Published: April 2nd, 2012 at 2:33 am ET
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Title: Fukushima…radiation so high – even robots not safe
Uploaded by: TheBigPictureRT
Upload Date: Mar 30, 2012
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. More than a year into the nuclear crisis at Fukushima – radiation levels have now reached their highest point yet. What does all this mean – and what should nuclear supporters in America be taking away from the continuing crisis?
More about Kamps: “Prior to joining Beyond Nuclear he was for eight years the Radioactive Waste Specialist at Nuclear Information and Resource Service”
At 6:40 in
KAMPS: Unit 4 storage pool… The entire building is listing including the pool. What they have is steel jacks underneath the pool to try to keep the floor from falling out or the pool from flipping over.
If that cooling water supply is lost, it will be just a few hours at most before that waste is on fire. 135 tons outside of any radioactive containment. They would be direct releases into the environment. 100% of cesium-137 could be released to the environment.
Published: April 2nd, 2012 at 2:33 am ET
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I am amazed and aghast they haven't offloaded this pool yet.
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Perhaps it is not possible to unload because the pool contains a few (or more) melted rod-assembleys.
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The fuel can not be unloaded for several reasons.
1. Most of the fuel is too radio logically and thermally hot to move into dry casks.
2. The refueling crane is destroyed.
3. The overhead equipment crane is destroyed
4. Melted fuel can not be removed easily
5. Dose rates on the refueling floor are probably limiting.
If the only problem was melted assemblies then, like TMI, it might take a year or two to remove the fuel. Like Arnie has always said this is the biggest threat.
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Methods to remove radiation from the body
http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/p/radiation-decorporation-resources.html
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Thanks, stock. Will add this to the growing Radiation Eposure and Protection Forum at RC
http://realitycheck.no-ip.info/forum/index.php/topic,9.0.html
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Well the only way is using atom bomb to destroy the whole area and to burn up everything.
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Burning does nothing to the radionucleids. They go up the stack to become more fallout into the atmosphere. Burning radioactive waste is about the worst thing that can be done to spread the radiation. Japan's bureaucrats are contaminating the entire chain of islands burning radioactive waste across Japan, truly stupid.
Any idea of using even more atomic bombs to spread even more atomic waste into the atmosphere is simply absurd.
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Fred, it's worse than stupid, they are intentionally spreading radioactive fallout in areas which haven't been affected very much. They want people to die from cancer and heart disease.
That mayor who got a heart attack and died recently attended an incineration test the day before his heart attack.
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never mind every one you can cure for fear of radiation by going to work in fukushima
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Fukushima cures cancer.
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I just love the word.."if".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0catEdRqGX4
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RT @fukushima_actu #福島 JAXA New Radiation Detection Camera Ready (DeviceMAG): Fears surrounding the nuclear cat… http://www.devicemag.com/2012/04/02/jaxa-new-radiation-detection-camera-ready/
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@Whoopie..Thanks for this post..perhaps after they quit staring at it with their hi tech gizmos..they will consider increasing the evacuation zone…
More likely… they just are going to have a great view of watching it happen.
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Now ALL THREE FUKU NUKES are too hot to work around. NOT EVEN ROBOTS can work around these three reactors. SFP 4 is in grave danger. Ongoing earthquakes further weaken Building 4. 134 tons of burning molten fuel would wipe out Japan and USA. No choice now but to fill these 4 buildings with sand and concrete. Build casket around all four buildings. UN must take over efforts to contain Fuku from TEPGOV.
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From reports, the fuel in this pool has caught fire a few times already, how much/bad, we may never know !
So damaged rods are in pool !
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Kevin Kamps estimates it will take $10 billion to decommission Fuku plants. If the decommissioning includes digging out the 3 coriums from the ground under the plants, the cost to decommission Fuku will be a minimum of $100 billion, if it can be done at all. TEPGOV TEPID efforts to deal with Fuku are several orders of magnitude less than what it would take to actually deal with the problem. Nationalize TEPCO, UN step in!
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They(coriums) can't be dug out like truffles..IT is hot ..in chem transformation and on the move.
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Yes, like 3500 degree LAVA, but fissioning.
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@philipupnorth..yes…exactly.
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At 7:06..a chart worth looking at..showing how things go under the reactors..
