WEBVTT 00:00:07.057 --> 00:00:11.232 [Maggie Gundersen] Hello Mr. Hirose and hello people of Kansai. 00:00:11.232 --> 00:00:15.508 I am Maggie Gundersen. I am the President and the founder of Fairewinds Associates 00:00:15.508 --> 00:00:21.876 and the founding director of Fairewinds Energy Education non-profit. 00:00:21.876 --> 00:00:29.044 I am here today with Arnie Gundersen, my husband, and Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Associates. 00:00:29.044 --> 00:00:36.142 We are here today to talk to you about the triple meltdown at Fukushima-Daiichi. 00:00:36.142 --> 00:00:38.926 We hope to answer all your questions. 00:00:38.926 --> 00:00:43.893 I wish we could have joined you in person, but I thank you for watching this video 00:00:43.893 --> 00:00:49.994 and please send us any follow-up questions. We will be happy to answer them. 00:00:49.994 --> 00:00:54.678 Now let's bring Arnie into this conversation. 00:00:54.678 --> 00:01:01.256 Arnie, how dangerous is the situation now at Fukushima-Daiichi Unit 4, 00:01:01.256 --> 00:01:05.695 particularly in Japan with its continuous danger of earthquakes, 00:01:05.695 --> 00:01:11.749 and seismic activity and chance for an additional tsunami. 00:01:11.749 --> 00:01:17.927 [Arnie Gundersen] Unit 4 has always been my biggest concern. 00:01:17.927 --> 00:01:23.780 If you watched our website on the very first week of the accident I was saying 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:29.377 that if Unit 4 were to catch fire, you would have to evacuate Tokyo. 00:01:29.377 --> 00:01:35.462 As a matter of fact the book that we wrote talks about that a lot. 00:01:35.462 --> 00:01:43.961 It is really important and it remains the biggest concern that I have about the Fukushima site. 00:01:43.961 --> 00:01:52.004 Unit 4 has more fuel in it than any of the other units in the complex, 00:01:52.004 --> 00:01:58.173 but more importantly it has the most recently used nuclear fuel. 00:01:58.173 --> 00:02:04.504 And all of that fuel is outside of the containment. 00:02:04.504 --> 00:02:07.758 So that would make it dangerous enough. 00:02:07.758 --> 00:02:17.058 Except that also, of course, Unit 4 has had a series of explosions and is weakened structurally. 00:02:17.058 --> 00:02:21.925 Before it might have withstood a 7.5 earthquake. 00:02:21.925 --> 00:02:31.575 I believe that the structural damage to Unit 4 is so great that if there is a 7.5 earthquake, it will not withstand it. 00:02:31.575 --> 00:02:40.925 Here is what would happen if Unit 4 were to crack and the water were to drain out of the nuclear fuel pool. 00:02:40.925 --> 00:02:52.025 The fuel is hot enough that it needs to be water-cooled. If air is all there is cooling the fuel, it will burn. 00:02:52.025 --> 00:03:00.658 It will burn the zircaloy cladding on the fuel, (and) will react with the oxygen to create a fire. 00:03:00.658 --> 00:03:09.280 And it is a fire that once it starts, cannot be put out by water. Water would make it worse. 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:16.258 So the nuclear fuel would have to burn completely before the fire would ever go out. 00:03:16.258 --> 00:03:26.608 In the process, all that radiation would go up into the atmosphere and blow all over Japan and all over the world. 00:03:26.608 --> 00:03:32.342 There is as much cesium in the fuel pool at Unit 4 as there was 00:03:32.342 --> 00:03:42.342 in all of the atomic bombs dropped in all of the tests in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, and into the 1970's. 00:03:42.342 --> 00:03:52.543 All of the above ground testing has less cesium in it than is in the reactor pool at Fukushima 4 right now. 00:03:52.543 --> 00:04:01.892 So it is a grave situation. I don't believe that the Japanese Government is moving fast enough. 00:04:01.892 --> 00:04:09.509 If there is no earthquake, the plan to remove the fuel slowly is going to be adequate. 00:04:09.509 --> 00:04:13.342 But we cannot wait on Mother Nature. 00:04:13.342 --> 00:04:20.018 We have to quickly move that fuel out of that pool and onto the ground. 00:04:20.018 --> 00:04:23.525 The key here is quickly. 00:04:23.525 --> 00:04:28.122 The Japanese Government finally just this month came up with a plan 00:04:28.122 --> 00:04:38.658 to build a building around the fuel pool building and begin removing the fuel in 2013 or 2014. 