Fukushima: Two Years & Counting

[Polish_Silver]

Nuclear waste a non problem

-The issue of nuclear waste is a verboten subject in cost calculations. Sure, it's belittled - typical of the industry that runs parallel in its propaganda to Big Tobacco's decades long campaign against the hazards of smoking.

-.

Nuclear waste is rarely discussed because so few people understand anything about it. My college lab partner studied nuclear physics for over 6 years. He has since worked in a medical x-ray company for over 20 years. He knows more about radiation physics and toxicity than anyone else I know personally.

He explained to me that nuclear waste is largely a political and perception problem. The spent fuel rods can be reprocessed, which will reduce the volume to 10% of the original. This is well known technology and used by some countries. It is not used in the US, because Carter stopped it. He thought it might create a weapons proliferation problem . (Hardly anyone else seemed to worry about that, though.)

90% of the spent fuel rod is useful fuel and can go back into a new rod. The 10% is waste. But this 10% is very quickly decaying. It is a problem for 5-25 years, not thousands of years. The long lasting isotopes are part of the 90%, and they are back in the reactor making electricity.

Well that is just too complicated for a mainstream journalist or a politician, so we are stuck with a system (or lack of system) that increases cost and risk at the same time. Is democracy hopeless?

[c1ue]

Re: Nuclear Dangers Misconcieved

Since nuclear power may very well prove to be essential, transparency begs the question - what are the true costs of nuclear power?

The problem is - the true cost of nuclear power also cannot calculated if gigantic legal fees are part of the equation.

How can you price out a nuclear power plant when you can expect legions of NGO lawyers attacking your application both in the court of public opinion and in the civil courts?

How well can anything be priced when those ideologically opposed to it have huge worldwide fundraising efforts in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars?

The cost of nuclear waste is greatly affected by this - just look at the gyrations which any attempt to create a nuclear waste disposal site, facility, or even temporary storage catchment must undergo.

The reason why spent fuel rods and what not are stored on site at the nuclear power plants is very much a function of this legal interference.

Are all such NIMBY and/or public safety concerns over-wrought? I actually don't think so - but the problem is a lot of it is.

When you have ideologically motivated anti-nuclear players, it is impossible to operate on a purely rational basis. These players would be as adamantly against EJ's pebble bed reactor idea portion of TECI as they are against the present install base of nuclear power, and would fight these new installations just as rabidly.

[don]

Re: Nuclear Dangers Misconcieved

industry obfuscation vs ideological intransigence

looks like a nuclear standoff to me . . .

[don]

Update Tour

the assumption is Gundersen is a pariah to industry stalwarts . . .

[RebbePete]

Re: Fukushima: Two Years & Counting

Typhoon Wipha is headed directly for the power plant. What happens next is anyone's guess.

[vt]

Re: Update Tour

http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/12/phys...lear-disaster/

http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl/

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvi...gus_completed/

[Slimprofits]

Re: Fukushima: Two Years & Counting

The Uncertainty of Risk by Nick Werle ---- http://nplusonemag.com/the-uncertainty-of-risk

Risk management failed on several levels at Fukushima Daiichi. Both TEPCO and its captured regulator bear responsibility. First, highly tailored geophysical models predicted an infinitesimal chance of the region suffering an earthquake as powerful as the Tōhoku quake. This model uses historical seismic data to estimate the local frequency of earthquakes of various magnitudes; none of the quakes in the data was bigger than magnitude 8.0. Second, the plant’s risk analysis did not consider the type of cascading, systemic failures that precipitated the meltdown. TEPCO never conceived of a situation in which the reactors shut down in response to an earthquake, and a tsunami topped the seawall, and the cooling pools inside the reactor buildings were overstuffed with spent fuel rods, and the main control room became too radioactive for workers to survive, and damage to local infrastructure delayed reinforcement, and hydrogen explosions breached the reactors’ outer containment structures. Instead, TEPCO and its regulators addressed each of these risks independently and judged the plant safe to operate as is.

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

First, as AP reports, Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

A Board of Audit report describes various expensive machines and untested measures that ended in failure. It also says the cleanup work has been dominated by one group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants despite repeated calls for more transparency and greater access for international bidders.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi said all of the equipment contributed to stabilizing the plant, even though some operated only briefly.

