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Fukushima To Become Nuclear Dump?
mdsolar writes "Japan's atomic energy specialists are discussing a plan to make the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant a storage site for radioactive waste from the crippled station run by Tokyo Electric Power Co."
Words are fun.
"Dump" vs "Storage Site" or "Spent Fuel Storage" or "Waste Storage".
You can tell when someone is trying to sensationalize a story by the words they choose.
Yes, make a nuclear waste dump on a site known to be hit by magnitude 9.0 earthquakes and Tsunamis. Great idea that shows how safety conscious the nuclear industry is.
do they choose it based on the assumption that there will be no big natural desasters close to this place?
Can anyone provide a source for this, I'm not denying this is the case, I'm just interested to know how, seeing as about 25% of the graphite was ejected and something like 5% of the core burned in the open for 9 days.
On topic, I can't see it being the best site for a nuclear waste dump. From my limited knowledge, though my uncle is a geologist specialising in nuclear waste disposal I would have thought you need an incredibly stable area.
Disclaimer: I'm pro nuclear, but not rabidly so.
Japan is a signatory to the London Dumping Convention which prohibits disposing of nuclear waste at sea (as is the US). Putting a dump site close to the ocean (like at Humboldt Bay Nuclear) means that the site will have to be moved, likely at great expense, owing to seal level rise.
Is this gonna be the birthplace of Godzilla?
I'm sure most posts that show up in this thread are going to be very similar in nature to the parent, but don't jump to conclusions so quickly. When the industry talks about long-term storage, here's what they're referring to... (from the article):
The disposal of high-level waste is more complicated since it needs to be solidified into borosilicate glass and placed inside heavy stainless steel cylinders about 1.3 meters high, the World Nuclear Association said. The casks are then usually transferred to interim storage sites before a long-term underground repository is built.
Storing nuclear waste as borosilicate glass in dry-cask storage is an expensive process, but once complete, the casks are quite durable. This is a much safer storage option compared to leaving the spent fuel pellets in a swimming pool.
God already took a nuclear dump there didn't he? Who are we to argue? /troll
i've been saying this from day-1 "they're going to have to scrap the whole thing, it'll never function properly or safely ever again, and you watch, it'll be more than just encased, they're going to completely fill it with materials that slow radiation".
like ocean mud. three to one, place a bet with me, grimy mud from the bottom of the deepest oceans will be involved because it was discovered that more than any other substance including lead and ceramics, mud from the bottom of the ocean is the best barrier against radiation. the only reason they wouldn't do that would be to spare expense. i'd say ten to one but two factors against it happening are: 1. it's expensive to do 2. apparently the people involved with this plant are cheap asses who spare every possible expense whenever they can.
anyways. i thought it was horrendous that they kept trying to keep it as a viable, working power station for so long. greedy dumbfucks.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The comments here once again show that people only look for the duration of their own lifespans (or perhaps a little more) regarding the storage of nuclear waste.
Nuclear storage must be done in a place which is inherently safe. Which is safe without human intervention in the next decades/centuries/millenia.
You can't dump it somewhere and make a plan to "build a dike if need be". Who will guarantee that a dike will be built if need be in 250 years from now? Or 2500 years from now?
(read quickly because this comment will deleted soon by those in power)
Since Nuclear power is statisticstically safe, and the power plants would have shutdown in the earthquake it is very unlikely that such a disaster really happened there. All that we can see is that real news is censored, everybody in a wide area was moved away, A No fly zone was erected , even as radiation at high altitudes is completely neglect able,and independand research are kept a great distance.
All that surely must point to something more serious and it can only lead to the conclusion that the tjunamis was caused aliens landing and that they came to land close to fukushima, or that the hatching eggs of godzilla caused the tsunami and now they are researching Godzilla at that location, or whatever, this region was filled with old folklore that either came to life or is now lost for the next decades.
By making a storage there it is a sure thing that they can keep the peopla away for some more decades, while they at the same time have a good excuse to build some huge buildings that can hide the cover-up. And since no more people live there, there is no-one who can protest.
