Officials now saying that reactor 4 spent fuel rod fire, burned itself out.  The temperatures had risen to twice the limit. This, along with possible hydrogen explosion, caused the 783 spent fuel rods to catch fire.

Officials admit the spent fuel rod storage areas are not equipped with any type of “back up” systems to prevent overheating and fire caused by natural disaster.  The design of the nuclear plant has the spent fuel rods stored above the reactors. Workers at Fukushima plant 1 (Daiichi) are now focusing on reducing spent fuel rods from overheating. There is now concern with the Spent Fuel Rod storage above reactors 5 & 6, their temperatures are rising.  Officials say they have begun flooding the storage areas with sea water.  Reactors 5 & 6 were down for maintenance when the quake/tsunami hit.

Atsushi Takeda, an official with Japan’s Nuclear Safety Research Association, says that most of the back up systems did not work properly.  The primary concerns are to keep reactors from overheating.  Takeda believes most of the problems with the Fukushima plant happened after the tsunami, not because of the magnitude 9 quake.