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Japan's Plan To Freeze Fukushima With An "Ice Wall" Is Melting Down
Who could have possibly foreseen this?
A year ago we wished TEPCO the best of luck with the construction of the "Game of Thrones"-esque 1.4km giant wall of ice that was designed to surround the exploded Fukushima power plant and slow the movement of irradiated water below the damaged reactors, preventing it from flowing over into the ocean and surrounding land. A plan so idiotic we were at a loss for words trying to list the ways it could go wrong (we didn't bother with how it could go right because it clearly couldn't).
And, as it turns out, making a project overly complicated and ridiculous doesn't assure it will be a success. Quite the contrary. As Japan JIJI reports, Tepco said the project, which remains in its early stages, is experiencing a problem with an inner ice wall designed to contain highly radioactive water that is draining from the basements of the wrecked reactors.
A Tepco spokesman added that "We have yet to form an ice plug because we can’t get the temperature low enough to freeze the water."
Oh, you mean to say that a he plan whose success relies on freezing water may fail because... it is impossible to get the water to freeze? Truly some of the smartest Japanese scientists must have been behind this brilliant strategy, or at least those who were not involved in the planning of the BOJ's QE program of course.
The underlying idea was simple enough... on paper.
Trenches are being dug for a huge network of pipes under the plant that will have refrigerant pumped through them. If successful, it would freeze the soil and form a physical barrier, significantly slowing the rate at which uncontaminated groundwater flows into the reactor basements and becomes contaminated.
The coolant used in the operation is an aqueous solution of calcium chloride, which is cooled to minus 30 degrees. The ice wall employs the same technology as the trench project and involves the same contractor, Kajima Corp.
Alas, the reality is proving to be far more complicated than theory - just ask the Fed:
The idea of freezing a section of the ground was proposed last year. Engineers have used the technique to build tunnels near watercourses. But scientists point out it has never been used on such a large scale, or for the length of time Tepco is proposing.
Coping with the huge amount of water at the plant is proving to be a major challenge for Tepco, as it tries to clean up the mess after the worst nuclear disaster in a generation.
As well as having to collect vast quantities of water used to cool the melted down reactors, Tepco has been pumping up and storing water that drains down from inland mountains to the sea.
Full decommissioning of the plant is expected to take several decades. An exclusion zone remains in place, and experts warn that some former residential areas may have to be abandoned as settlements because of persistently high levels of radiation.
May have to be abandoned? Can't Japan just raise the minimum safe radiation dosage as it did back in 2011. That way people can assume they are still safe. And after all the whole exercise is to boost confidence, isn't it.
In conclusion: “We are behind schedule, but have already taken additional measures, including putting in more pipes, so that we can remove contaminated water from the trench starting next month,” a spokesman said.
Wait, wasn't the issue the temperature of the water, not the number of pipes. Oh who cares anyway, as long as someone pretends to be doing some work to "fix" the world's worst nuclear accident in history, having long since surpassed Chernobyl in severity. One can't have the locals realize the government is hopeless and that the Fukushima situation was a complete disaster from the start, and what's worse, one which can not be fixed. Especially now that Abenomics has failed, and the Nikkei is still down for the year, thus not providing the required dose of distraction from an increasingly irradiated life.
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Time for plan "B"
I think they already tried plan B(ullshit).
Just nuke it already, how much worse could it get?
But MSM says don't worry.....
This is why I love Zero Hedge - it's so damn SNARKY! : "reality is proving to be far more complicated than theory - just ask the Fed"
Japanese FUBAR....
Fukushima'd Up Beyond All Reality
They're not thinking clearly. It's just probably because of all the r a d i a t i o n
junk shot?
unquenchable subatomic fires are little som-bitches.
Boris, there is a clean up on isle 4, how soon can you attend to it?
“Alas, the reality is proving to be far more complicated than theory - just ask the Fed”
Isn’t there a quant out there with all the answers?
"Japan's Plan To Freeze Fukushima With An "Ice Wall" Is Melting Down"
The plan worked fine. People have been nodding along for the better part of a year rather than ask where the line of cement trucks is.