Some of the failures cited in the report:

• FRENCH IMPORT: Among the costliest failures was a 32 billion yen ($270 million) machine made by French nuclear giant Areva SA to remove radioactive cesium from water leaking from the three wrecked reactors. The trouble-plagued machine lasted just three months and treated only 77,000 tons of water, a tiny fraction of the volume leaking every day. It has since been replaced with Japanese and American machines.
• SALT REMOVAL: Sea water was used early in the crisis to cool the reactors after the normal cooling systems failed. Machines costing 18.4 billion yen ($150 million) from several companies including Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy, Toshiba Corp. and Areva were supposed to remove the salt from the contaminated water at the plant. One of the machines functioned only five days, and the longest lasted just six weeks.
• SHODDY TANKS: TEPCO hurriedly built dozens of storage tanks for the contaminated water at a cost of 16 billion yen ($134 million). The shoddy tanks, using rubber seals and assembled by unskilled workers, began leaking and some water seeped into the ground and then into the ocean. The tanks are now being replaced with more durable welded ones.
• GIANT UNDERGROUND POOLS: A total of 2.1 billion yen ($18 million) was spent on seven huge underground pools built by Maeda Corp. to store the contaminated water. They leaked within weeks, and the water had to be transferred to steel tanks.
• UNFROZEN TRENCH: A 100 million yen ($840,000) project to contain highly contaminated water in a maintenance tunnel by freezing it failed because the water never completely froze. TEPCO subsidiary Tokyo Power Technology even threw in chunks of ice, but eventually had to pour in cement to seal the trench.

* * *
So it is even more distressing that, as Science Journal reports, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, destroyed 4 years ago in explosions and meltdowns triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, won't be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors' nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it...

The image below is from a TEPCO handout (in Japanese). As expected, the Fukushima scans revealed no fuel in the reactor vessel.




Fukushima Update goes on to explain...

In February of this year two muon detectors from the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization [KEK] in Tsukuba, Japan were installed outside the Fukushima Daiichi unit-1 ruins at reactor vessel height for the purpose of finding that ‘missing’ reactor fuel.
...

Now the plan is to go ahead and insert the new shape-changing robot in April to see if there is enough left of the control rod drive rail to get that robot onto the containment catwalk, where it should be able to circle inside the containment itself to collect more data about the location of the corium (melted fuel). Hopefully it’s still in the containment drywell, not having melted through the base pad into the lower level basement or ground below. If it exited the drywell it may have melted through the downcomer vents and into the torus in the first level basement, and some may have found its way into drains and drainpipes as one of the flows at Chernobyl did to produce the corium formation known as the “elephant’s foot.”

The geology at Chernobyl is quite different from Fukushima, having been built atop a solid granite bedrock rather than rock and gravel fill. The Chernobyl “elephant’s foot” formation exits a large drainpipe in what was the basement of that plant and melted 3 meters (~9 feet) into the granite. If the Fukushima unit-1 corium made it to the ground underneath the plant it is likely to have spread much further through the fill and be much more difficult to retrieve, even as the ‘underground river’ of groundwater that runs beneath the facility picks up contamination and takes it on out to the ocean.Decommissioning requires that all nuclear fuel – in whatever state – be removed from direct contact with the environment and safely isolated.

The unit-1 muon scans apparently also found some evidence that some fuel fragments may have been relocated from the reactor vessel to the spent fuel pool and refueling floor, though the precise nature of this evidence and how the fuel managed to get to these locations is not explained. If there is corium/fuel debris in these locations it will make cleanup in preparation for defueling the SFP more complicated, especially in light of the re-contamination of rice fields downwind during the cleanup of the unit-3 refueling floor. Now that the glorified ‘tent’ over unit-1 has been removed, cleanup of that mess is scheduled to start sometime in the next week.

[lektrode]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

First, as AP reports, Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami....

seeing as 0C (where this one comes from) is decidely WITH the anti-nuke LUDDITE brigade - guess we ought to file this one under the same heading as this beauty:

A Scientific Model Of What A Zombie Apocalypse Would Look Like (And Where Not To Hide)


but just curious what they've also 'wasted' pumping up their own crony class while tilting at (subsidizing) windmills and solar panels?

never mind what it has cost them to REPLACE all the nuke-generated KWHs that they arent getting BUT ARE STILL PAYING THRU THE NOSE FOR?

just wondren....

