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http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/17/serious_danger_of_a_full_core 　　March17,2011

“Serious Danger of a Full Core Meltdown”: Update on Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe

「完全メルトダウンの深刻な危機」

（前略）

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(各号機の危険性）　（＊爆発の頃、保安院より発表されていたもの。現在は日本では「損傷」とかの婉曲表現に変えられている。）

And with us in Washington, D.C., is Paul Gunter. He’s a reactor oversight project director at the nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. He’s also a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance, an anti-nuclear group.

Paul, I want to begin with you. The latest reports that we got overnight and early this morning about the situation in the reactors of Fukushima, could you give us your sense of what’s happening there?

PAUL GUNTER: Well, obviously, right now, there is a lot of contradictory information. I think that what’s most important to understand is that among these six units at Fukushima Daiichi, Units 4, 5 and 6, the fuel in the reactor core was taken out of the reactor vessel, taken out of containment, and placed in these rooftop spent fuel pools. So all of the radioactive inventory was moved. We’re very concerned about this very large volume of radioactive material that is now in a conflict of information in its state of, you know, no water or water. But clearly, right now, there is a serious danger of a full core meltdown outside of containment at Unit 4. This could occur at Unit 5 and 6, and we still have the crippled reactors at 1, 2 and 3.

（4,5,6号機の燃料棒は原子炉、格納容器にはなく、すべて屋上の使用済み燃料プールに移されている。水があるのか無いのか情報が錯綜しているが、プールにある莫大な放射性物質が非常に懸念される。明らかに４号機の格納容器の外で炉心の完全メルトダウンの深刻な危険性がある。それは5号機、６号機でもひょっとしたら起こり得る。）

cf: 下記参照Aと少し異なる：４号機は「Fuel was in the storage pool」５号機は「the reactor was inactive but still loaded with fuel」６号機は「all fuel transferred to the spent fuel pool」　　

（＊21か22日の記者会見で、５号機と６号機には燃料を入れたばかりだったと発表。そのため温度が上下している。だから炉心に燃料がないのは４号機だけ。　＊貯蔵プールとは、外部にある共通のプールのことか？　ここの約６４００本ほどあるという。http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/science/news/20110318-OYT1T00021.htm 　）

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the crippled reactor 3, which has also been releasing, pretty regularly now, radioactive steam, there are reports that there has been a breach in the containment vessel there. And that, of course, is the only reactor that had the more toxic mixed oxide fuel that was brought into it in the last couple of years as fuel. Your sense of reactor 3?

（３号機もまた、現在頻繁に放射性の上記を放出しており、格納容器が破損したとの報告があった。（＊現在は報道では「破損の疑い」）

PAUL GUNTER: Well, Unit 3 is burning what they call plutonium oxide. They like to call it MOX as an acronym rather than POX, but in fact it’s plutonium oxide. This fuel has a lower melting point, for one, and it’s just loaded with plutonium, which is highly toxic at micro levels.

The containment, which is a Mark I General Electric boiling water reactor—we have 23 of these reactors in the United States, dead ringers for Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 through 6—it’s right now in this state of—it’s ruptured. Unit 2 has also compromised its containment. These have all been documented. So, you know, the walls of defense are falling, with the melting of the cores, the collapsing of the—we’re expecting the collapsing of the vessels. And then, with these damaged containments, these are all open windows to the atmosphere.

（１～６号機まで、デザインは同じ、GE社のマーク１．３号機のその格納容器が割れている。２号機も格納容器に被害。

（参照A:　
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608504576208840531837916.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs=interactive
Current status at Fukushima Daiichi March 22 )

JUAN GONZALEZ: Karl Grossman, you have been following now for decades the claims of the industry, the politicians, about nuclear energy, both in the United States and around the world. Your assessment of what has happened here and what it will mean in terms of nuclear power in the future?

KARL GROSSMAN: What has happened here is an enormous nuclear power tragedy, and we’re on the cusp, I fear, of an even more horrific tragedy, with a loss of cool down accident—and we have multiple loss of cool down accidents underway—and, importantly, breach of containment. And as Paul said, that’s quite possible now. Just the most enormous disaster, except for a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, where you have tons upon tons of nuclear poisons—no containment, except for some corrugated steel ceiling. That stuff gets out in a loss of water accident, and it would get out explosively, because of the fuel rods being made of zirconium. And I could explain that. It will just burst into the environment, become airborne, affect not only Japan but much of the world.

