Fuel Rod Removal Operation Begins At Tsunami-hit Fukushima 101
rtoz writes "TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has started removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building of Tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station in Japan. The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant's No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask. This step is an early milestone in decommissioning the facility amid doubts about whether the rods had been damaged and posed a radiation risk. 22 unused fuels will be moved to the cask a task which is planned to be completed by November 19. After being filled with fuel, the cask will be closed with a lid, and following decontamination, will be taken down to ground level and transported to the common spent fuel pool on a trailer. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing the fuel into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. The entire removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014."
And then? And then? (Score:5, Informative)
But the one question no one seems able to answer is what you ultimately will do with all that toxic spent fuel. Simply speaking there is no answer, no plan for what to do with nuclear waste from any plant damaged or otherwise.
It's a start, but there is a LONG way to go (Score:4, Informative)
They are just starting to move fuel assemblies which where removed from their reactors prior to the earthquake. Where it will be a good thing to get these things out of the leaky cooling pools the real work has still not started. It's not really going to be possible to start working on the reactors which melted down for a few more years. Even then, it won't be possible for humans to approach so the work will require invention of remotely operated tools that can deal with the unique situation, and tasks necessary to clean up this mess.
It took 14 years to decommission Three Mile Island after the accident there which was exceedingly less complicated because the containment structures where not blown open and there was only one reactor involved. We are decades away from being done here with multiple reactors at least partially melted down, sea water being used for coolant and the extensive damage to the containment structures.
This is a great start, but until they get all of the high level material into an inherently stable condition and/or offsite we won't be able to breath easy. Keep it going TEPCO."
Re:And then? And then? (Score:4, Informative)
No-one takes in another country's nuclear waste, at least not spent fuel or reprocessed waste. Britain and France used to reprocess spent fuel from Japan but the recovered uranium and plutonium was reformatted into fresh fuel elements and they along with the waste from the reprocessing operation has been returned to Japan [sellafieldsites.com].
Re:And then? And then? (Score:2, Informative)
"Yeah, quit bitching about Uranium fucking hippies, it's half-life is only 4.468 billion years"
If it was just Uranium they wouldn't be spent fuel rods. Try taking a look at this, you might get what I'm talking about: Fission_product [wikipedia.org].