Inside view of the destroyed Spent Fuel Pool of Unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 8 May 2011. TEPCO

TOKYO, June 7 (AP) – Japan will for the first time report to the UN nuclear watchdog that fuel in its crippled Fukushima plant may have melted through the bottoms of three reactor core vessels, a news report said Tuesday. The Yomiuri Shimbun daily report came a day after Japan more than doubled its estimate of the radiation released into the air from the plant in about the first week after it was hit by the March 11 seabed quake and tsunami. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) now says it believes 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere in the first six days — compared to its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels. Almost three months after the March 11 disaster, Japan is preparing a report to be submitted this month to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which sent its own multinational fact-finding team to Japan recently. Japan’s government plans to tell the IAEA that fuel is assumed to have melted down and through the reactor pressure vessels of units one, two and three and into their outer steel containment vessels, said the Yomiuri. …

Japan to report nuclear ‘melt-throughs’ to UN

By arevamirpal::laprimavera
7 June 2011 It’s so predictable how these politicians and bureaucrats behave: like they have behaved ever since the start of the accident. Yomiuri Shinbun (original in Japanese; 6/7/2011) reports that the Japanese government will now admit in the report to IAEA that the “melt-through” may have taken place in the Reactors 1, 2 and 3 at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. According to Yomiuri, “melt-through” happens when the melted fuel leaked from the Reactor Pressure Vessel and deposits at the bottom of the Containment Vessel, and is considered worse than “melt down”. Well, “fear-mongering” and “sensational” US Representative Ed Markey, D-Mass. was right then. He said back on April 6 that he’d received information that part of the reactor core had probably melted through the Reactor Pressure Vessel at the Reactor 2 at Fukushima. And the NRC said they didn’t know for sure. Uh huh. By the time the report is submitted and discussed at the IAEA, they will be talking about the corium out of the Containment Vessel, eating away the foundation.

#Fukushima I Nuke Accident: Japanese Government Admits “Melt-Through” in Reactors 1, 2 and 3