This has been one of the most difficult blog entries we’ve written. In order to gather the most thorough evidence to date, we poured through countless news stories from Japan and the World, as well as official press releases from TEPCO, NRC documents, Areva status documents, and a JAIF report in order to determine the truth at Fukushima. We had assumed that since the IAEA is an international organization, it would have the most honest report, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. What you’re reading took numerous hours of research over many days to discover the theoretical timeline of Plutonium radioactive isotope leakage at the Fukushima Daiichi facility.
Major Players
TEPCO Tokyo Electric Power Company; IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ; JAIF Japan Atomic Industrial Forum ; NRC Nuclear Regulartory Commission ; Areva: A huge French nuclear conglemerate.
DOE US Department of Energy
There are two sources of Plutonium at Fukushima’s Daiichi plant.
1. #3 Reactor was loaded with MOX fuel some four months before it was to be de-comissioned. This is strange in of itself.
2. Plutonium is created in small quantities by the nuclear fission process in the spent fuel rods. Most of these are stored in the fuel storage pool at #4 reactor.
Plutonium disclosure happened over time as it was discovered or theorized by various parties. Bear with us as you read the chronology. There are many groups and experts involved: all of them discussing the implications of a plutonium leak.
Experts like Michio Kaku mentioned that Plutonium could be released from the MOX fuel, and then when the explosions began occurring so often (beginning on March 12), many nuclear experts stated that plutonium is a byproduct of the nuclear fission process. The explosions, whether hydrogen in origin or not, occurred at least five times over the month long course of the disaster.
Apparently TEPCO knew about Plutonium isotopes on 3/21 and 3/22. It was discovered in the soil around #1 and around several parts of #1’s infrastructure. No disclosure came at that time. True disclosure of that information only came out in the TEPCO press release on April 9th and through the Japanese Educational website about the disaster and reactor status (April 8th).
On March 23, experts were asked, on television and in the press, about the blue neutron beam, and stated that it might be due to the presence of uranium and plutonium radioactive isotopes, and an indication of spontaneous random re-criticality.
Plutonium was detected on 3/25 and 3/28, but the only reason we know this is from a minor footnote from a JAIF document which was only recently released on April 8th.
On March 26th, the NRC (The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) analyzed the situation, but didn’t come right out say plutonium. Apparently based on the wording (read the chronology) they knew it though.
Here’s what is clear:
The 3/26 NRC document details neutron sources being thrown up to 1 mile and bulldozing of very high dose rate material being bulldozed between units 3 and 4. This means the US government knew about it and stayed silent. The New York Times broke that story on April 6.
On March 30th, the IAEA and a US dept of Energy official both documented possible Plutonium release in their statements.
The JAIF report wasn’t released until April 8th.
Read more:
http://lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/plutonium-and-uranium-detected-april-10-2011-update
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