Reply #244: can't fill a fuel storage pool with cement .....

[divvy]

Entombing the plant -- there may be some that think the nuclear plants in Japan can somehow be buried in concrete like Chernobyl. These are light water moderated nuclear plants and spent fuel storage pools... it isn't a graphite reactor. You could put a concrete structure around the facility and it would help with shielding and the spread of contamination. It isn't a viable way to store spent fuel, though. The only way I know of to store fuel is under cleaned and cooled water... or dry in specially designed cement casks. You can't just pump cement into the pool or reactors... or at least, I don't think so. Cement could be pumped under the plants to slow core decent into the ground. I see that these cement pumps can also be used to pump water. I don't know what kind of spent fuel storage racks these plants have, but the ones used at our plant required that silica be kept very low. These pools are "off the chart" for silica. With all the salt pumped into the reactor and fuel pool, there is lot's of HCl (hydrochloric acid) in the reactor and pool... acidic water conditions. Cracks propagate faster w/ a lot of chlorides. Even if you build a cement structure around the facility, you need fuel pool cooling and a new water cleanup system for each pool... and perhaps new cranes and support systems to remove the spent fuel for permanent disposal. The fuel in the reactor needs a core cooling system... after a decade or more, it might be possible to remove the fuel from the RX. For the cores that have melted through the RX and containment, that is above my paygrade... I don't know. Ground water contamination is probably an early risk. I don't know what the worst case is. I don't know if an explosion is impossible. Hope so...