Hello nuclear engineers, can someone explain why it takes so long to shut down a nuclear power plant? I think my high school physics book was written by a pro-nuclear lobby. It assured me a nuclear plant can drop some control rods into place and stop the reaction. That may be true, but it still leaves a huge safety problem if it takes several weeks or even months for the reaction to stop.
Proposals for 'passive' cooling systems involve putting a big tank of water over the plant. If the plant shuts down you let gravity feed the cooling system. If a major incident happens, such as an earthquake or tsunami, it is likely to damage the tank and let all of the water out. What good is a passive system that is subject to the same problems as the plant itself?
Why can't we build a nuclear power plant that requires an active system to keep feeding the reaction, and make the reaction stop within minutes rather than weeks?
Is Jersey a dump for bad reality shows featuring big hipped women and douche bag men? - Gieco Spokesman
I8-D
facepalm fail. the link does not resolv.
that while common logic dictates long term storage in bedrock that is highly stable, there is no such place in Japan. Well, there is plenty of bedrock, but being situated pretty much on top of an active fault line, there is little in the way of truly stable bedrock. There is plenty of better places to build deep geological repositories, most nations don't really want to have somebody elses nuclear waste transported along their coasts to reach those places - if the were even willing to accept the waste in the first place, which is far from likely.
It may be that using a broken power plant is the best option for Japan right now. If that is the cause, I just found another reason why I'm glad I don't live in Japan (earthquakes and tsunamis are near the top on that list).
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
i don't think we should go on looking at tectonics as a stored-energy situation, based on probabilities. there is this whole entire other way of describing zones as 'active' and so on that goes against all of that, but for some reason scientists use both models. how can a serious scientist seriously look at the problem of earthquakes and volcanoes as both an assurance (where some areas are definitely more likely to be hit by these disasters than others) and also as a probability (where if one of these disasters just occured, it's less likely to happen again anytime relatively soon)? i mean, by putting a region under a category as 'active' that would by necessity mean that it's therefore that much less likely for anything to happen there, because it already happened before.
i know i sound confused but i'm not. i think the scientists who try and predict or assess these things need to pick one of two models and stick with it, and i don't think the gambling-based probability model is where it's at. i think they should just get to the nitty gritty on categorizing different regions based on what they can observe in nearby fault lines and volcanoes, and just always keep alert over those regions.
consider what all of this crap means about the american northwest, for example. there's been this spooky thing going on with yellowstone national park for some time, which should have brought to american awareness the fact that the entire area there is a huge, flat, supervolcano. that's heating up to the point where it melts peoples' shoes. the big tip-off should've been "old faithful" going nuts. "gee something's going to happen, here". man, if people thought mt. st. helens was bad, if yellowstone blew it would be like mt. st. helens was a pimple and the person's eye just fell out of their head. there would probably be many thousands dead from the explosion alone, and then millions from the after affects. life west of the grand canyon would get nasty. and yet our science hasn't progressed to the point, yet, where it's become obvious that these zones we keep picking up on, like "the ring of fire", are best considered connected for a *reason*? perhaps because they all operate on the same mechanism?
and before you go saying that yellowstone blowing is fringe or some bullshit, don't forget:
1. there are several very serious scientists trying *right now* to warn people about yellowstone
2. it's a safety issue affecting potentially millions of lives and the american economy on a level like you're seeing japan facing, now, on top of what problems we already have
3. pretending it's fringe just because you don't "get it" amounts to disinformation
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I thought about this much, and came to the conclusion lower seal levels can be obtained by clubbing most baby seals at birth, this way you won't have to dump anything, except all the data into new penguin farms, each of which can discard the rest of the signatory nuclear conventions from Japan, London or the US.
I'm running for president by the way. Vote for me and I promise I turn baby seals into fertilizer for the Humbolt Green Works.
Radioactive fish to feed the seals? http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/26/greenpeace-japan-nuclear-plant-radiation-accumulating-in-marine-life/
I have Fukushima in my pants.
Ah, I understand: You weren't able to keep your containment closed, and now your pants are contaminated. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
About 90 percent of the world's 270,000 tons in used nuclear fuel is stored at reactor sites, mostly in ponds of seven meters deep, such as those exposed at the Fukushima site when hydrogen explosions blew the roofs off reactor buildings.
