Earthquake off Japan

[AndroAsc]

A brief skimming of the story you linked shows to me a mayor throwing a hissy fit while one of the country's greatest catastrophies, in what the Fukushima incident is only a small aspect, is going on and being handled.

I simply can't follow your logic: by pre-emtively evacuating an area of 20km around the plant, they are not acknowledging the problem because they didn't make the zone larger?

Yes, they should have made the area larger. Either at that time the Tokyo Power company was withholding information about the severity of the disaster which led the Japanese govt to make this mistake OR the Japanese govt did not want to impose a larger evacuation zone to make it look like the situation is not that serious.

Incorrect: it is not solving the problem FAST ENOUGH.

As stated before, what we have here essentially is a reactor that under normal circumstances requires several days, if not weeks, to cool down.
The tsunami + earthquake thrown the regular cooling system into fuck. The workers and experts are doing whatever they can think of to compensate.

This crisis will likely last several days.

Agreed. But I think they are taking a too serialized approach to the problem, instead of doing more stuff in parallel. Only recently did they try to water bomb and use fire engines which admittedly did not work. But I wonder why did it take 3-4 days for them to implement this solution? When I first read that their reactors had a hole in the roof and they were unable to maintain stable operation of the water pumps, my first thought was to air drop water through the hole AND work on the water pumps at the same time? Would it had been effective if they had try a water pump + water bomb + fire engine combination on Day 2?

There are things to critize: the decision to extend the operational lifetime of the plant, the decision to try and "save" as many reactors as possible for future use, the skimping of essential upgrades to the cooling system where a similar situation has arrisen before.

I am sure that other mayor criticism can be said once a proper analysis can be made.

I am in agreement with this. I suspect that Tokyo Power company was limiting their efforts because they were trying to save their reactors in one form or another.

A generality does not always apply for a specific situation. Your wording is also vague: sharing with who? International experts who are far away? The public who will be scared screaming-and-shitless no matter what the experts say?

If you have read the reports, many international experts are criticizing the lack of information coming out from Japan that is preventing them from doing a proper analysis and to offer good technical advice.

Right now, the people managing the crisis have their hands full with, you know, managing the crisis at hand and have better things to do than make tweeting status updates.

Also, if the Japanese need help, they would have asked for it.

IIRC, it has been stated in several news articles regarding Fukushima that non-japanese experts and supplies are on their way.

So, what is your point again?

That was only on Day 4-ish of the event if I am not mistaken. They only requested boric acid supplies from South Korea when they realized that they had lost control of the situation. Wouldn't it not be more prudent to get the supplies for Day 1? At the worst if the situation is not as bad, you suffer the embarrassment of over-reaction. Let's hope that the delayed actions taken will not bottleneck any of their ongoing efforts.

Because they have people on-site, they have the equipment and training and a crisis is a bad time to start butting horns about who should do what.

Or think of it this way: how do you think it would look like to try and remove control from the company at the moment?
Last I checked, Japan has laws that requires the government to act in certain way. It can't just step in, shoot the head honcho of the company between the eyes and demand everyone to do as it says or they'll will follow their ex-boss.
That means legal, which means trial, which means arguing, which mean time and effort lost. In attempt to take control over, you are allowing the crisis to become worse. And even if you gain control, then what? You'll have to start from where the company started, but instead, you have to get everyone there in the first place and start everything all over again.

The Japanese government has its hands full with a catastrophe of a scale that dwindles the worst that Fukushima can do. Do you honest think it has time, energy, money and people to focus on this?

I can concede for practical purposes, letting the power company handle it on Day 1 or 2 is fine. But by Day 3, it's clear that the situation is out of hand and the government (led by their scientific experts) should have stepped in to mobilize all resources to deal with the problem. Don't forget that the person leading the efforts up to now has a conflict of interest in wanting to salvage their nuclear reactors. You can't possibly think that they have the best interests of the Japanese people at heart?

[Ekiqa]

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-sc ... /?cid=news

Now let's watch as everyone blows this out of proportion.

Even if all the particles dont reach north america, they will be picked up by the tiny creatures in the Pacific, and work their way through the food chain until they end up in the North American populace.

[Rahvin]

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-sc ... /?cid=news

Now let's watch as everyone blows this out of proportion.

Even if all the particles dont reach north america, they will be picked up by the tiny creatures in the Pacific, and work their way through the food chain until they end up in the North American populace.

