Reply #23: I'm not an engineer.. [View All]

[girl gone mad]

my academic background is relativity and quantum, but they (the engineers) will have to weigh their options.

If they keep trying to cool the reactors while they are leaking, this process will create a lot of radioactive water that will boil off into the air, seep into the ground, and contaminate the ocean. They will not be able to store all of the radioactive water created during the time needed to cool the core enough to take the assembly apart and dry cask the fuel. There is not much sense in trying to plug or repair the leaks if they had chain reactions and displaced fuel after loss of cooling, because my guess is the steel has become brittle and that's a battle they can't win.

If they think they have a plan that can minimize the spread of radiation and withstand the buildup of pressure for a significant amount of time, they will take it, even if it means constant monitoring and re-entombment every few decades, imo.

I would also be interested in hearing the opinions of experienced engineers. I am trained to think about what is happening at the subatomic scale in large systems and don't have any working knowledge of these materials (by that I mean all of the metals and the concrete, etc.) under these conditions.