（より深刻であるのが格納容器破裂。　同じように危険である、トタン屋根だけで格納のないプールにある大量の放射性物質。　プールの水が無くなれば、ジルコニウムの燃料棒は爆発性があるため大気に一挙に発散され、空気伝染で世界の大半を汚染する。）

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（最悪シナリオの場合の世界的被害）

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Karl, in the reporting that you’ve done in the past on the battles over the siting of nuclear plants in the United States, because, obviously, all of the reports are saying, "Well, that’s all happening in Japan; here in the United States, we’re in a much better situation with our plants." But one of the things that you uncovered was an assessment that the government did back in the 1980s of the potential—the potential deaths and injuries that might occur from a reactor accident and a breach of containment in the United States. Could you talk about that memo?

KARL GROSSMAN: Yeah. They have known the consequences all along. This is a report —it’s called "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2"—done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not Greenpeace, and it projects peak early fatalities, peak injuries, peak cancer deaths, scale cost in billions in terms of property damage, and a large hunk of the earth being rendered uninhabitable for millennia. And just, for example, for the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant, which is about 35 miles from where we sit now in New York, 50,000 peak early fatalities; 167,000 peak early injuries; cancer deaths, 14,000; scale cost of billions, they say $314 billion—in 1980s dollars, we’re talking about a trillion.

（原子力規制委員会が1980年代に発表した、原子炉事故で生じる被害の予測値：NYから５６ｋｍ離れたインディアナ・ポイント３の場合：　

初期ピーク死者数５万人、初期ピーク負傷者数167,000、ガン死14,000、損失は1980年代で3140億ドル、現在に換算すると１兆ドル）

As to the likelihood of a severe core melt accident, in 1985 the NRC acknowledged that, over a 20-year period, the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be basically 50/50 among the 100 nuclear power plants—there’s 104 now—in the United States. They’ve known all along here in this country that disaster could come, and there’s a good likelihood of it coming, and they’ve known the consequences.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’re saying that the NRC itself estimated a 50/50 chance of a meltdown in our plants here within 20 years?

KARL GROSSMAN: Over a 20-year period. That was formal testimony provided to a watchdog committee in Congress chaired by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, when he asked the question, "What does the NRC and its staff believe the likelihood to be of a severe core meltdown?" So, you know, when you hear these lines about, "Oh, the chances of a severe core meltdown, infinitesimal," and if there is, like you’re hearing these reports out of Japan, an accident, "Oh, just some minor effects among the population"—not at all.

You go to the documents. And many of them were, well, secret for years. In my book—I did a book in 1980, Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know about Nuclear Power—there’s a line in a Atomic Energy Commission report, "WASH-740-Update": "The possible size of the area of such a disaster"—this is a meltdown with loss of containment—"might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania"—in other words, covering the whole state of what would be the state of Pennsylvania, which almost occurred with the Three Mile Island accident. We’re talking about huge disasters here. And with a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, because you’ve got much more nuclear garbage—and again, no containment—it would be even worse.

（格納容器損失を伴うメルトダウンがおこれば、その被災エリアはペンシルベニア州に等しいであろう、それはスリーマイル事故とほぼ同じ。しかし、燃料棒冷却ポールでの水の損失が加われば、スリーマイルよりはるかに多い核のゴミで、何の遮断容器もないため、スリーマイルよりずっとひどいものとなろう。）

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（ジルコニウムの危険性）

And just let me mention one other thing. Everybody should, when you hear about these hydrogen explosions, understand that the fuel rods are composed of a substance called zircaloy. It’s based on something called zirconium. And way back in the late '40s and ’50s, they were looking for something to build these—not control rods—fuel rods with, and they decided to use zirconium, because it allowed the neutrons to move from fuel rod to fuel rod and keep the chain reaction going. Problem was zirconium, the other major industrial use is the speck on a flashbulb. Zirconium is explosive; at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it explodes. Before that, it emits hydrogen gases, which have exploded in several of these plants. There's, in a nuclear plant itself—this is in my book—20 tons of zirconium. At spent fuel pool, you’re talking about, because there’s all these old fuel rods, hundreds of tons. That stuff, again, as things get hot, explodes.

