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Fuel Rod Removal Operation Begins At Tsunami-hit Fukushima
rtoz writes "TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has started removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building of Tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station in Japan. The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant's No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask. This step is an early milestone in decommissioning the facility amid doubts about whether the rods had been damaged and posed a radiation risk. 22 unused fuels will be moved to the cask a task which is planned to be completed by November 19. After being filled with fuel, the cask will be closed with a lid, and following decontamination, will be taken down to ground level and transported to the common spent fuel pool on a trailer. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing the fuel into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. The entire removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014."
Good. It's about time to get those fuel rods out of there.
The US needs Yucca Mountain. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better to have fuel rods inside a mountain than at reactor sites. After all, Yucca Mountain is in an area so isolated that it used to be used for above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.
They keep saying "first we'll do this and then we'll do that" with the spent fuel.
But the one question no one seems able to answer is what you ultimately will do with all that toxic spent fuel. Simply speaking there is no answer, no plan for what to do with nuclear waste from any plant damaged or otherwise.
I realize this is hindsight but maybe the Ring of Fire isn't the best place to build nuclear reactors? Not that the Japanese have much option there if they want nuclear power.
They are just starting to move fuel assemblies which where removed from their reactors prior to the earthquake. Where it will be a good thing to get these things out of the leaky cooling pools the real work has still not started. It's not really going to be possible to start working on the reactors which melted down for a few more years. Even then, it won't be possible for humans to approach so the work will require invention of remotely operated tools that can deal with the unique situation, and tasks necessary to clean up this mess.
It took 14 years to decommission Three Mile Island after the accident there which was exceedingly less complicated because the containment structures where not blown open and there was only one reactor involved. We are decades away from being done here with multiple reactors at least partially melted down, sea water being used for coolant and the extensive damage to the containment structures.
This is a great start, but until they get all of the high level material into an inherently stable condition and/or offsite we won't be able to breath easy. Keep it going TEPCO."
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955, it's a little hard to come by."
- Doc Brown
Sorry, that should be 1532, the numbers have changed since they first announced they were doing this. I guess they miscounted initially.
Or maybe they just broke a few, and now they count them as two. By the time they're done, they'll claim to have removed 1752.8 fuel rods.
I didn't see the expected statement that these idiots will parade the hot rods through downtown Tokyo to reassure everybody they have the situation well under control.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Reagan reversed the ban Carter imposed on commercial reprocessing of spent fuel in the US in the early 80s. Nobody has funded a reprocessing operation (other than the lines used to produce weapons-grade materials from military breeder reactors) in the US for various reasons; raw uranium is cheap, nobody wants to use MOX fuel for cost and operating licence reasons and the US government is in charge of making spent fuel go away for which the generating companies pay a levy, currently over $30 billion dollars over the past few decades (it's what paid for Yucca Mountain).
From that which you linked:
Sounds like no-one's interested because it's prohibitively expensive even with big subsidies from the Gov't.
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Reprocessing and MOX manufacture is expensive, a lot pricier than using cheap freshly-mined uranium ore in a once-through operation. The big win with reprocessing is that it vastly reduces the mass and volume of dangerous waste needing dealt with, even after vitrification and encapsulation. That makes final disposal a lot cheaper and simpler as well as reducing proliferation worries since none of the resulting waste is at all suitable for nuclear weapons development.
Hang on a moment, unused rods are non-radiating. They're *ready* to start working, but they won't start radiating until they're brought together in a core. That's called "criticality", or "going critical", which is a self-sustaining reaction.
Prior to core insertion, unused rods are handled in open air, without any shielding, and can even be touched without a problem. You definitely don't want to bring them close to another fuel bundle, nor do you want them anywhere near a neutron reflector.
That would be a Bad Thing.
The only way this would be a threat, is if any of the debris in the storage pool damages the fuel bundles. Such as bending them and bringing the rods within criticality range of each other. Or if some stray metal got down inside the storage slots, acting as a neutron reflector and creating a hot-spot.
Outside of that, unless I'm wrong about unused fuel not being hot, then this is just a scare story.
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