#nuclearcores — Public Fediverse posts

.> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....

.> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...

.> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.

.> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....

.> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...

.> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.

.> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....

.> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...

.> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.

.> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....

.> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...

.> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.

.> Because the melted nuclear cores (corium) of reactors 1, 2 & 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are somewhere underneath the three reactor buildings, having melted out, workers at TEPCO have been pouring cold water on the corium since the meltdowns to cool the corium. This is both to prevent spontaneous fissioning, and also to carry heat away from the mess so that it may eventually be removed sometime later in this century (the melted core of Chernobyl is still underneath the reactor, almost 40 years later, and still has not schedule for removal). All of the water used to cool the corium is then pumped into holding tanks on the grounds of the Fukushima site. Also, groundwater flows through the basements that hold the corium, and that adds to the water being pumped out....

.> Because the dumping of the tanks is a political negative for the government of Japan, a pipeline is being built so that the water can simply be dumped via underground pipe, and the theatrics of dumping the tanks into the ocean can be avoided in the future. A political solution to a problem with few mechanical solutions...

.> What else can be done? As Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has said, the water could be moved to much larger tanks and held for up to a century, which would facilitate some further decay of the radioactivity of particles before they are released. However, this would be seen as a political negative as it would fill parts of Japan up with large holding tanks for a century, and remind everyone about the problem.