For GSS Energy Use chapter 4. Excerpt: NARAHA, Japan — In this small
farming town in the evacuation zone surrounding the stricken Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant, small armies of workers in surgical masks
and rubber gloves are busily scraping off radioactive topsoil in a
desperate attempt to fulfill the central government’s vow one day to
allow most of Japan’s 83,000 evacuees to return. Yet, every time it
rains, more radioactive contamination cascades down the forested
hillsides along the rugged coast. ...The government announced Tuesday
that it would spend $500 million on new steps to stabilize the plant,
including an even bigger project: the construction of a frozen wall to
block a flood of groundwater into the contaminated buildings. The
government is taking control of the cleanup from the plant’s operator,
the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The triple meltdown at Fukushima in
2011 is already considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since
Chernobyl. ...Some critics have dismissed the “ice wall” as a costly
technology that would be vulnerable at the blackout-prone plant because
it relies on electricity the way a freezer does, .... Nuclear experts
also questioned the government’s longer-term plan to extract the fuel
cores from the reactors, which if successful would eliminate the major
source of contamination. Some doubted whether it was even technically
feasible to extricate the fuel because of the extent of the damage
during the explosions and subsequent meltdowns. Even at Three Mile
Island, where the reactor vessel remained intact, removing the fuel by
remote-controlled machinery was a tricky engineering feat. While great
strides have been made in robotics since then, damage to the containment
vessels at Fukushima makes the problems there much more complex. Molten
fuel not only piled up like wax from a candle on the vessel floor, as
at Three Mile Island, but ran through cracks into the piping and
machinery below.... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/world/asia/errors-cast-doubt-on-japans-cleanup-of-nuclear-accident-site.html. Martin Fackler, New York Times. |
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