Fukushima Docs: I Feel Like Crying

[bananas]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/27/1020754/-Fukushima-Docs:-I-Feel-Like-Crying

Tue Sep 27, 2011 at 02:51 PM PDT
Fukushima Docs: I Feel Like Crying
by Joieau for Nuclear Free DK

Part I (cont.) - Who Knew What When

In Part I of this series linking to some of the documents Lucas W. Hixson received from the NRC in response to an FOIA request - which he has been uploading to his website - we looked at some internal NRC communications about the situation at Fukushima Daiichi from March 11 through March 15. This was the 5-day period when the reactors were actively melting, reactor buildings were actively exploding, and spent fuel pools were burning. Before moving on to what was happening in following days and weeks, there are a few more documents for the earliest days that help round out a picture of what our NRC knew when, but also the developing PR strategy toward information control that is often a more pressing concern to industry and government regulators when something very bad happens.

Again, links to each of these documents at Lucas' website are included right under the document number (for our archival purposes). I encourage readers to visit Enformable to peruse these and many more documents.

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Document 15:
Friday, March 11, 2001 @ 4:49 PM

Internal email from Daniel Mills in response to notification from Andrew Nosek that TEPCO was reporting a triple SBO . Short and poignant…

BBC is reporting radiation levels at reactor are 1000x normal. I feel like crying.

This exchange is revealing for its very brevity. NRC employees were obviously well-versed enough in the technology they are tasked to promote and/or regulate to understand clearly right from the first how bad the situation at Fukushima was. This 'First Fact' is something we all need to keep in mind while piecing together a sketch from these NRC documents of who knew what when, and what they did with what they knew.

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