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Fukushima Chiefs: The Technology Needed To Decommission 3 China-Syndromed Reactors Doesn’t Exist ... Maybe In 200 Years?
Preface: As you read this post, please keep in mind:
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The reactors didn’t just suffer a melt down, or even a China syndrome type melt-through, but a series of melt OUTS. Scientists have no idea where the cores of the nuclear reactors are. Well actually, maybe they have found them … scattered all over kingdom come.
- In response to the Fukushima crisis, Japan banned journalism, and Japan has once again gone fascist. If the heads of Fukushima are publicly telling mainstream media such as NHK that things are bad - and the government is letting them do it - you know things are really bad ...
We reported in 2012 that top nuclear experts say that the technology doesn’t yet even exist to clean up Fukushima.
Now, the head of the Fukushima nuclear plant and the head of decommissioning at Fukushima both say that the technology doesn’t exist to clean up Fukushima, and it may not exist for hundreds of years … if ever.
The Times of London reported last month:
The chief of the Fukushima nuclear power station has admitted that the technology needed to decommission three melted-down reactors does not exist, and he has no idea how it will be developed.
In a stark reminder of the challenge facing the Japanese authorities, Akira Ono conceded that the stated goal of decommissioning the plant by 2051 may be impossible without a giant technological leap. “There are so many uncertainties involved. We need to develop many, many technologies,” Mr. Ono said.
EneNews notes:
NHK ‘Nuclear Watch’ transcript, Mar 31, 2015 (emphasis added):
- NHK: The people trying to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have been hit by setback after setback… and faced accusations of misconduct. It’s lost them a lot of public trust… [Naohiro Masuda, president of Tepco’s decommissioning company] revealed he’s not sure if he can comply with the government set plan [for] removing the fuel…
- Naohiro Masuda, president of Tepco’s Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning Company: We have no idea about the debris. We don’t know its shape or strength. We have to remove it remotely from 30 meters above, but we don’t have that kind of technology, it simply doesn’t exist... We still don’t know whether it’s possible to fill the reactor containers with water. We’ve found some cracks and holes in the three damaged container vessels, but we don’t know if we found them all. If it turns out there are other holes, we might have to look for some other way to remove the debris.
- NHK: Asked [about the gov’t target to begin by 2020], his answer was surprisingly candid.
- Masuda: It’s a very big challenge. Honestly speaking, I cannot say it’s possible.
Dale Klein, Tepco Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee chair, Mar 31, 2015 (at 24:00 in):
- Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times: I was at the plant last week on the tour and we talked Mr. Ono, the boss. He made no bones about the fact that the technology… to remove the molten or semi-molten fuel doesn’t exist yet… I asked him how can you be sure that it will be, and he said, “Well, 200 years ago people would never have dreamed of bullet trains or mobile phones, but they exist.” That seems to be the scale of the leap… that’s going to be required. So there must be immense uncertainties around that… There must surely be a chance that it won’t work out, and that the eventual solution will be something like the Chernobyl solution… a sarcophagus of some kind sealing in the 3 plants…
- Klein: This is something that has never been done… Units 1, 2, and 3… molten fuel penetrated the bottom of the vessel… We don’t know… how much and where it moved. ***
Akira Ono, chief of Fukushima Daiichi, Mar 28, 2015: “There are so many uncertainties… For removal of the debris, we don’t have accurate information… or any viable methodology… I believe human beings have the capability to develop technologies…
It may take 200 years.”
In related news, Fukushima radiation just arrived on the West Coast of North America.
We explained in 2012:
[Airborne] radiation from Japan’s nuclear accident has turned up in seaweed on the coasts of California, Washington and other parts of the West Coast of North America.
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A 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents.
MIT says that seawater which is itself radioactive may begin hitting the West Coast within 5 years.
And government experts measured "astounding" levels of radiative xenon in the U.S. from Fukushima.
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kich the radiated can down the road for future generations
No mention of any deaths due to radiation poisoning at the site?
The dead tell no tales...
Because that answer would be zero, zip, zilch, nada... Learn to use google, because the fact that you didn't in order to answer to your own question is embarrassing.
