Spent fuel removal delayed for 2 Fukushima reactors by 2 years

They don’t have the beginning of an idea on how to remove the melted fuel. The rest is gesticulation from TEPCO and the Japanese government.

In any case, the tax payer will have to pay a fantastic amount of money to clean this huge mess. How can anyone rational continue to support nuclear energy after this?

Well guess I'll just put this "On the job" trophy back on the shelf and grab the "extended the goal posts again" (known as the elastic trophy) that's what's going to this years award ceremony. Please bring your parents.

Ah, but it's all safe 'n friendly.

Its Eco friendly which is important..

Its Eco friendly which is important

This is flat wrong. Nuclear energy produces a considerable amount of radioactive waste very difficult and expensive to store or to reprocess. Japan alone is sitting on more than 40 metric ton of pure plutonium not mentioning the other radionuclides.

I am sorry but producing extremely dangerous waste is not something which can be called eco friendly in any shape or form. Arguing the opposite is simply ridiculous.

@Aadarshconstructions

I don't know why you got any thumbs down mate for speaking the truth. Fact is that Nuclear energy is sold to the Lemmings as eco friendly rather than dirty old coal. Load of bollocks but that's how it's sold

Ground will be contaminated for a long period of time with or without the fuel rods being there. GOJ will block reentry for the continued safety of citizens.

why not just order all tepco executive staff to do it with bare hands.. i thought nuclear is safe... they should be the one setting examples

By 2 years? Haha, that's optimistic.

For my money, I loathe everything nuclear. That means I hate it.

Among the highest risks at the plant are the 1,573 units of fuel rods

Really? The rods have been out of a reactor for at least 7 years and much of it for a lot longer than that. They only pose a risk if you go up and hug one or try to cut it open. Otherwise they are pretty benign. just keep a few tens of feet away and you will be safe.

The government is more than willing to slowly poison it's own people and the citizens seem more than willing to take it because they'd rather die than think Japan isn't as good as they thought.

Interesting comments

I am in no way pro-TEPCO and feel they are responsible (with the government of Japan) for this accident. I post again the, NAIIC report on Fukushima, which I fully agree with. (For those that have seen this...sorry...but I continuously repost as I think everyone should read it)

https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/fukushima/naiic_report.pdf

I am not "pro nuclear" but some of the comments are rather interesting. That said,

@daito_hak - You are right. They have no idea how to remove the corium and neither does anyone else in the world. This is a first of its kind situation.

@Cricky - Do you have the solution to this problem or the technical know how to solve it? Probably not. There are a lot of engineers trying to fix this mess who should not be insulted. The problem is with the TEPCO management (which have now all been fired). Hopefully your comment is directed accordingly.

@Bill Wright "ground will be contaminated" - On the site itself, yes. Around the site no. The big issues is the continual draining of irradiated water into the ocean.

@Alex - All TEPCO "executive staff" that were in place in 2011 have been fired. This includes the President of TEPCO, the CNO, and all departmental managers.

@Dom - Yes, the fuel rods are one of the highest risk items on the site. The risk would be from a fire (and they have had a couple at the site since 2011). If the fuel rods over-heat or catch fire then we would have something worse than 3/11 (yes worse). In this case there would be contaminated airborne particulates being emitted from the site. This contamination would spread much further than the original accident and could potentially be more lethal.

@Mona Lisa - Not sure exactly what you are saying. All of Japan will be poisoned? No, not even close.

In the end TEPCO screwed up, the government did not have any reasonable regulatory oversight, and the accident (which was foreseeable) happened.

The end game will most likely be to figure out how to keep the contaminated water out of the ocean and then entomb the thing. This is not as easy as people may think but that is probably where we will be in 5 years.

Tokyo-Engr

Great,so they got lots and lots of public pension money( instead of rotting in jail like they should have been ) and time to do this work instead of wasting youngsters time and life.

as Dom says... its totally safe so get on with it instead of delaying and swindling away public money.

@Alex - I do not know the terms of their release but they are gone. This is merely a statement of fact and has nothing to do with what I think should happen to them. If this occurred in the United States these guys would have personal liability. This is not the case in Japan.

I do not know if they are getting lots of pension money or not above and beyond the pension they payed into through withholding taxes. If they are, I do not think this should happen.

What is totally safe and what should people "get on with"? I do not understand your last sentence. Do you think they should get on with entombing the plant?

Yes, the fuel rods are one of the highest risk items on the site. The risk would be from a fire (and they have had a couple at the site since 2011). If the fuel rods over-heat or catch fire then we would have something worse than 3/11 (yes worse). In this case there would be contaminated airborne particulates being emitted from the site. This contamination would spread much further than the original accident and could potentially be more lethal.

No, the fuel rods are not one of the highest risk items on site. The fires on site, which occur on just about any industrial site, have had nothing to do with the fuel rods which are under water and thus kind of safe from any fire that happens nearby. As stated the fuel rods have been out of a reactor for more than 7 years and thus are not at risk of overheating or catching fire, thus they don't pose a risk of spreading contaminated airborne particulates. And even if it was possible why would it spread much further than the original accident (which killed zero people and thus wasn't lethal)?

@Dom - You are right, the fires that have occurred to date have had nothing to do with the spent fuel rods. The spent fuel rods are in the spent fuel pools. The water level of the pools must be maintained within the pool and the rods must remain below the water level. A loss of cooling water to the spent fuel pool can cause the rods to overhead and boil off the water within the spent fuel pool. If a fire occurs (highly unlikely) it could cause a myriad of problems, the worst of which is an uncontrolled reaction followed by fire.

I agree; The original accident did kill zero people, you are correct. The biggest concern after the accident were the spent fuel rods stored in Unit 4. The biggest concern was if they did catch fire then airborne particulates would spread.

The original accident (unlike Chernobyl) did not release particulates. A fire involving spent fuel rods would. This and the water being dumped into the ocean are the biggest risks to the environment.

They did complete / improve the utilities required to maintain cooling of the SFP's a couple of years ago and thus I would agree on one thing - the risk of this actually occurring is very low.

The water level of the pools must be maintained within the pool and the rods must remain below the water level.

No. After about 3-4 years the spent fuel rods no longer require active water cooling. In fact they can (and in many places are) transferred after 3+ years to dry casks where just air flow keeps them from overheating and the structure of the cask provides sufficient radiation shielding.

They did complete / improve the utilities required to maintain cooling of the SFP's a couple of years ago and thus I would agree on one thing - the risk of this actually occurring is very low.

No. At this point the risk is zero.

@Dow - yes it is believed that ventilated dry cask storage is feasible after 5 years but I do not know of anyone actually doing this yet. After 5 years there is still a heat source (Cesium and Strontium 90). I believe it is debatable whether or not rods should be transferred around 5 years and this is why no one is doing it. I believe the Cs and Sr-90 has a 1/2 life of 30 years.

It is KNOWN that dry casks are feasible even before 5 years.

Not many plants are doing it because they still have room in the spent fuel pool and casks cost money. But decommissioned plants are using the dry casks.

The NRC allows movement to dry casks after only 1 year.

Yes Cs-137 and Sr-90 have half-lives of around 30 years, but they produce minimal heat. Most of the heat comes from the short half-life isotopes (