Nuclear Waste: Drone buzzes Fukushima temporary storage facility

[Generic Other]

Millions of tons of radioactive soil and debris can be seen packed in black bags in a temporary storage site at Tomioka, Fukushima prefecture.

Wow. How long do those plastic bags have to be stored?

[ViseGrip]

1. Forever. The waste never dies, yet the bags deteriorate. We are having YUGE

problems with storage of waste from this type of energy.

[Old Crow]

7. Oh, c'mon now. You're exaggerating.

Nuclear power plant waste is dangerous for only 24,400 years. That's a mere 12,000 human generations.

[FBaggins]

20. You're almost as far off

The waste that we're talking about is almost exclusively cesium (134 and 137). Their half lives are only 2 and 30 years respectively.

So 80% of the 134 is already gone.

[Old Crow]

21. Very interesting.

I certainly hope you're correct. Do you have a link to back this up? Or can you give a little more info? It's a terribly important topic and I'd like to be better informed. Thanks.

[FBaggins]

22. That's primarily what you get from a meltdown.

If you have a meltdown in a BWR or PWR, there are three primary radioactive emissions.

The first are the noble gasses. They're incredibly radioactive, but thus have short half-lives. They're usually ignored because they're lighter than air and don't react with anything else (i.e., they won't come down with rain), so they tend not to result in any danger.

Next you have the radioiodine (I131). That's usually the most significant health risk (and why thyroid cancers are the most common health impact), but with a half-life of eight days, it's gone in a few weeks... so there wouldn't be any of that in those bags either.

The longest-lasting release of consequence is cesium. Both iodine and cesium are "volatile" at meltdown temperatures and turn to gas (And thus are released in venting the reactor containment). Cesium has a short half-live when compared to most parts of reactor fuel (uranium/plutonium), but long when compared to the other things that an event like Fukushima might release.

Here's a resource

Note that things are very different in a case like Chernobyl - where physical pieces of the core were released when it burned in the open air. Very tiny amounts (milligrams) of less-volatile elements like plutonium can be released when the iodine/cesium volatilizes in a meltdown, but at Chernobyl, the core burned in the open air... so much larger amounts were released.

Obviously, fallout from nuclear weapons testing is an entirely different story.

[Old Crow]

24. Thank you!

That was really helpful and I appreciate your willingness to share your expertise.

Understanding this better makes those millions of bags of waste look a lot less nightmarish.

[Baobab]

25. Mutated eight-legged pig from Chernobyl

[Old Crow]

28. I don't think anyone here is trying to minimize the severity of what happened ...

... or is continuing to happen, at Fukushima.

The discussion I was having with FBaggins was all about those millions of bags of radioactive waste. I hasten to add I am no expert. But from what FBaggins has said, and from what I've been able to learn from articles online, not all radioactive waste is the same. There's high-level, medium-level, and low-level radioactive wastes (and a number of subcategories therein). The material in those plastic bags is LLW (low-level waste), as evidenced by the fact that it's being stored in piles in plastic bags with no shielding, no cooling, and workers are able to work around the bags with nothing but dust masks. Most of the bags contain low-level waste soil that was scraped from the surface of the ground around the plant.

This is not stuff you'd want to ingest, nor would you want to breathe any dust coming off of it. Nor would you want it in contact with your body for any length of time. But from what I'm reading, in a span of 30 years or so, virtually all of that LLW will have radioactivity levels indistinguishable from normal background radiation. At that point, the waste in the bags will be processed as regular garbage or landfill.

To keep LLW away from human hands and lungs while it degrades, the usual procedure is to bury the bags in a concrete vault.

The mistake I made at the start of this thread was in thinking all radioactive waste is the same, when that isn't remotely true.

[Baobab]

29. Thats not true, there are frequent spikes where the radiation will go very high, that indicates

gamma radiation sources, small pieces of really radioactive materials are mixed inside of that dirt.

[Old Crow]

30. Well, I'm happy to learn more.

Can you share a link please?

[FBaggins]

31. Links please.

Your claim simply isn't true.

The only gamma sources are the short-lived barium atoms that are a decay product of cesium. There have been no "small pieces" of "really radioactive" materials from Fukushima either. The release was almost entirely gaseous.

[FBaggins]

32. Eight-legged pigs that are not from Chernobyl

It isn't unheard of in pigs. Birth defects of all kinds happen all over the world (in people too of course). It's only when the FUD-mongers find one near a reactor that they suddenly claim a causal relationship. That's not science... it's sideshow hawking.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721872/Meet-octopig-Chinese-farmer-shocked-discover-four-extra-legs-protruding-piglets-stomach.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/7045083/This-real-life-Spider-Pig-with-eight-legs-has-stunned-the-internet.html

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19501121&id=9KgpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6_UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6383,2098709&hl=en

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1993-01-27/news/9301060106_1_norfolk-island-pine-ice-cream-pig

https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=25768

[cantbeserious]

2. Thank You For Sharing The Truth

eom

[Pharaoh]

3. Holy fuck!

Is this real!

