Автор: Kanonir
Дата: 12-03-11 17:19
ей тука нови официални данни:
Whether a partial meltdown is under way at Fukushima Daiichi is not yet clear.
The most important factor is summed up in a bulletin from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) that owns the facility: "Control rods are fully inserted (reactor is in subcritical status)."
Control rods shut off the nuclear reaction. Heat continues to be produced at that stage through the decay of radioactive nuclei - but that process in turn will begin to tail off.
Intriguingly, Ryohei Shiomi, an official at Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, is widely quoted as having said a meltdown was possible and that officials were checking.
Meanwhile, a visually dramatic explosion in one of the reactor buildings has at least severely damaged the external walls.
In principle, this should not cause leakage of radioactive material because the building is just an outside shell; the job of keeping dangerous materials sealed in falls to the the metal containment vessel inside.
Chief cabinet secretary Chief Yukio Edano confirmed this was the case, saying: "The concrete building collapsed. We found out that the reactor container inside didn't explode."
He attributed the explosion to a build-up of hydrogen, related in turn to the cooling problem.
цялото:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12723092
от друга страна:
As with its counterparts in many other countries, Japan's nuclear industry has not exactly been renowned for openness and transparency.
Tepco itself has been implicated in a series of cover-ups down the years.
In 2002, the chairman and four other executives resigned, suspected of having falsified safety records at Tepco power stations.
Further examples of falsification were identified in 2006 and 2007.
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