Experts: Radiation may spread uncontrollably from damaged Japan nuclear plant

I was searching for news on the Middle East, but ran across this article instead:

www.haaretz.com...

It covers how the situation could worsen, as well as how there are 34 plants in the US with the same design, and how they, on average, have four times as much spent fuel than the plant in Japan.

And, for the conspiracy-minded reading this, there's this quote:

Nearly a decade ago, Alvarez said, he began warning the United States about the need to pay more attention to risks at the open-air storage pools.

Thoughts?

Of 104 nuclear reactors in the United States, Alvarez said, 34 are of the same design -- open-air, elevated storage pools -- as the Fukushima plant. The U.S. pools are storing much more spent fuel than the ones in Fukushima and "are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their design intended," the expert added.

That's from your link.

I am pretty concerned about that.

Perhaps we need to decommission these and settle on making an extremely well built and like 20 layers of protection style waste storage facility deep in a giant mountain somewhere?

More big Earthquakes will happen, they always have for history. I don't think we are ready for the problems we are creating.

Well, it is Haaretz, but aside from that, for some reason I suspect that the 34 plants in the U.S. with the "same design" probably won't shut down as quickly when an earthquake occurs here because 1.) they are more rare in the U.S. than in Japan and 2.) no one here would spend the money. Complacency indeed. And this is quite concerning:

The U.S. pools are storing much more spent fuel than the ones in Fukushima and "are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their design intended," the expert added.

Maybe I'm wrong.

And in Japan, if the worst case does come to pass and containment is breached, yes, of course it will spread quickly and be harder to control. That's exactly what happens. However, I'm not sure the word uncontrollably is exactly accurate. It's already pretty much uncontrollable by many definitions, no? People will continue to attempt to control and/or contain it.

ETA: I typed too slow, muzzleflash...we zeroed in on the same quote, eh?

Open air disposal pools/ open ''containment'' of any kind of nuclear waste or by product in my opinion is extremely foolish and a total disregard to the safety and health of life its self.
I don't know a lot about the procedures by which we ''dispose'' of nuclear waste etc, but it seems the disposal process used in the past (present as well??) wasn't very safe or well designed.

I thought it quite ironic that www.abovetopsecret.com... was the next thread to this one when I refreshed recent posts.

reply to post by notsofunnyguy


Good catch. S&F&

But don't worry. Anne Coulter says radiation is actually good for you.

...Anyone else worried where this spin is taking us?

And CNN just said that EPA said there is NO increase in radiation levels in California, even though there are some other posts that quote articles saying otherwise.

I'm in L.A. and am fortunately able to stay indoors today. Just in case.

reply to post by notsofunnyguy


I'd venture to say they are saying that because there hasn't been SIGNIFICANT rise that would be enough to cause even minor health risks

I have a lot of friends in SoCal as i used to work on the WB lot and two of my friends are like minded and are taking their own independent readings and have reported nothing concerning to me so I chose to take their word over anyone that's saying the levels are being down played

Like many posters here I recently became interested in nuclear safety. It turns out I have been living on the brink of environmental disaster all my life and I had no idea until a few days ago.

I live relatively close to the Hanford nuclear site. That place is already a disaster. While it was in operation contamination was released for years. The full extent of this pollution was not known until the 1980s when citizens forced the release of documents.

Today, there is a large amount of radioactive waste making its way toward the Columbia River. Let me rephrase that.. there is ONE MILLION GALLONS of radioactive waste traveling underground toward the Columbia River.

The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons

(204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste that remains at the site. This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.

This waste was put in to single shell containers for indefinite storage. However, many of them broke releasing the waste.

Furthermore..

As of 2008, 1 million U.S. gallons (4,000 m3) of highly radioactive waste is traveling through the groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste is expected to reach the river in 12 to 50 years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule.

Source: Wiki: Hanford Site

They are already far behind schedule.

I imagine even a minor seismic event could allow this pollution to travel faster.