- Tell me this doesn't you cringe. The only kind of nuclear power I'd ever accept is that which doesn't leave behind nuclear waste and doesn't have the potential to explode.
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Is that a baseball term?
Be careful. The safest thing is to not create nuclear waste in the first place. That is only common sense.
Although a bit terrifying to what happened in Japan, but I hope they are able to solve problems in Fukushima Nuclear Earthquake damaged by the Tsunami a few months ago. Damage caused by the world community is very disturbing, because the resulting radiation and until recently its handling is still encountering several problems. I am sure, with the ability of Japanese nuclear experts and assisted by several scientists from the United States, France, Russia and other countries, then the matter would be resolved, sooner or later. Fukushima hopefully not become a nuclear waste as feared by some people
Some of the old tsunami stones were washed away and some were not. Evidence of past seismic activity similar to this year's?
What could go wrong?
Pee Wee style.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I rather like the idea of making Fukushima a seaside holiday resort for the small contingent of disgusting slashdotters who believe that nuclear power is a viable and completely safe form of energy production.
There they can do various leisure activities and maybe take some special classes on statistics, morality and 'bad science' and how it is that corporate cocksuckers can discredit real scientists the world over.
When you can't take things 'out' of storage - it is not really storage, but the fencing up of a disaster zone.
It also suggests they have given up with removing the crap, and will concrete the mess in, and prey
leaks from the bottom don't get too much worse.
Like Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island they can't remove the contamination and bulldoze it to the ground.
The core has melted, it is a glowing radioactive disaster. Oh, tell the people it is now a storage
site - that will work.
Or maybe you're just lazy. I mean, you must know the tech that can handle this otherwise you wouldn't know it would take 100 years to achieve.
If it turns out to be as possible to handle as it is to create a FTL drive or a perpetual motion engine, then although we can specify the problem (in each case "what to do with the nuclear waste", "how to get to the nearest stars and back before your children die" and "How to get infinite energy"), the answer in at least one of them is "never". But the knowledge is the same in all three cases: we know the problem. So how do we know that "100 years" is the answer to the others?
Fukushima To Remain Nuclear Dump
Plutonium fast breeders were shown to be an expensive waste of time way back in the 1970s - the exception is if you are just starting out on atomic bomb production. That's probably before you and the weird cargo cult nuclear fanboys here were born. Everything in nuclear has moved on apart from the fanboys and the lobbyists that just want fleece the taxpayer by getting governments to buy old nuclear technology.
Dry cask storage does not involve vitrification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage
Make poison lemonade!
Hello Fukushima Dai ichi is the worst dump site possible ! First it is situated directly over many future earthquakes. It can be reached by : - tsunamis - tropical storms and hurricanes, very common in this region - erosion - geological unstability - ground water Therefore, any stored material stored will, in a few years, leak without home to the ocean. In the lifetime of waste (million years), nearly all material will leak.
aaaaaaa
Hello nuclear engineers, can someone explain why it takes so long to shut down a nuclear power plant? I think my high school physics book was written by a pro-nuclear lobby.
Nuclear power plant only takes seconds to effectively shut down. The problem is you need cooling because of decay heat of non-uranium atoms that are produced in a fission reactor. Things like Iodine-131 and Xenon-135 and lots of other stuff, including stuff that in some reactors is used to provide medical grade isotopes for cancer patients and millions of diagnostic tests. The decay of these atoms releases energy and this turns into heat.
So, what type of heat are we talking about? Things like Fukushima will have 4,000MW of thermal heat when reactor is online. That's 4,000,000,000W. When the plant is shut down, its power drops "instantly" to less than 10% or 400MW thermal. Reactor is then shut down because the Uranium reaction is stopped via control rods. But decay heat produces 400MW now. This decay heat drops down exponentially. In 1h, it is 1% of output, or "only" 40MW. For reactors like Fukushima, they need wait a few days for decay heat to slow down until they can open the reactor (under water) and refuel it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat
Basically, at this level of heat, you no longer need to have extremely capable cooling system running. A water makeup pump is enough in emergency. The problem at Fukushima is not leaks, cracks, etc. due to any earthquake. You can have cracks and leaks that damage part of the infrastructure and keep the reactor very safe - the problem was that salt water flooded all their cooling equipment, shortening it out so even water makeup pump didn't work. And they didn't have procedures to have external pump available for water makeup. By the time they brought in the pump trucks, all cooling stopped for hours. Meltdown occurred shortly after hydrogen is produced - hydrogen is produced as a reaction between the cladding of the fuel and water vapour and needs at least 600-700C to occur - it can only happen when there isn't enough water already.
