December 12, 2011

Fukushima Update

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant says that molten nuclear fuel may have bored into the floor of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. 

TEPCO said that in the No. 1 reactor, the overheated fuel may have eroded the primary containment vessel's thick concrete floor, and it may have gotten almost within a foot of a crucial steel barrier.

The findings are the latest in a series of increasingly grave scenarios presented by TEPCO about the state of the reactors. The company initially insisted that there was no breach at any of the three most-damaged reactors; it later said that there might have been a breach, but that most of the nuclear fuel had remained within the containment vessels.

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