WaPo: US gov’t emails reveal serious discussion of setting off explosives at Fukushima reactor

Published: February 6th, 2012 at 11:29 pm ET
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Title: Messages show conflict within NRC after Japan earthquake and tsunami
Source: The Washington Post
Author: Steven Mufson
Date: Monday, February 6, 7:39 PM

[...] a trove of e-mails posted on the NRC’s Web site [...]

“This may get really ugly in the next few days,” said one NRC official later in the day after a report that Tokyo Electric Power Co. was venting gas from a containment building. [...]

Famous physicist Richard Garwin, one of [an ad hoc group of scientists assembled by Energy Secretary Steven Chu], proposed setting off a controlled “shaped” explosion to break through the concrete shield around the primary steel containment structure to allow cooling water to be applied from the outside. One NRC scientist called the idea “madness.” [...]

“Now we are seriously discussing using shaped charges in the vicinity of the head — madness,” [Dana Powers, a senior NRC scientist] wrote. [...]

Read the report here

Published: February 6th, 2012 at 11:29 pm ET
By
Email Article Email Article
28 comments

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28 comments to WaPo: US gov’t emails reveal serious discussion of setting off explosives at Fukushima reactor

  • rooks rooks

    Wow!? Heck of a brainstorming session.


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  • kimyo

    every time i read that someone wants to use explosives i can’t help thinking of the whale video. (wasn’t there a ‘solution’ to the bp/macondo disaster which involved ‘blowing it up’?)



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  • dear jones

    All options are on the table


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  • hbjon hbjon

    Harpoon the beast. Boron filled harpoon cannon. Our ace in the hole.


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  • Room101 Room101

    We are so good at tearing things apart, and so poor at putting things together. Our most enduring creation? Plutonium. It’s function? Killing us.
    For all the love, care, beauty our race possesses, we really stink.


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  • many moons

    I wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions at this “brainstorming session”…I hope so!


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  • CB CB

    Release of Intel for persuasive suggestion? Shaped charges at #4 yesterday?


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    • CB CB

      Is there a casualty control, perimeter containment, pre planned response manual. What to do up to, and after melt out? Worst case scenario drills? Training, SCRAM? All the above for worst case scenario? The experts here,whistle blowers, Government and Corporate agents need suggestions for containment…


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      • CB CB

        Concerned quiet citizen?, Russia, USA, China, Turkey, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Australia, Africa, South America? Any body with an idea for containment? Speak! Were all on the same page here. Japan needs suggestions NOW.


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        • steve from virginia

          Not that hard to figure out (problem it is the death of nuclear industry and probably Japan as an industrial nation).

          – Level with the public about the situation both in Japan and elsewhere. Get the emperor to do it.

          – Assemble a team of atom scientists who can provide SENSIBLE advice.

          – Put the best manager in charge instead of industry’s pet, maybe a military officer.

          – Expand the evac zone to 90 km in all directions. Begin to evacuate Tokyo.

          – Remove spent fuel by any means necessary from SFPs. Best way is to build a rail spur into plant site (should have been done long ago). Use remote control cranes to transfer fuel assemblies into transportable steel cans that can be lowered into the pools to be filled with fuel assemblies. Use rail cars to ship cans away from reactor site.

          – Cofferdam around reactors (no brainer) pump and treat ground water.

          – Map fuel and determine its conditions

          – Use solids to stifle reactions rather than water: boron, lead, sand, bentonite, etc.

          – Use core drilling machines to remove radioactive fuel.

          – Conscript all able-bodied Japanese for the work: appx 5-10 MILLION Japanese workers on the site in short shifts. It’s do or die time for Japan.

          – If steam increases and temperature there is big problem as this is an unmoderated fast reaction which could accelerate out of control.


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  • many moons

    I think they should bulldose the 6 reactors into the pacific and call it a day…then shut down all other plants and live with the fact that we kill a whole ocean…we may need to do something drastic to end this…seems like the Pacific won’t turn out to well anyway…at least we can preserve the land and crops.


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    • The corium may be 100 meters down already.


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      • Sickputer

        What if it is 10 Kilometers down in the mudstone. Then we’re beginning to talk methane layer penetration in a year or so. Arto begins to look like a savant.

        More likely it is a hundred l yards deep. Still in range for my shaped neutron bomb plan. Bruce and I are ready to drill the fracking holes. ;-)


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      • Arizonan Arizonan

        How or when will we know how far down it is? It has seemed an impossible thing to guess at for months now.


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    • If they bulldoze all radioactive fuel into the Pacific, it not only pollutes the Pacific Ocean, it pollutes ALL OCEANS, GLOBALLY. They are all connected. Once it is in the ocean, it will evaporate and go up into the air with the water vapor, contaminating the whole planet via the air.. I would not suggest that particular method.

      How about horizontal drilling to find the coriums first?

      Once found, map them all VERY specifically… How deep, what size, shape, temp, how fast they are drilling down, etc..

      Then get the experts of the world together in a room like the UN or Hague or whatever, and decide the best way to get rid of the corium, given what we know about all of them…

      It may end up being a shaped charge, that drills down to the corium and drives it down into the ground and spreads it out at the same time, to dilute it and cool it off, stop the criticality and fission process.

      It may be a special kind of drill that sends something into the center of the corium blob to cool it off and dilute it… like a very high pressure boron, magnesium lead sand combination..

      So far, the nuke community seems to be stuck in a box, and have no creative solutions at all..

      They do not seem to be doing ANYTHING to stop what seems like Armageddon coming.

      Don’t they see it?


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      • Sickputer

        So you prefer microfine airblown radiation versus solids in the sea. I will take the sea. If I was in charge it would have been blown into the sea in June.


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  • PoorDaddy PoorDaddy

    Madness is right…US attitude consistently seems to be…….
    if we can’t buy it, bomb it. Runnin out of $, so the only option left is bomb it, whatever it is!
    I guess we might just treat it like any other thorn in our side…..SHOCK AND AWE!
    I suppose we’ve got a few bunker fucking busters layin around.


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  • NUKE THE NUKES!

    Oh wait, that won’t work…unless somehow we can spin the media to support it. then it should be fine.


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  • James2

    That was a viable idea- to somehow open the tops of the reactors so you would have had several fuel pools, instead of blown up reactors.

    Heck for all we know they might have tried it….


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  • Heart of the Rose Heart of the Rose

    THIS conversation…worth being the little bird..or even the fly on the wall…lolol ..


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  • or-well

    shaped charge?
    Kinetic Reactor Inhibiting Shaped Procedure
    KRISP
    Chu’s ad hoc group
    Gov’t Official Offer Forum
    GOOF


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  • or-well

    Interesting this is in the Washington Post.
    Aren’t they an “organ” of the 1% view?


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  • entropy

    If thier going to do that, I’m moving to newts new’ moon state’.


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