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How To Take Apart Fukushima's 3 Melted-Down Reactors

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-in-case-you're-in-the-neighborhood-with-some-free-time dept.

the_newsbeagle writes "In Japan, workers have spent nearly three years on the clean-up and decommissioning of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. They only have 37 years to go. Taking apart the plant's three melted-down reactors is expected to take 40 years and cost $15 billion. The plant's owner, TEPCO, admits that its engineers don't yet know how they'll pull off this monumental task. An in-depth examination of the decommissioning process explains the challenges, such as working amid the radioactive rubble, stopping up the leaks that spill radioactive water throughout the site, and handling the blobs of melted nuclear fuel. Many of the tasks will be accomplished by newly invented robots that can go where humans fear to tread."

11 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Just blow it up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I figure a small 50-20 kiloton atomic bomb should do the trick...

  2. Wait for better robots by hawguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since they have a 40 year timeframe, they should just keep it contained for another decade or two and wait for superior robots to take over the task rather than relying on today's limited robots.

    1. Re:Wait for better robots by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Keep it contained" is a little optimistic. There is radioactive tea draining from the site to the sea. They are trying to use robots to install an ice dam in the beach to stop that, but have yet to begin installing it. It is unknown if it will actually work. They estimate they are losing 300 tons of fluid per day, of unknown composition but most certainly very radioactive. That is not "contained".

      --
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    2. Re:Wait for better robots by preaction · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They're inventing and improving the robots as they clean up the site. "Necessity is the mother of invention" and all that. Without a site to clean up, there's no way to build better robots to clean up nuclear sites.

    3. Re:Wait for better robots by nojayuk · · Score: 3, Informative

      I got tired of reading godlikeproductions and globalresearch and enenews and the other bullshit sites posting about the Fukushima disaster because they were garbage sources full of fairy tales, improbable conspiracies and Hollywood disaster movie physics. I've not read the item you posted but the link text claims says fuel pellets were blasted thirty kilometres by the force of the explosions. Think about that for a moment, the physics of it, launching ANYTHING that sort of distance requires precision engineering as in large artillery pieces or an explosion that would have levelled the entire site and for kilometres around it too. No giant explosion, site not levelled, no artillery in evidence, bullshit story.

    4. Re:Wait for better robots by nojayuk · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just keeping track of the circular loops of fairy stories, fantasy physics, delusions and "make shit up" that passes for citizen science and knowledgeable discourse on the subject of the radiation releases from Fukushima would be a full-time job and it wouldn't do any good anyway as the stories are self-reinforcing, passed from blog to blog and repeated in the comments with addenda and shifting decimal points among the Dark Conspiracy theories.

      At least when you see enenews or globalresearch in the link or you find Arne Gunderson or Chris Busby headlining the DOOM! DOOM! and THRICE DOOM! story the link ends up at you know you've reached the bullshit zero energy point and you can stop there but the perpetual notion machine is still churning away in the background -- did you know that if a fuel rod is dropped while being moved from the SFP in reactor 4 it will trigger a flash-fission event resulting in a flux of neutrons so intense it will make the reactors in the Daini plant ten kilometres south of Fukushima Daiichi explode? I read that on the globalresearch website a few days ago, written by a Japanese guy who's been going into the exclusion zone to offer herbal therapy to folks living there, so it must be true /snark.

      As for U and Pu being detected in soil samples at Fukushima, uranium is quite a common constituent of soil. The samples tested don't show any enrichment from natural levels whereas pollution due to fuel pellets would be at least 2% U-235 and maybe more. As for plutonium there's about the same amount of Pu-239 and Pu-240 as was present before the reactors were built courtesy of Fat Man, Castle Bravo and its sisters (amounting to about 150 megatonnes of Instant Sunshine in the Pacific) and even the Tsarbomba made its presence felt in the isotopic record. Some more was added in 1986 when Chernobyl let rip and its core burned to atmosphere. As long as the TEPCO engineers keep cooling the core remnants in the three reactors that's where the non-volatile elements like U and Pu will stay until they can be properly safed.

  3. Just modify the constraints... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Some tasks are difficult because of the assorted parameters that you have to adhere to while doing them. In this case, relatively low tolerance for irradiation of workers and human morbidity and mortality are probably major inconveniences.

    This being so, it seems only logical to employ TEPCO management as decommisioning operators. It's not like they were good for whatever their existing job descriptions are, and we can safely value their radiation exposure as unimportant, or even a benefit.

  4. Re:I have a plan by hawguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tunnel 100 ft. below the reactor and build a huge leak-proof chamber. Use controlled detonation to collapse the reactor, building, and all into this chamber. Fill it with water and close/seal it off. Build something cool on top.

    If it's easy to build a leak-proof, earthquake-proof chamber than can contain high grade nuclear waste indefinitely, maybe all reactors should have this huge chamber, then all they have to do after an accident is fill it with water and cap it off, and maybe build a playground on top.

  5. Re:I have a plan by bob_super · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meh, you just need to engineer it so it blows UP.
    Vertical, one shot, with enough pressure to propel each reactor at escape velocity.
    I'd do the math for you, it's elegant, but there isn't enough space in this comment.

  6. Don't know by Spazmania · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they don't know how they'll do it, how do they know it'll take 40 years and 15 billion dollars?

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    1. Re:Don't know by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      The "37 years remaining" reminded me of the old joke: A museum guide tells visitors "...and this ancient artifact is six thousand and thirteen years old". A tourist asks: "How do the scientists know that so precisely?" The guide responds: "I don't know how they did that, but when I got the job thirteen years ago, they told me it was six thousand years old". (Or something along the lines of this...)

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      Ezekiel 23:20