Remember

[Workingman]

I am hoping that the temporary storage tanks remain just that: temporary.

At some point they will have to be drained and the water treated to remove many of the radioactive nuclides and isotopes to make it safe(er).

Why this was not set up as an integral feature of the clean-up process is a mystery. It should have been started within months, if not weeks, of the clean-up process beginning.

[Suff]

As far as I'm aware, the cores melted but were kept from going critical.

They are researching robots to go in and get the material out. I doubt that is going to work too well, so we're going to see that cooling system sitting there for a very long time to come.

It will be released to us in dribs and drabs, to keep the horror down.

I also know the containment vessels were breached when the accident happened so they had to seal the lower levels and pump the water out of there too.

Things that are not reported in the general press. You have to go looking for it.

The half life of active uranium in a reactor is???? not 2 or 3 years anyway.

[KateLMead]

And these are not the only plants in the world.

[Workingman]

As I understand things it is the water in the lower levels that is being pumped - to the tune of 400 tonnes per day - to the storage tanks. A total of about 350,000 tonnes so far, and rising.

The IAEA, US EPA, UKAEA and French SFEN have all done research into the clean-up of radioactive contaminated water and all agree that a mix of micronic filtration and reverse osmosis can remove >98% of contaminants. Danfoss and Siemens both produce equipment to do the work with the present volumes. OK, the filters and membranes become highly concentrated radioactive materials, but 'hard' contaminants are easier to deal with than water.

I say again, this work should have been carried out within weeks of the start of the clean-up.

[Aggers]

It is interesting to try to imagine what the state of our planet will be in a few hundred years time.

My view is that mankind it now digging it's own grave. It's a case on "More. more, more", "Greed, greed, greed", "Self,self, self".

When the great awakening comes, it will be too late.

Can't anyone else see that?

[Workingman]

A few of us Aggers, but we are urinating into the twin hurricanes of public apathy and capitalist market forces.

[Suff]

I say again, this work should have been carried out within weeks of the start of the clean-up.

Undoubtedly. They were in denial and in good Japanese fashion, trying to cover it up. I guess in a society which expected you to kill yourself for the disgrace of making a mistake, covering up mistakes was probably a National obsession. Hard to break.

Especially as they still have the "window seat" culture. That is where, when you have disgraced yourself, you are given a seat by the window, expected to turn up to work every day to that seat; but no work is given to you. The shame of sitting there doing nothing whilst your colleagues are working hard is supposed to drive you to suicide... Interesting culture.

However, the reason they are having to pump the water from the lower levels is that the containment area is breached. This is the water they are pumping Into the reactor to keep it from going critical. They are pumping it OUT of the lower levels again and into the tanks to cool it and inject it back into the reactor. No matter how much they filter it, it will just come back as contaminated the next time.

Because they can't get into the containment chamber to repair it, they have to have a solution to get the water out of the lower levels so they can keep the cycle going. This is it.

That's what I understand of the situation. They blocked the lower levels, which were leaking to the sea and made it part of the cooling cycle.....

I might be wrong but I don't think I am.

This is why they are looking at robotics. First to repair the reactor containment chamber and then to get the material out. Once they have repaired the chamber they can get rid of the tanks and get back to the normal pressurised cooling model of a normal reactor.

As I say, the whole story is not being told. I've pieced this together from dozens of articles who want to dwell on one particular point of the whole mess. Our press, working for us, to tell us important things like what celebs are doing.....

[Workingman]

This is the water they are pumping Into the reactor to keep it from going critical. They are pumping it OUT of the lower levels again and into the tanks to cool it and inject it back into the reactor. No matter how much they filter it, it will just come back as contaminated the next time.

That is a closed cycle where all that happens is that the water becomes more contaminated with each pass. The more contaminated it becomes the harder it is to deal with. If it was treated before going back into the tanks its level would never get critical. The solid waste of old filters and membranes would be much easier to handle and reprocess.

Surely somebody in TEPCO or the Japanese scientific community understands this? I guess the we both have pointed to why, you with their culture and me when I talked about burying their pride.

[Suff]

Just a bit of further reading.

The Wiki page is bad enough. But it does not mention the core melt.

You have to go further to find more out about the actual state of the reactors and any core melting.

Whilst the wiki article states that the metal casing of the rods reached a temperature which caused it to break down and produce hydrogen gas, it does not talk about the meltdown of the core. For that you have to go elsewhere.

So when they talk about all these "containment tanks" being a risk because they are leaking, they are telling you half truths. The whole place is a complete disaster in which they are trying to just keep the ball rolling long enough to get some remote technology to try and recover the mess.

The problem is that their “temporary” structures are likely to be there for decades unless there is some revolution in robotics to allow them to get the melted fuel out and stabilise the rectors.

Not helped by the fact that reactor 4 is subsiding and may collapse and they still can’t get the spend ruel rods out of the cooling pools…..

Maybe the press decided the whole story is simply too horrific for the public to know. Maybe someone wants to convince the public that Nuclear really is “SAFE”.

However the situation for all nuclear reactors remains the same. When the sticky stuff hits the whirly thing, there is NO off switch…

[Workingman]

I am thinking that a new International Treaty is needed so that when these sorts of things happen international aid can be sent in asap.

I know that some countries wouldn't sign up, but something has to be done. Companies and countries do not have the expertise to deal with the reality, they can only simulate and exercise, yet there is plenty of real life experience out there.