Queue plan B......a curtain of compressed air. We'll take 10,000 of those sharper image fans with no exposed blades, dig a big trench, and point them facing in. This should buy us at least another year.
ZeroHedge @ #FUKU....bitchez
And how much energy would be required to take on such a task. Last I checked, Japan did not have much in the way of excess energy.
No reason they couldn't build a new nuke plant right next door to provide them all the power they would need for the freezing.
GE has some nuke power plant blueprints dated 1962 for sale, real cheap.
Ah.. so.. I am trying to get a hold of the concept of infinite heat sink.
They could probably use a really big thermopile to power the ice wall, since the temperature difference between the radioactive groundwater and the ocean is probably fairly high.
Japan's new energy motto going forward:
"Nuke till you Puke"
That will look really nice below their logo, "Olympics, bitchez!"
Just cut the entire rising-sun isalnds out and stargate them into space (eh, moon of Mars perhaps?)...
Citizenry can ante up for a vacant unit in China, or Australia, or Canada.
They need the international community to start asking a shit load more pointed questions of Japan, and then ban the use of nuclear fuels in japan altogether for a start, and energy sourced from elsewhere (i know thats the kicker but common fucking sense instead of opting for the easier solution). Forget nuking the site, bury the fucking thing. We dont need the nuclear material aerosolising ffs.
Or, to quote yer avatar: "Hey guys, safen up!"
+1
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nucleartracktown/
Or maybe they need to restart a damaged reactor to supply enough energy to keep the coolers operational.
The freezer is one of the biggest energy consumers in the house. So imagine how much they need to freeze a area the size of 500 foodball fields... and do it for forever...
FREEZE INFINITY!!!
Japanese SNAFU....
Situation Normal, All Fukushima'd Up
Fuku'd Up Beyond All Recognition?
I really hate idiots... Especially ones that presume to lord over others in such a stupid fashion...
Cheer up. Godzilla was just a bad CGI movie (twice). We still have a few years until it actually materializes out of the sea.
Short Japanese life expectancy, long Mothra
Nah man. What radiation does not outright kill, it fucks up. But not in a Spider man or Godzilla kind of way. Its more like the shit out your side and get fed through your nose kind of way. The BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) study pretty much summed it up.
-->There is no safe dose of radiation<--
and low doses actually appear to be EVEN MORE dangerous.
FGB
and low doses actually appear to be EVEN MORE dangerous.
More dangerous than no doses or more dangerous than high doses? Could be a bold claim right here!It already nuked itself. They're just not going to admit it.
Fukusima went full melt-down 3 days after the Tsunami hit. Everything since then has been like watching a slow motion train wreck of unavoidable consequences.
At every step they deny it happened. At every step the reality of the situation steps in to prove their denial another lie. They fall back, regroup and come up with another denial.
IT MELTED DOWN LONG AGO AND THERE IS NO STOPPING IT, NO CONTAINING IT. Only denying it is left. Denial and the slow realization that the only solution left to the pollution is dilution (spreading it around the entire Pacific Ocean and hope it doesn't spawn Godzilla in the next 500 years).
Indeed! That sums it up. TEPCO hasn't the balls to admit three full meltdowns buring through containment and somewhere they do not know. Down there in the ground are the cores. Clean up? That is a hoax, there will be no clean up. Who are they kidding. All they can do is keep flushing water in the general area of the cores to cool them down. This releases a constant flood of radioactive water, whcih is too much to contain. TEPCO are liars and fools.
Heart breaking stuff.
http://enenews.com/tv-largest-disease-outbreak-oceans-hitting-west-coast...
When I saw a video last year of Japanese officials doing a stupid dance on stage in tandom to try and woo the Olympic commitee I knew the world had officially gone mad.
When they actually were rewarded the Olympics the date changed to then.
John 3:16
By the time the Olympics roll around the world will be in all out war.
Why didn't they just build the god damn reactors out of ice in the first place? Fuckin stupid nips.
u fucking stupid, reaktor need liquid water, idiot.
you dont make energy with nuclear by itself, reaction boil water to make steam that rotate turbine, go school , stop posting, kill yourself, fucking american.
One of you two forgot the sarc tag...
I think
The sarcasm tag was not needed on the initial post. Mkkkby's post was such an outrageous comment that it can only be construed as sarcasm.
