Tepco Weighed Using Firearms to Avoid Fukushima Explosion

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As the first hydrogen explosion rocked the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials scrambled to prevent a second blast, at one point weighing the use of firearms to shoot a hole in the reactor building to release the pressure.

“It was probably the last resort,” Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University, said by phone yesterday.