TEPCOReposted From Enformable Nuclear News

Complete transcript from Nuclear Regulatory Commission Website

Editor’s Note:  This morning I received a call from Mike Ruppert who had obtained these documents from a Facebook reader. At this point, I see the links and sources for this story as legitimate. The Enformable Nuclear News website seems quite reliable. I concur with Mike who says:

It is my prayer and deepest heartfelt wish that somehow what follows can be shown to be incorrect. If it is correct, however, then in my estimation ONLY two important questions remain to be asked. They are, “Exactly how much radiation has been released and how many human beings have already been fatally exposed and in what regions of the Northern Hemisphere?” And, “As radiation continues to spread – especially for more dangerous isotopes like plutonium – is this then an eventual life-terminating release of radiation for the entire planet?”

This is not a spoof. This is not “The Onion” on steroids. If these documents are valid, we are in deep, deep trouble…CB

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
JAPAN’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI ET AUDIO FILE
WEDNESDAY – MARCH 16, 2011

 

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Hey, Chuck. Hey, can you just — and I don’t want you to interpret this in any way, questioning anything – I am just trying to confirm what the source of our information is.

CHUCK CASTO: Which information? Mainly, our source of information is TEPCO –

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.

CHUCK CASTO: — and Conti, the Government. We’re embedded, I think we’re doing 24/7 with their Government meeting.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: So, the spent-fuel pool indications, that’s coming from, I would say, our team in Japan? Would that be acceptable?

CHUCK CASTO: Yes, they’re coming from TEPCO.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.

CHUCK CASTO: They’ve been more receptive to, well, us and designing the cooling system, and we’ve got requests in on the equipment to DoD, and they’re getting back with how much equipment they can get in here. They’ve already, I understand that they’ve started to move those big four pumps towards the site.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: So, you’re –

CHUCK CASTO: I think that we’re making progress on getting involvement and suggestions. TEPCO is reaching out to us now on the designs of the mitigating systems. And John and all the guys are putting together a design, and we’re working on it.

[divider]

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Yes. So, again, just to repeat, we believe pool No. 4 is dry, and we believe one of the other pools is potentially structurally damaged?

CHUCK CASTO: That’s correct.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay. And again –

CHUCK CASTO: That’s the best we know.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Yes.

CHUCK CASTO: And we certainly know, I think we absolutely know that pool No. 4, though, the walls have collapsed –

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.

CHUCK CASTO: — on pool No. 4.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: And again, because I’m going to get asked the question, where’s that coming from. I’m going to say it’s from a team that is in Japan that is embedded that is working closely with the Japanese utility and the Japanese regulatory agency, is that correct?

CHUCK CASTO: Correct.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay. That’s all I need.

BRUCE: Chuck, before you go –

CHUCK CASTO: Yes?

BRUCE: — you indicated that the walls of the pool were damaged or down?

CHUCK CASTO: Yes.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: I’m not going to get into that level of detail. I mean the relevant factor is it’s dry.

CHUCK CASTO: Yes, and they can’t maintain inventory at all.

NRC CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay. Good. Thank you. I appreciate it.

CHUCK CASTO: Yes, sir.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Chuck, we got a briefing before from Tony and John, and they indicated that there was structural integrity to the core pool.

CHUCK CASTO: When was that?

MALE PARTICIPANT: That was about four hours ago.

CHUCK CASTO: Well, then, I need to tell the Chairman that because that’s not what we understood just a few hours ago.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Yes, we relayed that information after we got it from your team.

CHUCK CASTO: Is the Chairman still on?

MALE PARTICIPANT: No. I think he’s dropped off.

MALE PARTICIPANT: But it’s okay because he’s not going to get into that level of detail. But we just need to be careful about consistency in the assessment of the information. I know it’s going to change, too.

CHUCK CASTO: Yes, well, we were consistent. That’s what we heard; that’s the last we were told, that the walls were not there.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Right. Because our discussion with part of your team was we thought you had abandoned the notion of putting coolant back in that pool and that you were looking more at dropping sand or something else like that?