As to the respondent to the initial post...I believe him to be a dullard from other posts which he has composed.
Maybe he may learn something. Then again maybe he will not. I cannot care less about him.
Sadly that's the truth. The "ice wall" isn't crazy, its just impossible because of the continuing meltdown of the cores.
Jack this flushing of radiation is the equivalent of dispersal of all the nuclear waste in that place over the course of a few decades. In Ukraine the when they found the molten core they called it the elephants foot because of the shape, a few years later they found that is started to crack and the outer surface was starting to break down into a fine dust. So I ask you. Flushing this crap with water for the next few decades is going to spread the contents of these molten cores as a fine dust all over the world, is it not?
But it needs to be properly nuked so TEPCO can save face by blaming the radiation on a bomb.
I'm sure that Obomba would oblige, have it on the Hiroshima anniversary and spin it as a commemoration.
Trouble is, there might be enough radioactive material within range of ground zero to sterilize the planet of its last cockroach.
Trouble is, there might be enough radioactive material within range of ground zero to sterilize the planet of its last cockroach.
and Politician
Isn't putting cockroachs and politicians in the same context being harsh on the little critters?
I figured politicians were included when he mentionned cockroach ;)
Fuck, how stupid could we be? Japan hosts the fucking 2020 WINTER Olympics. They are going to be practicing their asses off thanks to TEPCO.
TEPCO are going to decommission the fuck out of Fukushima.
Slurry walls would work fine. They are used all over the world. Are these people idiots?
The Japanese don't have a lot of experience drilling for oil (which is the method needed, since there isn't room to excavate without releasing the irradiated water).
At 5000 psi, concrete is more or less waterproof, and even Haliburton could handle the cement job.
There are also polymer and lipid based soil stabilizers specifically engineered for toxic waste containment that reduce the capillary action of in situ soil to less than that of concrete.
But in both cases you need people with experience remediating disasters, not compounding them, as well as experience drilling and filling boreholes in wet environments.
What's disgusting is that the cost of doing it right is less than the cost of this INSANE dysfunctional Rube Goldberg machine, and doesn't require any energy on an ongoing basis.
WTF, did Ultraman retire? Get his lazy ass working on this.
So much for giving those reactors the cold shoulder.
No plan "B"!
((((because it's plan "Z"))))
I think plan B is restart the rest of their reactors. Hell, not much left to lose. The human race is one rake away from a serious smack in the face.
check this out. Go to the 11 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKyh8l1XAk&feature=youtu.be
One wonders just how much concrete could have been pumped into the site by now if they had started immediately after the initial disaster became known.
TEPCO and the Government of Japan need to execute a "McEwen Maneuver" (see history of the Red Lake Mine). POST THE HONEST REALITY OF THE SITUATION ONLINE IN AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE TO THE GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY, AND ASK FOR HELP. THERE IS NOTHING MORE HONORABLE. DO YOUR DUTY.
Perhaps if the Japanese had asked the Russians or Ukrainians for some "experienced help" with the project sometime within the first week after uh-oh, then maybe the problem would have been contained/addressed by now.
Yeah, send in the Gundam!
and what about plan F ? As in - totally Fcked
Sum Ting Wong
Ever Ting Glowing
Mai Tai Roid Growing
OK I chuckled on that one. Haven't seen that one before.
mai roids growing
Dr. Suzuki Where Are Yu !!
David Suzuki? What does the gospel of Agenda 21 have to do with this?
This is a hilarious story: clueless salary man causes technological disaster with his body odor.
"Stink Bomb" by Katsuhiro Otomo, anime from 1995, english (fan) dub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1GvKJp1wew
You know nothing about nuclear radiation jon snow.
One question. If it is this serious, especially after 3 years, how come people in Japan aren't sick and dying by the hundreds and thousands by now?
They are not dead....just long term unemployed. Really long term.
If its really this serious, you have to lie
And they've been lying since the very beginning! Even at the moment the first roof lifted off.
The USA woudn't lie.
USA USA USA!
Not much difference in being really long term unemployed and being a zombie, is there?
I believe they have seen a dramatic rise in child cancers.