What's your point? Unless the radiation dosage is significantly above background, it won;t be harmful. "Particles" is a meaningless term in this context. Any air- or water-borne radiological particulates will be greatly dispersed before they ever reach the American continent.

You do realize that you're exposed to radioactive particles on a daily basis, don't you?

[AndroAsc]

In response to my earlier more critical comments, it does appear that today's (Mar 18) efforts seem to be better. They are deploying much more fire fighters and at least now the Japanese army and civil defence are involved while TEPCO works on restoring power to the water pump.

[Broomstick]

Strategic fuel reserves aren't in big above ground oil tanks usually, normally they are dug in underground, the US uses salt caves for example to store crude.

How many salt caves do the Japanese have? I was aware that the US stores its strategic reserves underground, but since I have no idea how the Japanese store their reserves I was making no assumptions. As you point out, the Japanese are a bit secretive about how their reserves, which is only sensible.

Transportation always seems to be a major bottleneck post-disaster.

It is, that's why they clearly need more aircraft at work.

Of course, the quake and tsunami also destroyed some Japanese aircraft, including some of the military ones. That can't help at all.

Actually, transporting clean water is more important than food right now, though everyone seems to emphasize the food. A healthy human being can function on little or even no food for a week or two. It's unpleasant, but human beings have sufficient caloric reserves to cope with that. The first few days you need to fly in rescue crews to pull survivors out of the rubble, clean water, and emergency medical supplies.

Food lets people do work; you can boil water given fuel and many parts of Japan are chopping up trees to do exactly that.

Well, yes, food helps you work but my point is that well nourished people in a developed nation - which would apply to Japan - can keep functioning without food longer than without water. Right now, the places where the tsunami hit have a problem with their water supplies being contaminated with salt, which boiling won't remove. Near Fukushima (within 30 km) there are concerns about radiation in the water which, again, boiling won't remove. Fresh water supplies, yes, boiling will work.

They're not just chopping up trees - they're burning debris to keep warm and yes, probably to sanitize what fresh water they can find. Thank goodness for a well educated populace aware of some of the dangers.

Anyway food was just the easier example to work out the number on quickly. 1600+ tons moved a day can do a lot even if its just moving water and that's only a limited example of what the US could do, deploying one Chinook battalion. Almost no survivors are now being found. Many international teams did not find a single person.. pretty bleak but that all goes to show that the building codes held up to the quake really really damn well.

All true.

One week in, it's time to concentrate on survivors and getting them the basics for survival. Food, water, clothing, shelter.... Relocation of survivors should be considered. If people want to leave and go elsewhere that should be made possible. I would oppose forced relocation on general principles, but in some cases it may be necessary for health and safety.

The idea that we should not aid people because they might be injured trying to pick up food is absurd. This is one of the most educated countries on earth, I think they can figure it out.

How? If the food is in the middle of unstable, broken up rubble how are they going to "figure it out"? Draw lots to see who risks a broken bone or infected gash to get the supplies? In an area without basic medical care?

If there is truly no other choice, yes, that might be what we have to do but really, imposing further risks at this point is counterproductive. No one starves to death in a week, taking a day to clear an area to receive supplies and reduce risk is NOT absurd, it's prudent. Now water might be a more urgent need, but even then, it would be a last resort.

[aerius]

Even if all the particles dont reach north america, they will be picked up by the tiny creatures in the Pacific, and work their way through the food chain until they end up in the North American populace.

Oh darn, we'll be internally poisoned with a whole 9.7BED of radiation.

[Simon_Jester]

I always thought that the radioactive waste was stored underground in some desert area which is seismically stable.

Yes, that was the idea behind the Yucca Mountain storage facility. I think there's an idea floating around that we built something of the sort. We didn't, because the project was killed due to lobbying.

Lobbying which, well, involved a lot of rhetoric similar to that used by AndroAsc... [glares in irritated fashion at AndroAsc]

Not that I blame you for this, Andro, what I mean is that this mindset- of assuming the worst in any situation with the word "nuclear" attached, assuming by default that all the authorities are covering up the real magnitude of the disastrous consequences of things existing while having "nuclear" in the name... that is the soul and center of the anti-nuclear movement, and has done more to make nuclear power less safe and less common than almost anything else.

If there was a functional equivalent to Yucca Mountain that the Japanese could relocate spent fuel to, in all probability there would be no major hazard from Fukushima. What major hazard exists comes from the fuel pools, which would not be needed, or would be needed to a much lesser degree.