（ジルコニウムは爆発性がある。2000°F　で爆発するがその前に水素ガスを放出する。福島第一の幾つかですでにそれが起きた。原発一つに20トンのジルコニウムがあるが、福島の使用済み燃料プールには、数百トンのそれがある。温度が上昇すれば、爆発する。

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（（GE社製の）圧力・サプレッション・システムを用いる原子炉の問題）

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I also wanted to talk about the history of the type of nuclear reactors. There have been warnings about the design going back for decades. The organization Nuclear Information and Resource Service recently released and posted online three memos [11/11/71 , 9/20/72 , 9/25/72 ] from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on the GE Mark I reactor design. The memos show that the Commission knew of serious problems with the design of these reactors as early as the 1970s. Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service spoke with us last evening.

DIANE D’ARRIGO: Back in 1971, Stephen Hanauer of the Atomic Energy Commission did a memo to the Atomic Energy Commission outlining serious problems with the design of the kind of reactors that are operating, and are failing and melting, in Japan right now. In September of 1971, he did a memo that recommended that the United States stop licensing reactors using this pressure suppression system. But his recommendation was rejected by the upper-level Atomic Energy Commission safety officials. The top safety official, Joseph Hendrie, he agreed with the recommendation, but he rejected it, saying that it could well mean the end of nuclear power. Now, the problems that were raised in those earlier memos are what led to the disaster here in Japan. And I wanted to point out that the United States has, since those memos were written and then ignored or rejected, licensed and has operating 23 of this type of nuclear reactor.

（この種の原子炉の設計に深刻な問題点があることは、すでに1971年には原子力委員会にはわかっていたが、この圧力サプレッションシステムを用いる原子炉への免許発行停止勧告は拒否された。それが原子力産業の終わりになり得ると。この問題が今の日本での福島第一原発災禍に至った。）

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（最善のシナリオ）

JUAN GONZALEZ: I also wanted to—that was Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, who spoke with us last night. Paul Gunter, I’d like to ask you about the—the news has been worse each day in the efforts to try to get control of these crippled reactors. But if the government is able now to finally bring electricity back, as they’ve been saying they’ve been trying to string a new line, and to begin bringing water back into these reactors and into the spent fuel pools, do you envision any problems if they’re able—continuing problems, if they’re able to get the water back on?

PAUL GUNTER: Well, let’s first of all realize that what’s been demonstrated at this catastrophe is that nuclear power is going to be more of a liability than it is an asset during natural disaster or national crisis. We sincerely hope that the Tokyo Electric Power Company can restore power. But these six units are history. The best we can do right now is see them buried under concrete, and hopefully that can contain it. That’s the best scenario right now.

But clearly, if you want to actually have civil defense, the real issue here is to prevent this from happening. And we believe that means to be—mean you promptly shut down these most dangerous reactor designs all over the world, and then we begin the rapid phase-out of this inherently dangerous technology and phase in a 21st century energy policy of renewable energy and energy efficiency.　（終）

（これらの６つの原子炉は過去のもの。現在の最善のシナリオはコンクリート石棺にして、放射能を閉じ込め得るのを期待すること。国民の防衛を望むなら、重要な問題は、この事故の再発を防ぐ、すなわちこの最も危険な設計の原子炉を世界中ですべて廃炉にして、本来的に危険なこの原子力技術の段階廃止を急ぎ、再生可能エネルギーとエネルギー効率の２１世紀型政策を段階導入することだ。）

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訳：レンゲメレンゲ

「デモクラシーナウ」の福島第一原発関連記事のポイント訳をお送りします。
全文はできず、ポイントだけですみません。そのうちデモクラシーナウ・ジャパンで特集がでるかもしれません。
が、今また３号機に煙りがあがり、緊急であると感じ、今朝これをポイント訳をしてみました。
石棺しか方法がない、との意見が最後であります。
米国では１～６号機共通の米国GE社のマーク１退部の危険性は
1970年代から指摘されていたようにです。加えて福島第一は老朽化しています。
国民の防衛を望むなら（さらに世界中の人々の健康と生命を犠牲にしてまで）
これを維持するべきでないという意味であるように思えます。
忘れがちな大切な事実もあり、今の状況を止めるため、みなさんに、
この情報を活用して頂くことがあればありがたいと思いました。　
今日は、記者会見で記者たちから保安院に対して、「いつまでこの状況を続けるのか」
との声がやっと今、あがっています。遅きに期した感じです。
東北の人たちの被ばくはどれくらいかと思います。他の地域の乳幼児も心配です。
土壌や水にたまる放射能のため東北のおいしいお米も犠牲者です。

石棺も、多量のコンクリート手配を考えると可能かどうかも分かりませんが、
急務であると感じます。
英語をいれたままですみません。英語があると事実確認のチェックが可能
であるためこのままにしました。

3.23　18：00