Normally I’d expect that it’d just get demolished along with the building, but the boat looks like it might actually be salvageable. Might just have to demolish it anyway though, if it’s not worth the hassle and cost to get the kind of extraction equipment you’d need (heavy lift heli? edit: Probably not, googling suggests ferries that size are 200+ tons, way more than heli capacity).
It’s a bummer, because I’ll bet the boat is more or less fine. But it won’t be once what’s left of that building gives way.
Yeah, the boat looks like it might still be seaworthy, but I just don’t see how they get it off that building short of cutting it up into small pieces.
A crane, or multiple cranes with harnesses designed not to smoosh the boat when it lifts it (with lifting bars) could do it I bet. It’ll run you into the tens of thousands, maybe even more? But cranes could do it I bet.
Now whether they get to it before that building collapses is another story.
I think it’s amazing that the building is still standing at all.
People say that Japan has incredibly high construction standards… there’s the proof. If I owned the firm that built that building, I’d incorporate that photo into my promotional materials.
Pogo
1587
Heh, looks like there’s more square footage on the boat than in the building itself.
Owner of the building should call “finders keepers.”
jason
1588
“What boat? No. That’s my house, it just happens to look like a boat. I was going through a phase…”
Jojo
1589
Even if they got the boat off the building, they have to get it back to water. How far inland is that?
There are trace levels of plutonium everywhere though, left over from above-ground nuclear testing. Is the amount they found here significant enough to worry about? Would be nice if they’d checked on that…
One would assume the Times would not report it if it’s not above background levels.
Sarkus
1593
The news I saw said that they were very confident that only one of the three plutonium hits their testing found was related to this accident. The real significance is just to reinforce the idea that one of the reactors (likely #2) has a failed containment situation.
Apparently there is talk that the Japanese government is close to either taking over the site or even Tepco completely as a way of dealing with the increasing evidence that the company is struggling to deal with the mess.
The significance to me is that they very clearly don’t really know what’s going on, and there is undoubtedly worse news to come.
So, yeah, one small spot of plutonium may be no big deal, but it demands the question of what else is going on that simply hasn’t been found or reported yet. At the point when you’re leaking plutonium into the ground… well, good luck ever cleaning that up, let alone the rest of the as yet unseen iceberg.
CSL
1595
TEPCO should have been nationalized weeks ago with all the evidence that they haven’t been truthful.
jpinard
1596
Every time information is released they should be putting it into context to not freak people out, but also to not cherry-coat the danger of what’s going on. It is frustrating to see people moving into their fallout shelters in Utah due to exclamatory news headings, yet on the opposite side Tepco being intentionally misleading. Sure people are ignorant, but put it into context so people can’t misconstrue exactly what’s going on.
CSL - agreed, but we all know how evil regulation and socialism are. /sigh
Sarkus
1597
So the idea of entombing the reactor(s) in concrete is now being discussed, though an expert said that move is probably years away from happening.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014643061_quake31.html
In america, not japan. Fear of appearing socialist is not the reason they haven’t taken them over.
CSL
1599
I’m potentially six months away from moving to Japan - if TEPCO can’t handle this (and its been fairly clear they can’t) - then the national government needs to step in. We’ve seen that Japanese citizens have been sane, selfless citizens so its a shame that they are being lied too by private power corporations that have been caught before. The current Japanese government will probably bear the brunt of the current situation.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/03/emails-from-fukushima-workers.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Here’s an article about the circumstances the workers at the Fukushima plant are working with. It makes the point that most of the people working there have lost everything.