I wish I could find the original.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnFY0au9vPU&feature=related
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It's like deja vu all over again…Yogi Berra
Like the Deep Water Horizon oil volcano, you don't pick the guys that caused the disaster, to fix it…duh!
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The Japanese would rather die than admit the truth.
The only trouble, is that they are taking everyone else with them, especially North America.
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If this isn't scary enough there are 500 of these things around the world and there were hundreds more to be built. You'll notice nothing happens that the citizens want until it gets so bad they just go ape. If another nuclear power plant let's say in the USA were to meltdown and destroy a city nuclear power is done. There are numerous plants on fault lines and what better way to destroy this country than for terrorists to bomb a nuclear power plant. This technology was created out of war and it will produce billions of gallons of waste over the next hundred years and all you can do is store it. It's time to close these things and grow hemp like they should have been doing all along.
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I think its safe to say that its absolutely time to bury the entire site. Build outer structures from a rebar type steel mesh, and fill the entire thing with concrete. Box in the site, thats all you can do at this point. Who has decades to give TEPCO for cleanup? Am I to believe NOTHING weather/earthquake will happen for decades and that the site is safe?
If reactor 4 crumbles, Japan is finished. Unfortunately those idiots will also takeout about a zillion US residents as well, California and Hawaii will be destroyed thanks to TEPCO's absolte negligence. And TEPCO is worried about accounting to shareholders? You havent seen ANYTHING until unit 4 destroys the Japanese economy and takes down California. There won't be enough money in the world to cover those costs. The moment unit 4 crumbles, TEPCO/the Japanese government is finished.
Why the US government (and the rest of the world) isn't mandating action by Japan is beyond me.
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Uranium oxide fuel rods will not combust. They cannot burn. They can melt and give off metal fumes like DU except for the fission product kickers adding to the otherwise slow disintegration of U. The zirconium cladding might ignite though, at 2000 degrees F. If SFP4 has melted some already how hot did the temps go?
As far as claims that corium remains hot to 3500 degrees F, refer to in the direct videos taken by the Russians of the elephants' feet. In fact, the vitrification is analagous to dry cask separation or a natural steady state cold shutdown. Corium stops the fissioning and apparently from the Russian videos, is not superhot, as they were close to the corium. Burning through sand/concrete (mostly sand) forms it. If you have been close to hot lava you know the feeling. I just did not see that in their eyewitness video of the corium.
thanks to all who are advocating entombment with sand and concrete. Ask a quarry or landfill operator how long it would have taken if they had done that last March. My guess is with all the Komatsus available they coulda done it in two weeks…set up a big conveyor belt like in a quarry and dumped a mountain of volcanic sand on the mess. Woulda been a done deal. Instead they exposed their nation to needless radiation sickness. To stupid to drive a nucklar ractor I guess.
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Yes, so the point is the situation is totally out of control, and they think it will be cheaper to decomission the plant over 40 years. The problem is that they don't have that kind of time. Can you imagine another tidal wave knocking that fuel down and just washing it into random places scattered around the cities?
I could give a crap about the shareholders, because the lawsuits coming are going to render "cost savings" irrelevant.
At least if they bury the site, they can stop the bleeding, because at this point it is totally clear that they can't clean it up and we simply cant wait 40 years while all this crap is precariously perched awaiting another disaster.
I mean now they say they have to develop special robots and cameras? Develop? How long is that going to take? So how many more people are exposed to leaking radiation in that time? How much more of the pacific ocean is contaminated while you design a robot? From the beginning you can just look at the situation, the Home Depot drain hoses cooling nuclear wreckage.
The only downside to the entombment is that aspect of the ocean. Obviously if they didn't have to spray water on the reactors we wouldn;t be looking at all that waste either, but will entombing the site stop the leaching of radiation into the pacific? Is that not related to watering down the reactors?
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Time for more advanced civilizations to take over in Japan.
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Those are which? In your opinion?
Stupid comment.
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I am not implying that my own government (U.S.) is not also in the pocket of the nuclear industry but I think that we would probably use more effective techniques of dealing with the crisis. A lone helicopter dropping a bucket of water into the wind, the spreading of clay on the sea floor, the burning of irradiated debris are frightening examples of the child-like approach currently underway.
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why are they not considering mechanical (not electrical) robotics?
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reinforced concrete. stable/no leaks. use mech. robots to encase #4sfp. they must be thinking of things like this.
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