So it is looking like another Chernobyl solution is likely to be used in Japan...

[Blackhatjack]

According to MSNBC experts interviewed this morning the only solution seems to be construction of a Chernobyl type containment shell over the 6 nuclear reactors, using massive amounts of sand and concrete to provide a shell.

It has been 25 years since the Chernobyl containment shell was built, and radiation is still too high to allow human habitation anywhere close to it.

The realization is kicking in that there is no other solution. So who is going to build it?

IF the #4 reactor storage pool was empty of water, these experts are saying radiation levels could be lethal to humans within minutes of exposure.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. How will the floor be "protected" to prevent a meltdown?

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. A few bright sides about that

the crust is fairly thing there, one of the cores in Chernobyl went down a mile, the other 12 miles. That might take it right onto the magma... self cleaning as it were.

[lovuian]

5. whoah....self cleaning Radiation doesn't self clean

won't it make the magma radiated too?

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Melts, and disperses and where do you think it came from?

It is slightly radioactive already... has been for ever, Uranium came from magma in geologic time.

[yawnmaster]

16. the heat at the core of the Earth is due to radioactive decay. Returning a bit to whence it ...

came isn't going to affect the magma.

[truebrit71]

7. ..are you serious? I never saw that...holy crap!!

...

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Yep I am dead serious

It just does not say on top... it cuts thorough. The temps are about equivalent to low tem magma once it melts...

[k2qb3]

20. How does this nonsense get posted and nobody says anything?

The Chernoble meltdown never got beyond the basement of the building.

There are pictures of what was left of the core.

[pokerfan]

23. Thank you

[Statistical]

25. Facts don't matter. Some people believe reactors can cause a nuclear detonation.

Some believe the China Syndrome is a plausible scientific theory.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. Core one did melt though to about a klick

core two, did melt down deeper. You can google that, by the way. The photos are from the first one not the second one.

The earth's crust IS very thin on that area of the crust.

IT JUST MIGHT... NOT SAYING IT WILL. DEPENDS ON TEMPERATURE THAT IT REACHES. REGARDLESS A CORE MELTDOWN IS LIKELY TO GO THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE VESSEL LIKE THE PROVERBIAL BUTTER AND ONTO THE GROUND UNDER IT... YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

Have a good fucking life

[petronius]

38. Seriously, do you have a source for that? I can't find anything that suggest the Chernobyl

melt got below the base of the facility, let alone penetrated kilometers deeper. Perhaps you've been deceived by some malicious or ill-informed web-nonsense? :shrug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Or perhaps a few people connected to the industry

are wrong too.

Yes it is deep and one of the issues that has led to the rebuilding of the sarcophagus twice already... ok not full rebuilding, but repairs.

At this point I know people are freaked and do not want to do their own research and in a few cases piling on. No you are not. But serious, it gets that hot... And at the very least it will melt through the bottom of containment, losing it. Actually it going down into something of a hole, even if 500 meters, might make entombing it easier.

A lot depends on temperatures and local substrate.

[Make7]

39. What is the sarcophagus?

What is the sarcophagus?
Following the explosion, a massive concrete 'sarcophagus' (cover) was constructed around the damaged no. 4 Reactor. This sarcophagus encases the damaged nuclear reactor and was designed to halt the release of further radiation into the atmosphere. The first task in containing the destroyed reactor was to build a 'cooling slab' under the reactor to prevent the still-hot reactor fuel from burning a hole in the base of thereactor. Coal miners were drafted in to dig this tunnel under the reactor and by 24 June four hundred coal miners had built the 168m long tunnel under the reactor.

By November 1986 the sarcophagus containing the reactor was completed using more than 7,000 tonnes of steel and 410,000m³ of concrete.

The sarcophagus was designed with a lifetime of only 20 to 30 years in mind. The greatest problem is a lack of stability: it was hastily constructed, and corrosion of supporting beams threaten the integrity of the entire structure. Water is leaking through the sarcophagus via holes in its roof, becomes radioactively contaminated, then seeps through the floor of the reactor into the soil below.

...

There is no certainty as to how much fuel has been left inside the reactor but most estimates put it at more than 95 percent of its original contents. Also dumped inside the sarcophagus are thousand of cubic metres of nuclear waste created by fragments of the destroyed reactor building and contaminated soil that has also been dumped into the sarcophagus.


http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/nuclear/nomorechernobyls/what-happened-in-chernobyl/

 

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

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[CountAllVotes]

2. this is what my husband said the other night

He said that Japan would become like Chernobyl and that no one will be able to live there ever again. Maybe he was right.

