Take the Chernobyl option: entomb the Fukushima reactors
TEPCO will not have a solution to the Fukushima disaster for another ten years, according to their scientists who spoke with Senator Wyden in his recent visit.
Ten years?
So how is TEPCO handling the hot reactors in the meantime?
Remember those news reports last year, where TEPCO workers had no solution but braved radiation so they could pour water onto the exposed fuel rods? No one knew what they'd do with the radioactive water afterward, of course, but they didn't know what else to do.
That's what they're doing. Still. For the last thirteen months. They're pouring water onto the spent fuel rods, it's boiling away into radioactive steam, and, in a brilliant solution, TEPCO just dumps the radioactive water into the ocean.
The reactors, like active volcanoes, meanwhile are spitting out hot particles of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. Those particles are getting caught up in car air filters from Japan all the way to the greater Seattle area. Sea kelp as far away as the west coast of the US has been contaminated with large amounts of radioactive iodine.
TEPCO plans to continue for the next ten years.
There is a solution, one that nuclear scientists recommended at the start. The Chernobyl solution. It will cost TEPCO four reactors, but those reactors are already gone.
Petition: Tell TEPCO we can't wait ten years: Take the Chernobyl Solution.
Also posted at http://icarus.dreamwidth.org, comment wherever you please.
Ten years?
So how is TEPCO handling the hot reactors in the meantime?
Remember those news reports last year, where TEPCO workers had no solution but braved radiation so they could pour water onto the exposed fuel rods? No one knew what they'd do with the radioactive water afterward, of course, but they didn't know what else to do.
That's what they're doing. Still. For the last thirteen months. They're pouring water onto the spent fuel rods, it's boiling away into radioactive steam, and, in a brilliant solution, TEPCO just dumps the radioactive water into the ocean.
The reactors, like active volcanoes, meanwhile are spitting out hot particles of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. Those particles are getting caught up in car air filters from Japan all the way to the greater Seattle area. Sea kelp as far away as the west coast of the US has been contaminated with large amounts of radioactive iodine.
TEPCO plans to continue for the next ten years.
There is a solution, one that nuclear scientists recommended at the start. The Chernobyl solution. It will cost TEPCO four reactors, but those reactors are already gone.
Petition: Tell TEPCO we can't wait ten years: Take the Chernobyl Solution.
Also posted at http://icarus.dreamwidth.org, comment wherever you please.