Burying failed nuclear reactor could make things worse

[highplainsdem]

http://www.3news.co.nz/Burying-failed-nuclear-reactor-could-make-things-worse/tabid/1160/articleID/203275/Default.aspx

Burying failed nuclear reactor could make things worse
Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:12a.m.

-snip-

"When you drop tons of material from hundreds of feet in a helicopter, you're going to do some damage," said Alex Sich, a nuclear engineer at Franciscan University in Ohio. "It could be a bad idea. ... I would ask them to stop and think three times before they do any dumping of heavy materials."

Sich, who has lived in Chernobyl and published research on the disaster there, noted that Russian authorities dumped some 5,000 tons of sand, clay and other materials from helicopters in an attempt to smother that dangerous reactor.

The Japanese situation is different, he said. The Japanese reactors are surrounded by multiple barriers designed to contain radiation from the reactor cores. If a heavy dumping cracked the inner vessels and exposed the reactor cores, "that would be absurdity," he said.

Other risks focus on the spent fuel rods, which are a key source of concern. While pouring tons of sand on the rods would block radiation from escaping, it would also insulate them and make them heat up faster. The heat could decompose the concrete floor, allowing the rods to fall through, which could complicate efforts to contain the radiation, said Elmer Lewis of Northwestern University.

-snip-

Please read the entire article at the link.

This is the best explanation I've seen yet of why they aren't already preparing to bury the reactors. This is something they'd prefer not to risk until the reactors are cooler, which could be years from now.

[Marblehead]

1. what a clusterf*k

this could effect the world if they don't get it stopped soon. I said the same thing with the gulf gusher, Deja vu all over again

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Especially since it looks like we're connected through the water table.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x701123

[Scuba]

3. And trying to build sand barriers...

...off the coast of Louisana after last summer's oil gusher disaster was recommended AGAINST by Bobby Jindal's committee of scientists (botanists, marine biologists, etc. from La. higher education) but Bobby ordered it anyway.

Because...


...Any idiot could understand what the purpose of the barriers was meant to be.
...No one could understand how to protect/rebuild a fragile coastal ecosystem in 25 words or less.
...It got Bobby lots of airtime bitching that it wasn't happening because the Feds were incompetent.



Anyone see any commonalities?

[Urban Prairie]

4. I posted as much in another thread

and while reading a thread on The Oil Drum website, most of whose members are much more technically savvy than most of us her on DU, one member replied that he wondered where the seawater that did not evaporate, but that managed to land and make contact inside the spent fuel rod pools, was being permitted to drain? Is there or more likely, was there a drainage system for the seawater that probably became irradiated after it contacted the spent fuel rods? Where did it eventually empty into? The ocean?

Also since seawater is not exactly the purest form of H2O, there must be a lot of dried sea salt and mineral residue, ect...that is now coating/caking the still very hot spent fuel rods, and I wonder if that is having a corrosive effect on their casings?

[Art_from_Ark]

5. At least 130 tons of fresh water have been pumped into #3 and #4

in the last couple of days, so I would imagine that that has washed away a lot of the salt/mineral residue. However, I am also wondering where all that water is eventually going.

[BeFree]

6. Radiated h2o?

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll clean it all up before too long.

No, they didn't clean up the leaking polluted water from other plants, like in the US where it seeped into the ground. But since the Japanese are superior in their nuke tech, surely they have all that figured out by now.

Right?

[Statistical]

9. It is very difficult irradiate water.

Oxygen is completely resistant to irradiation. There are no unstable isotopes of Oxygen thus no matter how much radiation you hit oxygen with you can't form a radioactive isotope.

Hydrogen only has one radioactive isotope -tritium (H3). However to form tritium you need deuterium (H2). Dueterium is naturally present in water as a result of the creation of the universe however it only exists as about 0.0015% of water.

[Statistical]

8. Steam.

[highplainsdem]

7. kick