Wow! People need to get this.

[uhnope]

10. no, it's RT

no telling what the truth is in any Putin TV video

[Generic Other]

11. Google images show these piles all over Fukushima

I trust my own eyes.

[uhnope]

12. lol here's some more google images for you

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/bizarre-google-earth-footage-captures-7701315

[Generic Other]

14. My family lives 100 kilometers from Fukushima

They don't think it's some funny joke. Are you seriously suggesting that the hundreds of images of piles of collected waste are hoaxes like UFO sightings? You are really delusional if this is the case. Honestly. I rarely post any news of Fukushima just because I don't feel like dealing with posters like you who think the devastation of Fukushima is somehow being exaggerated. It really shows what lengths some people will go to defend nuclear power. Hope you never have to eat your words with a dose of radiation. You live by any nuke towers we can monitor for you? Because sooner or later, you will witness firsthand what lousy neighbors they make.

[uhnope]

17. if you follow the thread

you will see that I was questioning the veracity of RT, as part of a larger issue of using it as a source at all.
I don't doubt there could be truth to the report and would be interested in some news from a decent source.
This has nothing to do with defending nuclear power or thinking Fukushima was exaggerated.
I hope your family is alright.

[Generic Other]

18. Like I said, I know the Japanese authorities are removing contaminated topsoil

I just didn't realize how much! The RT drone seems to have captured real images (as have others you can view by googling). It is clearly one of the ways they are trying to contain the poison. Not very effective if you ask me.

As for doubting a news source's veracity, I try and use common sense and a case by case analysis of the evidence presented. I have read outright lies told by NYT and our so-called MSM too many times. How is that any different than Rt's reporting? Like most of us, I have to look beyond what they say. Images are much harder to fake. I don't care where I get glimmers of information. I only hope they all add up to some small sliver of truth in the end.

Sorry if I seemed testy, but many posters get verbally piled on by DUers who mock and ridicule anyone who dares to even raise the topic every time they ever post anything Fukushima related. It certainly creates a damper effect on conversation.

[uhnope]

19. that's cool.

I'm sorry people gang up on you, if you are just try to raise the issue of the continuing effects of the Fukushima disaster. (I haven't seen the threads...some people do pile on if they think something is a baseless CT, but like I said I haven't seen the threads you're referring to and I'm not saying you're posting CTs. I sometimes mock CTers but that had nothing to do with my replies to you.)

[7wo7rees]

26. Sorry for what you and your family are dealing with.

Very sorry for the members here who attack you for your source.
Check out Arne Gunderson,

www.fairewinds.org

He was at 3 Mile Island.

http://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education//cctv

[FBaggins]

23. It's always a good idea to doubt anything you read on RT...

... however, it's pretty well known that soil decontamination in Japan is done by scraping the top layer of soil and carting it off. IIRC, they're up over 11 million tons (in 1-ton bags) removed.

I don't know about the provenance of the video here, but it fits with what has been reported (that lots of it is being stored temporarily in the province). There are likely a number of similar locations.

[Agony]

27. It's always a good idea to doubt anything you read on CNN...

...

[uhnope]

33. false equivalence much?

[C Moon]

4. It's amazing how much damage humans can do. And it's not like we don't know.

[Jopin Klobe]

5. ... and, it's amazing ...

... how much God damned money they make off of it ...

[C Moon]

9. +1000GB

[Ford_Prefect]

6. What happens when the next tsunami hits? How long to migrate to Puget Sound, or Catalina, or Panama?

[zeemike]

8. Well if it washed it all out to sea they would not have to worry

About what they are going to do with it all.

[Generic Other]

16. I live by Puget Sound and worry about it too

Fukushima already has made it all but a certainty that the generation of farmers currently working my family's land in Japan will be the last. Only a matter of time until people start showing health effects. Then the real exodus will begin.

[mjvpi]

13. They haven't dealt with the damaged reactor yet.

My understanding is that they are still trying to build an "ice wall" down into the soil to control what is continuing to come out of the bottom of one of the damaged reactors. I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that they are continuing to pump water into either reactor two or three, to keep it cool. Some of those bags contain the water after it has been used for cooling. I will have to go back and read. Telco has maid it hard to follow.

[Generic Other]

15. The Japanese government suppresses information

Heaven forbid we get honest information about the dangers nuclear power plants pose. And there are posters on DU who don't want anyone even discussing the topic as the conclusion always boils down to how much risk we are willing to live with. I am sick to death of nuclear power advocates and their radioactive blather.

Welcome to DU.