Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant

[flamingdem]

http://ibnlive.in.com/generalnewsfeed/news/japan-weighs-need-to-bury-nuclear-plant-tries-to-restore-power/614626.html

BURY IT ALREADY

Reuters | 12:16 PM,Mar 18,2011

By Shinichi Saoshiro and Mayumi Negishi TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be the only way to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986. Officials said they still hoped to fix a power cable to at least two reactors to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, one of the most critical of the plant's six. It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged that burying the sprawling complex was an option, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters were having little success. "It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference. As Japan entered its second week after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 10 metre (33-foot) tsunami flattened coastal cities and killed thousands of people, the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl looked far from over. Millions in Tokyo remained indoors on Friday, fearing a blast of radioactive material from the complex, 240 km (150 miles) to the north, although prevailing winds would likely carry contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated city to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean. MORE AT LINK

[KT2000]

1. What I have been thinking

In Chernobyl the helicopters flying over were dropping cement.
Wondered why they were not doing this in Japan. Supposedly they are not salvageable after the sea water.

[flamingdem]

3. I think they worry about the continued melting under concrete

and potential criticality. There was some reason/excuse put forward a few days ago.

[flamingdem]

5. Also, now the US has been invited to participate, it might be their thinking

which backs the idea that the US had a condition going in - that they would have to let the plant go or some such. The US experts may have immediately known it would get to this point considering what a mess the plant was in.

[snagglepuss]

10. As soon as they seawater was used as coolant the reactors were a write-off.

[flamingdem]

2. C'mon someone rec to 5, this might actually be good news!

I'm not being sarcastic, it was the Chernobyl solution.

[joshcryer]

4. They should try everything they can to get it under control so that they can safely...

...dispose of the fuel. Even if you encase the crap in concrete it'll sit there festering for 10k years.

[flamingdem]

6. But for days now workers can't do much of anything due to high radiation

and that will just get worse, so no normal methods can apply.

[jtuck004]

7. They have already removed most of the fuel from Chernobyl,

after they used this solution to stop the fire and let it cool enough to remove the fuel from the reactors around the blast site safely. There is some missing, (about 200 tons) and they have bored some holes where they think it might be, but, I'm sure you know, it's dangerous and slow work. That portion is likely to stay under the new sarcaophagus, though as technology improves I would bet they try to find another way. It's more a money thing now. But the Japanese reactors are different, and may offer a different solution.

I seriously wonder if they underestimated the damage, or if they were just in denial of the need for a bigger response. When they said water was going in but the container wasn't filling up, any plumber could tell them they had a leak. But that didn't seem to bring out the water resources necessary to bring the volume of water to keep laying it on a leaking system. Even the silly water canons - those are great for crowd control or a building, but not for multiple streams of ten thousand gallons of water a minute.

I was actually expecting ships to pull in and start laying the water to it. Then again, the sea may be so full of debris and bodies that they thought they couldn't pump enough out, or maybe they thought they could just vent the radioactive steam long enough to get the electrical line there. But they had to know that created a hydrogen danger, especially after the first explosion. Or maybe not...

[joshcryer]

8. It amazes me that they don't have friggin robots to do this thing remotely.

I know it sounds childish but c'mon, surely there is some demolition mining robots that can take care of the fuel.

[jtuck004]

9. I think your idea is forward-looking and would provide us a great

field for research. Not only with big robots, but perhaps some sub-miniature version that could do things at a molecular level in a hot environment like that.

Say a trillion dollars in nuclear and robotic studies, research, and development. That would be a good injection into this economy.

[snagglepuss]

11. You would think after the trillions of dollars spent since the atomic age started,

some of that money would have been spent to develop remote controlled equipement that could handle nuclear disasters.

[Tesha]

14. It's a question of politics.

While we *SHOULD HAVE* developed these, development would
have constituted a tacit admission that a large-scale nuclear disaster
was actually possible.

And you can still, even today, see the nuclear proponents denying
that a large-scale nuclear disaster is impossible, so there was no
possibility whatsoever that they were going to take any steps to
prepare for one.

Tesha

[snagglepuss]

15. Will that still be the case when people consider that AQ is watching events

and realizing the vuneribility of spent fuel pools and their massive destructive potential?

[Tesha]

16. Somewhere down the road...

...is another "No one could have imagined
that!" moment. :(

Tesha

[Tesha]

13. One problem is that the computers that control robots are affected by radiation too.

And unless specific steps are taken to "radiation harden" the electronics,
they are promptly and completely disabled.

There aren't many radiation-hardened robots around in the
world and few that are rigged for heavy work. (Most will be
for inspections and the like.)

Tesha

[Scuba]

12. As a scientist and informed citizen, I recommend...

...burying it in Wall Street hedge fund managers, climate change deniers, chickenhawk war-mongers, G.W. Bush and his entire administration and the Westboro Baptist Church.

Toxic waste, meet toxic waste.