Reply #68: not Chernobyl yet

[divvy]

I agree that comparisons to Chernobyl are premature. It isn't as bad as Chernobyl in terms of contamination spread... yet. I wouldn't be inclined to say that it couldn't get that bad, but it isn't yet and I hope it won't be. Nobody has died... I don't think we know the worst possible scenario... there has never been a spent fuel pool in this condition before and I haven't seen or heard any analysis of this scenario. The fuel in the reactors have not breeches their pressure vessels, yet. xxxx There is a wind shift coming. Areas north of the site may be in the fallout plume... a city of 1 million. I think that the radiation fallout that they see will tell us a lot about the severity of this problem for people outside the Japanese evacuation zone. I don't know how long it will take to fill a single fuel pool with those water cannon, but I wonder why they are only doing one at a time. Can't they get more of those fire trucks? xxxx I think I heard that U5 and U6 share a pool, so there are 5 pools that are hot and have low water levels. Even the best possible outcome for this accident is going to require a long time to get these Units in a safe and stable state. The cleanup or decommissioning could take decades. Some kind of structure will have to be built over the fuel pools... the ones with too much radiation to fly over. Hopefully, we will see a big dose reduction as the pools are refilled. New spent fuel cooling and demineralizer systems will probably have to be installed. My guess is that new systems will be easier (and lower dose) to install than repairing the current ones. The reactors would have to have functioning level control, feedwater makeup, and core cooling. The site would need normal off-site power restored and new or repaired emergency generators (tsunami proof this time). Even when things are under control, there is a lot to do... to really end the emergency. The 50 heroes are dedicated to keeping water in the 3 reactors that were running. Engineers should be working on designs for the necessary fixes. Another team should be looking at U4-6 and making sure those reactors are stable. Without core cooling, they won't stay that way forever. Another team should be trying to stabilize the fuel pools. The problems are too serious to focus on just one thing at a time.