Fukushima Reactor No. 4

Fukushima Worker: Concrete reinforcement of Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 is terribly deteriorating… now in a “dangerous state” — Cooling system stopped working, men helicoptered in 

Ene News,

11 December, 2012

Source: Iwakami Yasumi, Japanese journalist

Translation: Fukushima Diary

Date: Dec. 11, 2012

On December 11, 2012, Japanese journalist Iwakami Yasumi received this email from Mitsuhei Murata, former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland

I received this message on 12/9/2012.

The pump of the SFP in reactor4 had been having the spotty trouble, but it went out of order on 12/8/2012 at the end.

Nuclear workers were collected for emergency to replace the pump but it takes more 2~3 days to fix they say. (Extra workers were brought by helicopter even at night.)

According to a nuclear worker collected for emergency, the concrete to reinforce the SFP is terribly deteriorating to be in the “dangerous state”.

[...] a former executive manager of a major company commented this, which is very insightful.

“My fear has come into the truth. If it was merely the problem of the pump, it wouldn’t be such an issue but if the base to support SFP4 has some damage where we can’t see, the situation is much more serious.” [...]

Ambassador Murata: “I sent this email to all the chief editors of national newspaper companies, NHK and influential people of major mass media but they all ignored it. I was shocked. I called the manager of disaster headquarter of Fukushima prefectural government but he didn’t know that. It seems like they didn’t report it to Fukushima local government. ”