ScribbleLive

new tepco joke: Fukushima Daiichi's shoreline to be sandbagged The utility firm decided to sandbag the shoreline at the plant to a height of several meters"....."The Tokyo Electric Power Company moved emergency power generators to higher ground in order to prevent the reactors' cooling systems from failing in case a major tsunami hits the plant again." www3.nhk.or.jp
sandbags against a tsunami ?

@elainekirk They are probably just trying to protect themselves from the radioactive sea water.....

They are planning to fill the torus with "a kind of sticky concrete"? Is this new?

@General Armchair I think it must be Kurion: www.kurion.com

@es Looks like a pretty small company. Know anything about them?

Most coal contains uranium and thorium, as well as potassium-40, lead-210, and radium-226. The total levels are generally about the same as in other rocks of the Earth's crust. Most emerge from a power station in the light flyash, which is fused and chemically stable, or the bottom ash. Some 99% of flyash is typically retained in a modern power station (90% is some older ones), and this is buried in an ash dam.

The amounts of radionuclides involved are noteworthy. In Victoria, Australia, 65 million tonnes of brown coal is burned annually for electricity production. This contains about 1.6 ppm uranium and 3.0-3.5 ppm thorium, hence about 100 tonnes of uranium and 200 tonnes of thorium is buried in landfill each year in the Latrobe Valley. Australia exports 270 Mt/yr of coal with 1 to 2 ppm uranium and about 3.5 ppm thorium in it, hence up to 500 tonnes of uranium and about 800 tonnes of thorium could conceivably be added to published export figures. www.world-nuclear.org

@General Armchair Well, if they have experience from Handford... This is from the wiki entry for the Handford Site, a mostly decommisioned nuclear production complex in the US state of Washington, referred to in that previous link:

"The most significant challenge at Hanford is stabilizing the 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. About a third of these tanks have leaked waste into the soil and groundwater. As of 2008, most of the liquid waste has been transferred to more secure double-shelled tanks; however, 2.8 million U.S. gallons (10,600 m3) of liquid waste, together with 27 million U.S. gallons (100,000 m3) of salt cake and sludge, remains in the single-shelled tanks. That waste was originally scheduled to be removed by 2018. The revised deadline is 2040. Nearby aquifers contain an estimated 270 billion U.S. gallons (1 billion m3) of contaminated groundwater as a result of the leaks. As of 2008, 1 million U.S. gallons (4,000 m3) of highly radioactive waste is traveling through the groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste is expected to reach the river in 12 to 50 years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule. The site also includes 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste." en.wikipedia.org

@es Reading about Hanford just leaves me feeling so angry and helpless grrrrrr.

this is a different "Kurion" ? www.kurion.co.uk

www.greentechmedia.com

I followed the link on es' smartplanet link below....found this, more info on Kurion. "Kurion was incubated only a short while ago at Lux Capital, an NYC early-stage, science-heavy VC fund that yesterday announced that former CIA director James Woolsey has joined the firm. (Firelake Capital is also an investor.)"

@es What is so infuriating about hearing that the date is now 2040 is that back in the late 70s when we were fighting the nuke industry at places like Seabrook and Shoreham, Hanford was a disaster story then. And 30+ years later it still is. Nothing's changed as far as I can tell.

@General Armchair Yeah, sigh, and that 2040 date will be revised again as sure as TEPCO's 6-9 months will.

it's the same ligue as throwing zeolithe into the sea and installing curtains around the reactors. worth nothing.

@RBeaner By "spraying" do you mean injecting water into the cores?

@fitter I tried to say Combustion ( C-O-M-B-ustion) earlier, and it dropped the first four letters. ***bustion Engineering.

I just saw this on a tweet, on the Japan Google page, and thought that this person was right. "say "TEPCO disaster" and not "Fukushima disaster" and help protect Fukushima from more damage ..."

@Debra Beckahm I can understand the sentiment, but I think we're stuck with the name we have.

@General Armchair If I had an area I wanted to have ANY control over, the last people I would let in is called rainbow "warrior". I agree, they should work together, side by side, but I don't work well with Warriors.

@RBeaner I hope Greenpeace challenges the exlusion zone and makes a stink for the Government of Japan.

@Edano I think it's actually (or was at one time?) the Rainbow Warrior II. Didn't the French sink the first one?