Post date: Mar 12, 2011 1:31:10 AM
A disaster on the scale of Chernobyl could happen if authorities fail to contain a leak at two nuclear plants, a senior scientist says.
TOMIOKA CITY, FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN MARCH 12, 2011) NHK - A radiation disaster on the order of the Chernobyl accident could happen if authorities fail to contain a leak at two nuclear plants, a senior scientist working at a organization promoting safer environments said on Friday (March 11).
"We don't have all the information but every indication is that the type of event that occurred there is one of the most serious things that can happen to a nuclear reactor," Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists said.Authorities have battled to contain rising pressure at the two nuclear plants damaged by the massive earthquake and said thousands of residents in the area have already been moved out of harm's way.
"In the worst case the entire core could melt and it can melt through the steel reactor vessel and escape into the containment building and then the containment is the only thing that is standing between the radiation in the reactor and the atmosphere..... There is a chance if that does occur that there will be over pressure, the containment can fail and you might have a release on the order of the Chernobyl accident," Lyman said.
Pressure was building in reactors of two plants at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima facility, located some 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. At one of them, the Daiichi plant, pressure was set to released soon, which could result in a radiation leak, officials said.
Lyman said that more attention should be paid to where nuclear power plant are built.
"Japan is a very densely populated country with a serious seismic problem and we will see how the outcome of this event is. They may need to seriously rethink the way in which they site nuclear power plants and the way in which they institute emergency planning procedures," he said.
The cooling problems at the Japanese plant raised fears of a repeat of 1979's Three Mile Island accident, the most serious in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry. However, experts said the situation was, so far, less serious.