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Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years
mdsolar writes "'A U.N. nuclear watchdog team said Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to decommission the Fukushima power plant and urged Tepco to improve stability at the facility. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency team, Juan Carlos Lentijo, said Monday that damage at the nuclear plant is so complex that it is impossible to predict how long the cleanup may last.' Meanwhile, Gregory B. Jaczko, former Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that all 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology."
Hideki!
Why didn't he do anything when he had the chance?
Land uninhabitable for generations, 40+ years cleanup, trillions in compensation - yeah, I'd say it all went fairly well!
If this is honest and true permits should be issued post haste.
One caution.... newer is not better as Apple Map users found.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Is nuclear power really more cost effective per megawatt if you incluse the cost of long term storage and clean up after a disaster? Those numbers never make it into the calculations because they are inevitably paid by taxpayers.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Moving away from the first & second generation light water reactor designs is definitely something we should be doing, but simply going to smaller plants is a dubious plan.
From TFA:
> Dr. Jaczko cited a well-known characteristic of nuclear reactor fuel to continue to generate copious amounts of heat after a chain reaction is shut down. That “decay heat” is what led to the Fukushima meltdowns. The solution, he said, was probably smaller reactors in which the heat could not push the temperature to the fuel’s melting point.
Actually innovating, bringing something like the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor to reality, is more along the lines of what we should be doing.
Also, it was the tsunami that actually caused the meltdowns. Fukushima had appropriate backups for cooling the reactor, and were well under way when the reactors were shut down after the quake, they just didn't design for the eventually of a tsunami to come and categorically knock them all out.
$0.02
..... which are inherently much less risky, but are also less efficient.
Sadly, I don't think this would ever happen, mostly because of some kind of American inferiority complex.
It would be good if other areas of industry had the strong safety regulation that nuclear has. for example fertiliser plants.
Can't they just encase the plant in concrete/dirt and say fuk it? Seem to remember reading about Chernobyl being dealt with in similarly crude but effective fashion. Sure it would cost a lot to heap up that much rubble but hey, beats sitting on the thing for decades on end attempting to carefully spoon out all the nasties.
Any large industrial accident can take decades to clean up. More than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez accident, there are still lingering effects. There are many Superfund toxic waste sites that have been on the Superfund list for 30 years (the list was started 30 years ago or many would have listed longer)
Lies! It's clean, I tell you, it's clean! Get it through your thick stone cranium: Nuclear power is the cleanest of them all!
Sheesh...
all 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology. But that costs money, and we're not going to spend it.
So fuck you future people. Your problem. Sucks to be you.
To be fair, the problem is not just money, but also political. Many people want no new reactors, even if a new reactor will replace one of an older, less safe design.
Don't tell the ecodweebs that solar isn't clean, and their new Prius has done far more damage to the environment than the guy driving around a '98 Ford.
To be fair, the problem is not just money, but also political. Many people want no new reactors, even if a new reactor will replace one of an older, less safe design.
To be fair, the decision to decommission an existing reactor, and the decision to build a new one, are two independent decisions. If a reactor is unsafe, or uneconomical, or its license cannot be renewed, then it should be replaced, regardless of what technology is used to replace it. Decommissioning of old nukes is not being held up because new nukes are not being approved.
1. Send the best minds in Japan to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Study the tools and methodologies used. Interview all the engineers participating in the cleanup effort. Learn absolutely everything you can about waste recovery techniques, environmental stewardship, and safety protocols.
2. Do exactly the opposite.
The problem is that there were supposed to be other types of reactors that would "burn" the waste. That would generate even more power while getting rid of the "spent" fuel. Problem is those reactors never got approved due to proliferation risk. But of course they keep renewing licenses for the existing ones to create more waste and IIRC even allowing some more to be built.
I'm not sure why this doesn't come up when they talk about where to bury the waste - building a reactor to make use of it IS an option. Of course the longer we wait, the more spent fuel will be contained in giant blocks of cement that can't be used as fuel either.
