deep deep down.... (below Fukushima)
Project: Polytopia

... think about this one: the Fukushima Daiichi reactors will be a pain for some time from now on. Time horizon realistically is 300 years or so... we will be "famous" like bronze age or iron age... not sure what they will call us in the future... "uranium mess age"?

(1) You could have left the reactors alone after the tsunami, and the 3 nuclear fission cores + some spent fuel pools would have melted down... deep deep down into the ground. Leaving some traces of radioactivity in the groundwater until they have gone beyond. Radioactivity would have been mostly shielded by the surrounding rock formation. Cooled by surrounding soil and rock, it would eventually slow down and cease to be hot in hundreds of years. Capping the holes would heve been relatively easy... We (mankind) do not intend to live underground, do we?

(2) You could extend any bad thing on the timescale, if you wish. Some people like that (sado, maso, piercing, extended life expectancy of man, etc). You could heavily cool the reactors with water, slow down the unavoidable meltdown, such that everything happens near the surface. The water is, of course, a mess with radioactivity and will have to be cleaned or disposed of. The water treatment shifts the problem, all on the earth's surface where we all want to live, from water to the ion-exchanger or precipitates. The radioactivity doesn't go away, we simply juggle it around amongst us! Now that waste will have to find its final storage! How about deep deep down into the ground?

Difference between the two is, how long it takes, how much it hurts, how many workers get slowly irradiated to their "legal limits"...

Wasn't there a Japanese island named "Sado"?

Tue, Jun 21, 2011  Permanent link

Sent to project: Polytopia

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