I'm probably missing something, but who cares if it is plutonium or plutonium oxide? Radioactivity does not depends on whether it is in the elemental or oxide form.

What you're missing is that ALL nuclear fuel rods contain plutonium as it is produced during normal operations. The only difference between the fuel rods is that MOX rods contain a higher percentage of plutonium. Any melting/burning/destruction of any reactor fuel rod will liberate some plutonium.

To clarify: Plutonium-239 is created when a uranium-238 nucleus absorbs a neutron.

There are a lot of neutrons flying around among the fuel rods in a nuclear reactor; that's the point, without the neutrons there would be no nuclear reactor.

There is a lot of U-238 sitting around in the fuel rods. It's the U-235 that undergoes fission in a nuclear reactor (as a rule), and this is in some sense "the fuel" that provides heat to the reactor... but a hunk of pure U-235 the size of a power plant fuel rod is called a nuclear bomb, with reason. Nuclear fuel uses only a small percentage of U-235, and the rest of the rod (ignoring fission byproducts) starts out as U-238.

So you have U-238, and you have neutrons. You get plutonium. It happens. People deal with it.

Yes, they should have made the area larger. Either at that time the Tokyo Power company was withholding information about the severity of the disaster which led the Japanese govt to make this mistake OR the Japanese govt did not want to impose a larger evacuation zone to make it look like the situation is not that serious.

Bullshit.

Do you honestly not get that:
-The Japanese government has much bigger problems right now, like the actual giant tidal wave that killed many thousands of people? And left hundreds of thousands homeless?
-Fukushima has not released any major quantity of radiation that endangers people's lives within either the 20km radius they evacuated or the 50 km radius you arbitrarily decided they should evacuate because... um... it sounds like a nice round number?
-Fukushima is not expected to release any such major quantity of radiation, and that there are qualified experts other than TEPCO assessing this situation, who are in a far better position to make policy decisions about what to do about it than you are with your paranoid ravings?

Agreed. But I think they are taking a too serialized approach to the problem, instead of doing more stuff in parallel. Only recently did they try to water bomb and use fire engines which admittedly did not work. But I wonder why did it take 3-4 days for them to implement this solution? When I first read that their reactors had a hole in the roof and they were unable to maintain stable operation of the water pumps, my first thought was to air drop water through the hole AND work on the water pumps at the same time? Would it had been effective if they had try a water pump + water bomb + fire engine combination on Day 2?

Bringing up the necessary equipment takes time. The decision to, effectively, write off the equipment used as radioactive waste takes time. Identifying the problem takes time. The fact that you had some thought of doing something on Day 2 does not mean it could have been done on Day 2, or that real people who (I repeat) have bigger problems on their hands than Fukushima should be condemned for not doing it on Day 2.

Also, the problems with the spent fuel pond did not arise until some days after the earthquake-tsunami combo hit. The problems only became serious after the efforts to cool off the reactors and prevent further hydrogen explosions had already been underway.

I am in agreement with this. I suspect that Tokyo Power company was limiting their efforts because they were trying to save their reactors in one form or another.

Do you not get that their immediate reaction to the loss of coolant power was to flood the reactors with seawater, permanently making them unsalvageable?

That was only on Day 4-ish of the event if I am not mistaken. They only requested boric acid supplies from South Korea when they realized that they had lost control of the situation. Wouldn't it not be more prudent to get the supplies for Day 1? At the worst if the situation is not as bad, you suffer the embarrassment of over-reaction. Let's hope that the delayed actions taken will not bottleneck any of their ongoing efforts.

The Japanese government was busy. They had many, many things to do other than worry about Fukushima, which has so far been contained- it is not a problem for the entire country. It is, at most, a problem for people who live within a day's walk of Fukushima. So far, it wouldn't even have been much of a problem for them.

Compare this to the massive tidal wave, the fact that there are huge numbers of people in Japan in danger of dying of thirst, or starving, or dying of cholera or other disease. The Japanese government needs all the foreign aid it can get, especially all the airlift and transport capacity it can get foreign countries to supply, to deal with THAT problem. It does NOT need to waste thousands of tons of shipping capacity on bringing in a shitload of concrete to dump in on the OFF CHANCE that the Fukushima reactors or coolant ponds MIGHT go apeshit on them.

