Japan will dump fukushima nuclear waste into pacific!

a reply to: makemap

I have a better idea.

Make Lockheed use their graphene water filter to keep deuterium and tritium out and sea water on the other side of the filter!

Then, Lockheed can use both in their compact fusion reactor to generate electricity for the US. Coal dies. The dumb idea to keep coal around looks like the ravings of an out of touch 70 year old has-been and we quietly ignore this chapter of history while dealing with irradiated sea water.

But hey, guess that you need to make money for your investors instead of doing the planet a good by keeping more sh# from being dumped in it.

YAY, profit!

/sarcasm, if you could not figure that out

a reply to: contextual

Chernobyl was a huge reactor that punted out a tonne of radiation with nobody doing much of anything to help, Fukushima was tiny in comparison and controlled very quickly, it hasn't stop hacks conning uneducated types into thinking otherwise however.

Fukushima wasn't controlled.

Both were meltdowns due to insufficient cooling; ALL meltdowns are due to insufficient cooling. That's kind of the definition. Without proper heat transfer away from the reaction, the reaction chamber overheats and begins to melt/warp to the point the reaction cannot be stopped. In the case of Fukushima, the control rods warped and partially melted, rendering them useless. At that point, the reaction was in meltdown.

Right now there are at least three, possibly four, nuclear cores still reacting at Fukushima. They are not in the buildings... they are under them. They are buried in the bedrock below Fukushima, where they will continue to react and produce radioactive particles for many, many years to come. That bedrock is adjacent to the Pacific ocean, so all that radiation is spewing into the ocean at depths below the surface.

But, out of sight, our of mind, right? Nothing to see here.

That's likely what this decision is all about. It's like trying to decide if one should put the rest of the dirt in the muddy pail... what's it gonna hurt that hasn't already been hurt? Face it... in the vicinity of Fukushima, there is already massive radiation in the ocean. Anything that could be dead from it, is dead from it.

TheRedneck

As has been mentioned by others, there has been a more or less continuous release of radioactive materials via water since the accident. TheRedneck mentions that the cores are not in their containment vessels any longer and that they are likely in the bedrock beneath the plant:



I don't have the original source for that pic hand just at the moment, but I've had it in my gallery for a number of years now; somewhere else I have posted the image and it's source is in that post. Suffice to say it demonstrates what TheRedneck was describing.

Once offsite power was lost to maintain the cooling pumps and then the generators which would have served as the first backup and then the batteries which were the backups to the backups were all inundated by the tsunami, the melt downs were inevitable.

There is an underground stream below the plant that is picking up what water leaks down out of the cracked and shatter basements; water is continually being pumped in on top of what's left of the reactors and coriums (molten cores) and some of that water is captured and put into tanks, however nowhere near all of the water is recovered. That unrecovered water ends up in the Pacific.

At one point there was a plan to build an ice wall surrounding the plant in order to try and redirect the underground stream; that plan failed. It's not 300 million gallons, it's around 300 tons of flow daily:



Again, source is in whatever post I originally used the above image.

The coriums have to be kept cooled otherwise they would release even more radiation than they are through the constant flow of water. But make no mistake, until humanity discovers some technology to reduce the radiation these reactors will have to have this cooling water pumped into them for the next several thousand years.

At Chernobyl, a huge concrete sarcophagus was built to contain the reactor building and try and keep the radiation leakage under control. The radiation has caused that sarcophagus to deteriorate thus necessitating yet another building to be built surrounding the original sarcophagus.

a reply to: makemap
Hopefully it won't cause water temperature changes or worst.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Wow, excellent presentation! I have a couple of questions, though, since I haven't looked deeply into Fukushima in some time.

Your picture seems to show the cores in the area circled in red? Do they know the depth accurately (150-200m?) or is it best guess at this point? I'm interested because Fukushima wound up being the real-life version of the China Syndrome. A grand experiment in how badly the planet will be poisoned in the worst case event of a complete meltdown. My scientific curiosity wants to know just how deep the cores went before reaching thermal equilibrium with the rock surrounding them.

Whose bright (as in, bright like a black box) idea was it to try and freeze anything in that area? There are three (maybe four) nuclear cores reacting uncontrolled inside the ground. You might as well try to freeze a small volcano.

And finally, did we ever get verification that the fourth core melted down? Last I heard, they were still trying to stabilize it, but having limited success. I have expected that they failed in those attempts, but have not really heard one way or the other.

TheRedneck

The freezing was a temporary fix to a global issue to slow or prevent radioactive water from quickly entering the ocean.

Unfortunately years later there appears to still be issues at hand not dealt with. It seems many are dealing with it by denying it will effect their lifetimes so not so worried unless something changes unexpected.

a reply to: TheRedneck

a reply to: makemap


www.google.com...

OKUMA, Japan (Reuters) - A costly "ice wall" is failing to keep groundwater from seeping into the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, data from operator Tokyo Electric Power Co shows, preventing it from removing radioactive melted fuel at the site seven years after the disaster.

