How should the government dispose of radioactive beef?

Make it part of a flood relief package for North Korea.

Burning it is insane. That will only release it into the air. I think it should be served at the Diet, METI and MEXT cafeterias. And at TEPCO. Send packages to all the other power companies to give them a taste of things to come.

But seriously, chewitup is right. They don't need to share the pain here. Much of Fukushima is already in the past tense, unfortunately. The government may allow people to move back, it may force people to move back, but that would be evil. The areas of contamination should be used to store contaminated materials. Did pits, line them with lead or whatever else will work, and leave it and the rest of the contamination there.

Whatever is done with it needs to be done in Fukushima, a place the stuff never should have left in the first place. What is made in Fukushima should stay in Fukushima. No exceptions. No risks.

The government needs to start making lead lined concrete pits to store things like this starting months ago.

Jerome: Cesium and then strontium are the problems. Same for Fukushima as for Chernobyl.

First thing to ask is what isotopes are contaminating the beef? Iodine 131? No problem; store it for six months and put it on the market. Strontium 90? The half-life is 20 years, so time won't help much. However, it would be mostly concentrated in the bones; so, get that filleting knife out, then bury the bones. Cesium would be a problem. Sell it to the Gaijins since we'll eat almost anything!

Burn it with filters to capture the radioactive particles, that way they'll take up less space. Most of the cow is probably water, etc and presumably there are ways to do this safely. Then treat the ashes as radioactive waste. This is what's done with sunflowers used to decontaminate fields.

If they do this with as much as possible that is contaminated by the fallout, they can reduce the amount of cesium in the environment.

Honestly it's probably cheaper and more efficient to just burn it. Refrigerating it, cleaning it, or even putting it on a slow boat to Ethiopia would cost more, and there's no sense in throwing good money after bad.

Export it saying there are no immediate health effects.

Put it on the menu at the Diet and call it whale meat.

How do you safely dispose of any radioactive material in a country ravaged by eartquakes, bury it in lead lined concrete perhaps. Where would the internment take place? At sea ? In sealed underground caverns? The employees working for Tepco risking thier health and thier lives to try and bring this horrific situation under control should not be the butt of sarcastic wittisism. However the designers,the contractor who built the monstrosity and the owners of Tepco may be interested in making appeasment by kindly consenting to the offending material to be burried in thier own back gardens.

There is a century-old radioactive hot rock spring in the town of Miharu, Fukushima Prefecture.

Yawaragi no Yu is an onsen, or hot spring inn, located in the mountains of Japan's Fukushima Prefecture.

Its claim to fame are the rejuvenatory waters which bubble out from red-hot volcanic rocks beneath the earth's surface, carrying with them trace amounts of the radioactive element Radium.

At Yawaragi no Yu, in addition to more typical hot water pools and baths, locally sourced pea gravel is raked over hot rocks providing spa visitors with a unique "dry bath" of heat and radiation!

Concentrations of Uranium and Radium happen to be above average in the rocks around Yawaragi no Yu, and in the years after the spa opened in 1914 some association was made between the radiation and the reports of improved health relayed back from visitors who stayed at the onsen. Radiation levels are monitored regularly by onsen staff, it should be said, to ensure they fall within government-set safety standards.

This place has some experience with radioactivity and maybe they have hungry customers.

Readers, sensible suggestions please.

Feed it to those nationalists in black vans, they love Japan made stuff.

It is probably radioactive enough that it should be treated as nuclear waste. Which means it should be buried at a suitable facility. Problem being that no such facility exist, as no prefecture wants it.

Send it to all TEPCO employees for Ochuugen gifts.

Eat it.