New images from inside Fukushima reactor spark safety worry

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MARI YAMAGUCHI 2 hours ago

TOKYO (AP) — Images captured by a robotic probe inside one of the three melted reactors at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant showed exposed steel bars in the main supporting structure and parts of its thick external concrete wall missing, triggering concerns about its earthquake resistance in case of another major disaster.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, has been sending robotic probes inside the Unit 1 primary containment chamber since last year. The new findings released Tuesday were from the latest probe conducted at the end of March.

An underwater remotely operated vehicle named ROV-A2 was sent inside the Unit 1 pedestal, a supporting structure right under the core. It came back with images seen for the first time since an earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant 12 years ago. The area inside the pedestal is where traces of the melted fuel can most likely be found.

An approximately five-minute video — part of 39-hour-long images captured by the robot — showed that the 120-centimeter (3.9-foot) -thick concrete exterior of the pedestal was significantly damaged near its bottom, exposing the steel reinforcement inside.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-nuclear-46f47feac0133640b9b72f7700b21f32

[lapfog_1]

1. I thought they were employing large robots to dismantle the cores and remove them

although I never heard WHAT they were going to do with the melted core of a nuclear reactor once it was "cut up" and removed.

When Chernobyl happened we all wrote it off on "bad Russian tech and procedures"... but Fukushima proved that these sort of power plants are unsafe no matter how well run.

And they will continue to be disasters for possibly centuries to come, something we have zero experience at dealing with.

[Tikki]

2. Truth is there will be disasters for lifetimes and very, very expensive ones.

We will ask our children and grandchildren and on to deal with these possibilities and the long time
waste storage issues into their futures.

The industry is incredibly expensive from start to it's never ending future.

Tikki

[hunter]

8. Global warming will be substantially worse.

It's quite likely our civilization will not survive global warming as billions of people die prematurely.

We must quit fossil fuels now. Fossil fuels will be the end of us.

I consider anti-nuclear activism and promotion of renewable energy schemes that are useless without fossil fuel "backup power" another form of climate change denial. I didn't used to feel that way, I used to be a fairly radical anti-nuclear activist, but I changed my mind.

Aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Germany, and Denmark have failed. They are all dependent on natural gas as the primary energy source. There's enough natural gas in the ground to destroy the world as we know it if we foolishly extract and burn it. It's best we leave all fossil fuels in the ground.

By my rough calculations purely renewable energy schemes could only support about four billion people or less. So who should die?

Wealthy people with their solar panels and batteries and electric cars are the least self sufficient people of all, they are entirely dependent on a functional civilization for their survival.

It's the meek who will inherit the earth, the people who scratch by every day with minimal resources and tiny environmental footprints, but only because there are so many of them.

Nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

[Tikki]

10. Correct, my grandchildren will not be inheriting my panels, batteries and cars..

But They will be inheriting the radiated waste and chance of dangerous exposure from nuclear production.

New tech will continue to be developed. Hopefully some new technology may move us less precariously into the clear. Even, you all, talk about new nuclear industry developments that might change some of the 70+ years of current nuclear industry dangers. Hopefully fossil fuel dependence will be ended.

The past and current COST of nuclear to acquire, develop, material, construction, maintenance, research, safety, Waste disposal, labor and community alliance and the inevitable shutdown will never go down.

It will always cost the taxpayers..more and more.

Tikki

[hunter]

11. I couldn't make your math work.

Mother Nature is unyielding.

I'm not willing to bet the future of our civilization on imaginary "new technology" or miraculous synergies.

It always fascinates me that the "real world" of the greens is a lot like the "real world" of big business, as if both are actual aspects of nature herself and not some arbitrary human fantasy.

I first met Helen Caldicott when I was an impressionable and slightly mad autistic spectrum seventeen year old high school dropout and part time college student. From then on I had many grand adventures as an anti-nuclear activist and eventually acquired a respectable university science degree.

When I first signed on to DU in 2002 I was still on the anti-nuclear side of the fence but I've changed my mind.

I'll leave you with this happy thought...

If you are an ordinary human being who wasn't born and raised in the deep, deep wilderness, sleeping with actual semi-domesticated wolves, then about half of the nitrogen in you was fixed by the Haber Process. (I sleep with semi-domesticated wolves. Mostly they eat chickens "retired" from the industrial egg industry.)

