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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.
When are we going to find out that all the older reactors similar to Fukushima are shut down safely... Seriously, I have no great problem with the newer designs, but the older ones need phased out, not renewed.
When the NIMBYs stop fighting the deployment of newer designs. As long as pseudo-regulatory barriers erected by the general public make development of new plants based on new designs financially infeasible, companies will stretch the operation of their existing plants far beyond their original design lifespan. It is rather amazing just how much the anti-nuclear movement has made nuclear safety worse.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Yeh, damn NIMBY's causing Fukushima with their pseudo-regulatory barriers. Solar's also dangerous! What if a solar panel fell and landed on a bird, it could chop the bird in two!...
NIMBY's kill birds!
Ok, let's look at the facts. Lets just start with the total deaths per energy produced. So even with the bad old nuclear designs from the 50s to 70s that we currently use are better than any other energy source. Even with that very few people want to build more BWR or RBMK's. Most scientists and engineers want to build MSRs but to build a nuclear plant you have to follow regulations that written for LWRs and BWRs. For instance, you have to have a Boron system in your nuclear plant by regulation. The Boron system is used to prevent water from splitting into H2 and O2 gasses in a high radiation environment. If too much gas builds up it explodes. So its a good regulation. Except MSRs don't use water for a coolant so there is no Boron system in an MSR. So technically, a MSR plant which can't meltdown and doesn't require external power isn't legal in the US. So an elected official(s) needs to change the regulations but nobody is willing to be the person who changes nuclear regulation due to the NIMBYs. So we have a design that we have been able to build for 60 years, can't meltdown and by any measure is far safer than the LWR and BWRs we are still building. Do you see any MSRs being built?
Consider this, have any of you ever seen an engineering situation where making something a political issue causes better decisions to be made? I doubt it, I never have and you probably haven't either. Making energy production a political issue is just the same as getting the VP of Marketing to choose which web framework you use. We've had a solution that works for decades and instead we delay and promise unicorns which never exist. Your arguments are largely out of ignorance. You probably know about your chosen profession but you clearly don't work in energy. You are expressing your largely uninformed opinions about a subject you haven't spent time researching deeply. And that causes you to believe things that just aren't so and often violate basic principles of physics. But energy production is about physics and physics alone and doesn't give a shit about what you wish was so. Perhaps it would be better to leave these topics to experts but as long as this is a political issue, I don't expect any progress.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
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."
To date, 440 workers have died installing solar panels. 150 have died installing wind turbines on windmills.
Of course, that assessment depends on whether you use total distance travelled, or deaths per launch.
So is it 14 deaths for 537,114,016 miles travelled, 14 deaths for 833 total riders, or 14 deaths for 135 flights?
Next up a discussion of the safest vehicle ever - the Space Shuttle.
You are misleading with a bad analogy.
A Space Shuttle is used to get stuff to an orbit. So the correct metric is number of deaths per kg delivered to the given orbit. Trying to count it per mile travelled is completely stupid because travelling around Earth is not the goal of Space Shuttle.
On the other side, counting number of death per kWh is the correct metric in energy production area. The goal of a power plant is to produce energy. So we must count it per kWh.
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.