building the night of March 11 suggest it was the quake rather than the loss of cooling that critically damaged the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, a utility source said Saturday.

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Workers entered the No. 1 reactor building during the night to assess the damage only to hear their dosimeter alarms go off a few seconds later, sources at Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Since they thought the building was filled with highly radioactive steam, the workers decided to evacuate.

Based on the dosimeter readings, the radiation level was about 300 millisieverts per hour, the source said, suggesting that a large amount of radioactive material had already been released from the core.

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The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has so far said the reactor withstood the shaking and that the unexpectedly large tsunami caused a station blackout, which led to explosions.

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