And again, local vermin not caring about our beautiful county have deposited their trash on Dunn Pond Road. This time it’s an old convertible bed/couch.

I’m tired of disgusting people using my road and my county as their personal trash pit.

Please come back and get your trashy couch, one of your children may be rolled up in it.

Sincerely,

Angelo Petriello

Thompson, PA

Deadly radiation from a nuclear conflict swirls around the northern hemisphere. The sole survivors protected in a submarine search for a radiation-free haven before bomb sickness claims their lives as well. They find a safe harbor in the southern hemisphere; there they await their last day.

The plot of the sci-fi film, On The Beach, might prove to be 50 years ahead of its time about the effects of radiation enveloping the northern hemisphere; except that the radiation is not from World War III but from three nuclear meltdowns in buildings 1, 2, and 3, in Fukushima, Japan.

Under these daunting conditions, beginning this month Tokyo Electric Power Company will attempt to remove 1,535 fuel-rod assemblies from reactor building No. 4, a building wrecked by an earthquake, flooded by a tsunami, ravaged by an explosion, and on the cusp of collapse. This removal has the potential of being more calamitous than the three meltdowns.

Even under perfect conditions removing a fuel assembly is a dicey operation. It requires a computer-controlled crane, accurate to within a millimeter. But that equipment was destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. This time, for the first time ever, anywhere, it's going to be done by a manually operated crane, in a building of uncertain stability.

Further uncertainties are the fuel rods themselves.

Fuel-rods are inserted into racks called assemblies like cigarettes in a package, but this “package” is crumpled. No one knows the condition of the fuel rods in the racks. They could be corroded, bent, tangled, jammed, or broken. Yet these assemblies must be extracted and removed from the buffeted building before it collapses and all 1,535 assemblies crash 100 feet to the ground.

To understand why this is mission impossible and why we are on the verge of a radiation holocaust it is necessary to know some particulars about fuel-rod assemblies.

An assembly is a 12-foot long rack designed to hold 36 six-foot long fuel rods, plus another 36 rods on top of these for a total of 72 rods. A single rod is composed of a pencil-thin pipe made of zirconium and packed with pellets of highly enriched uranium.

A concrete roof was constructed over the top of building No. 4 to support a crane and men who will direct the procedure. The crane will attempt to lift a 660-pound assembly out of a cooling pool and swing it over to a nearby bathtub-like water tank. Then a ground-based crane will pick it up, load it onto a truck, and transport it to a safe cooling pool.

The operation must proceed quickly, as zirconium will self-ignite when exposed to air releasing its radioactive pellets. And this must be repeated 1,535 times, a procedure expected to take two years---that is, if all goes perfectly.

And if all doesn't go perfectly, then what?

Well, no one is quite sure except that it could be very, very bad.

It is possible that some rods will break open during removal freeing their pellets. This, in turn, could melt the zirconium pipes in other rods setting off an out-of-control conflagration.

The radiation in and around building No. 4 would become too intense to approach. It could even ignite 6,373 assemblies in another cooling pool, only 150-feet distant. That would create an unquenchable volcanic eruption of radiation spewing out of Fukushima for years.

And water won't extinguish this blaze. The extreme heat would split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, two flammable gases.

A far-fetched chain of events? Read on.

“This is a critical global issue”: Tom Snitch, professor at the University of Maryland with 30 years experience in nuclear issues.

“Could threaten all of humanity for thousands of years”: Yale Professor Anthony Gucciardi.

“A deepening environmental disaster that has China and other neighbors increasingly worried”: the New York Times.

“An unprecedented crisis” and “a house of horrors”: Dr. Tatsujiro Suzuki, Chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.

“An issue of human survival”: Akio Matsumura, adviser to the United Nations.

And when Tokyo Electric Power Company is finished with building No. 4, it can start on the 1,393 assemblies in buildings 1, 2, and 3.

It just might be a nuclear holocaust, a work in progress in Fukushima, Japan.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA