Japan Nuclear Operator: Inevitable Will Need to Scrap Reactors 1,2,3,4

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

@Reuters
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FLASH: Japan nuclear operator: inevitable will need to scrap reactors 1,2,3,4

2 minutes ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply

Read more: http://twitter.com/#!/Reuters/status/52977647826907136

[kenny blankenship]

1. And by scrap I mean make children's lunchboxes from the irradiated steel containment vessel & pipes

But really, it wasn't already a settled matter last week?

[aquart]

2. Excuse me? They plan to reactivate 5 and 6???????

[jtuck004]

3. They need electricity. eom

[dkf]

4. I'm surprised anyone will be allowed in the area.

[jtuck004]

5. So far this isn't Chernobyl, and they ran the remaining 3 reactors for about

another 14 years or so there, even after the people in the towns were evacuted. Needed electricty.


Could be different here with the seawater spreading things, but that's just conjecture...

I am now waiting for the "unexpected" surprise that radiation moves around in seawater.

[liberation]

6. The whole "this is not Chernobyl" meme is pointless, this is its own disaster

involving a different trigger, and a much different scale number of nuclear reactors have been compromised (both operationally and structurally) at the same time than in 1986. Plus there is also the issue of the releases of plutonium in the area, the explosiveness of the zirconium in the rods, etc, etc.

[JackInGreen]

9. here here

though it may be the worst we have in memory, the comparison is hollow.

[jtuck004]

10. What exists, and what presents a problem, are two entirely different

things. Just because some people are afraid of a scary sounding list doesn't mean everyone is. People will be demanding power, and they won't really care where it comes from, or a lot about "etc, etc". Plutonium was reportedly found in the soil of Sweden (in the country where radiation from there was first detected), corresponding to date of the explosion and realease from Chernobyl 20 years later. It heavily irradiated areas 150 miles to the NE. Fukushima has not come close to that, yet, but they are spilling a lot of hot water.

Life goes on. (Well, perhaps except where TEPCO has control. Then it's at least a little dicier).

Just as a mental exercise try taking 30% of the electricy away from any city. Jobs stop, or maybe just living there, but there is no longer power to do what a lot of people used to do. Of course replace it, but what are you going to do in the intervebing 50-100 years. Even the damn photovoltaic factory in that prefect runs on nuclear power. Jobs will be gone, there won't be power where people used to live. For decades.

Does anyone really think they will go on an austerity program and drop their useage by 30%? Or jump right on installing millions of solar panels and engineering giant wave machines to generate electricy? Got an idea how many decades of labor and how much cost you are looking at? And it has to be redundant, so you have to build it two or three times. And don't shade my building.

Now there are reports of other power companies refusing to turn some reactors back on (that happened to be down for maintenance) until the surrounding community gives them the ok. Betcha if the rolling blackouts start making their way to the areas in the south the reactors are back on line in 90 days, reagardless of what happens here.

I could easily be wrong. There could be a whole nation that changes the way it lives. We will see.

[Kalun D]

12. Wrong, Yes You Are

""Just as a mental exercise try taking 30% of the electricy away from any city...I could easily be wrong.""

Very easily, Japan has 20% nuclear

""Of course replace it, but what are you going to do in the intervebing 50-100 years""

exaggerate much?

""And it has to be redundant, so you have to build it two or three times.""

exaggerate much?

""People will be demanding power, and they won't really care where it comes from""

LOLZ!!!! stop it, you are going to put comedians out of work!

Fukushima is a stake right through the heart of the nuclear power industry. It's a realization of what all the corporate naysayers told us for years couldn't happen.

[liberation]

14. Again, it is POINTLESS

You're comparing a disaster which has happened 20 years ago, and thus there has had been all that time to fully quantify its magnitude with a disaster which is just developing, and which we still do not know its correct magnitude. In the same sense that there is a point that it is too early to say that it could be worse than Chernobyl, by the same token it is even earlier to say that it will not be as bad.