[Chris Coles]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

The solution has always been to sheet pile an enclosing ring dam along the coast to act as a very large settlement pond. That way all the radioactive by-products could be retained in the locality. Add a steady stream of Boron powder to cover the open water would both moderate and settle the radioactivity to the bottom, allowing the ground water to be processed without danger to the wider environoment. Why this has not been done is totally beyond me; eventually, they will have to; to become another classic case of bolting the door after the horse has bolted.

[santafe2]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

The solution has always been to sheet pile an enclosing ring dam along the coast to act as a very large settlement pond. That way all the radioactive by-products could be retained in the locality. Add a steady stream of Boron powder to cover the open water would both moderate and settle the radioactivity to the bottom, allowing the ground water to be processed without danger to the wider environoment. Why this has not been done is totally beyond me; eventually, they will have to; to become another classic case of bolting the door after the horse has bolted.

Or maybe we could just not build large scale nuclear reactors on the Ring of Fire....

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

Or maybe we could just not build large scale nuclear reactors on the Ring of Fire....

corollary to the above - how piss poor we've been containing waste after a meltdown - or is that too adult for some 'tulipers . . . .

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

The crippled reactors are inaccessible to humans because of deadly levels of radiation, so using the two-foot-long robot was the first chance officials were able to examine the damage caused by highly radioactive nuclear-fuel debris.

The robot has been developed by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID) and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy to investigate hard-to-access areas of the plant. It consists of three segments: the robot's main body and two compact crawlers. The robot can assume a long, straight shape for passing through narrow spaces, such as pipes. Alternatively, it can rotate its crawlers by 90 degrees in relation to its central body to assume a U-shape, with the crawlers providing better stability when travelling over flat surfaces.



The robot is 9cm in height. Depending on the position of its crawlers, it is 25cm to 64cm in length and between 6.5cm and 27cm in width. Weighing 7.5kg, the robot is operated via a 40m cable.



"We believe this will lead us to figuring out how to decommission the reactor," Ryo Shimizu, spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), told NBC News.

With the core still 'missing', Sputnik News reports that,

The robot sent to inspect a reactor' containment vessel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant stopped responding three hours into the operation.



TEPCO hoped to take a look inside the vessel containing one of the three reactors, which underwent a meltdown in the 2011 nuclear disaster.

A group of approximately 40 workers sent the remotely-controlled device, allegedly capable of withstanding high levels of radiation, into the vessel at 11:20 a.m. The robot stopped functioning after covering two thirds of the route at approximately 2:10 p.m., according to the Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The company did not say whether it would send another robot into the vessel on Monday, as previously planned. TEPCO's ultimate goal is to use the robot to inspect the melted fuel inside the vessel.

* * *
So there is still no sign of the corium...

[Chris Coles]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

My immediate reaction is to ask; is there an incline in the sub surface geology? Why?

It seems clear that we face a classic meltdown, where the cores have now passed through the bottom of the reactors and will be slowly dropping through the surrounding geology. If that is so, then is there the possibility of those cores hitting an hard rock incline where the cores might then slide sideways, down that incline; to meet at some point in the future?

That if that is a possibility; then there is also the possibility of what has, as far as I know, never been contemplated; the combination of thousands of Kgs of nuclear fuel into one mass ......... leading to the potential for an event that might become an extinction event.

Looking back to the long debates regarding the dangers of storage of nuclear waste, no one ever suggested such a potential; but now we have exactly that; the potential for a nuclear explosion far and away beyond anything contemplated before.

The concept of China Syndrome never went beyond the core of one reactor; now we have several, possibly six; moreover, close together in a line. If the underlying geology has an incline; surely those cores will eventually come together?

[don]

Re: Fukushima: Four Years & Counting (Bring on the Olympics)

So it is even more distressing that, as Science Journal reports, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, destroyed 4 years ago in explosions and meltdowns triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, won't be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors' nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it...

The image below is from a TEPCO handout (in Japanese). As expected, the Fukushima scans revealed no fuel in the reactor vessel.