Futility at Fukushima

With the news that the Japanese government is taking over cleanup work at Fukushima Daiichi comes the realization that the technical situation there has, for the moment and the immediate future, reached a state of futility.  Here are the facts:

1. The management and engineering expertise of TEPCO, the utility company that built and operated the plant, have been deemed inadequate for coping with the ongoing problems.

2. No one knows when the groundwater that flows naturally from nearby mountains, becoming radioactive as it passes through the ruined reactor site, started to pollute the ocean, but there is little reason not to conclude that it has been happening ever since the March 2011 meltdowns.

3. Some of the radioactive water is captured and put in tanks, but the onsite storage space is limited, while the groundwater is essentially infinite.  And the tanks are leaky.

4. No one knows where radioactive water is leaking from in the reactor buildings themselves, because crews are unable to approach the buildings.

5. Plans to create an impervious underground wall between the reactors and the sea by freezing the soil are experimental, far beyond the state-of-art.*

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6. The spiraling cost of the cleanup is unraveling the government’s framework for dealing with the disaster.

Japan is bleeding profusely from this open wound in its eastern side.  This is what sets nuclear power technology apart from other energy sources: when it fails catastrophically, for whatever reason, the consequences are beyond calculation.  When added to the lack of politically and environmentally practical solutions for longterm disposal of reactor fuel wastes, the result is a technology not suited for use in massive electrical grids.  Will nations continue to invest in it?  Of course, because after more than 50 years of government subsidy, plus the lingering effect of Cold War era propaganda that made being pro-nuclear patriotic, it is still deeply ensconced in the market.

*See “How to Build an Ice Wall Around a Leaking Nuclear Reactor” by Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic for what happens when a writer asks only sources in the business of building ice walls about building ice walls, rather like asking the barber if you need a haircut. Will Mr. Madrigal get a p.r. job offer from TEPCO?

 

 

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