2 remote Hokkaido towns seek to host nuclear waste storage site

Lose the power plant and it is a massive financial blow for the local area with all that entails.

Then build another power plant that doesn't create waste using renewables? Put all those engineers to work? Ehime could implement deep water cooling tubes for air conditioning. (Search Enwave Deep Lake Water Cooling in the pictures section of Google. We did that in 2007!). Also given that it's salt water it would store more energy than fresh water. Put solar everywhere, wind and waves into molten salt storage for continuous electricity generation.

Japan is perfect for all kinds of energy systems, just not for vested Big Oil/Gas Big Nuclear. It would take actual work not paper bag passing

Or do nothing of course.

i believe with Japan technology it wont post high risk to the residents of the designated town. Anyway you can't expect to enjoy the stable electricity power and at the same time dont want to pay any price for it. Please be realistic

Even in remote area, there are humans lives.

"...16,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods......., and there is no final repository for them in Japan."

There is no final repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods anywhere in the world, and there in lies the quandary. Currently, most highly radioactive spent fuel rods are stored at the nuclear reactors where they were generated; a less than ideal situation.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-storage-nuclear-global-crisis.html

There is an estimated 250,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods around the world, there is still no way to safely store it, and more is generated every day. What is wrong with this picture?

Thank Abe and Co for making Japanese so poor and desperate that they will poison themselves for a bowl of rice.

While Chernobyl, Hanford, and Fukushima are exemplary 1st order nuclear disasters, 2nd order disasters like leaking nuclear waste are a matter of time until exhaustion of resources and abandonment aka failure by default.

Not good. This is a problem that isn't going to disappear.

They are stupid worse than that the media thinks they are smarted than you. Wake Up!

Smarted? I guess it would smart to have the waste buried where people are living. Would you live in these proposed sites?

Those materials can be safely stored deep underground in bedrock with substantial concrete to cap it off.

Yet, as per the article, no country has permanent storage sites but Sweden and Finland, and they have massive geological advantage. I think what you say "can" be done actually can't for the most part, because humans are just too stupid, lazy, cheap and irresponsible to do what needs done. How many decades old is this problem? And look at the havoc caused by the Fukushima disaster and yet, here we are, ten years later, and STILL the problem lingers?

Wake Up!

Since the Fukushima disaster did not really wake people up why would you think typing it on the internet would? Its not going to. Humans are clearly just not responsible enough for this burden. Not even close to being so responsible.

You guys need to do a bit research.

I think you never researched human nature.

Remote towns trying to make themselves remoter. That's a winning move.

The waste is already somewhere. In Dai-ichi's case, it was in a pool on the fourth floor of a building. A few hundred meters underground near few people may be preferable to where it is now waiting for whatever "unforeseen" natural event, terrorists, North Korea missile, Bond villain, etc. comes along.

I say this in full knowledge that whoever sticks it underground is bound to skimp on the work and pass it off to the cheapest subcontractor out there.

I like how the government offers Casino Resorts to already economically thriving cities while nuclear waste gets offered out to the poor folk in the countryside.

Rapidly graying and shrinking? Yeah, it will be.

It shows clearly how desperate these rural towns are.

It also shows the lack of support from local and federal governments. The only way they will get any support is to host highly radioactive waste.

Tell me again how nuclear powers is cheap and safe.

It's a bit of a conundrum. I spent time in Ehime, and there is a nuclear power plant out there in the south of the prefecture which as I understand hasn't been operating post Fukushima.

The plant provided hundreds of high paying jobs in an area with not that much outside of agriculture and fisheries, and provided much of the local town's budget, with the town having facilities that larger cities in Japan would be lucky to have.

Lose the power plant and it is a massive financial blow for the local area with all that entails.

You guys need to do a bit research. Those materials can be safely stored deep underground in bedrock with substantial concrete to cap it off. There is essentially no harm at the surface at all, ok .000000009 chance of some random proton making it through all that material hitting the last brain cell you have left and killing you. Think about our core and think about our sun then think about how deep we can drill. Now think about how many vacant islands there are in the pacific.

There are many ways this can be safe, just like covid, hurricanes, climent "intentionally misspelled" change all of it is just the same. The media is always looking for drama. They think its there job is to entertain you with an exciting story. They are stupid worse than that the media thinks they are smarted than you. Wake Up!

What do the Japanese scientists think about it? Why isn't the media airing specialists in nuclear science?

Might be because in Japan we cast out the scientists with inconvenient opinions.

To contemplate storage of such material anywhere near a coast, river, lake or underground water table, should be ruled out immediately.

I don't know why you readers are even complaining about. Be glad they are taking it. Because these things are still waiting to be properly stored. As if delaying and refusing to store it anywhere in Japan is gonna solve the problem. It's not going anywhere soon unless someone made the sacrifice and take it. This decisions wasn't easy for them to make. You should instead thank and bless them for this sacrifice.

There are many lands in the world, including U. S. where the storage of radioactive material leaked eventually leaked into the soil:  e.g. https://armscontrolcenter.org/nuclear-waste-issues-in-the-united-states/

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

Is there a possibility of disposing of such waste outside the four main islands, some place like Antarctica or even Outer Space?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1973.11455433

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/burns.pdf

and/ or finding uses for the waste to be broken down into lower forms of energy, e.g. batteries.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/recycling-nuclear-waste-diamond-battery-a9297571.html

Once land is polluted, it may be dangerous for many years to come . . . .

Ah..if only the Mayors had the cranium capacity to find a better solution, rather then poison there area for, was going to say generations but they obviously have no thought for any generation other then their own.

...spent fuel is safe in about 6,000,000 years.

Six million years?

Oh, thank God. I thought you said 600,000 years.

The mayors and communities in the Tohoku area that hosted the nukes also received sizeable subsidies. They enjoyed them until....

based on a criterion put into use by nuclear scientists in Europe, which is that waste may be considered safe when it has decayed to the point that it is no more radioactive than naturally occurring uranium ore. According to this criterion, spent fuel is safe in about 6,000,000 years.

The whole idea of an island country sitting on the ring of fire with constant earthquakes, in addition to other natural disasters relying so much on nuclear power plants is really ridiculous to start with. And these plants produce waste. And these economically dying towns are trading immediate economic benefit now for the future.

Hurry for clean, safe a cheap form of energy that will safe the earth from global warming.

Sure, why not? Japan has been a model in anticipating contingencies and safe operations in the nuclear field.

Oh, wait . . .

Be very careful for what you wish for here. It's rather sad that due to the aging society and financial constraints ANY town or village has to turn to this for survival!