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Fukushima Daiichi latest - hows the clear up going?


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk0WzCtF0yY

Basically they haven't got a f+*>ing clue what they are doing and are just messing things up more and more and refusing proper international help. By the time this problem is sorted I will be abou

All ok?

 

....

 

An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 has struck off the coast of Japan prompting emergency services to issue a tsunami advisory for the Fukushima area.

 

Japan's Meteorological Agency raised a 1-meter (3-foot) tsunami warning for a long stretch of Japan's northeastern coast, including Fukushima. The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not post warnings for the rest of the Pacific.

 

There were no initial reports of damage on land, although the AFP agency cited reports saying that workers had been evacuated from the stricken nuclear power plant.

 

The quake hit at 2:10 a.m. Saturday Tokyo time (1710 GMT) about 290 kilometers (170 miles) off Fukushima. Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, ordered workers near the coast to move to higher ground.

 

The tremor was felt in Tokyo, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) away.

 

 

 

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Would be interested to know more about the people working there. Who are they? How qualified are they? Are they getting paid a ton?

Don't think I'd be too happy at the prospect.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A task of extraordinary delicacy and danger is about to begin at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power station.

 

Engineers are preparing to extract the first of more than 1,000 nuclear fuel rods from one of the wrecked reactor buildings.

 

This is seen as an essential but risky step on the long road towards stabilising the site.

 

The fuel rods are currently in a precarious state in a storage pool in Unit 4.

 

This building was badly damaged by an explosion in March 2011 following the Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

 

Moving the rods to safety is a high priority but has only become possible after months of repair work and planning.

 

One senior official told me: "It's going to be very difficult but it has to happen."

 

The fuel rods are four-metre long tubes containing pellets of uranium fuel and the fear is that some may have been damaged during the disaster.

 

Gambaro!

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Fuel Removal From Fukushima's Reactor 4 Threatens 'Apocalyptic' Scenario

 

In November, TEPCO set to begin to remove fuel rods whose radiation matches the fallout of 14,000 Hiroshima bombs

 

An operation with potentially "apocalyptic" consequences is expected to begin in a little over two weeks from now - "as early as November 8" - at Fukushima's damaged and sinking Reactor 4, when plant operator TEPCO will attempt to remove over 1300 spent fuel rods holding the radiation equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima bombs from a spent fuel storage tank perched on the reactor's upper floor.

 

While the Reactor 4 building itself did not suffer a meltdown, it did suffer a hydrogen explosion, is now tipping and sinking and has zero ability to withstand another seismic event.

 

A chorus of voices has been sounding alarm over the never-been-done-at-this-scale plan to manually remove the 400 tons of spent fuel by TEPCO, who so far has been responsible for mishap after mishap in the ongoing crisis at the crippled nuclear plant.

 

Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, warned this summer that "They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods," and said that "To jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine is quite a leap of logic." Paul Gunter, MD, Director of the Reactor Oversight Project with Takoma Park, Md.-based Beyond Nuclear, also sounded alarm on Thursday, telling Common Dreams in a statement that "Given the uncertainties of the condition and array of the hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel assemblies, it will be a risky round of highly radioactive pickup sticks." Gundersen offered this analogy of the challenging process of removing the spent fuel rods:

 

 

If you think of a nuclear fuel rack as a pack of cigarettes, if you pull a cigarette straight up it will come out — but these racks have been distorted. Now when they go to pull the cigarette straight out, it’s going to likely break and release radioactive cesium and other gases, xenon and krypton, into the air. I suspect come November, December, January we’re going to hear that the building’s been evacuated, they’ve broke a fuel rod, the fuel rod is off-gassing. […]

 

I suspect we’ll have more airborne releases as they try to pull the fuel out. If they pull too hard, they’ll snap the fuel. I think the racks have been distorted, the fuel has overheated — the pool boiled – and the net effect is that it’s likely some of the fuel will be stuck in there for a long, long time.

 

---

 

yikes

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While the Reactor 4 building itself did not suffer a meltdown, it did suffer a hydrogen explosion, is now tipping and sinking and has zero ability to withstand another seismic event.

 

I thought it had been encased in a big steel structure?

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As long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman explained, the

 

 

Spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible.

 

"In the worst-case scenario," RT adds,

 

the pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and cause an explosion many times worse than in March 2011.

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The bring-down of the fuel rods from Fukushima Unit 4 may be the most dangerous engineering task ever undertaken.

 

Well if anyone in the world can do that competently, TEPCO jolly well can!!

 

:thumbsup:

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The bring-down of the fuel rods from Fukushima Unit 4 may be the most dangerous engineering task ever undertaken. Every indication is that TEPCO is completely incapable of doing it safely, or of reliably informing the global community as to what's actually happening. There is no reason to believe the Japanese government could do much better. This is a job that should only be undertaken by a dedicated team of the world's very best scientists and engineers, with access to all the funding that could be needed.

 

The potential radiation releases in this situation can only be described as apocalyptic. The cesium alone would match the fallout of 14,000 Hiroshima bombs. If the job is botched, radiation releases could force the evacuation of all humans from the site, and could cause electronic equipment to fail. Humankind would be forced to stand helplessly by as billions of curies of deadly radiation pour into the air and the ocean.

 

As dire as Wasserman's warning sounds, it is echoed by fallout researcher Christina Consolo, who told RT that the worst case scenario could be "a true apocalypse." Gunter's warning was dire as well.

 

"Time is of the essence as we remain concerned that another earthquake could still topple the damaged reactor building and the nuclear waste storage pond up in its attic," he continued. "This could literally re-ignite the nuclear accident in the open atmosphere and inflame it into hemispheric proportions," said Gunter.

 

Wasserman says that given the gravity of the situation, the eyes of the world should be upon Fukushima:

 

This is a question that transcends being anti-nuclear. The fate of the earth is at stake here and the whole world must be watching every move at that site from now on. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, as a ceaseless flow of contaminated water poisoning our oceans, our very survival is on the line.

 

They don't know TEPCO!!

:grandpa:

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