Japan Nuclear Crisis-Fukushima cooling efforts making problem worse, not better.

Japan, the nuclear industry and the media continue their effort to minimize this disaster. A review of the evidence shows that current efforts to cool the plant are both ineffective and counter-productive.

Every day that is spent pouring water on radioactive lava is another day wasted. All the salt accumulation in the reactors will have locked every valve, making reactivation of the circulation pumps impossible even if they have power and fresh water.

The water presently reaching the melting fuel is first super contaminated after which is it released into the air via steam, or into the local ground water and the adjacent ocean. Most will end up in the ocean. These radioactive elements will concentrate into the food chain. The inverse square law really means that ingestion of radioactive elements magnifies their effect immensely.

Every day, radiation climbs at the plant. Every day is one day less we have to work before the problem escalates even further. Every day, we are lied to about the magnitude of the problem puts the Japanese people and the entire world at greater risk.

A massive effort to isolate, cool, and then entomb the entire site should have started a week or more ago.

You cannot just pour concrete over the reactors and ponds. First you have cool the fuel and immerse it in a moderator so that the melting stops. To first cool the fuel you must do more than pour water over top of it. You must submerge it in circulating, cooled water, or in an amount of water large enough to naturally disperse the heat.

If you turned the each unit or the entire site into a huge swimming pool further meltdown could be halted. Moderators could be injected. Concrete could then be poured on until the plant is entombed.

This is simplistic and filled with complications, but some sort of drastic effort along these lines should have begun on day one. It may already be too late, but work with huge bulldozers, shovels, and dump trucks should be possible even as radiation levels rise. On equipment that large radiation shielding could be built around the driver. Giant dikes could be built and all the fuel could be immersed in a body of water large enough to keep it cool. Further steps could then be taken.

This immense problem requires an immediate and immense response.

AaronC