The deadly Fukushima radiation is getting into the Pacific conveyor current, which inevitably brings it to the west coast USA. However it gets to the USA much more quickly via migrating fish.
Do you eat wild Pacific salmon ? I used to.
Do you know where those salmon born in western North America spend their time in the Pacific feeding before returning to western North America to breed - give you 3 guesses ?
Your wasting your time worrying. The levels of radiation from Fukushima on the west coast is absurdly small... 5 - 20 bq/m3. You should stop eating banannas too, because the levels are so small, you're actually getting more radiation from eating 1 bananna than from the salmon.
I have an entire freezer full that I caught in Alaska last September. I am in the nuclear business and have access to Geiger counters and labs with radiological analytical equipment. My Geiger survey reading produced nothing above normal background levels. Flesh samples of my fish and those of farmed Atlantic salmon were very close to the same readings from the lab. So, if you have any salmon you want to give away you can send it to me. Old George here is always early to the sensationalism table.
"I am in the nuclear business and have access to Geiger counters and labs with radiological analytical equipment."
A Geiger Counter is useless. You need to use a HPGe detector with a multichannel analyzer to detect contamination.
Salmon is highly contaminated with Mercury and other heavy metals from Chinese coal plants and industrial waste dumped into the oceans. Even if its not contaminated from Fukashima, its still toxic to consume. All Seafood should be off the menu. Pehaps you won't get acute illness but those toxics accumulate over years and will lead to illness in 10 to 20 years. I suppose if you 70 or 80, the you have nothing to worry about.
I used the GM on the freshly caught fish and on the processed meat. No surface contamination. The lab analysis showed no contamination above background in the flesh. I did this just because I was curious about potential contamination in the fish from Fukushima. Not saying that it still won't show in the future but as of right now - nada.
Salmon is not "highly contaminated" with mercury. Been eating seafood all my life 2 or 3 times a week. Your claim that I will become ill in 10 to 20 years is sensationalism and just plain wrong.
And you own a fishing boat. Right?
If you are in the industry why dont you comment on the main subject and shed some expertise. Your minute sample of a population doesnt mean squat.
The radiation is coming as surely as the current is flowing.
When I saw the news about the reactor meltdown, I immediately bought a huge freezer and 300lbs of fresh wild pre-fukushima sockeye, which I have been living off.
"When I saw the news about the reactor meltdown, I immediately bought a huge freezer and 300lbs of fresh wild pre-fukushima sockeye, which I have been living off."
Still contaminated with Mercury and other heavy metal toxins. Seafood is unsafe to eat.
Aguy- fish have both mercury and selinium. The selinium prevents the mercury from absorbing into the blood stream. This myth about mercury in Fish being bad for you is blown out of Proportion to the science/.
There are many societies that live off of fish but you don't see studies of those people do you? When actual science and knowledge is learned people then realize how many lies thy have been told.
Radiation doesn't bother machines, they are the next form to run the planet, I think its just part of the plan.
Actually, radiation is a terrible problem for machinery. It damages/destroys electronics - that's why an EMP is such a major threat. Radiation also damages metals. Exposed to enough radiation, you can make an 1" think sheet of titanium crumble like an egg shell.
" It damages/destroys electronics - that's why an EMP is such a major threat."
Two different causes for problems, EMP is different the Ionizing Radiation. an EMP causes an electrical field surge (Compton radiation) that damages electronics causing extreme overvoltages that exceeds the break down voltage of PN junctions. The electronic short out. Ionizing radation can induce a small electric charge when a high energy partical hits the metal inside of an electronic component. In the case of digital devices it can flip a bit from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1 causing the machine to crash. It can also damage microelectronics by causing the small amounts of metal to erode (a few atoms at a time) from the surface reducing current flow, or causing an internal short. Consider that satellites operate in a high-radiation enviroment. Tube electronics are also nearly immune ionizing radation and to can also survive an EMP event (unless its an extremely powerful EMP).
"Radiation also damages metals. Exposed to enough radiation, you can make an 1" think sheet of titanium crumble like an egg shell."
