No promises in Fukushima cleanup, director says

The man leading the daunting task of dealing with the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant warns with surprising candor: Nothing can be promised.

How long will it take to decommission the three breached reactors, and how will it be accomplished, when not even robots have been able to enter the main fuel-debris areas so far? How much will it ultimately cost? Naohiro Masuda, tapped last year as chief of decontamination and decommissioning for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co., acknowledges he is a long way from answering those questions definitively.

“This is something that has never been experienced. A textbook doesn’t exist for something like this,” Masuda said at Tepco’s Tokyo headquarters Monday.

....

New science will have to be invented for the plant to be cleaned up. Each step of the way, safety and consequences must be weighed, for workers and for the environment alike, Masuda added.
No promises in Fukushima cleanup, director says

The entire article above will be a reality check for many. But, for me, the emboldened part is the key.

New science will have to be invented for the plant to be cleaned up.

If there were one sentence that I could transmit to all of humanity, that may be it. It's great to see it being admitted in mainstream media but I think few understand the implications of the statement.

When it comes to Fukushima, our only basis for hope is faith. We have to have faith that the technology needed for the cleanup will be developed. Because if it's not, we've got no hope here.

As long as we're on the subject, here's something to think about:

Mother from Fukushima: It was very weird… plants with huge, huge flowers and gigantic stems — I brought deformed vegetables for radiation measurement, but officials didn’t test any and yelled “Don’t you understand? We say it’s safe!” — “All the beetles were disfigured and died”

Mother from Fukushima: It was very weird… plants with huge, huge flowers and gigantic stems

The first cancer patient has been confirmed by the Japanese govt. yesterday from the Fukushima plant. Also now they have 4 robots to help with the decommissioning of the plant, whatever that means. My wife's friend worked there and said the technology just is just not available today and expect to see work for the next 50 years. And yes, over 44000 known people have been employed there and pay today is at 200 bucks a day. Our electricity bill went up at least 17% over the last couple of years. Reason, coal prices are high. BS... Anyway, its a mess and a big mess.

the japanese government are guilty in my opinion of hiding the true nature of this disaster ,along with tepco the nuclear industry and nearly all world leaders ,star and flag because this effects us all no matter where you live ,cue the dis-info artists who will be here soon

a reply to: Profusion

It seems odd to me, that we can send a probe to Pluto, to Mars, to Venus, and set up solar observation satellites to record activity on the surface of the Sun, and yet we cannot assemble a robot capable of entering a radioactive hot zone on the face of our own world.

Also, although I cannot find the reference for it right now, I am sure I recall reading of a method that a lady professor from the States had devised, for rendering certain isotopes inert. Unfortunately I cannot remember her name at present either (lot on my mind lately, all boring life stuff, pushing out the interesting things).

I mean, should we just call Elon Musk? The dude seems to be good at assembling solutions to problems which might render others somewhat dumbfounded! Just a thought.

a reply to: Profusion

They don't know…

…How long will it take to decommission the three breached reactors, and how will it be accomplished…

…because nobody can get anywhere near the artificial 'suns' fissioning in the reactor buildings without receiving an instant lethal dose. There is no cleaning up what you can't approach.

Like the melted slug of radioactive material in the basement of Chernobyl, these masses of melted fuel below Fukushima give off so much lethal radiation, they will probably never be removed in the foreseeable future. One of the benefits of nuclear power is that in the minuscule minds of the greed soaked, power hungry mind of men, they though this would never happen.

…when not even robots have been able to enter the main fuel-debris areas so far?

Because the design of the GE BWR are patterned after their counterparts aboard nuclear submarines which have bulkheads with pressure doors and metal ladders. Robots can't climb ladders or step over bulkhead entryways.

They've tried.

a reply to: Profusion

I'm not surprised at what he said but I am surprised he said it at all. Question is, will anyone listen and at least try to do something?

a reply to: Profusion

They've known for quite some time that the technology does not yet exist with which to properly clean up this lethal pile of slag:

"I feel it is impossible to fix before my death," he said.

"We just don't have the technology to fix it. It currently doesn't exist. We just can't deal with the melted fuel."

Fukushima disaster: Plan to send residents home three years after nuclear accident labelled 'irresponsible'

It was talked about back in the original mega-thread well before it was closed a little over 2 years ago. So they've known they don't have the technology and that it would still need to be developed.

Hell, you can go a find that there have been studies showing that we have to account for society's total collapse and resurgence some long time in the distant future and deal with things like those future societies not being able to read our language or understand our pictograms where it comes to dealing with the markings of nuclear waste sites and how long it will be dangerous.

Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms

How asinine is that?

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

How asinine is that?

This whole scenario really grinds my gears. I've said this before on here I may be no expert but right before this happened I watched the Chernobyl documentary, the real story, and it scared the living daylights out of me. It also went into graphic detail of what was done there so when this happened I had a clue about what was going down. To say that is the highest number on the nuclear accident scale is as lie given the current situation.

Then there's the fact that Chernobyl hasn't really even been dealt with. The current sarcophagus is failing and was only meant to be a stop-gap measure at best. Not a thing is being done to fix that situation but people would rather plunk down their hard earned cash for the new Star Wars flick which would probably make enough money to build a new sarcophagus over Chernobyl. So we humans have failed twice, um, really three times including Three Mile Island.



Anyway, I'd say it ain't going to be "fixed" anytime in our lifetimes. What amount of damage from this remains to be seen but I don't have high hopes it will be pretty.

We are so smart to create and build these nuclear plants yet why aren't we smart enough to not do it, knowing the risks? Probably best left unanswered as it might drive you crazy.