When the ice wall was announced in 2013, Tepco (9501.T) assured skeptics that it would limit the flow of groundwater into the plant's basements, where it mixes with highly radioactive debris from the site's reactors, to "nearly nothing."

However, since the ice wall became fully operational at the end of August, an average of 141 metric tonnes a day of water has seeped into the reactor and turbine areas, more than the average of 132 metric tonnes a day during the prior nine months, a Reuters analysis of the Tepco data showed.

loll.. every nation state throws there # out...

before getting pissed about this check your own county out and what they just threw out in your waters

originally posted by: TamtammyMacx
The solution for pollution is dilution. That's what it comes down to?

I can see a scene from Idiocracy 2.

"Man, your world sure is polluted. I mean look at all the nuclear waste."
"Yeah but... dude.. it's like, diluted and stuff *stoner laugh*"

originally posted by: kingsquirel
loll.. every nation state throws there # out...

before getting pissed about this check your own county out and what they just threw out in your waters

I don't think most countries pollution has a half life of around 23,000 years...

originally posted by: Ophiuchus 13
a reply to: makemap
Hopefully it won't cause water temperature changes or worst.

Um, wasn't there a thread in this forum saying Pacific ocean is heating up.

originally posted by: Ophiuchus 13
a reply to: makemap


www.google.com...

OKUMA, Japan (Reuters) - A costly "ice wall" is failing to keep groundwater from seeping into the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, data from operator Tokyo Electric Power Co shows, preventing it from removing radioactive melted fuel at the site seven years after the disaster.

When the ice wall was announced in 2013, Tepco (9501.T) assured skeptics that it would limit the flow of groundwater into the plant's basements, where it mixes with highly radioactive debris from the site's reactors, to "nearly nothing."

However, since the ice wall became fully operational at the end of August, an average of 141 metric tonnes a day of water has seeped into the reactor and turbine areas, more than the average of 132 metric tonnes a day during the prior nine months, a Reuters analysis of the Tepco data showed.

Just like my original post. They don't need an ice wall. They need to build a container to grab the rods and put rockets to it and fly it to outer space just like those sci-fi spaceships(transport ships). Then nuclear the living hell out of the rods into dust.

If japan can build cars/carriers, surely they can build a nuclear proof transport box for it, let SpaceX, NASA, Russians or even Chinese put rockets to it. Since they all gone to the moon or space.

a reply to: gallop

I don't think most countries pollution has a half life of around 23,000 years..

How many nuclear blasts have been done by the USA military over the last fifty years or so.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Your picture seems to show the cores in the area circled in red? Do they know the depth accurately (150-200m?) or is it best guess at this point?

As far as I know, it is a best guess as to the location of the molten cores. If I recall correctly, this was from a document at TEPCO's website on the incident. I had the translation done by a friend of mine and she had a bit of difficulty with what she was able to translate due to some of the terms being of a technical nature.

Whose bright (as in, bright like a black box) idea was it to try and freeze anything in that area?

Actually, I believe that that suggestion was made by Silverlock in the original megathread on the accident; that thread has since been lost to whatever issues the database has.

They began construction on the ice wall in 2014:



As has been mentioned by before, the wall did not perform as hoped.

And finally, did we ever get verification that the fourth core melted down?

As far as I know, the reactor 4 core did not melt down but it (and the spent fuel rods) was buried beneath quite a bit of rubble:



Another image from my gallery originally sourced at TEPCO I believe, or perhaps cryptome

originally posted by: makemap
I've got an idea, world concentrate all research areas in nuclear radiation and space tech. Move the nuclear plant/nuclear rods into space very far away from Earth and nuke it in space.

??? If you're going to the expense of getting it into space, just send it into the sun...

a reply to: makemap

It is impossible to destroy radioactive particles in an explosion, even a nuclear explosion. All you would do is spend a small fortune to rain radioactive particles on the entire earth over the next few centuries.

And as far as shooting it into the sun, I'm not sure what reactions would result from the fissioning material and the fusioning plasma. I don't like the idea of taking a chance on the source of all life on earth.

TheRedneck

a reply to: makemap

The technology required to lift that amount of mass into low Earth orbit cost-effectively would make the Fukushima problem rather redundant.

Anyhoo why nuke it in space???!!!

Why not just fire it into the Sun?

not cool.

Sounds good to me. I'm not going to be wandering around the bottom of the ocean anytime soon. It would be nice to railgun it into the Sun, but that would be pretty pricey.

The Earth is always trying to kill us, anyway. A little more radioactivity isn't going to make a whole lot of difference in the long run.

Just remember, if you happen to visit the west coast from Vancouver British Columbia to San Diego California, don't eat the seafood. Our continental west coast is going to get what Japan unleashes.

I can see it now, Godzilla attacks Los Angeles.