“Once-in-a-decade” typhoon could make everything at Fukushima even worse

“Once-in-a-decade” typhoon could make everything at Fukushima even worse

click link

snip

Heavy rain, flooding and gale warnings have been issued for Tokyo as Typhoon Wipha makes its way across the Pacific. But while the capital is preparing for the storm to make landfall Wednesday morning, the real concern is where it’s headed next: 130 miles northeast, near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

A major storm like Wipha’s shaping up to be, warns Climate Central, “likely would complicate cleanup efforts, or possibly pose an even greater danger to the facility”:

Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at WeatherBell Analytics, a private forecasting firm, told Climate Central that the storm poses a “huge flood potential” for the Fukushima area. “Deep convection on the westward flank of the storm . . . plus the topography of Japan means heavy rain for the coastline regardless of the Typhoon’s track,” he said in an email message. “Wipha is extra-large size-wise,” Maue said, predicting it will grow and strengthen as it makes its closest pass to Japan, aided by strong jet stream winds in the upper atmosphere.