Posted on 05/17/2011 6:37:51 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
TEPCO: Meltdown at No. 1 reactor started much earlier than initially reported
The meltdown at the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant started only five-and-a-half hours after the March 11 tsunami struck, hours earlier than Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s earlier estimate.
TEPCO originally said the meltdown began on March 12, and implemented measures to contain the crisis based on this assumption.
It had said the water level in the core started to drop around 9:30 p.m. on March 11, and the fuel rods became fully exposed just before 9 a.m. on March 12.
But new calculations by TEPCO based on provisional results showed the fuel rods were fully exposed around 7:30 p.m. on March 11. With no water or system to cool them, all of the fuel rods had melted by the morning of March 12, only 15 hours and 20 minutes after the tsunami crippled the plant.
(Excerpt) Read more at asahi.com ...
P!
Wonder if it had anything to do with this?
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_22.html
Operators manually shut down an automated cooling system 10 minutes after it engaged - they think the workers were following instructions in the operating manual to do so and that it’s possible the system, had it not been shut down, would have prevented over heating.
Tepco, the Japanese Government and Most World Wide Nuclear Experts, knew that a complete core melt had occurred and that fact was made obvious when the two reactor buildings exploded. Yet the entire nuclear establishment dragged its feet and slowly put in place a very small evacuation zone. Then for one month they denied partial meltdown followed by another month of full meltdown denials. In the meantime thousands of Japanese are still living within 50 miles of at least one completely melted reactor.
Scumbags. Every one of them. They should all be forced to personally work in these plants.
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