A good idea for Fukushima?

Hi all, just registered to see what people thought of this idea.

I believe the latest problem is that the containment pits have cracked, allowing contaminated water to leak into the sea. Why not use gelatine to turn the contaminated water to jelly and reduce how porous it is? It may also reduce evaporation

 

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That'd be a lot of dead horses...

 

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Don't think that would work, I'm afraid, much as the idea of radioactive jell-o tickles me...especially if we add yellow #5 food dye.

(There's always room for... Fukushima!

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:bugeye

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OTOH...some sort of (I think) Boron slurry? Boron absorbs radiation, right?

Meh, I dunno, I'm sure the resident experts will be by...

In the meantime,I've been following the Union of Concerned Scientists' daily press briefings off and on...I find them a digestible way to understand what's going on @ Fukushima Daiichi:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power...m_campaign=japan-nuclear-crisis-link2-3-15-11

 

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They are going to pour hydraulic cement into the hole and cover it up completely, concrete is better, much better along with Boron to contain the radiation from escaping. Thanks for your suggestion, at least you are trying!

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Would be worth looking into. Maybe could have even been done from the beginning.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...as-ocean-dilution-makes-risk-negligible-.html

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/index.html

 

I'm not suggesting that this is a solution, but it would certainly slow things down, it's easy to implement and takes little effort. Secondly, it can be run alongside the existing efforts to fix the cracks. If it is a reasonable suggestion, how can the idea be suggested to tepco / someone who can help?

 

Use pig trotters.

 

The reactors are in the North of Japan and it's still pretty cold there (most pictures show people wearing heavy coats) and based on their descriptions these trenches would be outside and not heated so the water would be quite cold such that it's unlikely that the huge amount of gelatine you would need could be easily mixed with all that the water (look at the instructions on how you make Jello)

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They tried application of concrete directly to the crack and that apparently didn't work.
There is a new plan to inject a polymer based compound to attempt to stop the leakage.

Arthur

 

In your drawing where is the crack located, you don't show it. or don't you know? If theres a flow of water then the cement won't set up, they need to stop the waters flow before adding in the cement, or did they do that already?

 

They said it was near the water intake and that the leak is making it into the ocean, so I'd presume it's on the ocean side.

Information they release is not quite as detailed as one might like, so I can't say exactly what they did, but I do know that the water had a fairly high level of radiation release at the surface so that is likely to be making any repair work more difficult than you would normally imagine.

Sure, if a couple of guys could hop in there and work at it then no problem, but they are likely doing this at a distance and not much "hands on" effort.

 

So they nust stop the water from being applied to the reactor long enough for the cement to set up, which would only take minutes. Have they done that yet?

 

The water doesn't appear to be coming from the reactor anymore as the freshwater injection cooling continues and the RPV pressures are stable.
The radiation appears to be a result of the original over pressure problems resulting in leaks/venting in Reactor 2 (the one which might have a crack in the lower Torus, which isn't a problem unless they again lose cooling).
They said that most of the water itself is from the Tsunami.
The level has in fact gone down as they were pumping it out.
When they got the level down about a meter is when they discovered the crack and the leak.
The problem right now is they don't have any place to store all the water remaining in the trench and so they would like to stop the leak until they can do so.

Arthur

 

Then I do not understand why the hydraulic cement isn't setting up. If the water isn't flowing the cement should start to bind as its being added into the water.

 

Well water is coming from somewhere, I'm just not sure where:

Unfortunately the information is sketchy at best.

 

That's an understatement.

 

Decent video showing the structures we are talking about.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.nuclear.tepco/index.html

 

Yes, I saw that already but it doesn't deal with the cracked pipe or its location or where the water is coming in from.

 

Here is their plans on how to drain the buildings.

http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110403-3-2.pdf

Arthur

 

Thank you for the link. I still do not know where the crack is located even with this drawing. That is the most important thing to know. If the entire earth has been ripped open allowing sea water into that crack then that's one problem but if the crack is only along the pipe itself and water is only coming out if that area into the sea then that's another problem. Again , if the water is flowing then somehow that flow has to be stopped before the cement is poured or your just wasting cement.

 

The pit is well above sea level.

A better drawing of the pit in question:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110402e1.pdf

TEPCO says they don't know where the water is coming from but are investigating.

Arthur