Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Ice Wall To Stop Reactor Leaks
minstrelmike writes "Japan is planning to install a two-mile, subterranean ice wall around the Fukushima nuclear plant. 'The ice wall would freeze the ground to a depth of up to 30 meters (100 feet) through a system of pipes carrying a coolant as cold as minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit). That would block contaminated water from escaping from the facility's immediate surroundings, as well as keep underground water from entering the reactor and turbine buildings, where much of the radioactive water has collected.' The technology they're using has not been used to that extent before, nor for more than a couple years. An underground water expert said, 'the frozen wall won't be ready for another two years, which means contaminated water would continue to leak out.' But at least they have a $470 million plan ready to present to the Olympic committee choosing between Madrid, Istanbul or Tokyo."
There's about fifty million tonnes of radioactive potassium (K-40) in the world's oceans, all natural as you can get with a half-life of ONE BILLION years!!! so it will be a persistent hazard to health until the Sun enters its red giant phase. It's the reason seawater is highly radioactive and why seafood sets off scintillometers and radiation meters (counts of about 100-150 Bq/kg typically). It also makes detecting fission isotope contamination from Fukushima and the US thermonuclear tests in the Pacific kinda tricky when the samples taken close to Fukushima read 0.05 Bq/litre from cesium-134 and cesium-137 and the meters are pegging out from the 10Bq/l emissions due to the presence of K-40. The only way to accurately measure it is to record the spectrum of the particles and gamma radiation emitted from a smaple over a period of a few weeks since the energies of the radiation due to the fission products is different to the natural K-40 background of the seawater samples.
50 million tonnes of K-40 versus a kilogramme or two of the cesium isotopes from the Fukushima reactors, which one concerns you more? Let me guess...
In Boston, for parts of the Big Dig in the Back Bay area, this was how the tunneling was done. The ground there is far too soupy (that's a technical term used by geologists) to tunnel through effectively. They ran water with an antifreeze agent (just salt I think) through the pipes and kept it chilled below the freezing point of regular water. Over time it froze the ground in the whole area so they could tunnel in it and reinforce the tunnel before finally allowing the ground to thaw. It seems to have worked just fine for Boston.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Agree that the number is not zero. I was only objecting to the 985,000 number. I know WHO's estimates a number in the low thousands, like 4,000 or so, and that I can believe and accept. I remember seeing a Ted talk where someone added the death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the nuclear power deaths total because it was almost undistinguishable from zero. It really grinds my gears when people take advantage of people's ignorance to peddles lies masquerading as scientific facts.
I think there is an argument to be had about nuclear power based on facts, and I can accept that people may come to a conclusion that is different from mine.