Unit 4 has possible uneven settlement , possibly leaning , possible will topple over - Tepco has no plans to to survey building from the outside. It would appear we are just sitting around waiting for the inevitable bad thing to happen with unit 4 and the spent fuel pool there....

Possible uneven settlement of reactor 4

Posted by Mochizuki on May 7th, 2012 · No Comments

Following up this article..Tepco started soil improvement work under reactor4

Mr. Kino, a freelance journalist asked Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency about the state of the reactor4 building on their press conference of 5/7/2012.
It’s been told that the building was leaning.

<Translate>

(Mr. Kino → K, NISA → N)

K : About the state of reactor 4, has anyone surveyed the building ?

N : Like tilt ?K : Yes, tilt and other points.

N : We surveyed the water level of SFP4, and confirmed it’s not leaning.

K : Apart from the water level, hasn’t anybody surveyed the level of the building ?

N : Because we confirmed it was not leaning, we think there is no problem with the building.

K : I can not understand how you can check the entire building only to see the water level now that the whole building is deformed. (It is not enough only to check the water level of the pool.) Has nobody surveyed the building even from the outside ??

N : No, nobody has surveyed it.

K : Has anyone conducted soil survey around the reactor building ?

N : No, I don’t think so.

K : Some people point out that the ground is having uneven settlement around the reactor 4 building. If you have’t conducted high and low instrumentation, you don’t even know that ?

N : Earthquake may have caused ground subsidence in the area of Fukushima plants, but because the building is on the bed rock, the state of the ground is different from the building area and other areas.
Seismic evaluation of the building was conducted in the most severe standard.

K : but it is rational to think the basement of the building has been damaged underground too. Do you evaluate the basement floor is completely safe ?

N : We reinforced the SFP4 based on the most severe seismic evaluation.

K : No, I mean, apart from the reinforcement of the building above the ground, now it can be assumed the basement of the building is damaged, and there may be uneven settlement around the reactor, how can you guarantee the building is not leaning ?

N : If the building is leaning, we can tell it by checking the water level of SFP4. Inspector actually entered the building and confirmed the safety visually.

K : OK. There is no plan to survey the building from outside ?

N : I haven’t heard any specific plan about building survey from outside. We would need to start it from evaluation of the bench mark to conduct building survey.

<End>

Tepco started building the cover of reactor4 building to remove 1500 assemblies of spent fuel from 4/17/2012. They can not design the cover without knowing the exact length, height, and ground bearing capacity by detailed surveying.

and....

http://enenews.com/govt-spokesman-raises-possibility-of-heat-or-lack-of-walls-decreasing-strength-of-no-4-reactor-building-we%E2%80%99ve-not-included-these-points-in-our-assessment-even-though-that-may-e

Uploaded: May 8, 2012
Translated by: Goldieluvmj

At 2:50 in

Kino: Are you saying that there is no damage to the building and have you not considered all of these points in your assessment?

NISA: Whether there are damages to the building, whether strength of the building has decreased due to heat or lack of walls etc, we’ve not included these points in our assessment even though that may exists. Regarding the unit 4 spent fuel pool problems, safety wise, we recognize that it is a very important problem and therefore we’ve made some reinforcements.

and......

http://enenews.com/koide-spent-fuel-pool-no-4-was-caused-to-tilt-after-explosion-worried-about-pool-falling-down-nisa-we-confirmed-it-was-not-leaning-we-think-there-is-no-problem-with-the-building-video

New York — Description: Japanese Nuclear Scientist and Japanese and US medical doctors to discuss current radiological health conditions and concerns in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor catastrophe.

Hiroaki KOIDE / Nuclear Reactor Specialist and Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute

As of March 15 when the explosion occurred in No. 4, that spent fuel pool was caused to tilt.

I am worried right now if that pool falls down, there is a great danger of a large amount of radiation being released.

http://enenews.com/guardian-asks-how-likely-is-a-catastrophe-at-fukushimas-no-4-fuel-pool-plant-is-near-fault-as-large-as-one-that-caused-m9-0-quake

The Guardian
Richard Schiffman
May 7, 2012

[...] nuclear experts say that their biggest concern involves Reactor 4, which sustained severe structural damage [...]

A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on the nuclear accident called this pool “the weakest link” at Fukushima. Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser at the US department of energy said: “If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain it could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.”

How likely is this? While the structure of Reactor 4 is stable for the moment, the Dai-ichi plant lies miles from a big earthquake fault – as large as the one that caused last year’s quake, but much closer to Fukushima. According to astudy published in February (pdf) in the European Geosciences Union’s journal Solid Earth, that fault is now overdue for a quake.

Whether or not the critical pool at Reactor 4 would survive another major quake intact, Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me in a phone interview that a failure of the jury-rigged inadequate piping installed after the disaster could knock the cooling system out of commission.

After visiting Fukushima on a fact finding mission recently, Senator Ron Wyden wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the US warning that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.” [...]

These risks have led two former Japanese diplomats on a crusade to avert what they see as a disaster waiting to happen. UN veteran Akio Matsumura and former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland Mitsuhei Murata attended a conference in Seoul at the end of March “to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4.” They called on the international community to set up an independent assessment team of structural engineers and nuclear scientists to study conditions at Reactor 4 and recommend a course of action. [...]