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Fukushima Cleanup, 5 Years On (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: Today is five years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, leading to a series of meltdowns. Nearly half a million people were evacuated at the time, with 100,000 still unable to return to their homes. The government has set a goal of 20mSv/year before people are allowed to live in affected areas again, and while progress is being made hotspots are still a problem in many areas. Reconstruction has been largely waiting for decontamination to be completed, allowing homes and businesses to fall into ruin. Those who do wish to return find their communities gutted, with essential services and jobs gone. Meanwhile, engineers are still unable to determine exactly what happened at Daiichi, particularly what saved reactor 2's pressure vessel from exploding. The initial reports were scary even before the nuclear plant problems were evident. Engadget notes that even now, the worst part of the cleanup remains a grueling work in progress, tough even for robots. Reader the_newsbeagle writes, too, with a link to the New York Times' take on the 5-year mark, and notes that The state and location of the melted fuel inside the reactors is still a mystery. The meltdown zone is too dangerous for human workers to enter, and robots have had limited success navigating in the wreckage. So Japan is recruiting subatomic particles called muons to map the reactors' insides. These particles, born of cosmic rays, constantly stream down from the atmosphere, passing through most matter unimpeded. But their occasional interactions with the subatomic components of uranium allow physicists to locate the blobs of the deadly stuff.
A small amount of nuclear contamination in exchange for saving millions of tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere and a lesson in how to prevent this ever from happening again is a good trade, imo.
I agree. Especially when you consider that far more people have had, and will have, serious health problems (including cancers) from all the coal-fired power plants used in Japan than from this incident.
And while the trigger was the earthquake and tsunami, the failure was purely human in nature- poor planning, stupidity, etc. When it comes to coal power, the solutions are not nearly so well known or easily implemented.
I was assured by the Slashdot elite, even weeks on from the earthquake/tsunami, that there had been no meltdown nor even any kind of breach of the nuclear fuel at all and to say otherwise was a tinfoil-hat-tier conspiracy.
This is shocking to hear of a meltdown today!
Your brainpower must be exceedingly limited if you don't understand the length of time and scope of problem that a nuclear meltdown poses to the environment versus some "carbon", that arguably does or does not have a limited effect solely on the climate of the planet.
I doubt that the thousands of people evacuated from their homes and businesses for the last 5 years and continuing in the future for a while yet would agree.
It was an unnecessary lesson, given that other nuclear power plants in the same area survived the tsunami just fine because they were properly prepared: they built tsunami walls high enough to handle historical tsunami, plus a bit more as a safety factor. Even as there were warnings in the 2000s that the protection was inadequate at Fukushima the management there didn't improve the situation. This is a trade-off that never should have been necessary. Tepco was simply too cheap to head the lessons already learned by others, and now the government and the people are on the hook to the tune of billions of dollars.
The only lesson learned here is not to trust a for-profit business to do the right thing when safety costs them money. It needs substantial oversight to make sure they don't cut corners.
Oddly, the meltdown may be good for the environment. The meltdown has created regions that a bad for humans and may be good for nature. Overfishing in the hot zones is no longer an issue...
It's also with noting now close it came to being far, far worse.
Number 2 rector was building up pressure and the operators were unable to relieve it. The valves seemed to be stuck, even after they got emergency battery power to them. The containment vessel was over its design limit for pressure. Then suddenly the pressure fell, and no-one knows why.
Had the reactor containment vessel failed, the worst case was the loss of Eastern Japan. Hopefully one day we can find out what saved the country.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You have got to be kidding.
From my home I can see the smoke stack of the Kingston coal power plant in Kingston, TN, located at the confluence of the Emory and Clinch rivers. A few years ago the largest coal ash spill in history happened at the plant when the wall of a large coal ash retention pond collapsed. Nobody died or was injured. The area has recovered and is beautiful. This is quite significant, let me repeat, this was the largest coal ash spill in history, no one was hurt, the area is beautiful.
From my home I can also see wind power turbines up on Windrock mountain, in the Cumberland mountains. There is a fairly good wind resource there.
I can't see it from my home but a few miles down river is the Watts Bar nuclear power plant.
I cannot see it from my home but a few mile up the TN river is the Fort Loudon dam and hydro electric power plant.
I worry the least about the hydro power plants. Very safe, very clean, we have nice lakes for boating, fishing, recreation, they use the dams to help with flood control etc.
I worry a little more about the wind mills, I admit I don't like to see them, I think they ruin the natural beauty. We have eagles etc. around here and windmills kill a lot of birds and bats. I cannot hear the windmills but would not want to have them close enough that I could hear them.
Next, I worry slightly more about the coal plant. The coal plant has the scrubber stacks for pollution and emits mostly water vapor clouds, it is considerably cleaner than in the past. But it still does emit some pollutants into the air that I don't like.
I worry the most about the nuclear power plant. It poses the greatest threat to myself and my family. If there is a problem at the Watts Bar nuclear plant the entire region would be devastated for a very long time. It could be like Fukushima or like Chernobyl. When you have people involved you have human error and there will be problems that were not anticipated. There is much more down side to a problem at a nuclear power plant.
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