Containment Catastrophe

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “In Japan Reactor Failings, Danger Signs for the U.S.,” provides one more instance of the nuclear industry lying to the general public about the nature of risks involved in the operation of its plants.

Apparently, the venting system used in the stricken Japanese plants is the most up-to-date version, the same used in many plants in the United States, and it has multiple design and operational flaws that require expensive retrofitting or redesign.

The flaws include the inability of venting systems, critical to avoiding the hydrogen explosions experienced at three reactors in Japan, to work without electricity. And that was exactly what happened with the failure of the backup generators in the Japanese plants.

In addition, a fail-safe system to open the vents by allowing manual access to the valves was ineffective due to damage from the earthquake as well as an inability to approach the valves due to prior release of large amounts of radioactivity.

General Electric had claimed that the Japanese plants were using a less advanced type of venting system than in the United States, and that we were perfectly safe here. They did not offer any comment to The New York Times story.