Not really correct. Neutron radiation can cause transmutation in metals as Neutrons are absorbed and converted to unstable isotopes which decay giving off an alpha particle (helium) or . the metal can become loaded with helium which builds up internal stress in the metal leading to cracking (google Neutron embriddlement). However this process takes years do weaken metals.
Its possible to build robots are are nearly immune to high levels or radation by putting all of the electronics away from the radiation source (in a safe zone) and using just motors, hydraulics, soleniods, or pnematics to move the robot. however the it can be difficult to manuver the robot since the cabling can easily get snagged on debris. Vision systems can also be a issue since you can't mount camera or other electronic sensors on the robot. Something like an endoscope can be used, but it has limits and issues. There are robots that are used to work inside reactors and high radiation areas, but they don't have to deal with mangled equipment or debris that is inside of a destroyed reactor.
Long beryllium, Demron and boron nitride.
radiation bothers the electronics required to use those machines
doesn't take long under a heavy dose of radiation for them to lose functionality
The increasingly jingoistic Japs are poisoning the entire Pacific, which makes this an epic international problem.
We need of assemble a team of the best commercial, scientific, and military nuclear experts from around the globe, give them infinite resources, and come up with emergency and longer term solutions. A reverse Manhatten project, except global this time.
(This is a huge chance for Russia and the US to work together.)
It ain't just the water. Hundreds of spent fuel rods are lying around like pick-up sticks, waiting to get jostled and go critical the next time a real earthquake comes around. Boom.
It is time to take this out of the hands of these lying fucking face-saving Japs.
We go in and take over, and if they don't like it we bring in a global military force.
Welcome to fight club baby dawg. You are probably a young person who does not know the history of both the nuclear power industry and the Japanese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakumatsu
A couple of hundred years ago they were a closed society. The USA wanted them to trade and sent diplomats. The Japanese (being a 2000 year old nation/culture) were not interested, and had plenty of good reasons why. The USA then sent Admiral Perry
So, international trade means international banking, and debts that people not born yet are expected to pay off, owed to families and corporations that never die. Because Japan had litle to no energy resources, they needed to expand and colonize places that did (china, S.E. asia) to power the factories to make the things to sell to the world to pay off the debts.
The west was fine with japan having resource wars with china, killing hundreds of thousands. Because remember, Japan was paying off debt to them. And japan could be the bad guy to china instead of them after the opium wars they persecuted. But to fight modern war you need oil and rubber. The easy oil and rubber was in southeast asia. But guess what? the brits, dutch and french already claimed dibs on these resources, on the opposite side of the world to them, but next door to Japan.
Pay for oil through the nose to the west for resources in your backyard, to pay off debt to them that you never wanted, or do what? Be forced to try the violence they are so willing to use at the drop of a hat. The west was fine with that because ... obvious neo-cons had rootin tootin grandparents. We call them the "Original Cons" or O.C.s for short.
Germany was defeated, but as a western nation they were spared. According to Walt Disney's propeganda, the yellow skined, coke bottle glasses wearing Japanese monkeys needed to be made an example of. Enter the nuclear bomb. The dutch,British and french certainly were not going invade mainland Japan. And the Americans (believe it or not, even back them) were starting to wake up to the fact that they are the retarded bully that the real TPTB uses for the global ultraviolence.
The nuclear industry solved two problems at the same time. Bombs, or reactors (western supplied energy). Same choice as Perry gave them 100 years before. They got both.
Now ask yourself, which insurance company, along with re-insurance companies ensure the "peaceful atom" industry? Even Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway could not insure a single nuclear reactor, anywhere in the world. The only entity in the universe that can possibly insure Nuclear Reactors and the waste are men with guns who collect taxes. Kinda wierd how G.E. gets a tax refund every year, but every engineer I know who fix this problem pays 35% ...
Good summary of facts which few know/want to know.
The tylers are pretty smart. The NSA on the other hand.
EDIT: please let me know the nuclear reactors Warren Buffet is insuring.
Racism, is that what all the cool kids are doing? People like you are the reason innocent minorities end up face down in the grass riddled with bullets from a law enforcement encounter.
