Fukushima news piece from today

[RobertEarl]

Fukushima job feared too perilous for Tepco
BY MIYA TANAKA
KYODO NOV 19, 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has finally moved into the decommissioning process at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, despite doubt over its ability to manage a highly dangerous effort that will take decades.

The start Monday of removing fuel from the cooling pool high up in the damaged reactor 4 building was one of the few bright pieces of news to come out recently from the plant, which has been plagued with frequent radioactive water leaks and other troubles over the past year.

But the work poses another challenge to the utility, with its success or failure expected to affect the following process of retrieving the fuel from the pools for reactors 1, 2 and 3, as well as the melted fuel inside the damaged cores.

“Spent fuel has potentially a very large risk. . . . I am personally more worried about (handling) it than the radioactive water problem,” Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said in late October.


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/19/national/fukushima-job-feared-too-perilous-for-tepco1

[Mnemosyne]

1. Thank you, RobertEarl. What a critical time in our history, almost seems surreal.

[RobertEarl]

2. You are welcome, Mnemosyne

Was talking with a friend today. He is amazed we haven't dropped the 'Big One' yet. He fully expected to not be alive today.

We've made it this far, who knows, we just might avert disaster, again.

[Mnemosyne]

5. Please excuse my late reply. I am also amazed that we haven't, either by 'accident' or on purpose.

I've agreed with T.S. Elliott's line now for years, "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper". I was so terrified of a massive nuclear holocaust as a teen and into my twenties, it was almost a relief when my perception changed. Not that the world ending is a relief in any way, other than for the critters and the flora. I had so hoped to leave a better world for the grandsons...

And thanks for directing me to enews, sorry reply seemed grumpy.

[RobertEarl]

3. Just realized something

In the fuel pool is a whole reactor's worth of unspent/new reactor fuel.

What that means is that it really could blow sky high if that fuel gets a criticallity going. That ready to go fuel has been sitting there in that pool for 31 months now. Bathed in salt water and surrounded by many tons of old fuel, it is now all a lethal mix just waiting for the spark to set it off and make it go critical, like it is designed to do.

Tepco did pull a few of the unburned rods out a few months ago. Just a few. Why didn't they pull all those unburned rods out? May be because they did start burning?

Someone needs to ask the serious scientists in the Environment forum group that question. The hosts there won't allow me past the gate.

[RobertEarl]

4. Link to thread with nuke experts

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112757951

There are 3 of them there. The last 3 on DU, I believe.