Helluva legacy we are leaving.
Sometimes it challenges my ability to process reality.

Bomb test contamination, all the contamination from reactor operation,
50 some years of spent fuel buildup_
TMI, Chernobyl.. and the kicker,
Fukushima-Daiichi.

Madness.
And yet; they say I'm stupid to be anti-nuke.
I disagree.

I apologize to future generations for what we have done.



:sadness:





The Ongoing Damage and Danger at Fukushima
[link to www.fairewinds.com]

[snip]

HC: Well I mean, the only time they have ever tried to remove melted fuel was at Three Mile Island. And that took them 10 years, did it not?

AG: Yes. And that was easy.

HC: But that really was not melted like the way these 3 have really . . .

AG: Right. TMI had a blob of nuclear fuel on the bottom. But it had not breeched the vessel. All of these vessels have been breeched, the control rods come in at the bottom and they are leaking like a sieve. So it is likely that fuel has oozed out through the control rods, if not burned it's way right out.

It is likely Unit II has burned it's way right out and is now lying on the concrete. And I think that is really the big change . . . , in my view of the problem, is what they are finding in Units I, II, and III now. Let's think of a nuclear reactor as a pressure cooker.

....


AG: So they have contaminated the reactor, the bottom of the containment, the torus, which is that donut-shaped thing, the reactor building which is outside that, the thing that blew up, the floor of that is contaminated, and the building next to it, the turbine hall, should be the least radioactive and it is still a million disintegrations per second per every liter. So my thought is now, considering the extent of this contamination, that it is not fair to the workers to have them going in and clean this. And I think if I were Tokyo Electric's management, a couple of more years out after the cooling is completely done, I would consider filling up those containment buildings with concrete and walking away for 300 years. You know, obviously monitoring it, but I do not think it is fair to the workers to expose them to the extraordinary levels they will receive if they were to try to turn that site back into a green field.

HC: They could not turn it back into a green field. That is ridiculous. But anyway . . .

AG: Yes, you are right. And of course the big concern would be you have got to make sure you have got it all captured and it is not going down into the water table.

HC: But it will, and if you put concrete on it, you know it is going to keep going down into the water table and you know it is going to keep contaminating the Pacific Ocean for the rest of time.

AG: Right. So there is no good solution.

HC: No there is none.

AG: Absolutely no good solution. But the solution would be to bore holes underneath and constantly pull water out from under the building so that whatever leaks down gets treated. So we are still back with these big de-mineralizers again. But to my mind, I could not, as a manager, order a couple of thousand workers to pick up extraordinarily high exposures to dismantle these plants at this point in time.