Posted on 03/12/2016 11:03:59 AM PST by Rockitz
The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site.
Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-meter high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods in the quake and tsunami.
Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of tonnes. Five robots sent into the reactors have failed to return.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) 9501.t, has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.
“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”
The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.
But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring ...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Nuke a nuke plant? You dumb or what?
Cherenkov blue?
US Navy? Carriers, Subs, and people who know how to play safely with nuclear power. Send a bill to the UN and if they don’t pay it, it’s our dues for the next century or until the bogus organization is desolved (soon I hope)
“Not a single person has died from the Fukushima reactor’s encounter with a tidal wave. If this is “the worst nuclear accident of all time”
I support nuclear power. I actually worked on a plant once. But that’s ignorant to pretend this isn’t a nightmare disaster. And its ignorant to try to say Chernobyl is worse. That like comparing lung cancer to a pancreatic cancer. Both are equally bad, just have a few differences that at best, are academic.
The Fukushima plant ruined a big area in a very densely populated country. And it still isn’t cleaned up. And there are very big problems that are going to be tough to solve.
The only reason the Chernobyl disaster had a higher body count is due to the Soviet methods of fighting it. Many brave heroic souls went in and did things they shouldn’t have done to fight it.
But sadly, this was a huge setback for nuclear power.
I'm hoping you didn't think that through before hitting the post button. If you did, well...crack a book or two. Soon.
Borax, I like that.
“US Navy? Carriers, Subs, and people who know how to play safely with nuclear power.”
They know almost nothing about commercial nuclear plants. Military people are mostly narrowly trained on one system, and know very little else. For example, your average tanker cannot jump in and safely operate a giant caterpillar bulldozer.
And a melting down core isn’t the time to get OJT.
Instead of taking over, offering help is the only thing to do. And in reality, the problem wasn’t in the response, it was in the combination of location and design. Nothing the Navy could do for them really.
All of the first-responders at Chernobyl died.
The second and third waves of fire, military and police responders were brought in at gun point to control the meltdown. They failed, and many of them died as well.
The true death toll is probably in the low thousands.
Radiation breaks down polymers like Teflon in short order. High flux can also cause problems with digital electronics.
Even low-IQ animals don’t foul their nests. Mankind on the
other hand wallows in it; & it’s beginning to show. :o(
And the dilution of that minuscule dose of "poison" in the vast volume of the Pacific Ocean will be so high that it will only be detectable with super-sensitive instruments. IOW, it will be absolutely harmless to any lifeform.
I've had it with ignorant "We're all gonna die!" screamers who uniformly exhibit zero sense of proportional reality!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To help you gain perspective, use Google Earth to scan up and down the valley north and south of
Latitude 37.097103° and Longitude -116.050589°.
Every one of those hundreds of craters you will see there was made by a nuclear or thermonuclear BOMB -- detonated right here in the good ol' USofA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Are you dead from radiation, yet?
...a physical chemist sends...
Ya, but at least no Co2 has been released...global warming ya know....whats a little genetic mutation amongst the japs?
We had one ship over there but the radiation was too high.
Five years later and it’s getting worse. Any FReepers who said it was much ado about nothing five years ago ready to eat your words?
stuck_in_new_orleans: Nuke a nuke plant? You dumb or what?
FreedomPoster: Yeeeaaaaahhh. No.
I notice there's no "why" in any of these answers. That's because the physics works. You have to compare the damage of a nuclear explosion to the damage of a years-long leak of radioactive materials. Properly placed, a bomb of the right size would vaporize and burn out all of the radioactive materials, which would then be dissipated in the air as short-halflife ash and the problem is over. Compared to leaking radioactivity into the ocean for the next hundreds of years, that's preferable.
Science. Try it.
All because some stupid engineers placed the backup generators near the ocean instead of on the hill behind the nuclear plant!
This stupidity will be the death of this great energy source.
What do you think Fukushima’s going to be like in 10 years?
Ding ding ding....
Yep.
No. That is just the US Great White Fleet they would bring the experts and equipment and show our presence. This is most likely worse than. Chernobyl. The Russians were able to stop the spread. This thing is still spreading. We eat fish out of the pacific. This is a must fix situation. The Japanese need to take responsibility by taking help. Damn them and their pride. Zerobummer should have forced help down ther throats but his anti nuclear politics is more important than human lives.
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