Accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant

As you must know, at the time of writing this news, in Japan, because of the earthquake of 8,9 and especially the tsunami that followed yesterday morning, reactor No. 1 of the Fukushima power plant built by the sea, following the destruction of part of its maintenance facilities and safety relays, broke down in part, the diesels and engine no longer being able to supply the water reactor, the latter partly bare, began to heat up. And He created water vapor charged with radioactivity, which itself created pressure in the containment protecting the reactor, and this finally pulverized the dressing of the enclosure (it is a priori planned for). But the reactor has not yet exploded and seems to be going through a process of fusion. For now, Bertrand Barré, Areva's scientific advisor, has told us that the severity of the incident is at least 4 out of 7 on the international scale of nuclear events (INES). By comparison, the disaster of Chernobyl was classified 7, the maximum alert level. But don't worry, everything is fine. Because we, who are well placed with our 58 reactors in our 19 nuclear power plants, according to Eric Besson, our energetic minister, "it's not a nuclear disaster". Understand, Japan hasn't been razed yet for the 2^e times... I let you discover the France 2 article on the question below.

Update 00:51 - The Point : Failure of the cooling system of a second reactor at Daiichi

13.03.2011 update - Crashdebug: Nuclear: Japan has played the sorcerer's apprentice. And France?

Update 26.02.2016 : Fukushima : 5 years later, Tepco admits to having lied about the seriousness of the state of the reactors...

The accident that occurred at reactor No. 1 of the Fukushima power plant was assessed by the Japanese authorities at level 4

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced on Saturday that the nuclear accident has been rated as level 4 on a scale of 7.

An explosion occurred Saturday morning (French time) in this installation located 250 kilometers north of Tokyo.

The roof and walls of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant collapsed and thick white smoke billowed from the plant, raising fears of a major nuclear accident.

The radiation on the site has "rather decreased"

A level of radioactivity 1.000 times higher than normal was detected Friday in the region. Tepco had then received instructions from the authorities to release vapors containing radioactive substances to lower the pressure, after having evacuated the area within a radius of 10 kilometers.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano assured Saturday that the radiation on the site had "rather dropped" after the explosion, which "did not take place in the reactor", he insisted.

With the Fukushima No. 1 plant experiencing cooling problems, the US Air Force delivered coolant to the site overnight from Friday to Saturday.

The reactor vessel did not suffer any damage, according to the site operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco). The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency also deemed serious damage to the reactor vessel on Saturday unlikely.

The 4 level qualifies "accidents not involving significant risk off the site", according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The term "anomaly" is used for level 1 and "incident" is only used for levels 2 and 3.

Level 4 is the worst known so far in Japan, said an official from the international agency.

Another nuclear power plant in the region, Fukushima No. 2, also had cooling problems on four of its reactors and the electric company Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) took preventive measures.

"A Chernobyl-like disaster is not possible."

That's what told us Bertrand Barre, scientific advisor to Areva and author of the book "The 100 words of nuclear power". According to him, a catastrophe similar to that of Chernobyl is not possible "because the installations are different".

He told us that the severity of the incident is at least 4 out of 7 on the international scale of nuclear events (INES). By comparison, the Chernobyl disaster was classified as 7, the maximum alert level.

The problem that arises for Fukushima resembles that of Three Mile Island, in the United States in 1979, estimates Bertrand Barré, indicating that the accident had been classified 5 on the INES scale, which corresponds to an "accident causing a risk outside the site".

The specialist notes that extending the evacuation radius from 10 to 20 km is a serious measure which means significant risks.

For its part, Andre Lacoste, President of the Nuclear Safety Authority in France, considered that "the situation is clearly serious". He points out that the "positive point" is to be seen in the direction of the winds which would push possible air pollution towards the Pacific.