Sad as all hell in any event.

[anarch]

9. probably not ALL of Japan

but that's going to be a pretty big exclusion zone, and pretty close to some very highly populated areas. I don't think there's any way around it at this point.

[CountAllVotes]

12. well ...

I would not care to live there for any reason whatsoever after this.

Nope.

[onehandle]

13. Yep. Bigger than the Chernobyl dead zone. Russia didn't seal off a big enough area.

They won't be able to get away with what Russia did.

[Buns_of_Fire]

33. Trouble is, Japan doesn't have a lot of "disposable" space to start with.

It's slightly smaller than California, with roughly 3-1/2 times the population (126.5 million vs. 36.1 million).

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html <== Japan info
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108187.html <== California info

[BeFree]

4. Huge swimming pool?

Build a tsunami wall around it (there never was a tsunami wall around it?)
and fill it with seawater. Then have lead cladded submarines dive in and rearrange things.

[truebrit71]

6. Plus i recall reading somewhere that the sarcophagus is in need of heavy repairs..

...don't know how you would build one without essentially sentencing all of the workers putting it together to death..

[Statistical]

28. There has been a plan to put a better shield around Chernobyl since 2003 but nobody wants to pay...

The shield would be built next to the reactor where radiation is lower and then slid into place on rails over the reactor and existing adhoc sarcophagus. Finally the end walls would be built and then put into place.

Ukraine claims it doesn't have the money (and likely doesn't). EU keeps saying it needs to be built but offers no funding.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cetacea]

8. How much would the installation of electric pump help?

Shades of "top hat", "top kill" ?

[Mira]

11. A job for HALLIBURTON?

Honestly, I'm way too sad to be joking around.

[1776Forever]

15. I heard another expert say these aren't the same type of reactors as were used in Chernobyl.

:shrug:

[buddysmellgood]

18. That's right. The problem is with the nuclear waste and how it's stored.

The reactors have containment systems that should prevent the reactor fuel from burning through the Earth.

[Beam Me Up]

17. Could any of the most hazardous work be done robotically?

Or is that technology not sufficiently developed yet?

[CabalPowered]

30. Theoretically, yes

Off-the-shelf robotics will not work though. To be effective, they would need to be hardened against radiation. The Soviets had some some success with robotics but there were areas where the radiation was so high, the circuitry was toast after a few days.

[Thunderstruck]

19. I know this is probably going to piss some people off and that's not my intent.

But since the area is wrecked anyway and has been evacuated, would it be feasible to drop a nuclear bomb on that site? Couldn't that consume the nuclear material and leave the area evetually habitable just like Nagasaki and Hiroshima are today?

[CountAllVotes]

21. you may have a point there

and no, I'm not pissed off. Any ideas are welcomed right now I believe. And as you suggest, if the area is uninhabitable anyway, why not kill it off with a nuke for good?

:wow: :(

[Thunderstruck]

22. The irony is profound, but...

:shrug:

[CountAllVotes]

24. it sounds horrific

But could it be any more horrific than what we are now witnessing? How much worse can it get?

As long as they evacuate the entire population of Japan beforehand, I really do not have a problem with it.

The problem I do see however is the people being evacuated. How radioactive are they? How safe is it to be in contact with them? Do we know this?

Many many questions and so very few answers. :argh:

[Thunderstruck]

27. Yea, it definately sucks.

[daleo]

26. I think you would have fallout multiplied by fallout

And Tokyo is not far away.

[Statistical]

29. bingo.

The nuclear device would create its own fallout and the mushroom cloud would suck up the existing nuclear material and add even more radiation.

[CountAllVotes]

31. ugh

Well scrap that idea!

[Thunderstruck]

32. Yea, that's pretty nasty. My main thinking was based on

Nagasaki and Hiroshima being occupied today because the effects were temporary. A temporary solution vs. a (semi-)permanent situation like Chernobyl.

But alas, it's all dirty. Thanks for your post. :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. Hmm no, but it would get 12 reactor cores to the air, plus the bomb

[Beam Me Up]

41. You can put out fires with gasoline, too...

but I wouldn't advise it. :nuke: