30 Years To Clean Up Fukushima Dai-Ichi

0WaitState writes "Damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant may take three decades to decommission and cost operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. more than 1 trillion yen ($12 billion), engineers and analysts said. Relatedly, Japanese officials and power plant operators are now working on the problems involved with disposing of 55,000 tons of radioactive water. '... international law forbids Japan from dumping contaminated water into the ocean if there are viable technical solutions available later. So the plant operator is considering bringing in barges and tanks, including a so-called megafloat that can hold about 9.5 megalitres. Yet even using barges and tanks to handle the water temporarily creates a future problem of how to dispose of the contaminated vessels.'" Yesterday's 7.1 aftershock caused brief power losses at three other nuclear facilities, and small volumes of contaminated water spilled, but no significant radiation leakage occurred before the problems were resolved.

Comments

Re:Is 30 years a long time?

[hawguy]

Could someone put 30 years into perspective for me?

No problem, I can put it into units that most Slashdot readers are familiar with.

The Library of Congress is 211 years old, so 30 years is around .14 Library of Congresses.

In comparison, a 2TB hard drive is around .2 Library of Congresses (printed material only).

So, in conclusion, Fukushima's cleanup is less than one 2 TB hard drive.

Re:Dispose of that water ..

[Anonymous Coward]

tritium emissions can't even get through a sheet of paper

Those are the dangerous emissions. They don't get through paper because they loose all their energy damaging it, which does not much for paper since it is already dead. Its the reason why the protective gear used near nuclear accidents is so thin, its enough to keep the alpha radiation from reaching your body, once ingested however there is nothing between it and your vulnerable cells.

Re:Dispose of that water ..

[Zeio]

Alpha particles can be breathed and actually is the most ionizing of all the ionizing radiation.

Alpha particles are extremely dangerous but are not penetrating.

The worst vector is to have an alpha emitter embedded in living tissue.

You must understand radiation exposure is not the same thing as exposure to hot particles or hot particles embedded in vivo.

There is a terrible misunderstanding going on. Sure, you could eat dinner next to a solid block of plutonium if its not critical its just a metal brock that emits some radiation. There used to be uranium paints and glazes used on cookware. Atomized and superheated fission products or fission products in salts and compounds embedded in vivo is a bloody mess. Its porrly understood and you can't use "x-rays, cosmic rays, plane flights" and trash like that to compare. The rays aren't that dangerous. The hot particles are very very dangerous because they can become part of your own biology and emit, even at low levels, inside your body.

So much for your sheet of paper. If that was the cause, Radon wouldn't be remediated and people would just enjoy sniffing alpha particles.