That's how dependent most of us are on heavy industry, now largely powered by fossil fuels, even the wolves who keep my feet warm at night.

[orthoclad]

12. 10,000 years from now the waste will still radiate

Will people even be able to read the warning signs? We can barely read English from a couple hundred years ago.

How many generations of people (and other life) will have to deal with the waste?

I'd rather do without tv, cars, and gadgets. I run on solar now.

The situation is dire. I'd be willing to use a few reactors built to US Navy standards, but we know damn right well corporate reactors will cut every corner they can, then abandon the mess.

[hunter]

14. You do not "run on solar now."

You are entirely dependent on our fossil fueled civilization like everyone else.

The only people who actually "run on solar now" live much as their distant ancestors did in very remote places, hunting and gathering, and they don't tend to have internet access.

Random google link:

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/meet-the-worlds-most-remote-tribes

The smallest environmental footprint I've ever had in my life was when I was living in the garden shed of a crazy Vietnam war veteran and foraging for food in dumpsters. That lifestyle was a reflection of my own mental health at the time but it was not sustainable.

Many fossil fuel wastes and other industrial toxic wastes have a half life of FOREVER.

[orthoclad]

15. No

[NickB79]

26. Life by and large deals with radiation just fine

Chernobyl, Fukushima and Bikini Atoll are wildlife sanctuaries now, despite the radiation. Just remove humans from driving, logging, mining, farming, fishing, hunting, building cities and otherwise using the land, and radiation becomes a non-issue in short order.

The only species that radiation really harms are those that are long lived, like humans.

It's a shocking and humbling realization that what we consider normal human activity is WORSE for the planet than a melted nuclear reactor or thermonuclear bomb detonation.

[womanofthehills]

16. Sun Zia wind farm will produce 3500 MWs

Nuclear reactors produce way less MWs and cost 4 times as much and need new uranium rods constantly- and there is no safe place to store all the used rods. The spent rods are on site making it dangerous if there is an earthquake, terrorist attack, corrosion etc.

Plus - the price of uranium is going up and we have relied on a % of our uranium from Russia.
Past uranium mining in the four corners has been linked to many cancers in theNavajo Nation and the tailings are still sickening the people because mine operators never cleaned up tailings.


I’m the opposite of wealthy, and I have had solar panels on my roof since 2000. I started out with used solar panels taken off of a building in Oklahoma. Out here in NM, the majority of my neighbors have solar panels - We all built our own houses so we aren’t exactly rich. You don’t need batteries. I lived totally off grid for 6 yrs. Now I’m connected to grid & can watch my meter spin backwards.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

23. 1/4 of 3500MW that is actually available at ALL TIMES

Is still very useful in terms of replacing fossil fuels. And most plants are not single reactors. And they fit in a tiny % of the land footprint that a wind farm does.

The frequency at which the 'capacity' is achieved with wind farms is essentially 0. IIRC, they tend to run at like 25-30% of 'capacity' as an average, and there's times they produce next to nothing.

A logical goal would be to have nuclear plants 'backing' the wind and solar farms, instead of what we have now. Coal and Methane-fueled Power Plants.

BTW: "Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) takes the current title of being the largest nuclear power plant in the world, boasting a net capacity of 7,965MW."

[cbabe]

3. Gates/Buffet and nuclear power

Radioactive grandkids?

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › 2021 › jun › 03 › bill-gates-warren-buffett-new-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-natrium

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to build new kind of nuclear reactor in ...

Jun 4, 2021Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to build new kind of nuclear reactor in Wyoming The project in Wyoming - the country's top coal-producing state - is a small advanced reactor with salt-based...

[cynical_idealist]

4. I think all the robots were killed by the radiation

so they haven't been able to follow their plan.

Imagine if this type of accident happened here under an R admin...

[NullTuples]

5. That was a pie-in-the-sky "what if we tried this..." plan that was floated.

The actual state of cleanup is...they've removed the intact spent fuel rods from the storage pool in Reactor building #3 as of last year. The rest of the actual work has been several steps removed, primarily trying to deal with the ever growing amount of irradiated & contaminated water that must be continually added to keep the melted down cores from overheating again.

