Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown, May 12 2011

TEPCO has been lying all along about the severity of the crisis


Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Despite the bombshell revelation that fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant have been fully exposed since the early days of the disaster, that reactor number 1 is officially in meltdown, along with news that reactor 4 is on the verge of collapse, the corporate media is largely disinterested in the story amidst continued fearmongering about terror attacks and endless coverage of the Bin Laden carnival act.

Bloomberg, One of the few mainstream news outlets to give the story the attention it deserves, reports, “Tokyo Electric Power Co. said one of the reactor cores at its stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant is more seriously damaged than previously thought, setting back the utility’s plan to resolve the crisis.”

“Fuel rods in the core of the No. 1 reactor are fully exposed, with the water level 1 meter (3.3 feet) below the base of the fuel assembly, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility known as Tepco, told reporters at a briefing in Tokyo. Melted fuel has dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is still being cooled, Matsumoto said.”

In other words, officials have been forced to admit for the first time that reactor 1 suffered a nuclear meltdown, leading to concerns that “radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.”

In addition, reactor number 4 is also reported to be “leaning” and in danger of complete collapse.
TEPCO has consistently underplayed and outright lied about the severity of the crisis in the two months since it began, claiming all along that fuel rods were only ever exposed for a limited period of time, when in fact they have been fully exposed since the very beginning.

Those who maintained that TEPCO was deliberately lying about the severity of the situation, labeled alarmist by many quarters of the media, have now been vindicated. But the corporate press has only offered a collective shrug to today’s shocking developments, burying the story under a mountain of propaganda about Bin Laden’s alleged personal diary as the establishment continues to keep people obsessed and fearful of terror attacks.

TEPCO’s proven deception has prompted a top official with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a statement today that implies the Japanese have been lying about levels of radiation released from Fukushima, in addition to other measurements, since the very start of the crisis.

“The reliability of instrumentation complicates our understanding of the exact plant conditions at any given time,” Bill Borchardt, the commission’s executive director of operations, said Thursday.

That’s diplomatic talk for ‘they’ve been lying to us all along’.

The exposed fuel rods have been spewing radiation that has largely been unaccounted for by authorities in their official measurements, but despite the fact that there is a 20km exclusion zone around the site, evacuees were put at risk after they were allowed to return to their homes earlier this week to collect belongings.
Although the scale of the Fukushima disaster has been put on a par with Chernobyl and latest developments suggest the crisis is only getting worse, the mass media has collectively decided to virtually ignore the story altogether, proving once again that Americans are being fed on a diet of bread and circuses that leaves them dangerously ignorant of what really matters in the world.