One properly placed nuclear "test" could blow the entire Fuck-U-Shima plant into the ocean. Question is if that would be safer than trying to deal with it on land ;-) For me it's an honest question even though it sounds absurd.
we got 40 degree days many time and im north of one of the reactors by 50 miles or so....
so dont tell us all that bs or we'd all be smokin about now
LFTR will solve these problems -- but YOUR help is needed
Imagine a nuclear reactor so safe you can walk away from it or shut its internal power and it will mechanically drain its operating fluid into a vessel where it will just sit there.
Imagine that this process will be scalable from local megawatts to nation-wide terawatts by a simple replication of standard industrial components, with no increase in risk or change in the overall safety factor --- because it is not just an 'improvement' over present plants, risk of explosion or radiation leakage into the atmosphere is nil. Light and heavy water reactors operate at high pressure. This one doesn't.
Imagine that it has no need to be near a body of coolant water at all. No need to site it near a lake or stream or coastline. Imagine that it can (slowly, productively) help to turn all that spent fuel presently at nuclear plants into electricity. All of it.
Imagine that it can be manufactured here in the USA. Now (my fellow Americans) imagine that it should and must be manufactured in the USA, soon, to make us completely self-sufficient for grid energy, power a new era of electric transportation. And because I would (respectfully) prefer this technology we have conceived developed here --- rather than purchase it from the Chinese.
LFTR is the golden ticket. Perhaps the thing that could transform humanity.
But your help is needed... why?
Because for one reason or another, all of the people you'd "expect" to jump on this idea are not doing so. And more tragic still, most of us are merely "expecting" to hear more about it some day. Without your help, that day may never arrive.
One hundred years ago a great many people did not have running water, access to reliable transportation or grid electricity. Even though news travelled slowly on paper, people took an active interest in the science, process and product of infrastructure building.
Today that basic aging infrastructure is in place, we enjoy our electronic gadgets, expect electricity to arrive, wait for good things to happen. We expect our politicians to be generally informed about emerging technologies (they aren't, really) and we expect smart money to go after smart ideas in the marketplace (it does not, always).
You cannot expect the people who have invested so much in water cooled nuclear reactors to drop everything and work up completely new designs. They're not doing it! With LFTR they cannot sell their solid-fuel solutions. Which is not to say that they are incapable of adapting. But why should they? So long as LFTR is not a household word their mindset need not change.
You cannot expect environmentally conscious people who are (rightfully!) afraid of Chernobyl happening in their backyard to understand how different LFTR is at first. They must be pointed in the right direction, encouraged to research it on their own.
You cannot expect big philanthropist money to deliver miracles either in any reasonable time frame. Bill Gates is backing Travelling Wave Reactors, a type of Integral Fast Reactor that is cooled by (dangerous!) liquid sodium. It is the right idea (nuclear) wrong horse (approach) but he just does not know it yet.
But the biggest issue here is the urgency with which this idea needs to be pursued. These things need to be funded --- through your active interest and by mentioning it to at least two other people. At least ten thousand people from all walks of life (such as you) need to devote a little bit of time to get up to speed on this technology.
I nominate you! I am no real expert on the subject, I've only recently begun to research LFTR and in the material available on the net I see the idea proposed directly and succinctly five years ago, but so little has happened since then... well, it's shameful. I used to assume that good things just happen. They don't. A real eye opener.
So I am reaching out to you. It begins right here: Thorium Remix 2011
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They should have rushed for the Pyramid wonder to improve the speed of their workers.
| will mechanically drain its operating fluid into a vessel where it will just sit there.
Until the rain and floods come in after the accident in which case you have steam explosions and radioactive waste in a highly water-soluble liquid combing to make all sorts of fun.
A LFTR is a chemical reprocessing plant with astonishingly racdioactive liquid (since it just came out of the fission core) circulating at hundreds of degrees with caustic chemical properties. There will be leaks. There will be breaches. Every drop is a huge problem. There will be----well anything that can go wrong in a hot chemical plant---now add in the fact that humans even in suits can't go in there for decades if something is wrong.
Nuclear reprocessing plants are the nastiest ones, because of the combination of liquids and radiaoactivity. I do not trust a utility with such an installation, and only want a tiny number of them, not every power plant to be one.
| will mechanically drain its operating fluid into a vessel where it will just sit there.
