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Fukushima: the Removal of Nuclear Fuel Rods From Damaged Reactor Building Begins (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Workers at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have begun removing fuel rods from a storage pool near one of the three reactors that suffered meltdowns eight years ago. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said on Monday that work had begun to remove the first of 566 used and unused fuel assemblies in reactor building No 3. The fuel rods stored in unit No 3's cooling pool were not damaged in the 2011 disaster, when a powerful earthquake and tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi's backup power supply and triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, 25 years earlier.
Tepco said the operation to remove the fuel rods, which are in uncovered pools, would take two years, adding that transferring them to safer ground would better protect them in the event of another catastrophic earthquake. Workers are remotely operating a crane to raise the fuel from a storage rack in the pool and place it into a protective cask. The whole process occurs underwater to prevent radiation leaks. The utility plans to repeat the procedure in the two other reactors that suffered meltdowns.
Tepco said the operation to remove the fuel rods, which are in uncovered pools, would take two years, adding that transferring them to safer ground would better protect them in the event of another catastrophic earthquake. Workers are remotely operating a crane to raise the fuel from a storage rack in the pool and place it into a protective cask. The whole process occurs underwater to prevent radiation leaks. The utility plans to repeat the procedure in the two other reactors that suffered meltdowns.
This is some very welcome news in developments at Fukushima as the foundations of Unit 3 are damaged. Workers at Fukushima have already removed 1000 fuel rods IIRC from that reactor building due to concerns about what would happen if the building collapsed.
To get a better understanding of why its an urgent issue, a report called Nuclear Power Plant Security and Vulnerabilities explored vulnerabilities at nuclear power plants.
From that report the issue of spent fuel pool vulnerabilities warranted further study in the now declassified report Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report by the Committee on the Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage within the National Research Council. It details variations of scenarios created from vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks, however the potential outcomes are similar if they are initiated by a natural disaster.
The most sobering scenarios came from analyzing what happens from loosing the cooling water from a spent fuel pool. Spent fuel rods are kept in a pool with a constant supply of water because the water not only cools them, it moderates the neutrons so that they don't become critical. One scenario examined from loosing the cooling water was a plutonium fire that creates plutonium oxide in the smoke with reactors that are MOX fueled, such as Unit 3 was. With several hundred tons of fuel it would be the largest plutonium fire we have ever faced, it would also be in open air.
You can find information about plutonium oxidization Evaluation of source-term data for plutonium aerosolization which starts at around 500 centigrade. I think that because of the proximity to the sea, plutonium chloride would also be created.
Actions to reduce the possibility of these kinds of scenarios are simple and cost effective. Mainly by dry cask storing fuel that has cooled for 5 years and separating and dispersing spent fuel recently removed from the reactor throughout the pools of reactors that are still operating. All very practical, affordable actions for reducing this risk of reactors that are still operating.
Information about the fuel removal process and the damage to the Unit 3 spent fuel pool in Tepco's Fukushima spent fuel removal plan.
There is very little point arguing about Nuclear power from an idealistic viewpoint. To idealize that nuclear power is perfect and requires no improvements means that the nuclear industry cannot evolve legal requirements for new processes. This, according to the official report into the Fukushima accident, is the main reason the disaster occurred.
So this is a great time to commend the workers and engineers at the Fukushima plant and express gratitude for their efforts to get this disaster under control. Thank you!!!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You're missing that regulatory costs are massively inflating the capital cost of new power plants. When it takes 20-25 years to get through the regulatory construction process, everything about building a new plant becomes way more expensive and the time to get a return on investment is ridiculous.
The NRC still treats newer, safer designs worse than it treats older less safe designs in the process. It requires $millions per power plant in ongoing compliance every year. It also still insists on analog everything, rather than digital technologies. Imagine how much more your new solar plant would cost if everything controlling it had to be analog and specially designed as a one-off.
There have already been enough MW of nuclear plants under construction abandoned because they couldn't cope with the regulatory burden to replace the power from every existing coal plant in the U.S.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Boron (boric acid) does not prevent splitting of water (which happens at a low enough rate anyway). It's used to reliably shut down the chain reaction, boron is a great neutron poison and borated water is an easy way to deliver it into the core.
As I said, water radiolysis even at full power is generally negligible. The danger is in steam-zirconium reaction, that happens when fuel rods lose cooling and fuel temperature rises past about 800C. This is a purely chemical reaction - zirconium displaces oxygen from water, releasing hydrogen.
"So even with the bad old nuclear designs from the 50s to 70s that we currently use are better than any other energy source. " = HORSESHIT, moron! Falling off a roof is NOT A RESULT OF ANY POWER SOURCE yet is tabulated as one?
You are dumber than you ought to be given what you've invested time to know halfway. NOBODY DIED AS A RESULT OF SOLAR OR WIND POWER TECHNOLOGIES. They threaten nobody ongoing! Nuclear can't say that.
When dishonest faggots like you try to pretend the likelihood of morons falling off their roof proves industry-investment-dying nuclear power is somehow "safer" than anything else, you know you've hit rock bottom of the slag pool.
To date, 440 workers have died installing solar panels. 150 have died installing wind turbines on windmills. Do you ever get tired of being wrong? And since those sources provide fuck all worth of power, when you divide to calculate deaths by terawatt hour you get that solar kills several times more people than nuclear. But yea, do go on and give us your completely uninformed opinion and continue to insist your guesses are equal to data and years of experience in the field.
Years from now, after nuclear finally gets us off of fossil fuels, how do you think your children or grandchildren will think of environmentalists from now? I bet that years from now, historians will lump you in with anti-vaxers (pro-plaguers), flat earthers and Trumpers. All of those groups deny basic data and facts and do so in the fact of that information for years. All of those groups have leaders who know that they are wrong and only care about that sweet, sweet donation money. Do you think the folks that run environmental lobbying groups actually want a solution to climate change? Don't get in the way of that money train dear.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Well,
I mean.. if it's radioactive enough to be dangerous, it could still be used for fuel. Go far enough down the line with reprocessing and that waste goes from having a half-life of 10,000 years down to about 100.
Thank you Jimmy Carter.
I'm calling BS on this..
IF you look at the total life cycle cost of various industrial sources of electrical energy, Natural Gas is the cheapest. The only way renewables compete is though tax breaks, carbon surcharges, subsidies and accounting slight of hand (where they conveniently *forget* to include the total life cycle costs). https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a... does a better job.
Renewables do NOT win on numbers. Never have and it's unlikely they ever will in my lifetime if you do a full cost accounting.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101