11/3/2011 Criticality Confusion at Fukushima Daiichi

After checking the RadiationNews™ Google gadget, I noticed ENENEWS (the tab one to the right of this feed) has highlighted that The Japan Times is calling for an investigation to determine the true seriousness of the condition now at the melted down Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  In The Japan Times article Find out true reactor conditions from 11/4/2011 JST it is reported that re-criticality (a sustained fission reaction) has occurred and that TEPCO has initially (on Tuesday 11/1/2011 JST) reported localized temporary criticality:

[...]

Because the half life of xenon-133 is 5.25 days and that of xeon-135 is 9.14 hours, criticality is very likely to have occurred just before the gases were analyzed.

Although more than seven months have passed since the start of the nuclear fiasco, clearly the reactor has not yet been stabilized. Tepco's plan to achieve "cold shutdown" of the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors by the end of this year may face difficulty.

The fact that Tepco cannot deny the possibility of criticality irrespective of its scale is a grave situation. The conditions are similar in the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors. It is thought that nuclear fuel in them melted and has collected in the bottom of both the pressure and containment vessels.

[...]

After claiming that possible criticality was indicated by release of various isotopes of Xenon gas TEPCO has now backtracked to say it is only a spontaneous fission reaction of curium (a less serious condition).  So what is really true?  TEPCO has had a tendency to lie, downplay and delay releasing news concerning their crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant so it is likely that something more serious is going on than what they are attempting to present to the public.  For example, per the ENENEWS article Krypton-85 up over 14,000% in one day at Reactor No. 2 — Kr-85 used to detect “plutonium separations” the existence of Krypton-85 in Fukushima Daiichi reactor 2 is indicative of plutonium fission.