Fukushima: Fallacies, Fallout, Fundamentals and Fear

I lack credentials to provide professional comments on nuclear power plants, but in my thirty-year military career I had extensive experience with nuclear weapons, and the effects of radiation exposure are the link between the two. As a career naval officer, I was a qualified nuclear weapons delivery pilot, and in intelligence assignments, a Nuclear Weapons Deployment Officer, and created Nuclear Weapon Target Annexes for U.S. European Command War Plans.
In my post military career I directed the research and writing of unclassified histories for the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency of the nine atmospheric oceanic nuclear test operations in the Pacific and the Atlantic. To do this, thousands of previously classified operation plans and post operation technical reports were declassified. The specific purpose was to revisit the success and failures of radiological badging of thousands of military personnel participating in these nuclear effects test operations. Yields from modest kilotons at Operation Crossroads, to the unexpected monster thermonuclear yield of Shot Bravo during Operation Castle were involved. The Bravo shot was designed to yield 4 to 6 megatons. It ran-a-way with a yield of 15 megatons and led to the most significant accidental radiological contamination ever caused by the United States. Accidents do happen, even when the most qualified experts are involved. Also involved, was the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon Number 5). The ship was well outside of the announced test restricted area, but the unexpected high yield and change in wind direction caused serious radiological contamination of the crew and ship. Islanders on atolls outside of the predicted danger zone also received dangerous radiation levels. Nature always has a vote in these events.
These nuclear tests were carefully planned and executed. All military personnel were badged and personnel involved in decontamination operations were monitored with time restrictions determined by the measured levels of radiation. The sailors, airmen and soldiers were disciplined and followed orders.
If the Japanese military is called into service for fire suppression by helicopters and decontamination operations on the ground at Fukushima and elsewhere in Japan, we can expect high levels of discipline and rigorous attention to badging and time of exposure. There is no other effective use of human resources in a radiation environment. There can be no vision of heroic attempts to lift spent fuel assemblies from damaged or drained spent fuel pools. Fuel rods are nested in assemblies. Depending upon the type of assembly in use, it would weigh 320kg (705 pounds) or 658 kg (1,450 pounds). Assemblies are moved by cranes, not humans, and they are hot. TEPCO reports that the current spent pool at reactor number 4 is 50 degrees centigrade ( 122F). The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the number 4 spent pool temperature was 84C (183F) in March of this year. If the pool is compromised, the rods in the assemblies begin to burn with fatal- to- human radiation levels. Discipline and courage are irrelevant in these conditions.
However, discipline and courage would be most relevant downwind from a compromised spent fuel tank at reactor number 4. If the wind vector is south, sending radiation over millions of civilians in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area, how many of them would be badged? Has the government written and promulgated an evacuation plan? And where would they go? There may be plans to evacuate the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and their dependents, but that is a fractional solution to the potential problem.
Don’t forget nature’s vote in this dangerous scenario. When, where and what magnitude will the earthquakes occur that challenges whatever has been done to prepare for those events? And what will be the outcomes? Ultimately, this will be a global event if the pool at number 4 fails.
Answers to these critical questions will be written after the fact. At a minimum, what is required is an independent international assessment of preparations for the inevitable earthquakes and possible tsunami.
Japan, and certainly not TEPCO, must not make decisions alone that will affect the world; and every country must offer technical and engineering assistance to take every possible protective action.