Why can't we build a nuclear power plant that requires an active system to keep feeding the reaction, and make the reaction stop within minutes rather than weeks?
Sure we can - it is called fusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
But no one really invested money into this so we are stuck with simple fission nuclear pile generating heat. The reason why nuclear power is very attractive is the ease of reaction and its reliability. You just bring some materials together and do some alchemy ;)
Anyway, fusion is the holy grail of next energy source after fission. It is clean (no heavy isotopes). The problem that are still be to be worked out at ITER are materials - material needs to be developed that is as strong as steel but doesn't get screwed up by neutrons. Fast-track route for ITER was not chosen therefore ITER will not result in a mass produced, power producing reactor until at least 2050. Until then, the only power reactors that will be built, will be Uranium and for India, maybe Thorium.
Uranium/thorium/etc. fission produces daughter elements that are radioactive, and that radiation turns to heat. It is basic physics. It can't be done any differently. The question is like asking why we can't make coal/gas/oil that doesn't produce exhaust gases like CO2. Fusion doesn't have this problem because it doesn't use heavy elements.
PS. Our planet is thought to be internally heated by Uranium and there are examples of natural reactors near surface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
basically, humans didn't invent nuclear fission. We are basically using it, just like we are using other energy sourc
the storage tank for the water leaking from two reactors with holes in containment, also has a leak. more of a slow distribution site than a nuclear waste storage site, haha.
Maybe they could call it population control. Storing a hazardous waste product in an areas proven to be vulnerable to tidal waves and severe earthquakes sounds like one way to kill of millions of citizens of their nation. If this were any more twisted I would think the Tea Party has a branch in Japan.
for them to admit that there's no hope in hell of cleaning up the radioactive mess. Way to save face Tepco
Actually, nuclear power increases over all emissions owing to its high opportunity cost
Like solar, and it's 10+ year cost to recoup energy used in its production???
Your propaganda is ridicules. What next? You are gong to rail against hydroelectric because it uses a lot more concrete and thus has even higher "opportunity cost" than nuclear??
Go back to your cave. Jeez.
Did the anonymous whiner read the linked study?
A nuclear criticity is inherenly unstable. Also "shutting down" works only in ideal conditions. When the fuel is liquid, it accumulates, and there is no easy way to stop that uncontrolled criticity. Also, every piece of material present around is made radioactive by induced radioactivity and contamination. So scrapping a plant is impossible (you can, at most, store the plant in pieces elsewhere, as very dangerous junk.) All this waste will leak, no matter what is done against. All containment materials degrade after decades. So there is, and there will be more and more consumed land. http://www.elenafilatova.com/index.html
aaaaaaa
Goddam seals ruin everything!
If we used thorium reactors we wouldn't need large, dirty dumps.
There was a huge spike in radioactivity at reactor #1 from May 22 to 25. I think the readings are from the drywell. http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/?n=1
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Well, "the industry" told us two days after the disaster that the fuel rods were intact and the containment was intact.
Then last week, "the industry" told us last week that the opposite was true.
The last director of TEPCO replaced the previous one when the previous one was caught lying and covering up problems.
"the industry" has a long history of covering up problems. Read "We Almost Lost Detroit" for an unvarnished view of "the industry"
Pardon me if I don't trust "the industry"...
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Thanks. But there is only one accepted submission listed for you: http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/30/1211240/New-Ebola-Drug-100-Effective-In-Monkeys which does not seem all that retarded. It does have only 129 comments so it might be less interesting than the present article which happens to be news you can use. You know, stuff that matters, not FUD.
It's not like anything could go wrong at this particular dump. A well chosen spot
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.