DJ US Marines Being Sent To Japan For Nuclear Response

[IScreamSundays]

Source: MorningStar

DJ US Marines Being Sent To Japan For Nuclear Response
31/03/2011 04:41
WASHINGTON (AFP)--The U.S. military Wednesday ordered a Marine unit specializing in emergency nuclear response to deploy to Japan to assist local authorities in addressing the massive crisis, officials said.

Some 155 Marines from the service's Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are scheduled to leave the U.S. Thursday and arrive in Japan Friday, a U.S. defense official said.

The CBIRF team, trained in identifying chemical agents, monitoring radiation levels and decontaminating personnel, wouldn't participate in the frenzied efforts to stabilized the reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, crippled by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The plant was also hit by several explosions, triggering fears of a catastrophic meltdown as radiation wafted into the air and seeped into the ocean.

Read more: http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/markets/newsfeeditem.aspx?id=134292890340446

[jtuck004]

1. I think that would be best. Because I am watching, on NHK, a guy

dribbling a white resin from a green K-Mart plastic watering can with onto the floors, the idea being that it would keep radioactive dust from moving around the area and into the ocean. While it spews 1 S/hr at the front, and probably 20 or more near the site of the core rupture. One guy and a gallon of paint. Not that they underestimate the problem.

What do you think the first communication back to the U.S. will be?

From the article:"Admiral Robert Willard, who is overseeing U.S. military assistance after Japan's earthquake and tsunami, said March 17 that 450 radiological and disaster specialists were awaiting orders to deploy as Japanese teams tried to cool fuel rods in reactors at the damaged Fukushima plant."

It's a day or so away from 3 weeks. Why wait till everything burns and blows up, then call for a bigger response?

And if we don't start yesterday on removing the spent fuel from our reactors after this lesson, starting, say, yesterday,
we deserve the tragedy we are going to get.

[avaistheone1]

2. Yup. The timing of the military assistance is mighty curious.

Seems as timely as the FEMA "assistance" following hurricane Katrina to New Orleans.

[AndyTiedye]

3. We Haven't Got a Safe Place to Put the Waste

Yucca Mountain would not be a safe place at all, there is an earthquake fault running right through the middle of it.

Of course, storing the waste was never the real plan anyway, they intended to "recycle" it, i.e. to transition
to running the plants on plutonium, without ever informing the public of this fact. This transition was obviously
under way already in Fukushima (where they use terms like "MOX" to try to hide this act).

[jtuck004]

4. I know. But it would be just as safe in seperate circulation pools,

away from the reactor. Build a shed over it, doesn't matter. Will take a few years for it to cool enough to put into casks then sit somewhere.

but today it's not only not safe, it intereferes with and exacerbates any problem with the reactor core, gets in the way. One hypothesis is that the explosion of the hydrogen generated by the fuel rods in one of the reactors (#3?) actually broke the core, and accounts for at least one breach.

That's worse than not safe.

[enough]

5. This is an important point. Spent fuel rods in the US should be removed away from reactors, NOW.

The rods should especially not be stored in elevated pools above the reactors, as they are in Fukushima and in many reactors now operating around the US. Removing the spent fuel rods from this precarious position should not wait till we find a "permanent" place to put them, which may be never.

Here's an interesting interactive site from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which will tell you about the reactors near you, and whether they have their spent fuel rods stored in elevated pools above the reactors.

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/reactor-map/embedded-flash-map.html