ENGINEERS were last night locked in a desperate race against time to spare Japan from a horrific nuclear disaster.The fate of millions lay in the hands of workers who have 48 hours to prevent a deadly meltdown at a quake-hit Fukushima One plant.
If they fail, there could be a Chernobyl-style radiation leak that will kill people within days and leave others at risk of cancers and childbirth defects for decades to come.
Experts claim that unless engineers can cool the rods, they will melt in around 48 hours and burn through the heavy casing of the containment building they are housed in.
A predicted change in wind direction today could leave Tokyo residents in any leak’s line of fire.
Nuclear expert Professor John Gittus, who helped with the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, warned the chances of a meltdown were “one in 10”.
He said: “Within a day or two we should find out that things are all right. That is my forecast.
“But there is a chance we shall find ourselves on the way to a core melt.” Prof Gittus, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, added: “What happened in Chernobyl is happening in Japan.
“The reactors have been switched off making a nuclear explosion impossible but a core meltdown would spell disaster.
“The amount of heat in the core after it has been switched off is enough to melt a hemisphere of concrete 100 yards in diameter.
“This is the China Syndrome we used to talk about and people thought it would go all the way through the world and come out in Australia. But the reality is it is a finite amount of heat energy called decaying heat.
“I did the analysis of the Chernobyl reactor for the British government. The difference is the Japanese reactor has got two strong containments.
“One is the pressure vessel which is a foot thick made of steel the second is the made of concrete and what has happened so far is both those containments have stopped anything get out. Chernobyl didn’t have either.”
But if there was a full meltdown highly radioactive vapours would swirl out into the atmosphere.
The professor said: “This vapour will be blown around. The expectation would be some dozens of people would receive big radiation doses and would die within days or weeks.
“Much larger number of people hundreds times greater would receive smaller doses and it is not certain what would happen to them. This happened after the Chernobyl accident.
“We can’t really be certain that the thousands of people who receive these smaller doses are going to have their lives shortened. But it is a possibility.
“The expectation is that however small a dose some people would die early as a result of cancers in 10 to 40 years’ time. But that’s not certain. They could be somewhere where it rained and a cloud of radioactive wind happened to be blowing over.”
With the rods melting out of control in three damaged reactors at Fukushima, engineers were pumping seawater into the containers in a bid to stop them overheating and melting.
Officials admitted radiation detected at Fukushima yesterday was twice the maximum seen so far.
The containment building’s designer claimed he told the makers of the plant it was not strong enough to withstand earthquakes. Masashi Goto said his greatest fear is that the blasts may have damaged the steel casing designed to stop radioactive material escaping.
He also painted a dire picture of what would happen if a full meltdown and explosion occur.
Mr Goto said because the reactor uses mixed oxide, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. It would mean plutonium being spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear explosion.
Even if that is averted, experts predict radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plant could still go on for more than a year.
Workers have no option but to periodically vent the reactors as part of the emergency cooling process.
Authorities declared an exclusions around a 12-mile radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.
A senior American official advising the Japanese government said: “Even under the best scenarios, this isn’t going to end soon.”
Japan responded by providing 230,000 units of stable iodine to evacuation centres as a precautionary measure.
As fears of a leak grew, another earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 hit Tokyo at 8pm UK time last night.
In the Pacific, US aircraft carrier the Ronald Reagan, deployed for relief efforts, moved position after detecting low-level radiation. Officials claimed crew members received a month’s worth of radiation in less than an hour.
Three US helicopters flying missions 60 miles north of the plant became coated with radiation.
Several crew needed decontamination scrubs.
Rescue operations continued all along Japan’s battered northeast yesterday.
Emergency workers found 1,000 bodies in Minami Sanriku and another 1,000 washed up on beaches in Miyagi.
Survivors said food, water and fuel were running critically low in the hardest-hit areas and 2.6 million homes were without electricity. Gas was running low.
Red Cross worker Patrick Fuller in Otsuchi said: “It’s a scene from hell. Almost everything has been flattened.
“The government is saying 9,500 people, more than half of the population here could have died and I fear the worst.”
Japan Red Cross president Tadateru Konoe added: “This is the worst I have ever seen. Otsuchi reminds me of Osaka and Tokyo after the Second World War when everything was destroyed.”
Mr Goto said because the reactor uses mixed oxide, the melting point is lower than that of conventional fuel. It would mean plutonium being spread over an area up to twice as far as estimated for a conventional nuclear explosion.
Even if that is averted, experts predict radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plant could still go on for more than a year.
Workers have no option but to periodically vent the reactors as part of the emergency cooling process.
Authorities declared an exclusions around a 12-mile radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.
A senior American official advising the Japanese government said: “Even under the best scenarios, this isn’t going to end soon.”
Japan responded by providing 230,000 units of stable iodine to evacuation centres as a precautionary measure.
As fears of a leak grew, another earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 hit Tokyo at 8pm UK time last night.
In the Pacific, US aircraft carrier the Ronald Reagan, deployed for relief efforts, moved position after detecting low-level radiation. Officials claimed crew members received a month’s worth of radiation in less than an hour.
Three US helicopters flying missions 60 miles north of the plant became coated with radiation.
Several crew needed decontamination scrubs.
Rescue operations continued all along Japan’s battered northeast yesterday.
Emergency workers found 1,000 bodies in Minami Sanriku and another 1,000 washed up on beaches in Miyagi.
Survivors said food, water and fuel were running critically low in the hardest-hit areas and 2.6 million homes were without electricity. Gas was running low.
Red Cross worker Patrick Fuller in Otsuchi said: “It’s a scene from hell. Almost everything has been flattened.
“The government is saying 9,500 people, more than half of the population here could have died and I fear the worst.”
Japan Red Cross president Tadateru Konoe added: “This is the worst I have ever seen. Otsuchi reminds me of Osaka and Tokyo after the Second World War when everything was destroyed.”
SOURCE : http://mirror.co.uk
