A simple clean up idea.

You don’t have to entomb anything. Just build a concrete wall around the entire power station at a safe distance. Backfill with dirt (on the outside of the wall). Pump several thousand gallons of mud/clay, or heated tar to form a water barrier on the ground. Fill the entire artificial lake with water to where it covers the reactor buildings (and fuel). Then you can work on the system from the top and safely remove the fuel and put it in storage cask working from barges floating on the surface of the lake.

Once fuel is gone, then you can drain everything, and clean up what remains.

Building the wall is the problem, everything else is simple.

Get me my tool bag...I, for one, am in...

Only one problem with your solution, the reactor has to remain "Stable" while the work is going on to encase it.

I wonder if they could build a mote type of enclosure with debris and bulldozers. Then, dig a well with a new gas generator pumps. Maybe several wells and pumps. If there is a river near by, dig a route to the river and have the river run to the facility. Apparently at this point contaminated water run off is not of major concern.

Originally posted by alldaylong
Only one problem with your solution, the reactor has to remain "Stable" while the work is going on to encase it.

It is a lot safer building a wall at a distance, than it is to build a tomb right over it. And a wall can be a lot thinner. About 5 or 8 inches thick would be fine. A concrete tomb would have to several feet thick, so it would take as much, or more concrete.

And you could have a moving shield to protect the workers as the moving concrete form made it’s way around the site.

Remember, radiation is line of site. Have a big moving wall between you and the reactors, and you will be fine……………… Ow, that’s right, the moving concrete form is a big wall, so just cover the side of it in a layer of lead, and try to stand behind it while working.

Originally posted by Wetpaint72
I wonder if they could build a mote type of enclosure with debris and bulldozers. Then, dig a well with a new gas generator pumps. Maybe several wells and pumps. If there is a river near by, dig a route to the river and have the river run to the facility. Apparently at this point contaminated water run off is not of major concern.

It is right beside an ocean, so just get a bunch of big pumps, and pump like there is no tomorrow.

They should just get a bunch of bulldozers, push the nuclear disaster into the ocean, build a park for children over the disaster site, and call it cleaned up!