Posted on 02/19/2021 8:37:03 PM PST by dynachrome
Cooling water levels have fallen in two reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant since a powerful earthquake hit the area last weekend, indicating possible additional damage, its operator said on Friday (Feb 19).
New damage could further complicate the plant’s already difficult decommissioning process, which is expected to take decades.
Tokyo Electric Power spokesman Keisuke Matsuo said the drop in water levels in the Unit 1 and 3 reactors indicates that the existing damage to their primary containment chambers was worsened by Saturday's magnitude 7.3 quake, allowing more water to leak.
The leaked water is believed to have remained inside the reactor buildings and there is no sign of any outside impact, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
is it new damage, or existing damage that has been newly discovered? the former compels an entirely different conversation.
New damage from the recent earthquake.
They should plant sunflower seeds near the reactor. Sunflowers are good at absorbing radiation and they can be cut down and new ones planted in place until the all the radiation is gone.
Ten years and no end in sight. Maybe they should just build a reinforced concrete great pyramid of giza over it and call it a day.
There are plants that can do the job, like sunflowers. If I were the Japanese government, I would plant sunflower plants and other plants that do absorb radiation and just keep replacing them regularly as they become fully grown.
There is no bright side here (glowing cores don’t count)
However it is speeding the development of radiation hardened robots
We will need them in space, or maybe they will be used by a malicious AI after it launches
One bright side is a greater demand for coal.
Isn’t nuclear power great?
“Ten years and no end in sight. Maybe they should just build a reinforced concrete great pyramid of giza over it and call it a day.”
Won’t work. There’s an underground river running under the site right into the Pacific. Lovely.
It is when you’re not an idiot.
The plant depended on cooling pumps which ran on electricity. The earthquake took out the regular power grid, but the engineers had designed backup generators, on site, to run the cooling pumps to prevent meltdown. What the engineers failed to do, was locate the backup generators beyond the 500 year maximum expected flood, so when the tsunami generated by the earthquake struck, it took out the backup generators. Had the generators been 20 feet further above sea level, we would not even have heard of Fukishima.
Of even greater irony, was that Westinghouse, the original designers and constructors of the Fukishima plant had a contract in place to decommission the plant, some 6 - 8 months after the earthquake. The new plant was going to be based on a more modern design, which depended on air cooling, and there were no cooling pumps, so any power outages would not have caused a meltdown.
Modern nuclear reactors “burn” much cooler, and use less radioactive materials, and have no “moving” parts that can break. Thorium based reactors are truly clean energy, and are being constructed and installed all over China, even though they were developed by a US government laboratory. As I understand it, a thorium reactor is contained within a concrete encasement, which is then buried. It runs for about 20 years, and dies out. It is then dug up after another 20 years and disposed of as low level nuclear waste. In the meantime, this thorium reactor, which can be towed by a single semi can provide power for a city of 500,000. The bigger the city, the more of them you would install. They are impervious to earthquakes.
“Leaked water remaining inside the plant, for now. “
Well that is what they are telling you, but does it make any sense? There is only so much volume in a building.
After the quake they told us that everything was normal and the plant was unaffected. They lie every bit as much as Biden.
Is there an international effort to help with Fukushima? This is potentially dangerous to the whole world. I would rather see some of our foreign aid money go to helping mitigate this than for some empty politically correct thing. This whole thing has shaken my confidence in Japanese engineering.
Since it caused a new drop in water levels, it is new damage.
And there will be more earthquakes in time.
So who the hell was dumb enough to authorize a nuclear power plant (or anything else) in one of the most geologically active places on the planet?
Japan sits on top of the location where the Pacific plate slides under an asian plate. (can’t remember its name). This is not a slow, smooth process. Similar to what happens in wackifornia, it sits there and builds up pressure for years, or less, then suddenly lurches a few inches to a few feet, depending on how long and how much buildup. Instant earthquake. Yes I know San Andreas is a different type of fault. The process is very similar though.
The friction caused underneath results in much heat, which in turn results in active volcanoes on the island. So if the earthquakes don’t ruin your day, the volcanoes might.
Really stupid place to build anything that resembles a nuclear facility. Guaranteed disaster.
And according to an article I read a couple of years ago, radioactive items are showing up in the pacific northweest, from this already broken nuclear facility. I can’t remember what, trash, fish not sure. Just the diluted radiation in the water maybe. But if it’s not already here, the Pacific version of the Gulf Stteam is bringing it here now. And Japan does not have it contained.
Yep - There’ll be a whole lotta shakin’ going on.
I wonder if there’s enough technology to actually quake-proof such installations.
They do have earthquake shock absorbers for buildings ...
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