Spent Fuel Rods Spew Radiation; Europe Puts Bone Marrow Centers on Standby
Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 01:15PM 
As the United States finally joined certain European countries (France, Germany) in evacuating nationals and family members from Toyko, a buried cover of fuel rods threatens to add more roentgens to the crisis.
A powerpoint presentation indicates that Toyko Electric Power had decided to construct an off-site interim spent fuel storage facility for recycling the rods, according to data obtained by NIRS.org. The report dated Nov 16, 2010 stated that the storage amount (ton-U) as of March 2010 at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility as possibly 600,000 spent fuel rods.
The strategy for Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants is “to store spent fuels safely until being reprocessed.” Many of the rods were stored close to the reactor roofs, which have been blown off of some reactors.
Descriptions of the ravaged plant and spreading radiation have experts groping for adjectives. Expert Joe Cirincione told Fox News that the threat is an “unprecedented crisis” and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen called the inclusion of the spent rods into the equation represents “Chernobyl on steroids.”
Gundersen is a member of the oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1. The first pool contains 20 years of spent rods that are still radioactive. Since the Japanese plant did not maintain proper pools to store the spent rods, “catastrophic fires” are a possibility. In fact, the BBC reported that rods in the pool of reactor four may be boiling. Readings are unavailable due to high radiation levels making the structure inaccessible.
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