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.

Comments

Boron doesn't prevent radiolysis!

[Cyberax]

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.

Re:You're looking at non-facts.

[sfcat]

"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.