When I read that Plutonium has been found in Japanese soil near the Fukishima Nuclear Power Station, it tells me that the disaster has entered a new, vastly more serious stage. This material is very toxic if it gets into the body, micrograms are enough to cause cancer. In a power station, it is normally locked up in the fuel rods, both fresh and spent-and separated from the environment by the zirconium cladding and several layers of containment. That the power company admits that it was found outside and in dirt is very scary, even if the level of radiation is presently limited.
What I think about is that this indicates that the basic containment systems are breaking down, and as the radiation level in the plant and surrounding area rises, it gets harder to work there, harder to take measures to stabilize the situation, and the poisons will spread. Certainly the water poured on the core, the water pumped into the waste storage ponds is an important mitigating action, but the fact that sea water must be used instead of the very pure water normally recycled means that there is a major leak in the systems, and that implies that the now radioactive water carrying stuff from the reactor and the fuel pools is leaking into the environment, possibly into the sea.
Combined with the fact that the electric power company doesn't want others to monitor the radiation at the plant independently, I believe that we should be worried that the story we are being told is incomplete and possibly misleading. We deserve to know more, indeed the event is going to be affecting the environment for centuries if not longer and it will become intuitively obvious to the most casual observer what is going on as time marches on. So candor now would enable folks to learn, to apply the considerable intellegence of the collective mind--and the fear of panic should not be an excuse to hide the truth--the Tsunami cleared that hurdle and a lot of land as well.
What we need to do now is manage this situation as best we can, and the sooner that Tokyo nationalizes the utility and brings in the best experts from around the world, the sooner that we can bring the resources that we have to protect the Japanese people and the Japanese economy from the vast store of radioactive poison that could be unleashed if this thing gets much worse. It could get much worse, or it could be that folks will continue with the courageous actions, the intelligent responses snd the collaborative work that has limited the damage so far. If this situation isn't stabilized, the world will suffer, and if we can effectively manage this Power Station's crises, the world will benefit. We need to learn the lessons since there are hundreds of other similar power stations around the world, and we need to learn how to manage the spreading contamination, the impacts to the food and water supplies, the impacts to the ecology together.
We haven't seen the last earthquake and tsunami that will impact a nuclear power station, so learning now is an opportunity, and we must apply the lessons immediately.
One thing that we know is that the secondary cooling systems could be made much more robust by adding a few simple elements:
Where battery backup power is now only adequate for 8 hours ( which is the case at several power stations in the U.S.) we should stress test those systems now since many backup battery systems fail under real loads if they are more than a decade old and have any latent defects. We can augment these systems so that they can continue to function for say, 24 hours--and we can install a way to connect banks of generators imported from off site.
We saw linemen in radiation protection suits installing new electrical power feeders at the Fukishima plant recently in an attempt to restart the control systems and the cooling pumps-- not easy in any case, but impossible if this was occuring in the summer in a desert station.... so we can install alternate feeders now, and assemble a bank of power generators that could be deployed to provide alternate power in the event that a power outage lasts longer than 8 hours. I know that the stations have onsite generators, and I know that these systems are also vulnerable to a variety of failure modes. These systems should also be stress tested and upgraded as necessary--
This incident also highlights the need to improve the back up systems that both contain the spent fuel storage and that provide the vital cooling for these "axillary" systems.
Our politicians who have prevented the development of secure spent fuel storage repositories must either face the scientific facts or be changed out for politicians who will enable the nation to do what we must do to make the storage safe for our society and economy. Perhaps the Fukishima events will put in motion the steps that we can take to ensure that natural events that are inevitably going to occur don't cause avoidable disasters that ruin public health and national economies.
