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The Largest Short-Term Threat to Humanity: The Fuel Pools of Fukushima
The Greatest Single Threat to Humanity: Fuel Pool Number 4
We noted days after the Japanese earthquake that the biggest threat was from the spent fuel rods in the fuel pool at Fukushima unit number 4, and not from the reactors themselves. See this and this.
We noted in February:
Scientists say that there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hitting Fukushima this year, and a 98% chance within the next 3 years.
Given that nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that an earthquake of 7.0 or larger could cause the entire fuel pool structure collapse, it is urgent that everything humanly possible is done to stabilize the structure housing the fuel pools at reactor number 4.
Tepco is doing some construction at the building … it is a race against time under very difficult circumstances, and hopefully Tepco will win.
As AP points out:
The structural integrity of the damaged Unit 4 reactor building has long been a major concern among experts because a collapse of its spent fuel cooling pool could cause a disaster worse than the three reactor meltdowns.
***
Gundersen (who used to build spent fuel pools) explains that there is no protection surrounding the radioactive fuel in the pools. He warns that – if the fuel pools at reactor 4 collapse due to an earthquake – people should get out of Japan, and residents of the West Coast of America and Canada should shut all of their windows and stay inside for a while.
The fuel pool number 4 is apparently not in great shape, and there have already been countless earthquakes near the Fukushima region since the 9.0 earthquake last March.
Germany's ZDF tv quotes nuclear engineer Yukitero Naka as saying:
If another earthquake occurs then the building [number 4] could collapse and another chain reaction could very likely occur.
(Unit 4 contains plutonium as well as other radioactive wastes.)
Mainchi reported on Monday:
The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor building has a total of 1,535 fuel rods, or 460 tons of nuclear fuel, in it. The 7-story building itself has suffered great damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company Areva have warned about this risk.
A report released in February by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident stated that the storage pool of the plant’s No. 4 reactor has clearly been shown to be “the weakest link” in the parallel, chain-reaction crises of the nuclear disaster. The worse-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. If this were to happen, residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would be forced to evacuate.
Former Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Sumio Mabuchi, who was appointed to the post of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisor on the nuclear disaster immediately after its outbreak, proposed the injection of concrete from below the No. 4 reactor to the bottom of the storage pool, Chernobyl-style.
***
“Because sea water was being pumped into the reactor, the soundness of the structure (concrete corrosion and deterioration) was questionable. There also were doubts about the calculations made on earthquake resistance as well,” said one government source familiar with what took place at the time. “[F]uel rod removal will take three years. Will the structure remain standing for that long?
Asahi noted last month that - if Unit 4 pool gets a crack from an earthquake and leaks, it would be the end for Tokyo.
Kevin Kamps said last month:
Unit 4 storage pool… The entire building is listing including the pool. What they have is steel jacks underneath the pool to try to keep the floor from falling out or the pool from flipping over.
If that cooling water supply is lost, it will be just a few hours at most before that waste is on fire. 135 tons outside of any radioactive containment. They would be direct releases into the environment. 100% of cesium-137 could be released to the environment.
Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura - whose praises have been sung by Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and Glenn Olds, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and Goldman Sachs co-chair John C. Whitehead - notes:
The unit suffered enormous damage during the tsunami—a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off, leaving the highly radioactive fuel pool exposed to the open air. If another high level earthquake hits the area, the building will certainly collapse. Japanese and American meteorologists have predicted that such a strong earthquake is indeed likely to hit this year.
The meltdown and unprecedented release of radiation that would ensue is the worst case scenario that then-Prime Minister Kan and other former officials have discussed in the past months. He warned during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos that such an accident would force the evacuation of the 35 million people in Tokyo, close half of Japan and compromise the nation’s sovereignty. Such a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe is unimaginable. Hiroshi Tasaka, a nuclear engineer and special adviser to Prime Minister Kan immediately following the crisis, said the crisis “just opened Pandora’s Box.”
