OK. 36 yo Mk 1 Reactor, spent fuel goes to the 4th floor; August 2010, TEPCO gets MOX fuel approval

[denem]

for Fukushima 1 No.3 - One of only three MOX approvals for the entire Japanese nuclear industry.

Someone explain this to me.

[Poll_Blind]

1. .

PB

[denem]

2. You must have more than plain Yen for something TEH stupid.

Fukushime 1 No.3 is one of only 3 to be approved by Japan to be modified for MOX fuel. There must more to this than that.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Well, what're you thinkin'?

I'm open to speculation about the situation. Japan is right up there with Israel as far as political corruption, payoffs, that sort of thing, so I tend to fall back on that impression.

PB

[denem]

4. MOX is about reprocessing spent fuel. Geeing it back to a fissile state

by adding plutonium. What I can't understand is that TEPCO nominated one of its oldest reactors. Cool spent fuel rods can be moved around.

[k2qb3]

5. Japan has massive debt problems...

an economy that's been in the crapper for a couple decades, very limited natural resources and a very high population density.

They were under a lot of pressure to keep their existing assets operational. Extending the life of an old plant is what happens when it becomes too expensive and difficult to build new ones.

Basically what it comes down to IMO. We're on the same road, very little new infrastructure being built, aging plants, aging everything, didn't invest in this sort of thing when times were good, didn't invest in this kind of thing when things were so bad we're throwing $Trillions of liquidity around either.

[denem]

6. Including aging BWR Mk 1 Reactors.

Vermont is closing one of theres I understand..