Until the rain and floods come in after the accident in which case you have steam explosions and radioactive waste in a highly water-soluble liquid combing to make all sorts of fun.
The salts are not water soluble, and have no violent reactions with either air or water. Contrary to your claims of "all sorts of fun", ORNL even dumped some in a pool at one point, and it did little more than create some steam. Fluoride salts are among the most chemically stable substances on earth, and both the fissile and fission products remain safely dissolved in just about any imaginable circumstances. Even so, keeping water out is not an issue, as there is no need to site the plants anywhere near water.
A LFTR is a chemical reprocessing plant with astonishingly racdioactive liquid (since it just came out of the fission core) circulating at hundreds of degrees with caustic chemical properties. There will be leaks. There will be breaches. Every drop is a huge problem. There will be----well anything that can go wrong in a hot chemical plant---now add in the fact that humans even in suits can't go in there for decades if something is wrong.
The sort of reprocessing done for a LFTR is very different and far simpler than conventional nuclear reprocessing, and the rates for continuous processing are also very modest. The entire reprocessing system will fit along with the core in a small hot cell. The most dangerous volatile fission products are continuously off-gassed, and do not build up as in solid fuels. Thus even in the event of an accident, there is a very small amount of residual radioactivity, and still no driving force to push it into the environment.
Nuclear reprocessing plants are the nastiest ones, because of the combination of liquids and radiaoactivity. I do not trust a utility with such an installation, and only want a tiny number of them, not every power plant to be one.
If the continuous processing bothers you, there are variations of molten salt reactors like the DMSR that leave all of the fission products dissolved in the salts, and only require processing every 10-30 years. By the tone of your post though, it sounds like you are only interested in fear mongering, and not rational discussion.
Until the rain and floods come in after the accident in which case you have steam explosions and radioactive waste in a highly water-soluble liquid combing to make all sorts of fun.
I cannot much that isn't covered in Kaitiff's reply to your concern last December --- aside from pointing out we're talking about fluoride not sodium salts.
Even the most complicated designs for LFTR are simple at the bottom. Drains in the containment floor after a pipe rupture --- or at shutdown through a melted freeze plug, the liquid comes to rest in a vessel where it is already sub-critical.
Yes it's temperature-hot, for awhile. While the salts are not chemically reactive with water (or air), as long as they are hot water will flash to steam. This is days, perhaps.
The steam risk for an active or recently-dumped reactor would be related to how much water intrudes.
This industrial process like many must be sensibly contained and kept away from water. Fukushima had generators in a basement without water-tight doors. A superior level of engineering is called for. Shouldn't be too hard.
Water solubility is another matter, you're right. Actual residual waste from normal LFTR operation is extremely small in volume compared to waste from water reactors, and should be vitrified into glass for storage. Here is another area where LFTR shines, for it would take ~300 years to decay to the harmless level of natural uranium. Small volumes of 300-year waste in glass is a can-do solution..
But would the temperature-cold solidified salts abandoned in a concrete and steel LFTR drain tank pose a threat to the water table, soil?
Eventually, slightly. Does that seem like an uncomfortable answer?
Often discussions of nuclear accidents take on some "Life After People" flavor, where the person posing the challenge to waste (or disaster!) management seems to get free license to presume no attempt at cleanup or rescue.
I challenge that license. A position of zero tolerance for risk, especially for existential issues such as energy, is a luxury we can no longer afford. Especially when it comes to the due diligence we should bring to bear to assess new technology. I hope you can agree with that, because we are all so dependent on this modern way of life. It has its good moments.
At Chernobyl radioactive graphite presented a horrible challenge, to be near certain places is deadly.
Radioactivity from fissile elements in LFTR materials will be uniform (completely mixed as liquids are) and relatively low dose, predictable in characteristic and risk. There will be no danger of 'hot pockets' and unknowns as those which plague Chernobyl and Pripyat today.
Because it's just glop in a large bucket. It will stay in the bucket, and regardless of the nature of the mishap the glop will not explode all over the biosphere or fission forever. It will wait patiently until people clean it up and recycle the useable salts into other reactors.