The current Japanese government has not yet mentioned the looming disaster, ostensibly to not incite panic in the public. Nevertheless, action must be taken quickly. This website over the last year has published a running commentary from scientists explaining why Reactor 4 must be stabilized immediately, who might be able to accomplish such a task, and why the situation has largely gone unnoticed. We believe an independent, international team of structural engineers and other advisers must be assembled and deployed immediately. Mounting public pressure would force the Japanese government to take action. We hope these resources are helpful in educating the public about the crisis that we face.
As the eminent German physicist Dr. Hans-Peter Durr said ten months ago, if the spent fuel pool spills, we will be in a situation where science never imagined we could be.
Matsumura was told that if the fuel pool at unit 4 collapses or the water spills out, so much radiation will spew out for 50 years that no one will be able to approach Fukushima:
Even more dramatically, Matsumura writes:
Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).
I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.
I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez [updated 4/5/12]:
In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.
Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.
Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.
There was a Nuclear Security Summit Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.
I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this unprecedented challenge.
Ambassador Murata’s letter says:
It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor. This is confirmed by most reliable experts like Dr. Arnie Gundersen or Dr. Fumiaki Koide.
Anti-nuclear physician Dr. Helen Caldicott says that if fuel pool 4 collapses, she will evacuate her family from Boston and move them to the Southern Hemisphere. This is an especially dramatic statement given that the West Coast is much more directly in the path of Fukushima radiation than the East Coast.
Will humanity rise to the occasion, and figure out how to stabilize fuel pool number 4 before catastrophe strikes?
Or will modern civilization win a Darwin award for failing to pay attention to the real threats?
»
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1945-1998 Visual History of Nuclear Testing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqhdDHV5wo
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Incredible. Mesmerizing. Painfully telling.
Time to encase it in sand and light off a nuke to turn it into glass.
aren't you the guy that thought a Curie was the amount of radiation needed to kill a small french woman?
This is probably the stupidest scheme anyone could come up with.
I threw a low-life like you that said exactly the same thing out of my taxi.
I recommend that you consider sepiku - but then for this, you need to be honorable.
v
"Will humanity rise to the occasion, and figure out how to stabilize fuel pool number 4 before catastrophe strikes?"
You have to understand that the Global Crisis and Global Collpase is one driven by the total intellectual exposure of our "leadership" as regards competence. Einstein stated this!
It is obvious. This lot are plain incompetent and criminally insane.
To answer the question: No. Emphatically No!
Our Global "leadership" is not interested in fixing this problem, and even if it did take a bribe to try to fix it, They, collectively and individually, wouldn't know what to do!.
And besides, they don't give a shit!
Global "leadership" is only concerned in retaining thier positions of power where they get to preside over their own failures!
That's what they do best! That is, presiding over failure; their own failure! Too bad that it is we that die, get tortured, imprisoned, maimed and suffer.
Hopefully, this disaster will totally wipe out the photoshop "leadership" of North America before they can destroy the rest of the World.
v
Latest News from Fukishima: It get far worse and NOBODY knows and I doubt if any of those responsible even care!
http://enenews.com
http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-fukushima-spent-fuel-85-times-cesium-released-chernobyl-destroy-world-environment-civilization-issue-human-survival-former-adviser
Nuclear Expert: Fukushima spent fuel has 85 times more cesium than released at Chernobyl — “It would destroy the world environment and our civilization… an issue of human survival” -Former UN adviser
Former UN adviser: If No. 4 pool collapses I’ve been told “during 50 years continual, you cannot contain” (VIDEO)
Report from Japan: Fukushima doctors can’t express anxieties about radiation or say things that are against what medical leaders decide to make public (AUDIO)
Nuclear Expert: Fukushima citizens urged to make reports of deformities or still births — “I don’t believe the Japanese gov’t wants that info out there” (AUDIO)Just a thought. Is this why dubya bought that land in Paraguay?
Wow, stock up on iodine, fellers.
Long sand and borax.
Instead of consolidating the spent fuel pool structure, can't they move the spent fuel rods to another location even if that was never done before? It still seems to be a possible option, although technically challenging.