CHUCK CASTO: No, we didn’t suggest that at all yesterday. The Reactor Safety Team suggested the sand. We were still working with water on all four pools.

And, then, I said let’s go both ways.

Let’s prepare for water and sand, get both solutions moving.

MALE PARTICIPANT: So, the latest update we had was that there was integrity to the 4 pool, although it had drained or evaporated.

CHUCK CASTO: Dry?

FEMALE PARTICIPANT: Bill, what did you receive from Jim?

MALE PARTICIPANT: Bill Ruan (phonetic) is in the room, too, Chuck.

FEMALE PARTICIPANT: He’s been on the phone with Jim.

BILL RUAN (phonetic): Okay. I just talked to Jim Trapp. And let me try to give you the background of where some of this information comes from.

[redacted]

[divider]

CHUCK CASTO; Yes, they can’t keep — that’s what I was told last night. You cannot get inventory above the bottom of the fuel.

[redacted]

[divider]

CHUCK CASTO: So, it’s drained.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Right.

CHUCK CASTO: Right.

BILL RUAN: Yes. Right, right.

CHUCK CASTO: That’s what I was saying, you can’t get water in it.

BILL RUAN: Yes, because there’s no fuel pool left.

CHUCK CASTO: Right.

BILL RUAN: Unit 3, he believes

[redacted]

[divider]

And basically, everything else is gone, and at least in his opinion, and, of course,

Chuck knows this, Jim’s opinion is there’s no water in the pool.

FEMALE PARTICIPANT: Unit 3?

BILL RUAN: Unit 3.

Unit 2, he believes it’s drying out. If you look at the top of the building now, that hole that they created, there’s steam coming out of that hole.

CHUCK CASTO: It’s in dryout.

BILL RUAN: They’re drying it out.

And, then, the only pool that might be okay is Unit 1.

In our discussion — and, Chuck, I hope you’re doing well, by the way — what we don’t know is what Jim told me was Daiene has declared an emergency on Unit, they’ve declared an evacuation.

So, maybe you triage this thing and try to help them maintain those units.

CHUCK CASTO: Well, I don’t know if Bill Borchardt is still on, but –

MALE PARTICIPANT: No, he’s not.

CHUCK CASTO: There was some talk yesterday about trying to get, on Unit 3, trying to get that hole bigger, so that we can push water in there from the outside.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Right

CHUCK CASTO: You know, yes, Unit 2. Unit 2, make that hole bigger, so they can push water from the outside. I don’t know how you make the hole bigger, but they need to take the top of that building down.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Well, we have some ideas.

FEMALE PARTICIPANT: What’s the proximity of Daiene to –

MALE PARTICIPANT: It’s north. Yes, it’s like right up there.

FEMALE PARTICIPANT: Oh, it’s close.

MALE PARTICIPANT: This is Daiichi; that’s Daiene.

MALE PARTICIPANT: Yes.

MALE PARTICIPANT: -You know, as Jim has pointed out, when you do your calculations to get your nuclear engineering degree, you do your radiation, you know, what’s the dose rate for the single fuel assembly? You know, you get like a million R an hour.

And we’ve got how many fuel assemblies?

BRUCE: Hey, Chuck?

CHUCK CASTO: Yes?

BRUCE: One of the questions that we’ve had is we’re getting some conflicting information, and Bill may have something more up-to-date than me. But it looked like there were a lot of attempts to try to get power back to the site. And so, we’ve heard in one instance that they’ve got the power line back to sites; others, that they’re still working on it.

CHUCK CASTO: Yes, we don’t have any information on that I’ve heard. The only thing, Bruce, I mean it’s always helpful to get power back.

But my understanding is it’s really just not going to do any good

 

Pages From ML12052A108 – FOIA PA-2011-0118, FOIA PA-2011-0119, FOIA PA-2011-0120 – Resp 43 – Partial – Grou…

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