Nuclear Energy — Current Status of Fukushima
One of our regular readers makes this comment:
Craig, if we don’t get that potential raging hell problem solved at Fukushima, all that (concern about renewable energy) will not be the issue. We are one earthquake from having the cooling pond on Reactor #4 getting toppled, releasing the equivalent radiation of 17,000 Hiroshimas. At that point, green energy will be academic. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” – Pogo
My sources? All the nuclear engineers and scientists who became disenchanted while they worked inside the system, and who finally left and turned around to start fighting nuclear energy from any source. Here’s one of numerous videos on the current status of Fukushima, from a nuclear engineer with 40 years’ experience with the subject.
Don’t mean to be a drag about it, as I am just as interested in green energy as you are.
Arm waving nonsense and piffle.
Yes the fuel rods (1331 spent, 202 unused) are being transferred to another coolant pool. But the prospect of them leaking is in no way “the equivalent of 17000 Hiroshima’s”.
They are removing the fuel bundles as we are discussing this.
While I am interested in the process, it looks well contained.
Interestingly, if the Fukushima park had used a breeder reactor, there would be far less waste to plague us today, but the concern of them building a nuclear weapon was too great, even though they have proven to be quite peaceful for the last two generations. We should think more carefully about waste, and how to reduce the amount of waste produced by nuclear power generation… But screaming that “the world as we know it will end” as a result of waste transfer from a compromised containment dome… That’s just making environmentalists vulnerable to “chicken little” attacks from those who seek to discredit us. It doesn’t help.
More radioactive isotopes will be released this year by coal power plants than were released in total by the Fukushima incident, and that’s an annual release, not a direct-hit-from-a-record-breaking-earthquake/tsunami release.