Those technical challenges seem to be the big problem. The fuel pool had a heavy crane overhead, this is normally used to hoist a container into the fuel pool, then fill it with water, and a few of the fuel rods, and hoist it out of it. The fuel rods are "hot" they need to be covered with water continuously, otherwise they'll burn and release the uranium, plutonium etc. The whole construction; fuel pool, crane as well as the fuel itself is very heavy. All of this is broken, the crane collapsed on top of the fuel pool, and there's a lot of debris (from the roof, crane, superstructure) in the fuel pool, blocking access.
To solve this issue, they have to reïnforce the building structure, then take out the crane, and debris, then build a new crane, and start hoisting the fuel out. That could take years. The issue is further complicated because the whole platform on which Daiichi was built is very possibly not capable of supporting heavier structures than that are there already, and could give way, and structures present (the 4 reactors) would then collapse. The ground is already cracked, there's been radiocative steam coming out, because of the core (of #1-#2-#3? or all) heating moisture underneath the plants (these cores are "ex-vessel" meaning they've breached the containment and are somewhere below the 3 reactors). The whole thing is built on a vertical vault, and is hit by earthquakes on a regular basis. After the march 2011 earthquake a rift has opened further, thus increasing the chance of further earthquakes, and this means a very possible increase in size.
The task is huge, and pressing. The calculation is that a "march 2011 size earthquake" could happen with a 70% possibillity within the next 2 years. It will take years to get rid of the old busted crane and debris, build a new one, and then start the process. Possibly 10 years.
WHY are not all the resources of the world, all the engineers, all the capable minds, all the building companies put into this effort? As outlined by the shocking reports above, if the contents of the fuel pool is exposed, and starts to burn, life of any kind with genetic code in DNA, on the whole planet will suffer a massive blow. If not the end. Once that plutonium is released into the lower atmosphere, there's NOTHING that can take it out again, so then go ahead blow your money on hookers and coke, 300 rides in Disneyland, or eat a ton of Skittles, whatever desire floats your boat, because... that'll be all folks.. o__0
Oh... the amount of uranium-plutonium sitting on top, or next to reactors in the USA, and a number of other places, stored in "swimming pool" type enclosures, is STUNNING. This shit is like russian roulette with 5 bullets. The reason the problem of the #4 Daiichi fuel pool being hushed up, is, I think, because the nuclear industry always has said these are "safe" and in the minds of the public it's inert rods that pose no danger. They don't want that perception to change. Because it's about perception now, not survival, to these people.
To solve this, something VERY DRASTIC has to happen now. Time is running out.
Here's a fun japanese talkshow....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqvkU61jKO8
The only way I can think of to resolve the issue is to build a crane capable of lifting the entire SFP with the rods inside. and place it in a ground level pool that is constructed on site. To get the fuel rods out of the pool the would need to rebuild the walls and flood the reactor building above the SFP and lower them into caskets. Perhaps if there are some old rods that have been sitting in the SFP for a decade or so, those can be reasonable removed with flooding a rebuild containment buiding.
Another option would to build a sarcophagus around all of the reactors, but that is going to take more than a decade an probably cost japan 100+ billion.
What is likely to happen is that the SFP remains held up with duct tape (sarcasm) until it gives out. When it collapses they will have to just dump sand and borax and bury it.
The problem no one talks about is, just who will be doing this work?
Seems to me, anyone exposed to the radiation levels as they currently exist is guaranteed a limited life span.
I know the Japanese are extremely domesticated, but this is asking a little too much, don't you think?
"The reason the problem of the #4 Daiichi fuel pool being hushed up, is, I think, because the nuclear industry always has said these are "safe" and in the minds of the public it's inert rods that pose no danger. They don't want that perception to change. Because it's about perception now, not survival, to these people."
This could be the ultimate and greatest crime in human history...
"The reason the problem of the #4 Daiichi fuel pool being hushed up, is"
Its likely because the gov't fears a panic and perhaps a economic collapse, then the preception that Nukes are safe. If the Japanese gov't spoke the truth, they would have to relocate probably about 20% of the population away from the effected area. Thats extreme tough, if not impossible in Japans case.
If the SFP does fail, it might just cause Japan to collapse.