00:04:38.658 --> 00:04:48.263 I said that that is what they needed to do on the Fairewinds site in an interview with Chris Martenson a year ago. 00:04:48.263 --> 00:04:53.586 These things have been evident, but TEPCO is not moving fast enough, 00:04:53.586 --> 00:04:59.679 and the Japanese Government is not pushing TEPCO to move fast enough either. 00:04:59.679 --> 00:05:06.202 I think the top priority of TEPCO and the top priority of the Japanese Government should be 00:05:06.202 --> 00:05:12.725 to move the fuel out of that pool just as quickly as possible. 00:05:12.725 --> 00:05:19.877 And in the meantime, they need to strengthen that pool to make sure that it can withstand an earthquake. 00:05:19.877 --> 00:05:27.271 Remember, that pool is not in a containment. You can look down in a satellite and see the nuclear fuel. 00:05:27.271 --> 00:05:32.942 The roof is blown off. And that is what makes it dangerous. 00:05:32.942 --> 00:05:41.111 In America, we had the Brookhaven National Laboratory do a study to examine what would happen in a fuel pool fire. 00:05:41.111 --> 00:05:48.335 Brookhaven National Labs determined that there would be 187,000 people 00:05:48.335 --> 00:05:53.775 who would develop cancer from a fuel pool fire. 00:05:53.775 --> 00:05:57.640 It is a serious concern and I do not believe that Tokyo Electric, 00:05:57.640 --> 00:06:02.643 and I do not believe that the Japanese Government is taking it seriously enough. 00:06:02.643 --> 00:06:08.884 For the last year I have been working with Akio Matsumora and finally it appears 00:06:08.884 --> 00:06:15.125 that the world community is listening to Akio Matsumora's concerns about the pool. 00:06:15.125 --> 00:06:20.131 We need to tackle this as a concerned world community, 00:06:20.131 --> 00:06:26.613 and encourage the Japanese Government and encourage Tokyo Electric to solve it quickly. 00:06:26.613 --> 00:06:32.592 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie you mentioned cesium in your earlier discussion. Why is it important? 00:06:32.592 --> 00:06:38.215 What is the health effect of cesium and are there any other radioactive isotopes 00:06:38.215 --> 00:06:41.807 that would have been released during the triple meltdown? 00:06:41.807 --> 00:06:48.743 [Arnie Gundersen] Cesium is one of many radioactive isotopes that are created in a nuclear reactor. 00:06:48.743 --> 00:06:59.142 It has got a 30 year half life which means that it hangs around for 300 years and biologically it mimics potassium. 00:06:59.142 --> 00:07:02.750 You might remember that if you have a muscle cramp, you eat a banana, 00:07:02.750 --> 00:07:06.359 and it goes to your muscles and relieves the cramp. 00:07:06.359 --> 00:07:11.375 Well, cesium also goes to your muscles. It is called a muscle seeker. 00:07:11.375 --> 00:07:19.159 When it goes to your muscles, it can cause cancer, but it can also cause a variety of other illnesses. 00:07:19.159 --> 00:07:26.842 The Brookhaven study only looks at cancer. It does not look at all the other things that radioactive cesium can do. 00:07:26.842 --> 00:07:31.426 In young children with rapidly developing muscles, especially their heart muscle, 00:07:31.426 --> 00:07:36.933 it can create something called Chernobyl Heart which is damage to the heart muscle, 00:07:36.933 --> 00:07:42.424 which once it is damaged, never ever recovers for the life of the child. 00:07:42.424 --> 00:07:52.892 So cesium is just one of many isotopes, but it is relatively easy to measure and also biologically causes 00:07:52.892 --> 00:07:58.995 almost the most damage of any of the other isotopes that are in that reactor. 00:07:58.995 --> 00:08:06.207 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie, you have said that you believe the explosion at Unit 3 was a prompt criticality. 00:08:06.207 --> 00:08:10.659 What is a prompt criticality and why do you believe that? 00:08:10.659 --> 00:08:21.009 [Arnie Gundersen] I developed my concern about a prompt criticality because of the nature of the explosion in Unit 3. 00:08:21.009 --> 00:08:29.607 Unit 1, when it exploded, blew sideways and with relatively low energy. 00:08:29.607 --> 00:08:35.958 You can measure the rate at which it moves and it moves less than the speed of sound. 00:08:35.958 --> 00:08:43.009 And that is called a deflagration. It does not do anywhere near as much damage. 