News re Japan's nuclear waste facilities?

[stranger81]

Anyone seen any news since the quake about how Japan's nuclear waste storage facilities have held up? Sounds as though their high-level waste is stored underground:

http://www.japannuclear.com/nuclearpower/program/waste.html

[Statistical]

1. Japan has no deep geological repository yet.

The timeline is for planning, survey, test drilling until about 2020. Actual repository will be built between 2020 and 2030. Storage would begin sometime after 2030. If other DGR are any guide expect that timeline to slip by at least a decade.

Waste in Japan is like waste in US.

Spent fuel spends about 5 years in primary cooling pool inside reactor. It is then transported to a secondary cooling pool outside the reactor (this plant has one secondary cooling pond for all 6 reactors). After about 10-20 years the fuel is dry casked and stored onsite awaiting final deep burial.

[Iwasthere]

Wait, aren't some of these plants in Japan 40 years old?

The cooling ponds are scarier than the rods to me. And didn't they put Plutonium in reactor #3 in October of last year (mixture - MOX)? No one is talking about how plutonium is so many times more lethal if it becomes airborne. And another explosion at #3 recently I just heard. Now a fire. I would be on a plane right now if I were anywhere in Japan

[stranger81]

2. Thanks for the clarification.

So that means all the nuclear waste produced at these plants is stored somewhere on site, either in a cooling pool or dry casked? Here's hoping the various explosions at the Daiichi plant (and the earthquake itself) haven't damaged those containment facilities.

[Statistical]

3. Yes.

Sometimes spent fuel is moved between plants. So a plant with less space may move spent fueled (dry casked) to another plant with more space. Also japan reprocessing its spent fuel so some spent fuel becomes new fuel.

The dry casked fuel is a non issue. There is very little residual heat, not enough to ignite the fuel. The cooling ponds are more serious risk.