Kalle
1601
Reading the quotes from plant workers makes Lorini’s earlier posts in the thread seem that much more tasteless. Which is quite a feat.
Quaro
1602
They aren’t passed the point yet where something really bad can’t still happen, but even if everything goes right, they will have to maintain the ‘feed and bleed’ for a couple of years. The immediate concern is figuring out to deal with the super irradiated waste water.
Then they can start on cleaning the soil and the buildings. THEN they can start working on the sarcophagus. YEARS.
I would expect to see some much better construction robots this time though – it shouldn’t be too hard to retrofit equipment for remote control. At some point they should be able to do most of this stuff without sending people in.
At some point a cost vs benefit calculation is going to have be made too. Just how big of an exclusion zone can they leave? The closer you get, the more its gonna cost.
Sarkus
1603
That article I quoted last night mentions that the US has already given them some robots designed to work in the conditions. But that said, there was a reason why the Russians had to take the risks they did with Chernobyl and thats the same reason why people who know about what happened revere the workers who basically sacrificed their lives to keep that situation from being even worse.
Clearly, though, this is going to be a years and years situation and given the huge costs involved its pretty much inevitable that the Japanese government, with international help, is going to have take over the whole thing. No corporation will have the ability to handle it, setting aside whether their motivations and actions would be the right ones or merely the most short-term profitable ones.
jpinard
1604
There are electro-plasma disintegrator machines that work on an atomic level of breaking apart the electrons, neutrons, and protons, essentially making whatever you put in it a non-issue. However, I think it can only work with a few kg’s of material at a time. If someone with more time than myself can find and post info on it, might be an interesting talking point.
MikeJ
1605
This thread is the top link for electro-plasma disintegrator machines. Frankly they sound scarier than the nukes!
jpinard
1606
That is not at all what this technology does. What you’re talking about is fission. You know, the thing nuclear reactors do.
What this thing seems to be doing is busting things up at the molecular level by splitting up the not scary stuff from the scary stuff. This in turn could lead to cheaper storage/disposal of scary stuff. Still a good tech, to be sure.
The term for the technology is plasma gasification melting.
Raife
1608
Sure, laugh about electro-plasma disintegrator machines now. You won’t be laughing when the frops come for you.
Pretty good Journalism Wall of Shame on the Fukushima disaster.
Report attempts to link quake with “Supermoon,” a fringe, psuedo-scientific theory that has been thoroughly discredited. Also manages to desecrate memories of Indonesian tsunami victims as well.
Sensational headline – “Just 48 hours to avoid ‘another Chernobyl’” – based on quotes from French bureaucrat, not a nuclear expert. Quotes from actual nuclear expert, saying Fukushima situation is in fact ‘not like Chernobyl,’ buried in third-last paragraph.
Headline says “Japão confirma possibilidade de explosão nuclear em reator afetado pelo terremoto” which means “Japan confirms possibility of nuclear explosion in nuclear reactor affected by the earthquake”. As far as I know there has never been any official report about the risk of a “nuclear explosion”. There were reports about the risk of another hydrogen explosion which is very different from a nuclear explosion. Hydrogen builds-up rising internal pressure. It’s not a nuclear reaction.
German reporting has all been like that, all the time, even in conservative publications. “Nuclear catastrophe”, “Chernobyl”, “Super-GAU”, “Fukushima region permanently uninhabitable”, “Tokyo irradiated”. Hardly a word about the earthquake and tsunami and the thousands those killed, unlike the damaged reactors which caused precisely zero casualties so far. It’s disgusting, though not at all surprising given that that the Chernobyl fallout (actual health incidents in Germany: zero) was hyped just as badly. The media here are a vast echo chamber of anti-nuclear hysteria. That’s the steady diet of misinformation and fearmongering that causes those mass protests against nuclear power.
I guess the bright side is that the blind fanaticism is aimed at a relatively harmless goal… compared to 17th century religious wars, say. Also, the fact that many international journalists are hardly better than the German ones probably counts as some small comfort. Sigh.
Is it relatively harmless though? Isn’t Germany contemplating what to do with its own reactors because of this?
Yes, and that’s bad enough… but while foolish it’s not actively dangerous. We can always import electricity generated by nuclear power from our neighbors, after all. And I bet that’s exactly what’s going to happen if all nuclear power plants in Germany do get shut down eventually.
The Cold War isn’t really over in the US either.
Quaro
1614
I’m tired of seeing anti-anti-nuclear articles that are SO outraged that Chernobyl is mentioned in some random newspaper article.
The problem with nuclear is that you need the government to cap liability and cover worst case scenarios. That sucks. You end up in a ‘bailout’ type situations where investors reap rewards and stick the risk on the taxpayers.
http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2011/04/the_heart_of_the_problem.php
The best places to follow the nuclear incident that I have seen are the ars technica thread: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1139141 and brave new climate: http://bravenewclimate.com/
Comparing Fukushima with Chernobyl is pretty stupid, actually.
AlanQ
1616
Uh not really, it would be stupid to say Fukushima and Chernobyl are the same but there’s nothing wrong with comparing one nuclear accident to another nuclear accident.
How dare the media compare the worst civilian nuclear disaster with the second worst civilian nuclear disaster! Have they no shame???
Do you have some kind of vision or attention problem where you can only read the first sentence of someone’s post? His first linked article even gave a shout-out to Reason.
Nope. My problem is that articles do more then just ‘mention’ Chernobyl and it’s not anti-anti-nuclear to hate on them for it.
Yeah. One’s in the middle of nowhere, and the other is right next to one of the most densely populated places in the world.
I would agree that comparisons are a bit premature, as it’s still not really clear what’s going on at Fukushima. Suspecting that might be worse than the Japanese authorities are letting on is hardly stupid though.
I know if I lived nearby I’d sure be paying close attention to events, and would move away if I could.
That right there is a misleading statement. If you’re going to make comparisons, they should be fair comparisons. Who decided this was the second worst disaster? Worse than Windscale or Mayak? Not yet it isn’t. There’s been an extremely high potential for disaster with Fukushima, but so far it’s been largely avoided.