GE.
We bring bad things and death.
I would like to hear an answer to this:
but something tells me that there is no answer.
There is a simple answer. Because doing so would require acknowledging the scope of the problem and the depth of the corruption that helped create it. People in power will do literally anything to prevent this.
They don't even have to admit to themselves that they are risking the lives of millions in order to retain power and wealth. Like almost all humans they can rationalize and self-delude themselves into believing that almost anything that is good for themselves is also a general good.
I watched your Japanese talk show, and it looks like the Tepco folks are still insanely optimistic about getting the fuel assemblies out in an orderly fashion.
I think they need to have rad-hardened remote controlled equipment, and forget about keeping water around the rods that are being removed from the pool. They need to yank those suckers out, damn the radiation (please stand back carbon base life forms) and lower 'em into a temporary pool closer to ground level. Since it's been a year by now, the assemblies have probably settled down enough that they won't catch fire if out of the water (and away from the other assemblies) for five minutes. Have some other rad-hard robots on standby with an argon-based fire extinguisher. And lots of borax in that water, please.
... meh ... I'm not gonna solve it with this armchair quarterbacking.
Que Sera Sera
Seb, I think when there's no inmediate answer, we (human beings) have to create one. That's why we're the dominant species on this planet. (not the most numerous, in numbers nor biomass btw) If the current powerstructure of a percieved elite (who are these people exactly?) hinders or even jeopardises the chances of survival as a species, we, the critical, thinking part of humanity (and there's more than we might think ourselves), have to deal with this problem, which is an evolutionairy hurdle, first. Otherwise, when this dangerous farce of makebelief powergames continues, we're toast. I'll leave it at that. Everyone please draw their own conclusion?
Urban Roman, did you see that German ZDF documentary "Fukushima Lüge" (Fukushima Lies) about the japanese "nuclear villiage" (Industry&Government&Scientists(not all))? It's on youtube. I think George Washington also reblogged it. It's one complicated widespread corrupt mess. Not even the Emperor is in on it. They censored his speech on prime time tv. And I don't think these rods have cooled off sufficiëntly to put them outside of water, that's what I've deducted from the information available (taken out of the reactor november 2010). I could be wrong of course, that's what Arnie Gundersen said and he's been quite consistent.
Anyway, thanks GW for bringing this to the attention, and thank you ZH to treat this Black Swan for what it is.
Because Ahminadinnerjacket might (or might not) be secretly working on a plan to drop a bomb on Tel Aviv, before Tel Aviv drops 200 bombs on Teheran. And he controls an oil field comparable to the Saudi one. And we won't buy his oil. Or he won't sell it to us. Or something.
Oh, and Dancing With The Stars is about to come on.
There might be another reason why little is being done to avert this catastrophe: maybe there's something much, much worse on the horizon that makes Fukushima utterly insignificant.
The waste fuel issue should be galvanising an enormous multi-national effort to avert disaster, but what if there's something bigger on the way that makes any efforts to contain Fukushima pointless?
Impending fuel famine? Impending nuclear conflict?
The sheep are completely ignorant, as usual - try asking 10 friends/colleagues what they know about Fukushima. I've tried it - most don't have the faintest fucking clue about it. Most know something about Chernobyl, but few seem to appreciate the danger from Fukushima.
Strange times.
Impending fuel famine? Impending nuclear conflict?
oh oh! How about massive asteroid strike? Yellow stone Super Volcano getting ready to blow? Reptile Alien Invasion inbound from rapidly nearing Planet Nemesis? Carrington Event times 10 coming up?
The reason nothing's being done is our 'elites' are naught but a bunch of inbred, incompetent sociopaths who only have the desire to eke out one more week of depraved existence, even if the result is turning the Earth into a raging Hell. Better to turn the whole planet into a sea of fire than give up an ounce of power or prestige.
Must be something bigger than the yellowstone caldera because we're fracking within a hundred miles of there, with troubling results noted elsewhere:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8381-scientists-increase-in-us-earthquake...