Americans and Russians? The Russians maybe should work on all those ex-Soviet SSN's rusting in the Arctic. And America can't even sort out its own waste after spending god knows how many billions digging a giant hole in the Nevada desert.
Japan isn't lacking in nuclear expertise, and there are fairly straightforward solutions to their Fukushima problems, its just that they are obscenely expensive. What they mean when they say they don't have the technology, is they don't have the money, and need to figure out a way to do it cheaper.
At the risk of engaging in excessive nihilism, I fear that the window of opportunity has closed on any remediation efforts. The missed opportunity was within the first couple of days after the 3/11 event. If TEPCO and the Japanese government had thrown all available resources at the incident, including all military personnel, then MAYBE the disaster could have been prevented or at least minimized.
Now all we're left with is the futility of endless academic exercises in "woulda, shoulda, coulda" scenarios.
Even if the world assembled a team of the brightest and best engineers and scientists, who would be the lucky grunts who have the distinguished honor of absorbing lethal doses of radiation, day after day?
Many people would be accepting a certain death sentence to contain the molten coria, assuming the technology is even available, which is highly unlikely.
All we can do now is cherish the time we all have left here as this ongoing Extinction Level Event plays itself out.
Throwing people at this problem would not have accomplished anything. This could only have been stopped with electricity to pump water into the reactor cores to prevent fuel overheating. Since they lost their off-site electricity source and their emergency generators (due to poor safety analysis and facility design) they were toast. No amount of individuals with buckets and hoses would have helped.
Once the fuel assemblies melted into corium there was no containing it without a supply of cooling water.
Also, this is hardly an "Extinction Level Event".
Nations require public licensing and permitting for all manner of not-so-risky activities, but for nuclear activities, which could wipe out God-knows-how-much, everything occurs in secret. How does that make sense?
R. Buckminster Fuller wrote about this. He said the secrecy is what Really Huge Corporations really love about nuclear power: since it is so dangerous, it HAS TO BE done in secret, and since it is done in secret, you can get away with SO MUCH MORE. Such as, cheapening up the design to the point at which any recent physics or engineering graduate could see you were asking for trouble. Therefore, a Fukushima-size event was inevitable.
Not yet...
+1000 for basically cutting through the BS and telling it like it is.
Here's a gun and a bullet. Try not to miss.
>Now, the head of the Fukushima nuclear plant and the head of decommissioning at Fukushima both say that the technology doesn’t exist to clean up Fukushima, and it may not exist for hundreds of years … if ever.
I'll need to check with a friend of mine who actually decommisions nuclear plants for a living as to the validity of this statement. I forget how many he has done since leaving the US Nuclear Navy but at a run rate of 1 major facility every 1 to 2 years. That's at least 6 and closer to 10.
BTW, he is an employee of this company...
http://www.enercon.com/decommissioning/nuclear
That only works when things aren't all busted up (and melted and massively radioactive) inside. It's tricky even under perfect conditions with all the machinery designed for this job working perfectly.
There are no handbooks written for this giant cock-up.
And you know this because of your lengthy years in the nuclear field, right? Surprisingly, when Chernobyl happened, I wasn't the only one to come up with the idea of dropping sand/boron/lead from helicopters onto that mess. Because I was aboard a nuclear sub at the time and half a globe away.
People like you abound, thinking you might actually have a clue, when in reality, you don't.
The reason I can say that I have more of a clue than you do is because I have actually operated multiple nuclear reactors. Most notably the ones aboard SSN-663 and SSN-674...Not to mention the S3G prototype reactor in Balston Spa, and a pool water reactor at a local university...
My friend and drinking partner from those times and whom I remain in contact with today was an ELT (career - he stuck it out for 20 years) and decommisions plants today. If you don't think emergency and contigency plans haven't been drawn up because it goes against your inability to accept even the remotest possibility that such plans have already been drawn up and concieved of makes you the type of person who shouts fire in a crowded theater.
Spend some time reading think tank web pages (notably that of the Rand Corporation during the time of the Cold War) to garner some enlightenment.
But back to the matter at hand... Your credentials would be?
Good god! You think this is a "decommissioning" problem?