This is "Life With People". We should always keep our thoughts centered on that because life is fun and people are cool.
Check out this documentary on George Westinghouse to glimpse what it was like when we were building infrastructure. Then please help give Thorium the chance it deserves.
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"public-to-forget-about-it-within-40-months"
40 months? How about 40 weeks. When is the last time you heard anything of substance about Fukushima?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
And Fujushima is currently producing ZERO power. How will we manage to do less than that???
Renewables get about 40%.
Real numbers.
Nukes are out 40% of the time. Fukushima, Sellafield and Chernobyl indicate your "almost all year long" is bullshit. But you're actually nearly 40% off in your calculation.
Greens want to move to more modern technology. Nuke nuts want to stick with a very inefficient method to boil water. The solid state tech in solar panels is much newer and much more elegant that trying to hold a bunch of poisonous fuel right on the edge of disaster, fuel that is so fragile that the temperature has to be kept low to avoid damage and the thermodynamic efficiency is much lower than for coal or gas plants. No, it is the nuke nuts who want to impede progress.
At the current accident rate, in sixty years there will be enough area in permanent exclusion zones that all world nuclear power could be replaced using solar power on that area alone. Seems like a better use of land would be to avoid the future accidents and replace nuclear power now. It would be cheaper. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly
It wasn't due to proliferation risk, it was cost. All the LSFR reactors ever built were research testbeds and experienced major problems. None ever recycled fuel successfully in the way that would be needed for them to be commercially viable.
The cost of development would be huge and the potential risks to the ROI are worrying to investors. It would make sense for the government to try to build one, if it were able to see beyond the next election or two and didn't have better options like renewables and fusion to throw money at.
These things are just not commercially viable I'm afraid.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Remember that they kill off whistle-blowers in the nuclear industry. Just mention the name Silkwood and chuckle and no one is going to say anything. The example of Tommy Hook helps with the intimidation.
If you are interested in costs, Amory Lovins' book "Reinventing Fire" goes into great detail. http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire Large scale renewables with new transmission turns out to be the cheapest approach. He still prefers smaller scale methods owing to their robustness to large scale disruption. Nuclear is the most expensive option.
The brute force approach used by the russians was only a short term solution.
Now they are looking at a way to build an even larger containment that would not only stop the leaking hastily build containment but also enable to clean the site bit by bit.
It's either that or keep on building new containment for the next few decades...
I agree with your stance on everything except this point: A position of zero tolerance for risk, especially for existential issues such as energy, is a luxury we can no longer afford.
A position of zero tolerance for risk, especially for existential issues such as energy, is a fallacy, an impossibility, and has never existed and is not obtainable.
FTFY
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Another FUD article by the mdsolar troll. He would rather have us go back to the stone age than have electricity.
Hey Soulskill, when will you grow up and recognize the troll posters rampant on this site?
And by the way, 40 years is nothing in the nuclear industry. The "clean-up" period for a typical reactor is something like 50 or 100 years. They leave the core in place to "cool off" before they remove it. And no, mdsolar, leaving a core in place for years will not cause another Fukushima or Nagasaki. Yeah, buddy!
So you bought some real-estate real cheap there for your retirement?
That would make a lot more sense if:
1. There was actually land available for sale 'cheap' - the Ukraine government has basically nationalized all of it and turned it into a state park.
2. It was somewhere I'd otherwise want to go. Not speaking Ukrainian or even Russian, the language barrier is a bigger obstacle than the price
Same holds true for Japan, really.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm not sure why this doesn't come up when they talk about where to bury the waste - building a reactor to make use of it IS an option.
Follow the money. Who would profit if we did build such reactors? Who is profiting from the current situation? Producers of nuclear fuel profit, who else?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
.
Ultimately, renewables will have to cut it. Or what do you think we will do when the non-renewables run out? And they will run out, that's why they are called non-renewables.
We have reserves for thousands of years of economic nuclear power, and we haven't even explored all that much for it. The problem I have is that right now Natural Gas and even COAL is expanding faster in the USA than renewables are, as an absolute metric.
