Japan Diplomat: Ground underneath Fukushima Unit 4 is sinking — More than 30 inches in some areas — Now in danger of collapse

To restate again, and again..  Just because the dangers are being actively downplayed does not make them any less serious.  Enenews and YouTube..

From Enenews:

Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland: Due to its ground has been sinking, Unit 4 is now endangered in collapse. [...] According to secretary of former Prime Minister Kan, the ground level of the building has been sinking 80 cm [31.5 inches] unevenly. Because the ground itself has the problem, whether the building can resist a quake bigger than M6 still remains a question.


From YouTube:  

It's not comforting that this video is over two months old either, is it?

Reactor 4: Japan to speed up Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup

Fuel assembly removal was slated for late 2013.  Now they're moving it up by one year?  I wonder what factors changed their risk assessment and resulting actions?  Japan Today.  Excerpts:

Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will begin removing fuel rods from a damaged reactors a year ahead of schedule, a government minister said Thursday, a move to address concerns about the risk of a new quake that could cause a further accident and scatter more radioactive debris.

“We would like to start taking out undamaged fuel this year. Preparation is now under way,” Japan’s nuclear crisis minister, Goshi Hosono, told Reuters in an interview.
“Doing it quickly is important. But we also have to make sure those workers out there, who are struggling under harsh conditions, will not be endangered by trying to move things fast.”  (Fast, like the earthquake happened 15 months ago and we're just now getting around to dealing with Reactor 4's Spent Fuel Pool fast?  That fast?)

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), operator of the plant, had said in April it aimed to begin removing the fuel rods from the No. 4 reactor at the end of next year.
That would have left large quantities of radioactive fuel rods outside the protection of strong containment vessels for two and a half years after the accident.
Experts say the fuel rods, now covered only by water and a white plastic tarp, could present a risk of a knock-on accident if the reactor building collapsed or the water supply used to keep the rods cool were disrupted by another earthquake.

Some 1,535 fuel assemblies—enough uranium fuel rods to power three reactors—are being stored in a pool atop the mangled No. 4 reactor building. The reactor, which was shut down for maintenance at the time of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, was badly damaged by a series of powerful explosions that followed the disaster as power was cut off to the plant.


Hosono said last month during a visit to the Fukushima plant that he expected workers to begin removing fuel from the No. 4 reactor’s storage pool next year.
Work began in April to raise what amounts to a giant tent over the building to keep radioactive dust from scattering during the transport of the fuel rods.

TEPCO says its analysis shows the No.4 reactor building would hold up in a strong earthquake. But Japanese safety regulators ordered TEPCO to recheck its findings last month after measurements showed one of the walls of the reactor building was buckling out by about 3 centimeters.

This rescheduling and actual start of fuel assembly removal is really fast action coming from TEPCO.  Alarmingly fast.  This situation bears watching..