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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."
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Will there be a semi-monastic order of warriors pledged to man it and protect the realms of men?
I don't understand why so many nations are trying to reach a consensus on military action in Syria over a chemical weapon attack that may or may not have been done by the regime there but nobody has suggested multi-national cooperation to take over the mess in Fukushima. Japan has failed miserably at dealing with this crisis and continues to do so. It's time to tell them to get the fuck out of the way and bring world-wide resources to bear on this. The UN should be bringing countries together to solve problems like this.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Turn in your geek card.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
-40 Celsius IS equal to -40 Fahrenheit.
We don't need no radiation
We don't need no Tepcontrol
No dark sarcasm in the controlroom
Tepco leave them rods alone
Hey! Tepco! leave the rods alone!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The prohibition on armed forces is written into Article 9 the Japanese Constitution of 1947, which states that Japan forever swears off war as a mechanism of foreign policy to resolve disputes. This was an article that was pressed in in order to ensure that Japan could never rise up militarily again - the Pacific campaign was incredibly brutal, and the Americans didn't see the worst of it (the Chinese and Koreans were treated worse). To this day China and both Korea's are still angry with Japan for what they perceive as a failure to sufficiently apologize for what the Japanese did earlier this century, and they would massively oppose any move by Japan towards returning to that state (i.e., getting a real military instead of the Self-Defense Forces they currently have).
Plus, the majority of the Japanese population supports Article 9 - the long-term suffering of the Japanese population via Allied air raids (read about the Tokyo firebombings that killed more people directly than the A-bomb attacks) punctuated by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has provided an inherent anti-war sentiment in subsequent generations of Japanese people.
In short, the US cannot decide for Japan whether to allow them to have an actual military - the US does not have the legal power to do so, and no one involved wants to eliminate this situation. (copy pasted from Yahoo)
The long;
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/89apr/defend.htm
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Quote Lex Luthor: WRONG!!!
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=-40C+in+Farenheit
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They both leak: the integrity of the reactor vessel is Not So Good these days; but it's still overheating so they are pumping water in and pumping whatever doesn't leak into the ground into the holding tanks, which are also leaking.
The tanks are more of a tragifarce, since they've got that 'You run nuclear fucking reactors and you weren't able to build some water storage tanks that don't leak within an alarmingly short time after construction???' thing going on, and the radiation levels of the leaking material are high enough that just sending in the welders isn't necessarily doable.
The reactor leakage is the more serious problem; because those are hot enough, thermally and in the radiation sense, that just fixing the leaks is not really on the table; but not pumping substantial amounts of water, which will promptly be contaminated and partially escape, isn't really optional.
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
Nuclear accidents have not been proven to have killed a single person.
Not a single person. Not a one? I mean, if you had led with "the numbers are vastly inflated," and then provided a supporting link debunking the inflated estimated cancer statistics, you would have sounded reasonable -- though a bit biased in being willing to accept similar loose causation for deaths from coal. Instead, you have revealed yourself as someone who is willing to disregard facts that are inconvenient to your worldview, regardless of how ridiculous the end result may seem.
At least 40 staff members and rescue workers died directly as a result of Chernobyl. 4 died in a tragic helicopter crash attempting to extinguish the fire, but the vast majority died with in a few days or months from acute radiation poisoning. That's just the people on site during the disaster and its aftermath. It doesn't count the 9 children who died of thyroid cancer or the IAEA's estimate of 4000 additional cancer deaths out of 600,000 exposed.
That also doesn't count the Soviet K-431, K-27, and K-19 nuclear submarine reactor incidents (28 acute radiation fatalities and many more radiation injuries between them) or the two radiation deaths in Tokimura in 1999. It also doesn't count non-radiation deaths like the Mihama steam pipe explosion that kill 4 workers in 2004 or the 3 killed by the SL-1 reactor explosion. It doesn't count cancer deaths from those and more incidents such as the Windscale fire or those caused by the Rocky Flats Plant (which, admittedly, was used to create bomb materials and not simply civilian power generation).
One can argue about whether coal is more dangerous in the long-run than nuclear (which I think is true), but one shouldn't do so by making up nonsense about nuclear accidents never once causing harm.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
Actually, a frozen region in the soil is a good container, because water that starts to
leak through... freezes solid and plugs the leak.
Frost heave is caused by thermal gradient, and
transports water to the coldest spot (which is
the container wall, safely underground) then freezes it.
So, no problem there!