I'll happily accept nuclear power as a stopgap the moment someone figures a way to stop criminally reckless and irresponsible disregard of safety. Same goes for offshore oil drilling.
Oddly enough, the USA and France seem to be doing pretty good in this regard. I remember hearing reports that one of the critical safety updates(a hydrogen burn-off system), was declined by the Fukushima authorities, which would have prevented the explosions. It was uniformly installed in stateside plants over 30 years ago.
What I'd like to see is a new generation of nuclear plants here in the states - shut down the nastiest coal plants and the oldest, least safe nuclear plants.
One thing that I like to point out was that of the 3 nuclear plants to suffer a major disaster, Fukushima was actually the oldest.
It's too easy to turn power plants into bomb factories. How else can you explain the preference for uranium and plutonium reactors, over thorium? I'd rather see the nation awash in small arms easily obtained by mentally disturbed people, than see idiot politicians and gung ho generals with easy access to nuclear bombs.
Uh... Especially when you're looking at countries like the USA, we're already 'awash' in nuclear weapons, which makes the 'easy access to nuclear bombs' already a given. We ended up finding easier ways to make nuclear weapons than scavanging nuclear plants for the materials. Still, at that point the Uranium chain was better known and had fewer problems. I'd LOVE to see a serious attempt to build a power generating liquid thorium plant here in the states, even as I'd also like to see solar panels on all roofs in the south... We still need a variety of power sources.
I don't read AC A human right
Fusion reactors don't exist and renewables are so absurdly expensive that relying on them would collapse what's left of the economy. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are running out and fission is scary.
We might have to accept that the time of cheap energy and with it the high point of human civilization is past, in which case the relevant questions are: how orderly will the transition back to pre-industrial agrarian poverty be? Can we keep relatively peaceful nation-states intact in the face of increasingly costly communication and transportation? How will we re-educate the vast majority of population who's skills are completely useless in a primitive society? And how will we deal with the inevitable die-off as agricultural output plummets?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/14/1858811/is-70-renewable-power-possible-portugal-just-did-it-for-3-months/ Clueless you seem.
For your immediate attention.....
/o-_] .-x=-.www:::Mod PARENT uP:::www.-=x-. [_-o\
.....noitnetta etaidemmi ruoy roF
renewables are so absurdly expensive that relying on them would collapse what's left of the economy
[citation needed]
We knew in the 1970s that solar panels would repay the energy cost of their production well within their lifetimes; back then it was seven years, for polycrystalline panels. Today it's three years, for thin-film. What's next? Wind keeps getting better as well.
Sunny Germany seems to be able to produce its power via Solar. Surely we can manage it here in the USA, especially in rainy states like California.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Germany is fortunate enough to have neighbors that have (so far) been capable of sinking its excess renewable power. They have been causing so much trouble for grid stability that it wouldn't be surprising if they were disconnected all together at some point. What is certain, is that their entire renewable scheme would fail if they were isolated.
Oh, and they are burning more coal now, so it is a little early to celebrate. With no nuclear, there is no path to the elimination of fossil fuel use in Germany, outside of exhaustion of the resource.
Decommissioning of old nukes is not being held up because new nukes are not being approved.
I think we should start a campaign to replace the word "greenie" with "wanker." Yes, it already has a meaning, but it would be more appropriate.
Just what we want to look forward to, fluorine to melt your bones before the radiation could damage them.
No radiation problem at all.
--
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Suppose a windmill lasts, on average, 20 years before needing replacement. That means you need to replace 1/20th of them every year just to keep the production capacity where it is. This means a huge, permanent money sink. And the same goes for solar panels too, of course.
The problem is that renewables are quite dispersed, so you need lots and lots and lots of infrastructure to gather them, which needs lots and lots and lots of maintenance. Also, to actually perform this maintenance you need roads (which also need to be maintained) and you also need to transmit the power somehow.
But at a cost.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Sorry for the late response. I didn't mean LSFR. Breeder reactors work. France uses them to recycle spent fuel. The official reason not to use them in the US is proliferation risk. It's not a technical problem, and the cost of "disposal" this way should be passed on the plants generating the waste. Simple as that.