containment failure

Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: "No One Knows How Fukushima Could Be Wound Down" As the Corium May Be Melting Through the Foundation "So says Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, in a telephone interview on May 19 with independent video-journalist Tetsuo Jinbo of...

The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth. While a molten reactor core wouldn't burn "all the way through to China" it could enter...

Sawdust. It's not the first thing most people would choose to put between themselves and highly contaminated radioactive water. But a mixture of sawdust — ogakuzu in Japanese — with chemicals and shredded newspaper is precisely what nuclear safety authorities and power plant officials turned to...