Reply #301: 10 year decommission seems like a pipe dream

[divvy]

I know they can do construction in Asia a lot faster than in US, but 10 years to decommission the plants, including their spent fuel pools, seems like a pipe dream. Admittedly, there was no rush to do TMI plant, but the challenges in Japan are a lot greater. They have a long ways to go to get the rad levels down above those spent fuel pools to allow installing new cranes and working over the pools. I don't think there are any mobile cranes that could lift a spent fuel cask. Maybe Xxxxx has some insights on that. It doesn't seem possible, but neither does the Chinese nuclear plant building plan. I have trouble relating to getting that much done that fast. Regardless, thinking about decommissioning is a little premature... they haven't stabilized the situation yet. It was encouraging that they evacuated the site during the recent aftershock, but they didn't have to stop the injections of water. That implies that they have been upgrading their temporary makeshift injection systems... that is very good news. I think they are doing a lot of things that they aren't giving us a lot of details on. I saw just one story about them constructing new external cooling systems. I think the public, in Japan especially, would feel better if they knew what the emergency response team is working on. Just a thought... the public there has to be shell shocked with fear... between aftershocks, fear of tsunamis, and radiation concerns. The story may seem old and stale over here, but those people in Japan are still living the disaster. How will they cleanup those devastated homes in the evacuation zone that are contaminated? Did they ever get the highly contaminated bodies out? I don't think you can get how bad it is unless you are there. This is Katrina times (I don't know how much, at least 10).