At Fukushima, decommissioning nuclear plant far more challenging than water release

Of course it is, any one thought otherwise is a moron!

“Measures to reduce radiation exposure risks by plant workers will be increasingly difficult,

So there will be group of people that will be scarified to radiation for this decommissioning project, Japan Inc at best.

it would be impossible to remove all the melted fuel debris by 2051 and would take 50-100 years, if achieved at all.

Started with flawed design and construction now will risk things even further. Without harsh international attention from China and South Korea Japan will cut corner even more for decommissioning.

Of course it is, any one thought otherwise is a moron!

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein.

About 880 tons of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the reactors. Robotic probes have provided some information but the status of the melted debris remains largely unknown.

And they still have no idea how or where to store the melted fuel rods after they figure out how to remove them. The real disaster may be still yet to come. One slip up when removing these melted fuel rods could very easily create a real China Syndrome event. And, to think, this all could have been avoided if they didn't disregard the advice they were given in 2001 to get the back up generators off the ground on to the roofs of the housings and to waterproof all the back up electrical systems.

We know. Thank you

No 1. & No. 2 reactors will be very difficult to deal with. The earthquake dislodged the rector cap of the No. 2 causing radiation levels of 10-15 Sieverts. If the molten fuels can be recovered it will be done without the use of cooling water. Both reactors still have spent fuel in their cooling pools.

The release of the wastewater is just the beginning.

Every paragraph of shock ad horror is followed by another.

It appears the technical knowledge and specialist equipment development is wishful thinking, forthcoming in a future that could be the stuff of fanciful luck over judgement.

All this to be entrusted to TEPCO with a safety record that leaves a lot to be desired, a gross understatement.

Be part of the solution instead of just whining. Go get a degree in engineering and/or physics. Technological challenges are solved by engineers and physicists. They don't whine, they work to solve difficult challenges.

Design new equipment, forge paths never taken before, develop innovative processes, build and test, modify and improve, continually moving forward toward the goal.

There are people who whine and people who do.

Be part of the solution instead of just whining. Go get a degree in engineering and/or physics. Technological challenges are solved by engineers and physicists. They don't whine, they work to solve difficult challenges.

In Japan for advance technology they don't have shortage of talent and money, however those things need to be approved by multiple oyaji's hanko. Before that you need to convince them whether those tech solution are really working, remember you need to convince oyajis that have no science and engineering background.

So your solution, just to study things and build things just won't work with current Japan's situation.

The most dangerous thing about nuclear power is the hubris of the people behind the tech combined with the greed of the politicians/CEOs.

Would have been much safer if they used a molten-salt reactor. Every existing plant should be replaced with one, and we should have started decades ago.

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/469120

There are no commercially available molten reactors.

Peter Neil, to dismiss the realities facing what is left of the once thriving Fukushima population as whining is rather short sighted

To suggest that commentators’ genuine concerns and opinions should, if you would allow me to quote you, “go get a degree in engineering and/or physics. Technological challenges are solved by engineers and physicists. They don't whine, they work to solve difficult challenges”

some more sensitive souls might find offensive.

I am assuming you fully read and understood the quite detailed article above

Peter, how will J people we able to move on if lessons are never learnt?

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'

Tokyo Electric Power rejected report warning the nuclear plant could be at risk from 10-metre high tsunami, media claim

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/29/fukushima-daiichi-operator-tsunami-warning

Quote……

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) officials rejected "unrealistic" estimates made in a 2008 internal report that the plant could be threatened by a tsunami of up to 10.2 metres, Kyodo news agency said.

The tsunami that crippled backup power supplies at the plant on the afternoon of 11 March, leading to the meltdown of three reactors, was more than 14 metres high.

Evidence that the utility was unprepared for the tsunami, despite previous warnings, came as the firm announced that the manager of the Fukushima plant, Masao Yoshida, was being treated for an unspecified illness and would leave his post on Thursday.

Little doubt no number of precautions could have prevented such a devastating earthquake/tsunami.

However, if recommendations and relevant guidelines been implemented from that 2008 report the sheer scale of melt down and inevitable leakage could have mitigated the consequences and saved countless lives.

Just a final thought Peter, forgive me please, another whine, the unrelenting costs to the hard-pressed J taxpayers just for the clean-up costs to date

Fukushima cleanup costs swell with no end in sight

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fukushima-cleanup-costs-swell-with-no-end-in-sight

The early estimates and future projections to quote……

7.1472 trillion yen for damages paid to people affected by the disaster; 2.9954 trillion yen for decontamination-related costs; 268.2 billion yen related to temporary storage facilities for contaminated materials; and 1.7019 trillion yen for nuclear decommissioning work and dealing with contaminated

Honest transparency must never be mistaken for cynical whining Peter

@itsonlyrocknroll:

There was nothing you wrote that I didn’t already know.

I lived 90 miles from the plant on 3/11/2011. I’m an engineer who worked in the nuclear industry.

We can’t control the past, we can only control the future. I choose not to relentlessly complain about the past (and almost everything) like many who post here. It’s perfectly valid to encourage people to become an engineer or a physicist and contribute to society and not just complain about society. People could have a full career working on the decommissioning of the plant.

There are givers and takers, positive and negative people, those who always look back and those who look ahead.

Peter Neil

so you were a nuclear engineer at the Fukushima NPP?

If we don’t learn from the past we will repeat the mistakes again in the future.

I always thought nuclear power plants were built to the highest safety standards. How wrong I was.

I have seen much better standards at other types of plants like heavy chemical.

Peter,

Having been totally familiar with my links posted, especially the 2008 report warning of the possible dangers, the resultant loss of life/collateral damage a tsunami would wreak on the plant and the local population.

Plus your knowledge as an engineer who worked in the nuclear industry residing 90 miles from the plant on 3/11/2011, these facts must not have have escaped or alerted you to the dangers?

Peter your words......

It’s perfectly valid to encourage people to become an engineer or a physicist and contribute to society and not just complain about society. People could have a full career working on the decommissioning of the plant.

I could not agree more, words from an educated intelligent person.

Your experience and knowledge would guide you to fully accept no matter how many future next generation engineers/physicists would contribute to the decommissioning of the plant.

R & D on such a scale, and the costs involuted would take resources stretching decades into the future.

To me. you would not formally be a person overly concerned about givers and takers, positive and negative people, those who always look back and those who look ahead.

You must have been associated with all walks of life in your professional career, not to rush to such judgments.

Apologizes, I clearly misread, and am mistaken.

There are many posters on JT who have no idea what happened at the NPP in 2011. It was complex.

wallaceAug. 28  07:24 pm JST

Peter Neil

so you were a nuclear engineer at the Fukushima NPP?

No, I was not. I was in the industry earlier in my career.

@itsonlyrocknroll

No apology is necessary. It’s hard to know who people are behind a name in this format. We don’t know their work, their experiences, strengths and weaknesses.

Engineers and physicists work in an environment of logical, fact-based approaches to problem solving. Emotions don’t solve many problems, so we try to put them aside.

Of course people should learn and research circumstances that affect them. The problem is taking factually incorrect information in a poorly done YouTube video as research is wrong. And neither are blogs and articles by people uninformed or with an agenda.

Google Research is a subset of Google with peer-reviewed papers. It’s much better way to start.