Also the Plutonium in Chernobyl was a byproduct since the plant was actually a processor to convert Uranium into weapons grade Plutonium (the majority of the fuel was still Uranium), where as a whole reactor in Fukushima is actually using proper Plutonium as fuel (or the more marketing friendly "MOX" term) in both the reactor and as spent byproduct stored in the pools. So there are two completely different magnitudes of presence of the material in either case.

There is also the fact, as I mentioned, that all the reactors in Fukushima have been compromised in one way or another. And another fun fact that it is not being reported, Fukushima is not the only nuclear plant affected in that area (there is another one near by also damaged, granted to a much lesser extent).

Yes, Japan needs electricity. But it is way to early to predict which direction they will take, since this is still a developing possible catastrophe. Also you need to understand that Japan has a much different history with nuclear "incidents" than almost anywhere else on earth.

IMHO the "it is not Chernobyl" meme seems more like a red herring trying to diffuse the actual magnitude of the possible catastrophe to fit a pro-nuclear narrative. Just as is the labeling of any attempt at an honest stock of the situation as it being a form of "panic." Even if not a single person dies, having reactors compromised in one of the most densely populated islands on earth near one of the largest cities (if not the largest) in the world is still a major issue given the possible catastrophic consequences which I am sure the people in Fukushima are willing to give up their lives to avoid.

[Demeter]

16. Diaspora

Parceling out the newly landless, homeless Japanese among the remaining nations of the world, for as long as the planet can support our species.

[Juneboarder]

23. Welcome to the world's new dump

Could this possibly be the plan of the thugs to find a spot to put all their waste now? I mean, how convenient that Japan will soon be no longer habitable...

[aquart]

26. That's going to be happening a lot from now on.

[Kalun D]

11. No It's Not Chernobyl

It's worse than Chernobyl

4 reactors vs 1

close to the sea, close to the water table

Chernobyl the explosion stopped the meltdown, Fukushima is doing a slow meltdown and not stopping

Much more densely populated area

they're not running any of these reactors again ever.

[tahrir]

22. you're right - that was only one reactor, this is 4

[nc4bo]

24. Didn't realize this topic was double covered. I asked the same question???

:wtf:

[Roci]

7. This was a given

a) the units were 40 years old , and from what I remember one of them was to be de-commissioned anyway and
b) once you use SEAWATER in or near an atomic pile, you're done (Corrosion)
so it's no surprise to me

[Art_from_Ark]

8. Exactly

Of course, the way that Tokyo Denryoku (Tepco) has been "managing" this crisis, I would not be surprised by anything about this.

[Turbineguy]

13. May take 30 years to scrap.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/tokyo-electric-s-damaged-reactors-may-take-30-years-12-billion-to-scrap.html

"“Lack of public support may force the decommissioning of all six reactors,” said Daniel Aldrich, a political science professor at Purdue University in Indiana. Tepco “will try to salvage two if it can find public support, which may be unlikely.” "

[Demeter]

15. Follow shortly thereafter by the Island of Honshu, and the Nation of Japan

[Sherman A1]

17. No surprise there

Seawater, age, PR.... stating the obvious me thinks.

[trud]

18. yet another flash/urgent post of very old news

As soon as they used salt water as part of the cooling process, those reactors were written off.

[Hissyspit]

19. I believe they are referencing the news conference today.

But, yeah, you're right about the reactors.

[4saken]

20. I think this was assumed the moment seawater was put in...

From what I understand the seawater introduces to many minerals that become radioactive and cling to everything. Making cleaning to costly or impossible.

[dipsydoodle]

21. BBC News link

Japan is to decommission four stricken reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator says.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) made the announcement three weeks after failing to bring reactors 1 - 4 under control. Locals would be consulted on reactors 5 and 6 which were shut down safely.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12903725

[Frank Cannon]

25. This from Nuclear Operations Sciences - Hiroshima Institute of Technology (NOSHIT) n/t

[aquart]

27. Their name is what?