Simple Question. Why is this still in the hands of a company (Tepco) ?

Why isn´t there an international team of scientists and specialists trying to secure the reactor? Why isnt germany involved and america and russia..

I mean: is it so complicated to "isolate" that area and stop the radioactive water from leaking in the ocean?

Why isnt your government helping.

Is this a "pride" thing of japan..
is this a "its not our buisness thing" of our governments?

i dont understand that.

EvERyONE'S INvOLvED in the long term so we should maximize the effort...
I dont think japan can handle this alone...

Originally posted by kauskau

Is this a "pride" thing of japan..
is this a "its not our buisness thing" of our governments?

I'd certainly go with the former before the latter. At least for America. Lord knows America can't keep its nose out of anyone else's business.

the japanese govt. has been working with tepco from the beginning. there is no way to fix it, not even a little bit, so thats why no other countries are offering technical aid, because there is no tech available at this time.

reply to post by kauskau


I don't think Alan Watts would approve of you getting into knots over this, I think he'd ask you to stay well out of it. What will happen will happen right? Like all new age philosophy that curves around responsibility. I used to listen to Alan myself, turns out he was a drunk, hiding behind his philosophy to justify his lifestyle.

That aside. There is no technology that can clear this up. Goes to show that these 'black projects' with all this 'super high tech' we're always hearing about might just be poop. If there was 'high tech' I'm sure it'd be used here. This has the potential to be the worst, literally, of any disaster we've seen. It's not pride, it's simple human stupidity.

if i remember correctly, at the beginning help WAS offered, but the Japanese GOVERNMENT/TEPCO told them to take a hike. so i would say it's a Japanese pride thing.

This is how Godzilla happened.

Why is it in Tepco's hands? im wondering if Tepco isnt just fragging the planet on purpose
There is enough MOX, plutonium and other yummy things stored at that plant to kill every living thing on earth a thousand times over.
This is ongoing for YEARS.
They can bury the plant under a mountain of concrete but the nuclear waste and reactions would continue to poison the ocean for centuries

reply to post by kauskau


Would you want your country, or company to take control of the probably the worst Nuclear disaster we've ever had?

Let's remember that the Japanese are notorious for under reporting and downplaying the severity and seriousness of major problems. It took them like 4 months to even admit there were leaks.

Japan seems to think it's better to try everything they can themselves, before they admit there's a problem and ask for help.

It's a risky situation. If another team or country gets involved and this goes all wrong, then you have to open a greater can of worms about responsibility. I'd be very weary about joining that conversation unless there was an international effort that would support each other no matter what happened.

~Tenth

reply to post by kauskau


I've been reporting on the Fukushima nuclear disaster since day 1. All the logistic, nationalistic, and technologic questions about who is/should be in charge of the broken Fukushima Daiichi reactors boils down to one common denominator: Follow The Money

Why not send in a hellfire for each blazing reactor unit? I'm thinking that by injecting chaos into the gift that keeps on giving, then the 'order' will be removed from the ongoing reactions. We're left with the junk in any event, but isn't this multiple meltdown unfurling 'like' 82 Hiroshima bombs per day? Or is it 82 per hour...? I don't have a number for this mathematical query, but there is a number. 82 per hour is something I took from another post at this site, and it was not a definitive figure.

This was the first thing I wondered re Fukushima. How many Hiroshima sized bombs are these reactors holding?
Not just Fukushima. All reactors are capable of runaway status.

Does all this cease to reproduce energy, once blasted? How can it be any worse than what is happening?

I don't think the force would necessarily have to be nuclear type detonations. It may be something much less that would do the job of disrupting the chain reactions, while not blowing all the dust into the sky. i.e.., small localized standard issue munitions, such as used in various movies when the big G needs to quiet a person. Or neighborhood.

Tepco could create a container perimeter, to keep it inside as best as possible. Once the bars or 'stuff' is blown apart, doesn't it cease to react? How can one be required to cool 'dust', after the munitions strikes?

The desired result would be a mess that no longer needs 'cooling', and could therefore be entombed.

My goodness, if this theory is right, then the ongoing crisis...it seems to be on purpose.


# 33

reply to post by TheWhiteKnight


Ionizing radiation is unaffected by any type of burning or explosion. The half-lives involved are unchanged.

reply to post by Uphill


I understand that. The radiation doesn't go away. My point is that since the main vector of world contamination seems to be the need for Tepco to keep sloshing sea water over the heated mess, or else, wouldn't it be better to stop the exothermic reaction by scattering it apart so that it would no longer be on the threshold of explosion since the reaction would cease to be any longer?

As it is they're pouring a chain reaction with no end in sight into the world's oceans. Mixing a huge drink.

Is this what they want?

If you plant a large enough slug into the face of a V8 engine, or even a small one in the right spot, it will stop.


# 35

It wouldent matter if you spread it out. Even small piles here and there will burn up if not cooled. You just basically took a mountain of "heat" and just made a lot of smaller piles of the exact same "heat"

If all piles are not cooled, they will begin to meltdown, releasing the exact same amount of radiation. So it being in abig pile or spread out makes no difference.

As for "exploding" or firing contained munitions at the reactors would only make the problem worse by gigantic proportions.

While I do agree that a third party should step in and take over. There is no viable solution to the problem just yet. With all the radioactive leakage flowing into the ocean it would mean one of 2 things.
Either Tepco is intentionally pouring the radioactive water directly into the ocean, or 2, the fuel has melted through the containment vessel and all other "containments" in place and has started melting into the ground, which is now contaminated the ground water.

The second choice seems the most logical.

I know a lot about this stuff, I am a radiation protection co ordinator at 2 nuclear power plants.

And one more thing.

You CANNOT stop the thermal reaction. The fuel has to go through its "half lives" and "breakdown/mutate" into its daughter properties. This could take decades to millennia depending on the exact fuel mixture.

You could bomb it, spread it apart, contain it in foam, yell at it and spit on it. Nothing would stop its reaction at this point. And even if you could, there is no way you could get remotely close to it without passing out and having your insides boil and skin slag off, that is a fact. The fuel is giving off so much REM per hour, I'm looking forward to tepcos solution.

IMO the only way to fix this is to have a fast breeder reactor which can use spent nuclear fuel up and running and ship fuel to it to burn it up.

But this brings up logistical nightmares. How can you remove it and keep it submerged? The fuel CANNOT come into direct contact with air. How would you transport it, and finally, how would you package the hardened glob of fuel into bundles to feed the breeder reactor.

IMO, can't be done without significant damage to personell and environment.

reply to post by MrTritium


Each reactor has a spent fuel pool which each have multiple cores in them. So blowing them up is basically a death sentence to the entire northern hemisphere and breaking the fuel into smaller pieces does not solve the decay heat problem its not the mass that causes the heat its what the mass is made of. Breeder reactors work by using Pu239 it dose not consume any fission products and actually create more of them. There is no simple answer to this and this will continue for decades. The only thing we can really do now is learn from our mistakes and make better decisions in the future. The reason why TEPCO has been kept in charge is because if the government takes over than they have to admit there is a huge problem which they have been trying to put off for as long as possible. It also provides a scapegoat when things do go wrong.

Sorry I meant travelling wave reactor.

it's not pride or any such thing, it's about their responsibility towards cleaning up the mess they created, to show the people that they are trying to fix the situation. to people in japan if it was handed off to someone else it would seem as if tepco was running away and didn't care for anyone but themselves, it would make them seem irresponsible and dishonorable, likely many working for tepco would lose their family, friend and business connections over the matter if they did such a thing.