An informal panel of experts in the U.S. Department of Energy discussed using military explosives to bring the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant under control, said panel member and physicist Richard Garwin, who pitched the idea.
“I wanted to make a hole through the great shielding slabs, which are more than a meter of reinforced concrete, and one of the opportunities was to use the military shaped charge,” Garwin said in a telephone interview, referring to the proposal he made to Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the panel meeting last April 5.
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