Japan: Fukushima plant "great risk": head of nuclear accident probe panel(fragile structures)

Kyodo News ^ | 07/06/12

[TigerLikesRooster]

Fukushima plant "great risk": head of nuclear accident probe panel

TOKYO, July 6, Kyodo

The head of a Diet-appointed panel to investigate the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster said Friday that the crippled plant in northeastern Japan remains in a dangerous situation because of its fragile structure.

"Fukushima remains at a very high risk, not only because of the spent fuel issues, but also because of its fragile structure," Kiyoshi Kurokawa, also professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, told a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, noting that another huge earthquake like the one last year may occur off the coast of northeastern Japan again.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[gunsequalfreedom]

You gotta love that “on the fly” engineering to seal up all those spent fuel rods and half melted and still glowing ones. Of course the thing is rickety and it is going to take patching for decades...provided another earthquake does not hit Japan (like that never happens).

[M-cubed]

truthfully...I want all the folks that don't deal with risk...to move to my Island so I can make a million with “reality” TV!

[SteveH]

Anything on suppressed demonstrations in Tokyo over the reopening of the Ohi nuclear reactor plant yet?

[TigerLikesRooster]

I will be banned if I post it.:-)

[Ronin]

One of my friend’s wife was protesting. She didn’t seem suppressed, but nobody paid much attention to the demonstrators. The rainy weather might have had something to do with that.

[bgill]

At least they’re now admitting there’s problems instead of the everything is peachy.

[justa-hairyape]

In case you have not seen it recently, this is reactor #4 building. The one of the four that did not have nuclear material in the RPV. They recently accelerated the demolition process. They plan on trying to remove the spent fuel rods in the spent fuel pool soon. It will be years before they can build robots that can safely enter reactor buildings #1 and #2 and can continue to work for long periods. They might be able to get to the spent fuel rods in reactor #3 since the top of the building has been blown away and access would be easier. This all assumes that technological progress continues in a society that is collapsing.