Stating The Obvious
The BBC reports that Japan will scrap stricken nuclear reactors
Japan is to decommission four stricken reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator says.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) made the announcement three weeks after failing to bring reactors 1 – 4 under control. Locals would be consulted on reactors 5 and 6, which were shut down safely.
Harmful levels of radioactivity have been detected in the area.
More than 11,000 people are known to have been killed by the devastating 11 March earthquake and tsunami.
…Seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has reached a much higher level of radiation than previously reported.
The new readings near reactor No 1 – 300m (984ft) from the shore – showed radioactive iodine at 3,355 times the legal limit, said Japan’s nuclear safety agency.
First off, reactors 4, 5, and 6 were in maintenance mode when the quake stuck, and any damage or leaks were the result of not keeping the spent fuel pools cool. The fact that they vented 5 & 6 for fear of a hydrogen explosion, indicates that the rods in the pool were probably over-heated and possibly exposed to the air.
It has been obvious for some time that reactors 1 through 4 were toast. The fact that they were exploding was a really big clue. It is also reasonable to assume that one or more of the reactors has melted through the containment vessel. Having plutonium in the soil outside of the reactors was another major clue. The real questions are how they are going to cool them enough to encase them in concrete and what are they going to do with all of the radioactive water?.
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And didn’t we already hear that concrete is not the way to go?
…and what are they going to do with all of the radioactive water?
it’s a big ocean out there….
Yeppers, the Soviet option. Dunk the reactor in the Marinas trench, voila. And if the sealife there starts growing multiple heads, well, just learn to love fish head soup, yo. 😈
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The problem with concrete, Suzan, is that it is a special type that is used, and the reactor cannot be hot or it won’t set properly. Further, you need to know that the reactor still has concrete underneath it, and you can’t determine that at current levels of heat and radioactivity. This isn’t a trip to the hardware store and add water – it requires people who know what they are doing. That would seem to be an extremely rare thing in Japan. I would prefer three to six inches of lead over an initial concrete cap, followed by another cap of concrete. but the lead requires a cool reactor.
They have already been caught doing that, Hipparchia, so I expect there will be monitoring on that possibility, and not by the people currently involved.
We must have posted at the same time, Badtux.
They keep talking about the Iodine-131 levels which is well and good, but I have more concern about the cesium isotopes with half-lives in years, not days. We have detected the Iodine in Florida, but they have detected cesium and xenon in Nevada, and that is definitely not good.
Almost everything I come up with to cool those suckers, will generally do it too quickly and will probably crack the container or the pipes.