00:08:43.009 --> 00:08:51.074 When I looked at the explosion on Unit 3, however, it was entirely different. You can see it, it is not hard to see. 00:08:51.074 --> 00:08:59.876 It is called a detonation. The speed at which Unit 3 exploded was faster than the speed of sound. 00:08:59.876 --> 00:09:04.165 And the important thing is not how Unit 3 exploded. 00:09:04.165 --> 00:09:11.808 What is the most important thing is that it exploded with a detonation, not a deflagration. 00:09:11.808 --> 00:09:16.258 The nuclear industry is not paying attention to this now, but it should be, 00:09:16.258 --> 00:09:22.126 because a nuclear containment can handle the slow moving deflagration, 00:09:22.126 --> 00:09:27.993 but it cannot handle the fast moving detonation. 00:09:27.993 --> 00:09:33.593 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community are absolutely ignoring the fact, 00:09:33.593 --> 00:09:39.193 that a detonation occurred in Unit 3. 00:09:39.193 --> 00:09:43.826 Well how did a detonation occur? That was the question I asked myself. 00:09:43.826 --> 00:09:53.459 I checked with chemists and atmospheric pressure and hydrogen will not create a detonation. 00:09:53.459 --> 00:10:03.537 Like on Unit 1 it will only create a deflagration. So I needed to figure out how a detonation could occur. 00:10:03.537 --> 00:10:06.132 But there are a couple of other clues here. 00:10:06.132 --> 00:10:11.496 One clue is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission way back in March of last year, 00:10:11.496 --> 00:10:19.222 wrote a report that is on our website, that talks about nuclear fuel being deposited on the site 00:10:19.222 --> 00:10:24.661 and nuclear fuel being discovered as far away as two kilometers. 00:10:24.661 --> 00:10:30.712 How can nuclear fuel get blown out of a nuclear reactor? 00:10:30.712 --> 00:10:35.811 The fuel that is inside the reactor is also inside the containment, 00:10:35.811 --> 00:10:39.925 and there is no indication of a massive containment failure 00:10:39.925 --> 00:10:45.077 and a massive reactor failure that could have thrown the nuclear fuel out. 00:10:45.077 --> 00:10:54.995 So I had to come up with a reason that the nuclear fuel could have been released in pieces, not little fine atoms, 00:10:54.995 --> 00:11:01.147 but in pieces which is what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says was discovered. 00:11:01.147 --> 00:11:09.975 The only way that could happen is if the explosion occurred in the nuclear fuel pool at Unit 3. 00:11:09.975 --> 00:11:17.680 Now if you look at the video of Unit 3, the very first frames show the explosion occurring on the side of the building 00:11:17.680 --> 00:11:21.611 and that is the side of the building that has the nuclear fuel pool. 00:11:21.611 --> 00:11:30.009 It started on the nuclear fuel pool side and then worked it's way up into the massive cloud that you see. 00:11:30.009 --> 00:11:38.960 So what could have caused that? That is the question. Hydrogen would have been above the nuclear fuel, 00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:46.059 it would have been a gas above the nuclear fuel and if it had exploded, it would have pushed the nuclear fuel down. 00:11:46.059 --> 00:11:50.700 That is not what happened. Remember, we have fuel fragments found off-site. 00:11:50.700 --> 00:11:55.342 Something had to lift the nuclear fuel up. 00:11:55.342 --> 00:12:05.343 The only thing I could determine is that it was a criticality in the fuel pool that caused the fuel to lift up. 00:12:05.343 --> 00:12:13.857 The division I ran built nuclear fuel racks for boiling water reactors exactly like Fukushima. 00:12:13.857 --> 00:12:24.326 The dense fuel racks that are now in every reactor everywhere are very close to becoming critical anyway. 00:12:24.326 --> 00:12:30.283 And in the accident situation where there was seismic event and explosions occurring, 00:12:30.283 --> 00:12:34.825 it is likely that they were very near to becoming critical. 00:12:34.825 --> 00:12:42.480 And what that means is that they were very near to becoming a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. 00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:48.842 Way back in college 40 years ago, we watched a movie called the Borax Experiment. 00:12:48.842 --> 00:12:51.850 You can find it on the web today. 00:12:51.850 --> 00:12:58.121 The explosion at Borax was a prompt moderated criticality. 00:12:58.121 --> 00:13:04.392 It looks almost exactly like the explosion in Fukushima unit 3. 