From AP:
"11 years later, fate of Fukushima reactor cleanup uncertain"
https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-japan-explosions-tsunamis-29856c614e4b88018cf1ec857fe1bcbd

[Kid Berwyn]

6. That's just Reactor 1. There are two more reactors in melt-down.

And Number 3 used MOX, a mix of plutonium-uranium oxide fuel, spread worldwide in 2011.

[flying_wahini]

7. I wonder if all the oil and Gas folks have any remorse about quashing (clean air and sun) energy.

I know; silly question.

[hunter]

9. They are the same evil clowns who promote wind turbines as the answer to all our energy problems.

How soon we forget Enron...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

Wind energy cults are the best damned thing that ever happened to the natural gas industry.

[Blues Heron]

13. So should we tear down the existing windmills, cover up the solar panels?

wont that make the gas usage go way up? Realistically, nukes are not coming to save us today, tomorrow or next year, or ten years. So - tear down the windmills because they arent supplying 100 percent right now ? Talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good.

[womanofthehills]

18. Actually. The new wind farms being built produce more energy then the reactors

And cost one fourth of the price. It’s why corporations are building wind farms.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

24. Wind farms which are, and must be, backed by another CONTINUOUS energy source

Cause, ya know ... sometimes the wind doesn't blow, but people and businesses still need power?

Which is in most cases, natural gas or coal.

Also you're comparing a massive wind farm to 1 nuclear reactor. Most plants have more than 1 reactor.

I'm not anti-solar and wind, but the backup power needs to be something non-fossil-fuel based. Batteries (at present) are inefficient and very expensive. Power is wasted just by the act of putting the electricity into the battery, and then extracting it. Laws of thermodynamics and such.

[hunter]

19. Did I say any of those things?

This is not a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

It's a case of feel-good measures being futile. Solar and wind power are incapable of supplying 100% of our energy needs. There are no magical synergies or energy storage systems that can make it happen. Solar and wind power are simply not viable without fossil fuel or hydroelectric backup power. Hydroelectric power is a limited resource that's not available everywhere.

On a world scale nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely. Quitting fossil fuels entirely is something we must do.

I'll leave you with this:

EPA tightens mercury emissions limits at coal power plants

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening rules that limit emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants from coal-fired power plants, updating standards imposed more than a decade ago.

The rules proposed Wednesday would lower emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults.

The move follows a legal finding by EPA in February that regulating toxic emissions under the Clean Air Act is “appropriate and necessary” to protect the public health. The Feb. 17 finding reversed a move by former President Donald Trump’s administration to weaken the legal basis for limiting mercury emissions.

--more--

https://apnews.com/article/mercury-coal-epa-power-plant-health-9fc882da610ff750a91b7ac50ca33bd6

Toxic mercury has a half life of forever.

[Blues Heron]

20. So we should keep these windmills but not build any new ones?

do you think we should stop building windmills? If they are so bad shouldnt we stop building them?

[hunter]

21. All they'll do is prolong our dependence on natural gas.

They'll do nothing in the long run to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gasses that get dumped in the atmosphere.

It matters not at all if we cut the amount of natural gas we burn one year in half if we burn the other half the following year, and then the same amount of gas so long as we wish to support wind turbines.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels.

If we build nuclear plants we don't need wind turbines or the gas power plants that "back them up."

[Blues Heron]

22. arent they cutting into our dependence on natural gas? how could cutting half not matter?

if we turn them off wont we be more dependent on natural gas? I really dont get the logic of hating on windmills when we know the nuke cavalry wont be riding in to save us.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

25. Yeah I don't get the logic of always hating on wind/solar for that very same reason

HOWEVER ... if these farms are being built in places where FF plants are the only backups available, and there's not even plans or talking of building a non-FF way to back them up, then I get the argument that they are, in effect, prolonging our dependence on FF. And that is very often the case.

Sure, we'll use less FF over a given time period with the wind farm adding capacity to the (likely existing) FF power plant. But we need to be thinking of a path to using, like, NO fossil fuels ... in any application where a non-FF power source is technically feasible.

This leads me to feel like wherever there's already wind/solar farms, we need to (like, asap) build nukes or hydro, and that any large scale wind/solar projects in the future need to be backed by non-FF plants, just as a matter of course/policy.

[womanofthehills]

17. It's the oil & gas folks building the wind farms.

They know where the money is - same people.