I’ve seen some wild disinformation about the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in the British and U.S. media, but the Germans take the cake. Here’s the headline and byline that just appeared on the site of Focus, Germany’s second leading news magazine:
A Super Meltdown is Imminent at Fukushima
50 workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are fighting a hopeless battle – it appears that a super-meltdown is now just a matter of time. The operators anticipate explosions in the last two intact blocks.
You’ll find a more sober assessment of what’s going on here. I suspect it’s moot as far as the U.S. is concerned at this point. For the time being, our nuclear industry is dead, and I will be very surprised if it experiences a resurrection any time in the next decade. The Chinese will likely be the biggest beneficiaries of the disaster in Japan. That country’s leaders aren’t stupid enough to be taken in by the hysteria mongering in Focus and Der Spiegel, and will likely proceed with the building of a series of new reactors as planned. They will probably find the cost of fuel to be significantly lower than anticipated.
UPDATE: Today’s (March 16) Wall Street Journal has a nice graphic of the six Fukushima reactors on the front page, showing the spent fuel cooling ponds all neatly ensconced above the primary containment vessel near the roof. It boggles the mind that it never occurred to the apparently brain-dead designers that maintaining the coolant levels in the ponds might be problematic in the event of an environmental disaster.