Given all the things we know, and know, and know, and know that they are doing in oh so many ways all over the fuckng world, your psychological explanation seems robustly compelling.
Strangely, what kills us all will be that we allowed sick fucks to be in charge of shit. All shit. On their whims. The particular tool that bit us on that day will be largely irrelevant. They were going to find a way.
That's just what crazy fucks do.
They sold us some real entertaining stories about freedom along the way, though.
You forgot zombie apocolypse.
I think the real reason is that Tepco/Japan.gov is paralyzed with fear. The instruction manual that came from GE along with the reactor doesn't seem to have a troubleshooting chapter for "total meltdown, fire, explosion, and core breach", and if they send anybody into the building, that person dies in a minute or so. And they don't have much remote-control equipment that can deal with cleanup on such a huge scale.
Out of habit, the Japanese like to have a very clean house. They are sweeping up contaminated stuff and burning it, making the radwaste airborne. They are washing down contaminated areas, flushing radwaste into the ocean. There just isn't any cultural response that makes sense here, and it will take a while to develop one.
My prediction is this: in ten years or so, a much poorer and smaller country of Japan will have some kickass rad-hard robotics, they will be almost 100% switched to geothermal and solar energy, but they will have the tech and personnel to clean up a nuke accident anywhere on the planet. Japan will be the place to call when your old rustbucket Mark I BWR blows up.
There are two primary gantries within each reactor building. The larger service crane removes biological shield plugs and concrete gates that are between the pools and the pressure vessel. It also removes the pressure vessel head and steam dryer.
The spent fuel itself is moved within the building with a much smaller A-frame gantry which rolls on tracks on the service deck. A metal tank filled with water is lowered into the spent fuel pool. Fuel assemblies are put into the tank which is then transported via a hoistway to the loading dock by the service crane.
Since the service plugs have already been removed there are few heavy items within the reactor to move. What is needed are tanks that can be filled then loaded into the SPF with the crane that is on site. Workers can then use a small crane to shift the assemblies to the tank. Since workers are already working inside and on top of the reactor 4 building, it is clearly not too radioactive for humans to set up the small crane. The cranes themselves can be operated remotely.
What the Japanese have failed to do is build a rail spur into the Fukushima facility to allow large,heavy loads to be shipped in and out. Once the tanks are out of the reactor they must be secured in railcars so the assemblies can be sent to other nuclear stations for storage and ultimate disposal. An ordinary railroad tank car would work. It would be fitted with a support structure for the assembly-filled tank. The tank car would be filled with water. At the end of the jouney, the tanks would be moved by host-reactor fuel handling infrastructure.
Unfortunately, neither car or track to run it on exists nor do truck-trailer substitutes. Four of these tank cars could be built for a few thousand dollars each. Assembly carries would cost more but the effort would be much less than what BP produced 2 summers ago.
Tepco should hire Boots and Coots/Halliburton. Tell them what to do then get out of the way.
To remove the fuel assemblies in reactor 4 would require 96 round trips: the four car 'trains' could make one trip per week, it would take 24 weeks to remove all the spent fuel.
The basement of the reactor building could have been filled with concrete along with the area under the pool. A large concrete pump is on the site and has been since April of last year. Again, crews have been working within the unit 4 building so radiation levels in this building are not unbearable.
A sheet-pile or slurry wall cofferedam could have been built around the entire complex. There are both kinds of structures around commercial buildings that are much larger. There is no reason why such a structure or combination of dam structures has not been built. With a cofferdam, water leaks into the environment would not be an issue.
Also, there would not be an issue of water over the three reactor cores.
Matsumura suggests a science group to provide management expertise and guidance. The Soviets had nuclear science expertise in place AT CHERNOBYL within two weeks of that reactor's meltdown.
No rail spur, no small crane, no cofferdam, no concrete, no science advisors, nothing just lies and more lies.
Good to read a positive scenario once in a while. Thanks for the information!
(Steve from Virginia)
Always good to read someone who knows something about the subject in hand.
