The Washington Post reports that nuclear fuel began melting at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi just five hours after the earthquake.
About 11 hours later, all of the uranium fuel in the facility’s unit 1 reactor had slumped to the bottom of its inner containment vessel, boring a hole through a thick steel lining, the University of Tokyo’s Naoto Sekimura told a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.
Here in the US the NRC concluded this fact early on and recommended American citizens evacuate to a 50 mile radius compared to the Japanese government recommended 12.5 mile zone.
The future of the site: Making nuclear lemonade?
One plan under consideration would be convert Fukushima Dai-Ichi into a nuclear waste storage site. This means permanently storing the nuclear waste at the site of the damaged reactors.
The Atomic Energy Society of Japan is studying the proposal, which would cost tens of billions of dollars, Muneo Morokuzu, a professor of energy and environmental public policy at the University of Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday. The society makes policy recommendations to the government.
“We are involved in intense talks on the cleanup of the Dai-Ichi plant and construction of nuclear waste storage facilities at the site is one option,” said Morokuzu.
Golly. I can just see a room full of executives, all sitting in awkward silence, and then one guy says "How about...how about a nuclear waste dump? I mean, it's already trashed anyway. Can't get any worse right?" Everybody perks up at this, and then the meeting really gets rolling.
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