The "volunteers" they enlisted early on knew they were going to die anyway. If you're 70 years old you're near the end of the runway, anyway.
or you're running out of fuel at 37,000 feet
....sushi has a half life?
Yep, you see it about 24 hours later. Unless it was bad, then it's sooner.
Same reason that blowing asbestos dust into someone's face often offends.
Good question. Anyone? I'm wondering the same thing myself.
Why not just build an underground concrete wall? The goal is simply to prevent ground water from entering the facility from the hills. Why bother using fancy shmancy ground freezing using tubes, coolant and ludicrous amounts of power to accomplish the task? Come on japan, dont solve problems lke you are americans.
intri8, this is Professor Koide's prescription from the beginning - dig down to bedrock and build a concrete wall around the entire site. Do they not do it because to do so would be to admit how cluster-fuk'ed it is and would contradict the "cold shut down" lie? Or is it because that flow of groundwater is actually doing the cooling of the cores that now lie under the reactors?
Thats possible. Plus 300 tons of irradiated water is dumped everyday. They would prefer future excuses to be able to dump pretty much indiscriminately, ie, the ice wall isnt working out like we planned.
You're right to question the premises. It's like big issues of foreign policy. Nothing makes sense until you start scraping below the surface.
Can anybody present a decent explanation of why they didn't entomb the entire site from Day 1? Why don't they do it now? More importantly, I would like to hear what the experts from Chernobyl advise in this situation, not to mention the rest of the global scientific community. Why are the Japanese being so cowardly? Why aren't the Americans stepping in with help and advice? What is really going on here, that nobody seems willing to tackle the situation head on? SILENCE IS NOT LEADERSHIP!
A wall around the site implies tepco gaining the ability to get accurate measurements and almost total control over contaminated water being discharged from the facility into the ocean. I'll bet they want none of that.
Such an arrangement would also pressure tepco to build more storage tanks - till the end of time from the looks of it - because random underground water flow would be doing less dirty work for them, and more contaminated water would need to be stored.
In short, no simple concrete wall is planned, no sarcophagus is in the works either, and the harebrained frozen ground idea is very much in play.. guess things are going exactly the way tepco prefers
Sadly, this seems to be exactly what is happening.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-11-01/japan%E2%80%99s-most-hat...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/30/business/corporate-business/...
If the containment has been breached (meltdown) then the concrete barrier will also prevent groundwater from escaping. In turn this will create a steam explosion from the trapped groundwater which surrounds the melted cores. The heat will boil that water turning it into steam.
That was a problem with the containment at Chernobyl. The water underneath the reactor core needed to be drained. If that core had melted down through the bottom of the concrete containment vessel and into the trapped water beneath that core then the secondary explosion would have been much larger than the initial accident and the resulting nightmare may have made Eastern Europe totally uninhabitable.
If containment has been breached in three of the reactors at Fukushima and water becomes trapped by an ill advised "solution" then it can cause a steam explosion. Then even Tokyo will be uninhabitable.
If this were serious the MSM would be all over it.........
/S/
Peruse
http://enenews.com/
Radiation exposure is probably most like smoking. It takes ages to have an effect (except on the young and elderly). People will start dropping like flies in a few years. Even then the deaths can easily be spun as having nothing to do with fukushima, just an unhealthy modern lifestyle. Japan is a modern day Mayan civilisations whose demise we are seeing in real time and on fast forward. All that irradiated Japanese sperm ain't gunna do to much for the demographics.
If you want to really fuck things up irradiate ovaries.
Either way, the Japanese are going to pay to breed.
Case in point
Depleted uranium used by US forces blamed for birth defects and cancer in Iraq (Video)
They'll live...till they wish they were dead.
They are dying, very, very slowly.... Genetic material being destroyed with each passing day.
They just "endure" because there's no tradition of panic and resulting bottom-up drastic changes in their culture at all.
Any change of strategy must come from above, from those in the top of the hierarchy.
A fatal flaw of this highly organised society, being taken advantage of?
