Digging through the remains takes a lot of time so even though the accident happened in 2011, this news is current.
From Russia Today:
Fukushima reactor could have suffered total meltdown – report
Fukushima’s reactor No.2 could have suffered a complete meltdown according to Japanese researchers. They have been monitoring the Daiichi nuclear power plant since April, but say they have found few signs of nuclear fuel at the reactor’s core.
The scientists from Nagoya University had been using a device that uses elementary particles, which are called muons. These are used to give a better picture of the inside of the reactor as the levels of radioactivity at the core mean it is impossible for any human to go anywhere near it.
However, the results have not been promising. The study shows very few signs of any nuclear fuel in reactor No. 2. This is in sharp contrast to reactor No.5, where the fuel is clearly visible at the core, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reports.
The team believes that 70 to 100 percent of the fuel has melted, though they did add that further research was needed to see whether any fuel had managed to penetrate the reactor.
They should just do what they did for Chernobyl - encase the whole thing in a concrete sarcophagus and be done with it. This technology is over 60 years old and we are still building them. Do we still use 60 year old computers? Automobile engines? Airplanes? Medical equipment? Televisions? Thought not. Why hasn't the next generation of nuclear power been developed? Because there is too much money in uranium pressurized water reactors. We need to shift to Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors - the fuel for the next thousand years.
And also, just to remember. Not one person died from radiation at Fukushima or anywhere else in the world. From the New York Times:
When Radiation Isn’t the Real Risk
This spring, four years after the nuclear accident at Fukushima, a small group of scientists met in Tokyo to evaluate the deadly aftermath.
No one has been killed or sickened by the radiation — a point confirmed last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise.
But about 1,600 people died from the stress of the evacuation — one that some scientists believe was not justified by the relatively moderate radiation levels at the Japanese nuclear plant.
And a bit more:
“The government basically panicked,” said Dr. Mohan Doss, a medical physicist who spoke at the Tokyo meeting, when I called him at his office at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “When you evacuate a hospital intensive care unit, you cannot take patients to a high school and expect them to survive.”
Among other victims were residents of nursing homes. And there were the suicides. “It was the fear of radiation that ended up killing people,” he said.
The whole thing was poorly managed (TEPCO - I am looking right at you). The reactor was going to be decommissioned a few months later, a similar reactor with a better protected backup generator withstood the tsunami wonderfully and in fact, was the community gathering point for the area. Done correctly, nuclear is very safe.
