“Temporary partial meltdown”?

by David Safier

If it were possible to be amused, if the obfuscation around the nuclear power plant catastrophe in Japan weren't so dangerous, I would call this my "favorite" line yet:

[C]hief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano repeated today that the contaminated water in Unit 2 appeared to be due to a temporary partial meltdown of the reactor core. [boldface added]

A temporary meltdown? My understanding is, when something melts down, it can't be un-melted.

The startling information in two articles in today's Star — here and here — highlight the problems with governments or corporations messing around with unbelievably dangerous technologies: they tend to understate the possibilities of dangers and downplay the damage when it occurs.

Some examples from the two articles.

• We know about the problems with the actual radioactive materials spewing their radiation into the atmosphere. But everything contaminated by contact is dangerous and has to be kept out of the environment: "Today, workers resumed the laborious yet urgent task of pumping out the hundreds of tons of radioactive water inside several buildings at the six-unit plant. The water must be removed and safely stored before work can continue to power up the plant's cooling system, nuclear safety officials said."
• Radioactive contamination in the ocean is spreading, but a spokesman claimed that had nothing to do with the plant's radioactive water leaks. "Today, though, he reversed that position, saying he does suspect that radioactive water from the plant may indeed be leaking into the ocean."
• Four months ago, the power company TEPCO said a tsunami could only reach a height of 18 feet at the plant, tops. "However, the wall of water that thundered ashore two weeks ago reached about 27 feet above TEPCO's prediction."
• TEPCO decided it would only go back to historical information from 1896 to predict worst case earthquake/tsunami scenarios. But a tsunami like the current one struck Japan more than 1,000 years ago, and  "The recurrence interval for a large-scale tsunami is 800 to 1,100 years."