Union of Concerned Scientists: Cleanup Lessons from TMI for Fukushima? (TMI had NO spent fuel)

[enough]

http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4635170323/cleanup-lessons-from-tmi-for-fukushima

This is today's daily update from UCS:

April 15, 2011

On March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor near Harrisburg, PA had a partial fuel meltdown. A July 17, 1979, article from the Washington Post reported that a study by the Bechtel Corporation estimated it would cost $405 million (with $25 million added for uncertainties) and take 4 years—until June 1983—to clean up after the incident and restart the reactor. This cost estimate corresponds to roughly $1 billion in 2011 dollars.

In fact, it took 11 years and 1 month to clean up the mess and NOT return the reactor to operation. And it cost twice as much not to restart the reactor as Bechtel thought it would cost to restart it.

(Article contains numerous clearly explained details about the TMI cleanup, not included here.)

snip>

Since the TMI reactor was operating for the first time, it had not generated spent fuel and therefore had an empty spent fuel pool that could be used for holding post-accident wastes. The 6 spent fuel pools in the reactor buildings at Fukushima contain a total of nearly 800 tons of spent fuel, and a 7th common pool contains over 1,000 additional tons of spent fuel.

The cleanup at TMI included areas outside containment that were contaminated by airborne radioactivity. The cleanup at Fukushima must deal with contamination due to airborne releases and large amounts of highly radioactive water. As noted above, the amount of highly radioactive water at Fukushima is 25 times the amount that was processed at TMI.

snip>

[enough]

1. Morning kick (nt)

[crickets]

2. Another kick -nt