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Fukushima's Radiation Is Contained By a Mile-Long Wall of Ice (cnet.com)
CNET reports on the massive ice wall created by an "intricate network of small metal pipes, capped off by six-foot-high metal scaffolding."
It turns out, coolant is running through the pipes, freezing the soil below and creating an impermeable ice wall that's nearly 100 feet deep and a mile long, encircling the reactors. It's like a smaller-scale subterranean version of the Wall in Game of Thrones, but instead of keeping out White Walkers and wights, this line of defense keeps in a far more realistic danger: radioactive contaminants from melted-down reactors that threaten to spill into the water by Fukushima Daiichi....
The structure, which cost roughly $300 million, paid for by public funds, serves as critical protection, defending the Fukushima area from one of the most radioactive hotspots in the world. While Tokyo Electric Power Co., also known as Tepco, struggles to find a way to remove radioactive material from the facility -- a process the government estimates could take more than four decades -- the more immediate concern is what to do with the contaminated water leaking out from the facility. One of the solutions has been to put up (down?) this underground ice wall, which prevents much of the surrounding groundwater from getting in.
The structure, which cost roughly $300 million, paid for by public funds, serves as critical protection, defending the Fukushima area from one of the most radioactive hotspots in the world. While Tokyo Electric Power Co., also known as Tepco, struggles to find a way to remove radioactive material from the facility -- a process the government estimates could take more than four decades -- the more immediate concern is what to do with the contaminated water leaking out from the facility. One of the solutions has been to put up (down?) this underground ice wall, which prevents much of the surrounding groundwater from getting in.
The "hottest" isotopes are of the LEAST concern at this point -- the ones that remain are still dangerous. The Ice wall is Not even perfectly watertight. The corium will have radioactivity hazardous to humans and the environment for hundreds of years... the water will contact it and become contaminated, and that contamination will spread into the soil and into the oceans and cause massive long-term damage.
so much of the info about Fukushima is clearly tainted by the preferences of those writing.
I've now read, within 2 days, articles about the current cleanup efforts that
a) claim they mostly don't work, the area is still dangerous and it will take decades to complete everything.
b) claim they are a demonstration of 1st world technology keeping things under control, people returning to the area, much of the radiation being cleaned up and the Japanese making impressive progress with robots in the reactor cores as well as completing a total overhaul of all their nuclear reactors to incorporate the lessons learnt from Fukushima.
So what is true? Probably some of both. But which?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
incorrect - it will be diluted at that point to the extent it can be detected but does not cause any permanent damage (except idiots who panic about nothing causing alarm to the rest of the population)
Radio-isotopes bio-accumulate in the environment, they do not dilute. They accumulate in the food chain because radio-isotopes appears as micro-nutrients to metabolisms. For example, plutonium chloride is highly soluble and appears like iron to metabolisms, which would be absorbed into blood, for example. Radio-cesium and strontium also have these characteristics.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.