00:13:04.392 --> 00:13:12.758 So an image I had from 40 years ago led me to conclude that the same thing happened in Unit 3. 00:13:12.758 --> 00:13:19.663 That a criticality occurred in the fuel pool and it pushed some of the nuclear fuel up into pellets, 00:13:19.663 --> 00:13:24.075 and the pellets wound up scattered around the site. 00:13:24.075 --> 00:13:37.429 Now, the criticality is called prompt moderated criticality. It is not a bomb. A bomb is a prompt fast criticality. 00:13:37.429 --> 00:13:46.491 This reaction occurs slower than a bomb, but faster than what occurs inside a nuclear reactor. 00:13:46.491 --> 00:13:53.161 The Borax experiments were designed to test just how violent that reaction could be. 00:13:53.161 --> 00:13:58.525 I think if you look at Borax and compare it to Fukushima Unit 3, 00:13:58.525 --> 00:14:01.776 you will see that there are an awful lot of similarities. 00:14:01.776 --> 00:14:05.851 Again this is a theory, but it is the only theory, 00:14:05.851 --> 00:14:11.342 that accounts for the explosion occurring on the side where the fuel pool is, 00:14:11.342 --> 00:14:20.025 and it is the only theory that creates the uplift force that caused the fuel particles to be thrown about the site 00:14:20.025 --> 00:14:23.758 and discovered as far as 2 kilometers away. 00:14:23.758 --> 00:14:34.201 Well there is one more piece of evidence and that is that the roof over the fuel pool has been totally destroyed 00:14:34.201 --> 00:14:40.996 whereas the roof over the nuclear reactor and the containment, collapsed downward. 00:14:40.996 --> 00:14:47.191 We talk about that in a video on the site as well and I think that is another important indication 00:14:47.191 --> 00:14:53.510 that whatever it was that caused the fuel to lift occurred on the fuel pool side of the building, 00:14:53.510 --> 00:14:59.138 and not in the middle where the nuclear reactor was. 00:14:59.138 --> 00:15:08.059 The videos after the accident and after the explosion show containment leaks as well. 00:15:08.059 --> 00:15:13.807 You will see in the weeks afterward, steam coming from the center of the building. 00:15:13.807 --> 00:15:19.482 And I believe that the containment lid lifted on Unit 3, 00:15:19.482 --> 00:15:25.158 and never went back down straight, so it has lifted and twisted sideways 00:15:25.158 --> 00:15:30.026 and radioactive gasses are lifting from that containment lid. 00:15:30.026 --> 00:15:38.142 But there is not enough evidence to say that that is what caused the explosion that we saw during the accident. 00:15:38.142 --> 00:15:46.142 The jury is still out and will be for 10 years until we get inside the Fukushima reactor to see what the damage is. 00:15:46.142 --> 00:15:52.993 But right now, I think my theory accounts for the damage, the speed of the shock wave, 00:15:52.993 --> 00:16:01.859 and also the fact that the contamination has been found as far away as 2 kilometers. 00:16:01.859 --> 00:16:05.330 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie, let's talk about the Unit 4 spent fuel pool. 00:16:05.330 --> 00:16:10.220 There have been a lot of questions about that and a lot of concerns right now. 00:16:10.220 --> 00:16:15.908 Was there a hydrogen explosion at the Unit 4 spent fuel pool and if there was, 00:16:15.908 --> 00:16:20.457 what is a hydrogen explosion and why would it have occurred there? 00:16:20.457 --> 00:16:27.808 [Arnie Gundersen] One of the biggest mysteries at Fukushima is how did Fukushima Unit 4 explode? 00:16:27.808 --> 00:16:33.759 There are a couple of very, very grainy videos that clearly show it did explode. 00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:42.992 It was a different type of explosion and perhaps a fire and an explosion that went on for a period of days. 00:16:42.992 --> 00:16:51.943 So exactly how it did explode is one of the big questions about the Fukushima accident. 00:16:51.943 --> 00:16:54.859 There are 3 competing theories. 00:16:54.859 --> 00:17:02.907 Tokyo Electric says that the radioactive gasses over in Unit 3 went through a pipe 00:17:02.907 --> 00:17:10.882 that connected Unit 4 and entered Unit 4 causing Unit 4 to explode. 00:17:10.882 --> 00:17:19.477 So Tokyo Electric's position is that the radioactive hydrogen that was created in Unit 3 00:17:19.477 --> 00:17:25.100 went through a pipe, entered Unit 4, and there it exploded. 