Like the cooked survivors of Nagasaki just had a "reassembly" problem - they should have just put it all back in a box!
With your SSN experience, what is the "emergency and contigency plans" for when the reactor melts through containment and out the keel?
If you and your friend go clean it up, you will become two of my heroes. Not joking.
"My friend and drinking partner..."
I've got a friend and drinking partner - he says you should either put forth some actual facts or go back to drinking. BTW - nothing wrong with drinking - it's not rocket science
My credentials are the following:
Fuck you! Electrical Engineer...tells me all I need to know. Whats in your portfolio? Death-cultist piece of shit.
Well actually you little orange bitch, I spent a few years of my ill-spent youth doing loss of coolant accident (LOCA) analysis in the emergency core cooling system group at GE, and yes, on Mark I containment boiling water reactors. I also spent a chunk of my life doing core thermal-hydraulic analysis on nuclear fuel rods and bundles, where the game is to figure out how hot the uranium fuel pellets and the zircalloy cladding gets under various accident scenarios. And I logged some time designing special gizmos to service the emergency core cooling system during fuel maintainence intervals.
There's a big difference, by the way, between designing and analyzing a car, and driving a car. Sounds like you've turned a lot of knobs in your day.
I'm 100% certain that Naohiro Masuda has and will continue to have no problem in cashing his fat TEPCO pay-checks.
Exactly. Decommissioning a plant taken normally out of service versus trying to clean up a destroyed plant with corium spread to "who knows where" are two completely different animals.
A good article, devalued by blatant fear-mongering in the last paragraph: That it's measurable doesn't mean it's dangerous, as in more dangerous than the naturally occurring isotopes/radiation.
Fake Science Alert: Fukushima Radiation Can’t Be Compared to Bananas or X-Rays
More half-truths in your linked article:
Fukushima has spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted. Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day. And the cesium levels hitting the west coast of North America will keep increasing for several years. Fukushima is still spewing radiation into the environment, and the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.
Let's go through it sentence by sentence:
Sentence 1: This depends on what you define as "spewed". Chernobyl blew almost everything straight into the atmosphere, which is the most dangerous (because totally uncontained) way of doing so. Fukushima mostly "spewed" it into the ground underneath, from which constantly some part is washed into the ocean, that is correct.
Sentence 2: A statement 20-30 times higher than initially admitted lacks any comparability to Chernobyl. It could still be, and I believe it is, factors lower than Chernobyl.
Sentence 3: Basically a wild guess and once again useless without some sensible comparisons to other events such as Chernobyl or above ground nuclear bomb tests.
Sentence 4: They will be increasing for many decades, as the leakage out of the ground underneath Fukushima into the ocean cannot be stopped (constant inflow) and the even distribution to the US west coast is delayed by ocean currents. Once again, the same was true for fallout from nuclear tests and it is a meaningless statement without a number what levels it will reach and a comparison what that means compared to other radioactive isotope releases.
Sentence 5: The second half is true, as for starters in Fukushima 3 reactors melted down. However the "spewing" so far has luckily been much lower for Fukushima as otherwise large parts of Japan would have been needed to be evacuated.
So GW, nice try but your bullshit just doesn't hold against close scrutiny!
My banana is radioactive.
How about yours?
Totally off topics- sorry - any opinion on the validity of Wayne Madsen Report tnx
Thanks GW for keeping on this. ENE news regularly reports horrifying die offs in the Pacific Ocean. This could be "On The Beach" in 20 years.
Ya, a lesser discussed issue is particle contamination.
Once a tiny particle of a MOX rod enters a living creature,
there is fair odds it get stuck in their body.
MOX is part plutonium, and any amount of it is a death sentence
if it is inside your body as an Alpha emitter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_particle#Biological_effects
Same deal with the 'safe' tritium pools lying around all over the fucking shop. Only tritium (hydrogen iso) bonds with oxygen too.
Think about that, you ugly bags of mostly water.
LOL. I stopped reading at "you ugly bags of mostly water"
Let's hear from GE on this. What's their position on how to clean up the mess created by the reactors they designed, sold, and installed?
Mr I-melt, what say you?