So, question -why on earth are they storing all these spent fuel rods on site -in all of these power stations worldwide? Was that the long-term plan, did they NEVER have a solution to neutralise or re-process them (or were they just going to dig a hole somewhere)
I'm sure the nuke industry advocates would blame the protesters and politicians, but it was always a technical problem that looked like it would cost a lot of money to solve. High level nuke waste is extremely dangerous and has to be handled carefully (as described by Steve from Virginia, above). You can't just bury it in the back yard, and it has to be kept submerged in water or the radiation will kill any people standing nearby.
Also, there was at one time or another a plan to process the nuke waste. They'd recover the remaining fissionable material to re-stoke the reactors, while reducing the volume of the waste for disposal. These reprocessing plants are expensive to build and are hazardous places as well -- I think France has some, but there aren't many of them on the planet. It's not a terrible idea, since the fuel is removed from the reactor after maybe 10% "burnup" because it accumulates neutron-poisoning daughter isotopes which make the reactor hard to manipulate with control rods. So there's the 90% of Uranium or whatever that could be re-used if it could be purified. You wouldn't need any more expensive U from the mines.
So while the politicians, the hippies, and the nuke managers all deliberate what to do with it, the simplest solution has been to leave it in the cooling pools. After several years the radiation level is down low enough that the assemblies can be removed from the pools and packed in "dry casks" which are also stored on site at the power plants.
Totally agree that there ought to be sheet piling wall or a cofferdam. There ought to be a huge stockpile of sand, borax, and metal boride rods of some description on the site by now. All the remote controlled robotics that can tolerate the environment there. And as many nuke scientists as they can round up.
But as I say below, I think the upper levels of management are completely paralyzed with fear. And they are not in the habit of sharing bad news, so lies is what we shall hear on the news.
Problem is extricating the fuel assemblies from the tangled wreckage of the superstructure which has a tiny little bit of damage from a hydrogen explosion last spring.
The assemblies weigh something like half a ton apiece, and the crane that put them into the pool is off its tracks and laying around in a shredded mess of rebar, steel beams, broken glass/concrete, etc. And the radiation levels, which are enough to fry electronics -- the radiation level gets higher whenever a fuel assembly is removed from its water blanket.
Yeah, technically challenging. Where are all those fancy Japanese robots? Oh, yeah, they aren't rad-hardened.
My munny's on the Darwin Award(s). :>(
has the Japanese health and safety regulator done anything to date other than hide under a desk?
they still regulating tax drivers gloves in Tokyo?!! ...great stuff this regulation
In 1959, there was a very powerful film about the end of the world from nuclear catastrophe, 'On the Beach' ... describing the last days of the remnant of humanity alive in Australia, before humanity is totally extinguished.
Ironically, as with Fukushima, in the film it is in the Southern hemisphere that people can survive a little longer.
In the final moments, an American submarine sails away so the crew can die in America, the captain leaving his lady love in Australia behind ... but both have a mere matter of days left to live.
A wonderful musical score in the film, makes use of the traditional Aussie political-radical song, 'Waltzing Matilda'.
Here are the final moments of the film ... absolutely lovely and brings tears to your eyes ... people looking into the sunshine one last time before they die:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfP1FCJTlo0
The pool just needs to hold together for another 500,000 years; some problems simply take care of themselves over time.
It has already begun:
http://verbewarp.blogspot.se/2011/03/operation-death-star-australis.html
Just who gives a shit about Australia? Nobody!
Now the whole Northern Hemisphere is full of radiation and also now,
the seas and oceans in both the Northern and Souther Hemispheres are full of radiation - don't eat seafoood -
so we all die slowly, a death of a thousand cuts due to those "fuckling crazies" aka "neocons" of the USA and the Zionists who they represent!
My message: "foxtrot uniform". You can Quote me!
"the seas and oceans in both the Northern and Souther Hemispheres are full of radiation - don't eat seafoood -"
I would suggest buying your seafood from the Atlantic ocean, and getting a reverse osmosis water filter, although I realize it may not be enough:
http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water-education/water-contaminants-heal...
Thanks for keeping the issue front and center, GW. Whenever I bring it up, most people refuse to discuss it to any depth, like they'd rather not know, scary.