00:17:25.100 --> 00:17:28.708 There is one piece of evidence that supports that. 00:17:28.708 --> 00:17:36.875 There is some contamination in some filters in Unit 4 that would indicate that gasses did come from Unit 3. 00:17:36.875 --> 00:17:43.241 So that is a possibility, but I do not think it is accurate because I believe 00:17:43.241 --> 00:17:53.525 that the containment was so damaged on Unit 3, that there was no pressure to push those gasses into Unit 4. 00:17:53.525 --> 00:18:01.692 I can't understand how the gasses, what the mode of force was to push those gasses into Unit 4. 00:18:01.692 --> 00:18:07.942 I think the hydrogen explosion came from something in side Unit 4 itself. 00:18:07.942 --> 00:18:10.908 There are two possibilities there. 00:18:10.908 --> 00:18:17.793 One is by Dr. Gen Saji and it is an excellent analysis. 00:18:17.793 --> 00:18:22.153 He believes that the hydrogen in the water in the pool, 00:18:22.153 --> 00:18:28.454 that was dissolved because of the radiation in the pool over months and months and months, 00:18:28.454 --> 00:18:32.631 was enough to cause the building to explode. 00:18:32.631 --> 00:18:39.392 As the water got hot in the fuel pool, it liberated the hydrogen that was in the water 00:18:39.392 --> 00:18:45.275 and that hydrogen was enough to cause the explosion. 00:18:45.275 --> 00:18:51.325 The second possibility, and this is my theory, early on in the accident, 00:18:51.325 --> 00:18:59.976 there is some video that is up on our site, that shows that the top of the fuel racks were exposed to air. 00:18:59.976 --> 00:19:05.808 I am not suggesting that the entire fuel pool ran dry. 00:19:05.808 --> 00:19:12.125 But the top of the nuclear fuel I believe was exposed to air and I think the photos show that. 00:19:12.125 --> 00:19:21.360 So if the top of the fuel was exposed to air, it is possible that a reaction could have occurred at the top of the fuel 00:19:21.360 --> 00:19:26.011 that would have created enough hydrogen to blow the building up. 00:19:26.011 --> 00:19:34.391 Dr. Saji and I agree that the hydrogen came from the Unit 4 fuel pool. He believes it was dissolved in the water. 00:19:34.391 --> 00:19:41.676 I believe it came from the fuel. Only time will tell when we get in to analyze the reaction. 00:19:41.676 --> 00:19:48.683 But there is an important lesson here that the nuclear industry is not taking into account. 00:19:48.683 --> 00:19:52.734 And that is the fuel pool temperature. 00:19:52.734 --> 00:19:59.061 The fuel pool is a large pool and it can boil locally. 00:19:59.061 --> 00:20:04.636 And that is something the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the international community is not looking at. 00:20:04.636 --> 00:20:12.854 You can get local boiling in a pool even though the bulk temperature of the pool may be at 80 degrees Celsius. 00:20:12.854 --> 00:20:16.702 In portions of the pool, it can be boiling. 00:20:16.702 --> 00:20:23.843 That supports Dr. Saji's comment that as it boiled it would liberate hydrogen, 00:20:23.843 --> 00:20:28.276 even though the bulk temperature never ever exceeded boiling. 00:20:28.276 --> 00:20:34.961 My theory is that I do believe that the entire pool had drained to the point where there was boiling occurring. 00:20:34.961 --> 00:20:43.527 But the real issue here is that the nuclear industry is not looking at the fact that localized boiling can occur 00:20:43.527 --> 00:20:49.085 even though the bulk temperature might be less than 100 degrees centigrade. 00:20:49.085 --> 00:20:51.669 That is an important distinction moving forward. 00:20:51.669 --> 00:20:59.306 We have about 23 of these Mark I reactors in the United States and there are another 10 or so around the world. 00:20:59.306 --> 00:21:08.116 I think that we need to design these pools so that the hydrogen generated by dissociation 00:21:08.116 --> 00:21:13.511 can be accommodated without exploding the building. 00:21:13.511 --> 00:21:18.427 No one ever designed for that because no one ever anticipated it happening. 00:21:18.427 --> 00:21:22.927 But it did happen at Unit 4 and we need to prevent that in the future. 00:21:22.927 --> 00:21:28.202 Not just on these Mark I reactors but on the 400 reactors that all have fuel pools 00:21:28.202 --> 00:21:33.477 that are all susceptible to that identical type of failure. 