Former mayor mr. Katsutaka Idogawa of the town of Futaba: he's one of the very few raising a voice.
http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/fukushima-disaster-radiation-children-740/
Open questions about this issue, by Mari Takenouchi (housewife turned activist), targeted by a police investigation after tweeting concerns.
http://koukaishitsumon.blogspot.jp/2013/01/blog-post_31.html
The coverup is just as surreal as the disaster.
Bay of Pigs
Tepco not reporting the truth and you figured Japan-land-of-free-speech would report it.
I suggest you go there and find out.
The trip is on me.
Fucking El Nino!
Do they need a nuclear plant's worth of energy to cool enough to freeze the ground???
Sub-zero from Mortal Kombat said he would help. So there's that.
Quick & easy - just deploy the ICE 9
oh, wait...
Yeah, um, not being able to get the water to freeze is going to negatively impact YOUR ABILITY TO BUILD A GIANT FUCKING ICE WALL. I'm, uh, gonna need you to come in Saturday to work on this. Probably Sunday too.
Even Pollacks know how to make ice.
Pipe dream.
Cosmic deflection no look confusion maker is more like it.
Arnie Gunderson over at Fairewinds had a completely different idea far earlier than this ice wall lunacy. I believe it called for a more solid wall made of material (and I don't remember the specific material) that binds with most radioactive isotopes. I assume it would act somewhat like a filter and much easier and faster to construct, long before this water storage issue became unmanageable.
Cement, with water soluble polyacrylics added (plasticisors).
Radiation, it's what's for dinner.
Beer #8
It was something like that plus another element that I can't remember, my apologies.
You gonna finish that 12 pack?
Made it to #9, tastes like warm Godzilla piss.
And you'd know what warm Godzilla piss tastes like how?
He must drink Bud.
I think in the film, "Water and Power", the starlet says to the male lead, "Ohhh that is so warm and it smells like asparagus!"
-1 for every glib reference to Godzilla.
And here I thought it was a fair question.
A plain old sheet piling wall like civil engineers use when they build a dam or other large project, and need to control ground water.
Doesn't Japan have any civil engineers?
Arnie had some other stuff he wanted them to do, like backfill with zeolite, but you'd think that three years would be enough to surround the plant with sheet pilings.
Thanks, it was zeolite. In any event, your idea and his both easier to do than this idiotic idea and would have been accomplished a couple years ago. Even if they could manage to construct this "ice wall", how sustainable is it? They'd have to keep the equipment running for what, decades? Obviously not sustainable.
They need to create hydrostatic pressure, not alleviate it (at first).
A wall that attracts and retains radioactive material is the last thing you would want. Readings on site will skyrocket over time due to accumulation of radioisotopes, and it will be very very hazardous to dispose of such a barrier when appropriate. Tepco would prefer fukushima's radiation situation to remain fluid, literally, giving them the option to dump water into the pacific as the need arises.
Given the half life of plutonium is 80 years, and Americium-241 430 years this area is going to be a radioactive shithole until well into the year 3000. Wouldn't a concrete secant pile wall be the better option not withstanding that it would become radioactive itself? Keeping the ground frozen for 1000 years is madness, and steel sheet piles would rust no matter how thick.
Good concrete generally lasts forever.
Roman concrete perhaps. 'Modern' formulations are lucky to last 100 years and are full of cracks (Hoover Dam leaks).
Maya cement works good too, waterproof after 1500 years is not a bad track record, and only slightly more expensive than portland cement.
Maybe they can put in a moat with some alligators or something.
^^This......
(dammit you edited out the best part of the plan!!)
Seemed tooooo far out.
But for those that are curious...it had to do with installing elevators like the one at the end of Charlie and The Choclate Factory and sending the nuclear cores into a mountain made of chocolate.
That's an utterly ridiculous idea which just introduces the need for a bigger wall around the chocolate mountain to keep the Japanses from eating it.
Come on people, this is serious, please, enough with ill conceived suggestions.
They'll come up with a solution in about 20 years....when all of those three headed babies graduate college and get to work on the problem.
I think you just identified the next leap in human evolution. At that point they should just say "fook it" and warp on over to Alpha Centauri.
Krugman must be jizzing in his pants.
Maybe he's jizzing in your pants.
I don't swing that way. No eCONomists, it's a hard and fast rule I have.
Glad gender isn't the limiting factor.
