Sea Water Could Cause Uranium Pollution From Nuclear Fuel Rods

New submitter Required Snark writes "UC Davis researchers have found a mechanism where the sodium in sea water can cause uranium nano-particles to be released from nuclear reactor fuel rods. Normally the uranium oxide compounds composing the rods are very resistant to leaching into water. This could have serious consequences for the Fukushima disaster, since sea water was used for emergency cooling."

Comments

From the link.

[sjwt]

"Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is “pretty insoluble” in water, Navrotsky said, unless the uranium is oxidized to uranium-VI — a process that can be facilitated when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent"

So the real issue is when you first use a supply of emergency bleach to hold out until your supply of emergency seawater arrives, or god forbid you forget to tell the overnight cleaning crew not to open up the reactor and give a good bleaching?

Which pollutes what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sea Water Could Cause Uranium Pollution" sounds like the opposite of "Uranium Could Cause Sea Water Pollution". Bad, bad sea water, polluting our uranium!