2013-11-16

Pray For Fukushima Workers

Tepco to start fuel removal from Fukushima reactor 4 pool Monday
“Full-scale removal (from the accident-stricken unit) is a very important process in moving ahead with the plant’s decommissioning,” Tepco spokesman Masayuki Ono told a press conference, adding that the experience will be useful in dealing with the three other units that were damaged in the 2011 nuclear crisis.

The unit 4 spent fuel pool contains 1,331 spent fuel assemblies and 202 unused ones. Workers will begin with the removal of unused fuel assemblies, which are easier to handle.

Riskiest Phase of Fukushima Decommissioning to Begin Soon
If one thinks about the Fukushima nuclear plant, it has been an uncanny attractor of the 'Murphy's law' effect from the beginning. Murphy's law states that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

Consider the accident's progression so far. Fukushima was protected by extra-high barriers against tsunami waves. It turned out though that some tsunami waves are so high and powerful that these barriers, against all previous experience and expectation, failed anyway (a 2008 study that warned of tsunami waves higher than 10 meters was ignored because it was held to be too unlikely an event). Because no-one thought the barriers would ever fail, the back-up power generators were housed on the ground level – where the seawater could get at them and destroy them. The long list of mishaps that have occurred since then, from tanks leaking radioactive water, to contaminated groundwater flowing into the ocean, to sudden steam eruptions spewing highly radioactive steam from cracks opening up around the plant, are all testament to Murphy practically squatting atop the plant.

No comments:

Post a Comment