Someone is jizzing in someone's pants. That's all we know at this point.
Made me laugh.
Therein lies the joke.
Glad the Genderpaler
You left yourself wide-open on that one, Klink.
What if Krugman wants you 'hard and fast'? Will you still adhere to your own rules?
Sorry. I couldn't resist.
(Silly little pricks; Dicks are for CHICKS!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZStaaVuxsgg
Oh I knew I was. Did it on purpose. I'm not like a saloon door, I don't swing both ways. Just so no one like Felchmeister gets all excited.
The original comment was from another thread posted today. Wasn't sure how many would get the reference.
Thanks for stopping to comment MS.
EDIT: I even upvoted the Zinger.
FlakFRAU is a WOMAN, Klink. A woman.
She is a cunt that has a pussy between her legs.
Truthfully Flak is a SHE and not a HE.
On paper it would work. But engineering reality is not so easy. Just look at it this way. Years after these meltdowns, all that TEPCO has to hang it's hat on is an ice wall. Consider for a moment how that makes TEPCO look. But anyways, since they still can't even find their three melted cores, what do you expect. Why can't they find the cores. A person looking for them would die. A robot camera would be fried by radiation. I guess we can wait till the reactions run out of fuel. So you in the distant Planet of the Apes future? "Forbidden Zone".
On paper it would work...if the paper was soaked in LSD and you ingested it.
If this is what they come up with after three years, well, think it through Jack. It's like the US Post Office saying they would return to profitability if they had flying cars.
Someone get BP execs on the phone! I'll see your ice-ring and raise you a top-hat!
The All-Clear will be given just in time for the 2020 summer olympics, if we make it that far.
Humanity gave up on the long term lease a while back... Apparently the flexibility of the month to month lease is MOAR appealing.
P.S. Why exactly is the Pennikkei up over 3% in the last 2 days exactly? Even the usd/jpy is completely disconnected from the Nikkei.
Nuke it.
?
I guess they've had to put this idea on ice.
better start from sweden
GEE.
I can't IMAGINE why their genius fucking plan to freeze some water right next to some nuclear reactions with a core temperature approaching the Sun's aren't working out like they expected.
Here, Johnny, drop this tray of ice cubes in to the boiling cauldron of super-heated water, and watch what happens. ... Well, of course the ice cubes melted, but is the TRAY still there? Here, let's try a little 'dry ice'. ... WHAT? IT melted TOO? I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY that happened! We need to call the G.E. engineers, to find out why...
On a happier note, the world's coldest-hearted people are being called in, as a 'plan C'. Hillary, Henry Kissinger, and Vlad the Impaler are boarding the first flight to Tokyo as we speak. George Soros and Zbignew Brezinski are on 'standby'.
It did not melt. It fucking exploded.
Toss an ice cube in a boiling pot of oil...AT A SAFE DISTANCE...and see what happens.
Better yet try deep frying a Frozen Turkey...Here is a video to show you what happens...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQe8ZE5_zY
How many trillion dollar bills would it take to absorb all that radioactive water into a massive paper mache ball?
OH...
Like a giant fucking TAMPON!
Get Proctor and Gamble on the phone. (I have an idea.)
That's GENIUS!
What's the Zimbabwean president's name?
If we simply sent 6.2 billion human beings over there to soak up the radiation, the whole thing would be easily contained. The other 500 million or so would still survive, we promise.
I wonder if the saturated tampon could be easily flushed down the toilet. The sewer department can take care of it... what do you mean, the sewer department doesn't work? Oh, I forgot, they were some of the 6.2 billion. I have an idea: All we have to do is print some more money, and buy them back from the dead!
And then the FED could soak up the toxic paper with its balance sheet. Who said that economics isn't a hard science?
S&P2000+
The proposal is BS...unless you live in Japan.
From our perspective, this solves NOTHING.
FUKUSHIMA is aptly named. As an ex USN Navy Nuke, we prided ourselves on safety. Japan...not so much.
Japan built "waiting disasters"
And here we are now.
The first order of business: nuclear reactors have propped up Japan for a long time.
History has nixed this.
FUKUSHIMA is the death knell of Jap Electric! It ain't going NOWHERE!