00:21:33.477 --> 00:21:36.944 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie, I want to follow up with a few more questions. 00:21:36.944 --> 00:21:43.026 In your discussion of Unit 4, you have talked about its hydrogen explosion. 00:21:43.026 --> 00:21:49.427 Is there any chance of a prompt criticality or a hydrogen explosion now at Unit 4? 00:21:49.427 --> 00:21:55.543 Would anything cause it to release more fuel or more radioactivity? 00:21:55.543 --> 00:22:03.461 [Arnie Gundersen] The fuel in the fuel pool at Unit 4 has now been cooled for about a year after the accident 00:22:03.461 --> 00:22:10.732 and it had been removed a couple of months before that. So the fuel is becoming cooler. 00:22:10.732 --> 00:22:20.410 It still needs to be water-cooled for another 2 years, but it is much cooler than it was at the beginning of the accident. 00:22:20.410 --> 00:22:29.960 So the chances of hydrogen generation are much, much lower now than when the accident occurred. 00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:40.394 So I do not believe that we are going to see an explosion in the pool now, no matter what happens. 00:22:40.394 --> 00:22:47.986 My biggest concern is that if the pool loses water, then it is an entirely different story. 00:22:48.017 --> 00:22:55.963 So if there is a large seismic event that causes the building to topple, or the pool to crack and the water to drain out, 00:22:55.963 --> 00:23:02.845 there is not enough cooling in the air of that fuel, and it will start to burn. 00:23:02.845 --> 00:23:07.445 Now the consequences of that are depending on which way the wind is blowing, 00:23:07.445 --> 00:23:14.583 it could mean the evacuation of Tokyo as a worst case. It could also mean cutting Japan in half 00:23:14.583 --> 00:23:21.244 so that the northern part is separated from the southern part by a band of contamination. 00:23:21.244 --> 00:23:28.648 So this is a very serious accident waiting to happen and we just all have to pray 00:23:28.648 --> 00:23:33.128 that an earthquake does not happen before that fuel is removed. 00:23:33.128 --> 00:23:39.479 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie, compared to the accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, 00:23:39.479 --> 00:23:47.747 how dangerous are the radioactive releases from the four reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi? 00:23:47.747 --> 00:23:56.820 [Arnie Gundersen] Three Mile Island was a level 5 accident and Chernobyl and Fukushima are level 7 accidents. 00:23:56.820 --> 00:24:02.193 That means roughly that Three Mile Island was a 100 times less 00:24:02.193 --> 00:24:08.212 than the accident at Chernobyl and the accident at Fukushima. 00:24:08.212 --> 00:24:13.977 People did die as a result of the accident at Three Mile Island. 00:24:13.977 --> 00:24:18.094 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says no, no one died, on their web page. 00:24:18.094 --> 00:24:22.013 But the evidence is clear that there was an increase in cancer. 00:24:22.013 --> 00:24:27.579 I refer you to Dr. Steve Wing's report that is also on our site that talks about it. 00:24:27.579 --> 00:24:32.078 And in addition some reports coming out of the University of Pittsburgh indicate just now, 00:24:32.078 --> 00:24:36.577 that we are beginning to see leukemia as a result. 00:24:36.577 --> 00:24:41.988 So while Three Mile Island was much less than either Chernobyl or Fukushima, 00:24:41.988 --> 00:24:47.400 people did die as a result of the radiation released. 00:24:47.400 --> 00:24:55.081 At Fukushima-Daiichi the evidence tells us that at least three times more radiation 00:24:55.081 --> 00:25:02.762 in the form of noble gasses were released from Units 1, 2 and 3 than from Chernobyl. 00:25:02.762 --> 00:25:08.820 We have seen radioactive gas clouds, noble gas clouds to the northwest, 00:25:08.820 --> 00:25:14.877 that are much worse than we ever anticipated to have been released. 00:25:14.877 --> 00:25:20.808 So we know that the noble gasses were larger than Chernobyl. 00:25:20.808 --> 00:25:24.954 Now iodine, which is another gas that is released, 00:25:24.954 --> 00:25:33.228 and also cesium and other gasses, seem to be roughly on the same level as the releases from Chernobyl. 00:25:33.228 --> 00:25:40.713 There are 2 issues here. As terrible as it is, it would have been much worse but for 2 things. 