this isn't too much of a surprise to me and is indicative of "only the other guy suffers this dilemma" social constructs. the mind invariably wishes to believe that malfeasance happens elsewhere alone, but truth is it does not.
Poor buggers. It's not like they had tons of land to spare. (BTW, story says Cesium-137 persists in soils for 30 years. In reality the half-life of cesium 137 is 30 years which means that in 30 years there will be half as much cesium 137.
Those reactors certainly had their issues and if I remember correctly, were scheduled to be decommissioned real soon. The funny thing is though, it did survive the quake. If it wasn't for the tsunami, it probably would have had no problems at all. Not sure what the deficiencies were with the reactor, but fixing them probably would not have saved the plant from the tsunami.
Subsequent reports have indicated that they did not actually survive the quake and the cooling systems were already failing before the tsunami hit.
It wasn't only the massive tsunami that stripped the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant of its essential cooling capability on 11 March: themagnitude-9.0 megaquake had almost immediately caused a failure of the number 1 reactor's primary emergency backup cooling system, which uses the steam generated by the reactor to push coolant around it. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/megaquake-took-out-fukushimas.html
Yes, that`s how I understood it. Protocol in Japan is to shutdown reactors whenever an earthquake hits. My understanding is that it was all going smoothly until the tsunami wiped out the diesel generators that kept the water (coolant) flowing. A battery system kicked in at that point, but with all power lines cut and the generators gone, the water pumps eventually used up the battery reserve. After that, the reactor became critical. I actually wonder what would have happened if they chose to keep the reactor going instead of shutting it down. It probably would have been able to sustain itself without the generators or outside power lines and completely avoid the disaster.
Yep, you're right. Wow, that's embarrassing. I obviously only skimmed it, but boy did I skim the wrong parts! Well, that's interesting to say the least.
Fukushima fuel rods may have completely melted Stabilising the reactors is just the first stage of the operation to resolve the crisis. Tepco has said it won't be able to begin removing the fuel for another 10 years. Decommissioning the plant could take at least 30 years http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/02/fukushima-fuel-rods-completely-melted outstanding!!
