Gundersen: Molten plutonium on the floor of 3 reactors, no solution for removal

[flamingdem]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

quote:
“Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said. “Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn’t exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor.”

excerpt:
Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. what a bloody horror

with no way out.

my wife's family is in tokyo. they are very worried. understandably.

[buddysmellgood]

2. But Weiner tweeted his underwear!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. our country has some bizarre death wish

we toss a talented pol for doing something stupid, but ignore a horror across the pacific.

what is WRONG with this country?

[DainBramaged]

9. +1,000,000,000,000,000,000

[PufPuf23]

4. One wonders what type of bedrock geology and how deep below the reactors?

Seems to me the only solution is to drill vertically then horizontally into hard rock and make a cavern very deep below the meltdowns.

Then to get the nuclear poison into the cavern while cooling small bits at a time separated from the hot mass.

The cavern would be the "safest" repository and would be below ground water.

Without finding a "bottom" and taking the easiest route of the minimal required cooling and cement entomb, this just ;leaves a bigger problem 20-50 years in the future.

One can easily conclude that the Japanese nuke plants will just bleed poison isotopes for the indefinite future otherwise.

[Electric Monk]

5. Volatile. Tectonic plates pushing up against each other, and lots of volcanos.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0315/Shinmoedake-volcano-Japan-s-explosive-geology-explained

Japan's explosive geology explained

When it comes to building a country, you'd be hard-pressed to do it in a more volatile part of the world than Japan.

(snip)

Japan lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire — a narrow zone around the Pacific Ocean where a large chunk of Earth's earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. Roughly 90 percent of all the world's earthquakes — and 80 percent of the largest ones — strike along the Ring of Fire.

(snip)

Japan's stretch of the Ring of Fire is where the North American, Pacific, Eurasian and Philippine plates come together. Northern Japan is largely on top of the western tip of the North American plate. Southern Japan sits mostly above the Eurasian plate.

(snip)

Colliding tectonic plates not only trigger earthquakes — they also build volcanoes. About 10 percent of the world's active volcanoes are in Japan, mostly where the Pacific Plate is diving below the Philippine Plate.

(more at link)

[PufPuf23]

6. Japan Quake Map

http://www.japanquakemap.com/

I have posted this link several times.

There have been 1321 quakes in Japan over 4.0 M since March 11, 2011.

There seems to be a swelling bulge (where most of the quakes are occurring) along the east coast before the archilepago dips deep.

I have lived all my live in north coastal California and coastal Oregon quake country and find this level and magnitude of activity mind-blowing. But then I also knew the pre- and post- area of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington state.

The Japanese people have to be shell-shocked.

There is no excuse for building nuke plants on faults or frankly building or using at all until technolgy exists that produces no weapons material, no toxic and long lived waste, and is zero threat to water and ecosystems.

[flamingdem]

7. We've got our similar nukes, without currently working safety backups on faults in California

... just maybe we can take Fukushima as a warning??!!

[bvar22]

8. The technology to drill horizontally exists.

I used to do it.
But, AFAIK, there is no technology for creating a cavern in bedrock at the end of a horizontal section.