I have watched over the last two weeks the constant barrage of reports and stories everywhere about the Boston Marathon operation (Yes that is an operation!), and it does seem that news elsewhere in the world has been badly overlooked.... We have seen the bombing at Boston and worries about fraudulent "terrorist" attacks, and the world has continued to badly overlook the still dangerous and deadly situation with the failed nuclear reactors at Fukushima Japan...I came across the following article that I definitely want to share with my own readers... It comes from the Japan Times online news service, at www.japantimes.co.jp, and is entitled: "Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years: IAEA". In this article, that I have here in its entirety for everyone to see for themselves, comes the revelation that the disaster at Fukushima is still very serious and that the cleanup that was originally speculated to be in a matter of a few years, will actually take much longer than 4 decades more to complete! I have my own thoughts and comments to follow:Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup may take more than 40 years: IAEA APA U.N. nuclear watchdog team said Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to decommission the Fukushima power plant and urged Tepco to improve stability at the facility.The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency team, Juan Carlos Lentijo, said Monday that damage at the nuclear plant is so complex that it is impossible to predict how long the cleanup may last.“As for the duration of the decommissioning project, this is something that you can define in your plans. But in my view, it will be nearly impossible to ensure the time for decommissioning such a complex facility in less than 30 to 40 years as it is currently established in the road map,” Lentijo said.The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. have predicted the cleanup would take up to 40 years. They still have to develop technology and equipment that can operate under fatally high radiation levels to locate and remove melted fuel. The reactors must be kept cool and the plant must stay safe and stable, and those efforts to ensure safety could slow the process down.The plant still runs on makeshift equipment and frequently suffers glitches.Just over the past few weeks, the plant suffered nearly a dozen problems ranging from extensive power outages to leaks of highly radioactive water from underground water pools. On Monday, Tepco had to stop the cooling system for one of the fuel storage pools for safety checks after finding two dead rats inside a transformer box.Earlier this month, a rat short-circuited a switchboard, causing an extensive outage and cooling loss for up to 30 hours.Lentijo said water management is “probably the most challenging” task for the plant for now.The problems have raised concerns about whether the plant, crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, can stay intact throughout a decommissioning process. The problems have prompted officials to compile risk-reduction measures and review decommissioning plans.Lentijo, an expert on nuclear fuel cycles and waste technology, warned of more problems to come.“It is expectable in such a complex site, additional incidents will occur as it happened in the nuclear plants under normal operations,” Lentijo said. “It is important to have a very good capability to identify as promptly as possible failures and to establish compensatory measures.”He said Tepco’s disclosures have been problematic and urged the utility to take extra steps to regain public trust.The IAEA team urged the utility to “improve the reliability of essential systems to assess the structural integrity of site facilities, and to enhance protection against external hazards” and promptly replace temporary equipment with a reliable, permanent system.NTS Notes: I for one knew when the reactors melted down and released their deadly poison into the environment that it would be decades before they were able to fix it... This was primarily due to the fact that the media and government do not want people to know that they actually have no idea or no method at present to actually seal and contain the destroyed reactors. That technology still has not been developed!Again, everyone must be made aware that the disaster at Fukushima is far from over... The reactors are still spewing their deadly radioactive particles into the environment, and those same particles are indeed still falling over North America as fallout... And now coming to the Pacific west coast as well from the large plume of radioactive water released from that plant into the Pacific almost two years ago....I again cannot understand how governments in this world still push for wars and destruction while this very real life threatening situation continues in Japan... It does boggle the mind!More to comeNTS
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