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Contaminated waste piling up

16 Comments

Workers move waste containing radiated soil, leaves and debris from the decontamination operation at a storage site in Naraha town, which is inside the former no-go zone of a 20-km radius around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Most of the contaminated soil and leaves remain piled up in driveways and empty lots because of fierce opposition from local communities to storing it in one place until the Ministry of Environment secures a central site that could hold it for the longer term.

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16 Comments
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Wow, those are lots of bags!! Why do I have the feeling that those will stay there....forever?

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Nowhere to go now and in the future.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

No other species in the world has such a direct impact on earth's ecosystem than we do. This is our future as a human race...and we are responsible for it.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

How long do the bags last?

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Fire that waste onto the sun, or outer space.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

It's toxic waist, and the worker is suitable attired with a paper mask! At every level this problem! Is just not sinking in.

3 ( +7 / -4 )

The word editors seem to be struggling to master is "irradiated."

Not "radiated."

Workers move waste containing irradiated soil . . . "

Radiated is the past-tense of radiate, which means to send out or emerge in rays from some point.

Irradiated means to be infused with radiation of the atomic decay type.

I doubt workers moving simple refuge that was splayed out in a radial pattern from some central point would be news-worthy. Unless aliens put the refuge there in a pretty pattern. Then we'd have a story.

But it still wouldn't be a story about radiation.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

These bags are the result of one of the most stupid operations to clean up a man made disaster in history likely.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

"Wow, those are lots of bags!! Why do I have the feeling that those will stay there....forever?"

Ms.Alexander-san, I have to agree with you for one sole reason: Tepco has not come up with a way to drop those into the Pacific and call it a "regrettable accident"!!!

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Looks like Naraha is on the way of Bhopal (India), where they dump around 20,000 of toxic waste after Union Carbide factory gas tragedy and now after 30 years, this waste has been a continuous source of soil and groundwater contamination and therefore, a cause of serious public health concern for residents in the surrounding areas.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

And crazy lunatic politicians and bureaucrats still want to restart the nuke energy plants. Insane!!.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Those bags will last like a year or two? I would imagine after even 3-6 mos they would get weak and start to rip from uv light on them every day and the pressure of their contents/ neighboring bags...

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I guess this would be classified as low level waste, along with workers' Tyvek protective suits, gloves and caps.

The logical place to put it would be back on the Fukushima NPP site, the materials' origin, but they need all the space now for building water tanks.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Fire that waste onto the sun, or outer space. yeah right, it cost $100,000s just to get 1kg into space the cost would come into $100s billions then you have the problem of rockets, all are not 100% reliable, if one explodes during assent it would spread tonnes of toxic waste over 100s of km area. not an option at this point in time.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Are Tepco going to monitor these bags? Give it 5-6 months and they will be rotten and leaking all over the place. A few years will pass, grass will grow over it all and people will forget about it, very very sad

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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