11 years after 9-11; 1 1/2 years after Fukishima

[existentialist]

There is much coverage today of the eleven year aniiversary of September 11, 2001.

I haven't seen any coverage of the one and one half year anniversary of Fukishima.

Seems to me that the Fukishima catastrophy, particularly the meltdowns and leakage of radiation are comparably important.

After 1 1/2 years only about 1 part per 1000 of the Strontim 89 release is still radioactive.

For the strontium 90 it is about 96.5 % left.

For the cobalt 60 it is about 82% left.

For the tritium its about 92% left.

There are many other dangerously ratioactive isotopes--some one which haven't yet approached 1% of one half life. And there is still a danger of collapse of some of the buildings outside walls.

Then there is the "Russian roulette" thatwe keep playing with all of the world's other reactors and storage facilities.

We can't really personalize an enemy in this, but I think it presents comparably dangerous issues--and more neglected.

[AsahinaKimi]

1. The Japanese newspapers have covered

Fukishima and continue to do it every day. Here are some links:

http://www.japantoday.com/

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/

http://ajw.asahi.com/

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/

All in English. I gather that most Americans don't care about what happens in Japan, so the News organizations ignore it. In fact, the American Press just allowed it to fade out of sight, while the Japanese press continued to cover it, from Children's school lunches at in the affected area, to some of the brave older employees who volunteered to help go into the reactors knowing they would be dead in 20 or so years.

Edited to note: Here is an example of it today:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/2814-still-missing-18-months-after-march-11-disaster

[a geek named Bob]

2. There's a solution to this problem...

1.) break up the materials into low self-exciting chunks
2.) encase each piece in a sphere of thermocouples
3.) encase the spheres in concrete

This creates massive numbers of long term atomic batteries. 1 gm of uranium should produce up to 24 watts, until high life is reached.

If we have something like 17,000 tons of atomic waste... that's something on the order of
17,000 X 1,000 X 24 = 408 megawatts. (as most houses use roughly 5KW for their max use, I think we can power 81,000 houses or so. That works out to a city about the size of Bridgeport, ct.)

To slow down the reaction of the Corium, I was thinking TEPco could force large hollow drill-rods made of tungsten, and filled with Xenon 135 into the mass.

[Sentath]

3. I have always wondered why this isn't done.

If it is so hot that it could set itself on fire it is obviously still putting out respectable amounts of energy.

[a geek named Bob]

5. The hard part

will be breaking up the Corium mass into smaller "safer" chunks.

I guess I'll always look for the technical solution, first.

[progressivebydesign]

4. Frankly, this year seems like the MOST coverage since the first year after.

And I sense it's political.