[Lamplighter]

NY Times
MARTIN FACKLER
12/14/11

Japan May Declare Control of Reactors, Over Serious Doubts

On Friday, a disaster-response task force headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
will vote on whether to announce that the plant’s three damaged reactors
have been put into the equivalent of a “cold shutdown,” a technical term normally used
to describe intact reactors with fuel cores that are in a safe and stable condition.

Experts say that if it does announce a shutdown, as many expect,
it will simply reflect the government’s effort to fulfill a pledge
to restore the plant’s cooling system by year’s end and,
according to some experts, not the true situation.<snip>

And indeed, experts credit the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco,
with making progress in regaining control of the damaged reactors.
They say the plant’s makeshift new cooling system, built with the
help of American, French and Japanese companies, has managed to cool the reactors’ cores,
including the molten fuel attached to the outer containment vessels.<snip>

“Claiming a cold shutdown does not have much meaning for damaged reactors
like those at Fukushima Daiichi,” said Noboru Nakao, a nuclear engineering consultant
at International Access Corporation.<snip>

“At this point, I would be more worried about the contamination
than what’s happening inside the reactors,” said Murray E. Jennex,
an expert on nuclear containment at San Diego State University<snip>

“All it would take is one more earthquake or tsunami to
set Fukushima Daiichi back to square one,” Mr. Kudo said.
“Can we really call this precarious situation a cold shutdown?”

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