00:25:40.713 --> 00:25:45.112 The first is that most of the time the wind was blowing out to sea. 00:25:45.112 --> 00:25:48.048 And of course Chernobyl was surrounded by land, 00:25:48.048 --> 00:25:54.369 so whatever way the plume meandered after Chernobyl, it contaminated the land. 00:25:54.369 --> 00:26:00.341 So when we compare Fukushima to Chernobyl, the total releases from Fukushima 00:26:00.341 --> 00:26:03.728 are likely higher than they were at Chernobyl, 00:26:03.728 --> 00:26:09.711 but because most of it blew out to sea, that is a good thing for the Japanese people. 00:26:09.711 --> 00:26:13.427 The second important thing that happened that was lucky, 00:26:13.427 --> 00:26:20.645 if we can call it luck in such a severe accident, was that it happened on a Friday and not on a weekend. 00:26:20.645 --> 00:26:25.864 There were a thousand people at the Daini site and at the Daiichi site, 00:26:25.864 --> 00:26:31.084 because it was a weekday, who could respond to the accident. 00:26:31.084 --> 00:26:36.604 If it had happened on a weekend, there would have been a small crew of people there, 00:26:36.604 --> 00:26:42.123 and the accidents at both sites would have been much much worse. 00:26:42.123 --> 00:26:48.377 Now that has an implication worldwide, because on weekends and in the evenings, 00:26:48.377 --> 00:26:52.170 we have very small crews at these nuclear reactors. 00:26:52.170 --> 00:26:57.423 And should there be a major accident, there is no way to respond quickly enough 00:26:57.423 --> 00:27:01.323 with the small crew of people that are working on the shifts, 00:27:01.323 --> 00:27:04.696 other than the main shift in the middle of the day. 00:27:04.696 --> 00:27:07.744 The international community needs to look at that, 00:27:07.744 --> 00:27:12.776 and it is not a matter of "well, we can get people there in a half a day." 00:27:12.776 --> 00:27:19.861 That is too late. The staff on site has to be larger at the beginning of the accident, 00:27:19.861 --> 00:27:26.670 to mitigate the potential for a serious accident. But yet it all boils down to money. 00:27:26.670 --> 00:27:33.811 The utilities that run these power plants really do not want a large staff because they have to pay for it. 00:27:33.811 --> 00:27:44.127 But in fact, it was the large staff at Daiichi and the large staff at Daini that likely saved the world. 00:27:44.127 --> 00:27:54.564 So the important take-away here is that the releases from Fukushima are as serious if not more so than Chernobyl. 00:27:54.564 --> 00:28:00.361 And that they would have been much worse if the accident had happened on a weekend. 00:28:00.361 --> 00:28:07.061 [Maggie Gundersen] Arnie, thank you. How significant is the danger of hot particles and why? 00:28:07.061 --> 00:28:14.045 [Arnie Gundersen] I am really concerned about the hot particles that were released after the Fukushima accident. 00:28:14.045 --> 00:28:17.840 Now a hot particle is more than just a single atom. 00:28:17.840 --> 00:28:24.528 An atom of cesium decays once and it is over, it is no longer radioactive. 00:28:24.528 --> 00:28:34.145 A hot particle though, contains thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms of cesium or other radioactive material 00:28:34.145 --> 00:28:40.279 and they, of course, decay for many, many years and decades. 00:28:40.279 --> 00:28:51.328 So if a hot particle is lodged inside you, either in your lung or in your liver or in your gastrointestinal tract, 00:28:51.328 --> 00:28:56.695 it can cause a constant bombardment of radiation over a long period of time 00:28:56.695 --> 00:29:02.062 to a very small localized part of your tissue. 00:29:02.062 --> 00:29:06.512 And that is exactly the conditions that can cause a cancer. 00:29:06.512 --> 00:29:14.594 So we have seen in Mr Kaltofen's analysis to the American Public Health Association: 00:29:14.594 --> 00:29:22.397 he shows what an air filter looked like in a car in Fukushima and what an air filter looked like in a car in Tokyo. 00:29:22.397 --> 00:29:29.104 Those air filters are no different than our lung, our lung acts as an air filter, 00:29:29.104 --> 00:29:37.478 and that causes that radiation to get trapped in our lungs or in our livers or elsewhere in our bodies, 00:29:37.478 --> 00:29:43.662 and will constantly, over decades, cause cellular damage. 00:29:43.662 --> 00:29:47.378 It is particularly a concern in young children because they have a longer life, 00:29:47.378 --> 00:29:51.095 and because their cells are rapidly developing. 