“Shoes immediately melted”

11/14/2011, actual Fukushima workers finally talked about how it was in the plant just after 311.

It was the situation beyond our imagination, no wonder, far from being announced officially.

It was told at the energy, environment symposium held at Tokyo University. The promoter was Mr.Aizawa, vice president of Tepco. (so it is likely that the ACTUAL situation was way worse than it was told at this symposium, but better than no information.)

The worker said:

After 311, power was lost, although it was a power station, they could not see anything. Radiation level kept going up. We had an argument if we must stay or escape from the central control room.

Because Tepco could not inject water, they used emergency methods of putting water. However, still huge aftershock kept coming. Every time an aftershock comes, they ran to higher place with the protective clothing.

Tsunami left the plant with puddles. Especially at night, workers felt fear to put cables because they may have been electrocuted.

Venting was done at reactors 1 ~ 3. Normally it can be controlled from the central operation room, but because it was out of power, workers had to go to the actual point to open the lid.

However, it was extremely hot because of the exposed fuel inside of the reactor.
A worker states, once they stepped on the ladder, the shoes got melted like glue immediately.

It was not just the heat, radiation level was also extremely high. Old workers were sent for venting.

(Source)

About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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