Those Japanese nuke plants should all be covered with a

[shraby]

good layer of dirt then encased in concrete. That's probably the only way they can do anything about the whole problem.

[The Straight Story]

1. We could just nuke the plant

:)

[shraby]

2. I see the smile..that would emit too much radiation of all kinds.

[NewJeffCT]

7. Nuke the whole site from orbit

only way to be sure...

[no_hypocrisy]

3. How would a meltdown into the floor be prevented with dirt on top?

[shraby]

4. At this point, I don't see any way they are going to prevent a

meltdown with resultant explosion. They might as well start piling dirt on them.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. Yup. They may have to try to do some clean up first but ...

Eventually they will have to bury it and encase it in concrete. It won't solve the problems but they don't have any other solutions that will either.

[Ilsa]

5. Throw a

tarp on it. I don't want to look at it anymore. ;-)

[OwnedByFerrets]

6. If we turn off our televisions, will the problem go away?

:sarcasm: just in case

[lapfog_1]

8. Won't fix the problem

even if you buried them with hundreds of tons shielding.

If the reactors or the spent fuel rods boil off all the water, the cladding oxidizes and becomes brittle (essentially rusting). At that point, the remaining fuel pellets melt through the rods and "slag" at the bottom of the reactors or storage pools. Then, if they weren't already undergoing fission, it's likely that fission reactions start again... increasing the temperature of the slag of fuel... thus begins the "China Syndrome" where the molten slag melts everything underneath it (steel, concrete, earth) until it hits a water table deep underground. The water, vaporizing instantly into steam, explodes very violently, and the resulting force spreads the debris over thousands of square miles. The world's biggest dirty bomb.

Game over for that part of the planet.

See Chernobyl.

Oh, btw, we still have move to do to prevent this at Chernobyl... and, to a lesser degree, Three Mile Island. Those plants are not "inert" yet, and won't be for many generations of people. We will constantly be redoing the containment (entombment) of those stricken reactors as all of our current technologies only hold for a few decades before degrading due to the high radiation levels.

[leveymg]

9. Here's a mission for the giant flying space battleship, Yamato!

Drill down to the core of the earth, and tow the nuclear material behind it. Keep going until it's on the other side of the earth, and then park it in front of the General Electric headquarters.

Then, let Jack Welch and the Americans deal with it.

[ensho]

11. and all the workers that would do this will be walking dead men

like the workers in Russia died

[MadHound]

12. That would be nice, but they need to first off, prevent a catastrophe.

Throwing dirt on top of a melting core won't help the problem right now. It would probably add to the problem. Can't throw on concrete right now, it would melt or explode. Remember, we're currently talking temperatures running at right around two thousand degrees.

The other problem is that there is simply no way to bring in enough dirt at this point, or concrete for that matter. Remember, these plants are in the middle of an earthquake/tsunami devastated landscape. Roads aren't open, machinery is not in place. Trying to fill them using "earth drops" from helicopters would be impractical.

Finally, it would have to be cool enough, radioactively speaking, to allow workers close enough to do this.

Nice thought, but you're about ten steps too early.