00:29:51.095 --> 00:30:02.878 So it is important that we monitor the children at Fukushima and throughout Japan over the next 3 or 4 decades 00:30:02.878 --> 00:30:11.627 to make sure that they do not develop cancers as a result of the hot particles that were released from Fukushima-Daiichi. 00:30:11.627 --> 00:30:17.168 [Maggie Gundersen] So Arnie, in closing, what do you want people to remember 00:30:17.168 --> 00:30:22.710 from your review of the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi? 00:30:22.710 --> 00:30:27.304 [Arnie Gundersen] About a month before the accident, we were walking and we were talking about an accident, 00:30:27.304 --> 00:30:31.114 and where it might occur. And I said I did not know where it would occur, 00:30:31.114 --> 00:30:37.227 but I thought it would occur in a boiling water reactor of the Fukushima design, 00:30:37.227 --> 00:30:42.255 I said a Mark I reactor. In fact, that turned out to be true. 00:30:42.255 --> 00:30:51.995 But I think the bigger lesson from Fukushima is that this is a technology that can destroy a nation. 00:30:51.995 --> 00:30:57.386 After Fukushima I was reading Mikolai Gorbachov's memoirs, 00:30:57.386 --> 00:31:05.946 and he says it was the Chernobyl accident, not Perestroika, that destroyed the Soviet Union. 00:31:05.946 --> 00:31:16.245 So we had that information for 30 years but yet we really did not realize that it could happen elsewhere. 00:31:16.245 --> 00:31:23.277 So we know that the accident at Chernobyl was a cause in the factor of the collapse of the Soviet Union. 00:31:23.277 --> 00:31:28.144 And we know that the cost alone from the Fukushima-Daiichi accident 00:31:28.144 --> 00:31:35.627 will easily go to a half a trillion US dollars over the next 20 years. 00:31:35.627 --> 00:31:39.361 That is enough to bring Japan to its knees. 00:31:39.361 --> 00:31:41.965 Japan is at a tipping point. 00:31:41.965 --> 00:31:47.861 You have an opportunity here to change the way we use energy. 00:31:47.861 --> 00:31:53.521 Or Japan can go back and turn on all its nuclear reactors again, 00:31:53.521 --> 00:31:59.181 and continue business as usual and of course risk another accident. 00:31:59.181 --> 00:32:05.254 So you have a choice, you have the opportunity to change the way you use energy, 00:32:05.254 --> 00:32:07.913 and to change the way you distribute energy. 00:32:07.913 --> 00:32:13.655 You can create smart grids that share power from the north to the south, 00:32:13.655 --> 00:32:18.167 and from the east to the west, where the frequencies are different. 00:32:18.167 --> 00:32:24.025 We can distribute our generation, instead of having massive power plants, 00:32:24.025 --> 00:32:29.883 in locations like Fukushima-Daiichi and Fukushima-Danai. 00:32:29.883 --> 00:32:37.300 We can distribute those power plants throughout Japan, throughout the world, with windmills, with solar power, 00:32:37.300 --> 00:32:43.513 with conservation and with distributed small sources of generation. 00:32:43.513 --> 00:32:51.749 Those are all one way of doing it compared to the other which we are presently using, which is central station power. 00:32:51.749 --> 00:32:55.227 We needed central station power in the 20th century. 00:32:55.227 --> 00:33:00.213 Now with computers, we do not need central station power anymore. 00:33:00.213 --> 00:33:05.516 We can do it another way. And Japan can lead the way if it chooses to. 00:33:05.516 --> 00:33:12.265 If it leads the way, it will have an export commodity that the rest of the world will want desperately. 00:33:12.265 --> 00:33:15.816 You have an opportunity here to change your country. 00:33:15.816 --> 00:33:24.265 And you also have a business opportunity here to sell to the rest of the world a product that we all desperately need. 00:33:24.265 --> 00:33:35.300 So the Fukushima-Daiichi accident is the worst industrial accident in history: it is a half a trillion dollars. 00:33:35.300 --> 00:33:40.934 But it also can be an opportunity for Japan to change the way it does business 00:33:40.934 --> 00:33:50.182 and to create the economy for the 21st century and beyond, with distributed generation and smart grids. 00:33:50.182 --> 00:33:52.619 I hope you choose that choice. 00:33:52.619 --> 00:33:57.997 Japan is at a tipping point and it is your choice to make. 00:33:57.997 --> 00:34:02.801 Thank you.