To you, Fukushima is the biggest disaster of the decade because it has the word "nuclear" in it. To the Japanese government at the moment, it's the subject of their 2:00 meeting... while the rest of the day is spent coping with real disasters that have killed real people and will kill more real people, instead of potential disasters that have killed no people and will possibly kill hypothetical people later.

I can concede for practical purposes, letting the power company handle it on Day 1 or 2 is fine. But by Day 3, it's clear that the situation is out of hand and the government (led by their scientific experts) should have stepped in to mobilize all resources to deal with the problem. Don't forget that the person leading the efforts up to now has a conflict of interest in wanting to salvage their nuclear reactors. You can't possibly think that they have the best interests of the Japanese people at heart?

By Day 3, TEPCO had already given up saving the reactors. Anyone who was paying attention on Day 3 (were you paying attention?) knew this: the reactors have been poisoned by seawater. This means they cannot be used to generate power, ever. The Fukushima reactors are now among the world's biggest, most expensive, and most chemically diverse heaps of scrap metal.

Moreover, even if (as you pretend) the desire to save the reactors had dominated TEPCO's response, this desire would NOT affect their policy on the matter of the spent fuel pond, the single biggest problem faced at the whole facility. They have NO reason to save the fuel pond, they don't want the fuel pond. It is, quite literally, a big pile of radioactive waste sitting in the middle of their facility. If they could get someone else to take it off their hands, or claim responsibility for it, that would no doubt be great from their point of view. At this point, if they have any functioning reactors left at Fukushima, the biggest risk they face that might cause them to lose the reactors is that fuel pond- the risk that it will contaminate the whole plant and force them to abandon it.

They have every reason to want someone else to take responsibility for Fuel Pond #4 off their hands. And no one else is stepping up. You know why? Because there is NO reason to assume (aside from your own paranoid ravings) that anyone else could do, or would do, a better job on such short notice.

[mr friendly guy]

Back to how the nuclear crisis will affect the development of nuclear power.

While China a few days ago stated it will continue to develop nuclear power while studying the safety standards, CNN has reported they have for now suspended approvals for new ones while doing it.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiap ... index.html

Since China was already planning to build shit loads, does this mean those ones being planned already had approval, and hence aren't being suspended? Or does this apply to ones being proposed?

Maybe this would give more impetus to pebble bed reactors, of which as of last year China had the only working prototype, since Germany abandoned the technology because of the nuclear is bad mmkay crowd.

[Zixinus]

Yes, they should have made the area larger. Either at that time the Tokyo Power company was withholding information about the severity of the disaster which led the Japanese govt to make this mistake OR the Japanese govt did not want to impose a larger evacuation zone to make it look like the situation is not that serious.

Or perhaps there is a simpler explantion that requires less knee-jerk, possibly paranoid assumptions: they increased the area because the situation became worse than they initially thought and was developing.

But I think they are taking a too serialized approach to the problem, instead of doing more stuff in parallel.

:eyeroll:

You wouldn't happen to be a manager, would you? [/snark]

Seriously, how clear are you on concept that saying something to happen and making something to happen are two very different things?

Furthermore, your criticism hinges on the assumption that the reports we got are accurate.

What you are basing that opinion on is that of bits and pieces that the news media managed to capture. We do not know how much of these bits and pieces are accurate or we what the whole picture is.
We can only see that picture in retrospect, once all the pits and pieces have been collected and dug up.

Only recently did they try to water bomb and use fire engines which admittedly did not work. But I wonder why did it take 3-4 days for them to implement this solution?

Logistics.

Or to elaborate: the people handing the situation are not fucking seers that can organise all those things and get them to the power plant before the accident actually happened so they would be all immedeatly there.

Look, I can critize your points one-by-one further, but it boils down to this: you are being an armchair-expert here about catastrophe-responce speed ane efficiency.

You assume that the people in charge are seers: they know perfectly well what is going on, what will happen and how, who to call and what to say, as well as to know instantly what decision to make. You assume that organising people and vehicles and equipment takes only minutes.

Back in reality, entire regions of Japan are in chaos. Like, what happens after fifth largest earth-quake in recorded history followed by a massive tsunami wave that wiped entire villages without stopping.
And the people trying to handle the aftermatch are human beings who have to get their shit together.

I know that it's hard to get that impression following Western news that is obsessed with Fukushima, but there is a massive fallout from a natural disaster with six-figure number of refugies, likely similar amount of dead and thousands in limbo between the two states, not to mention all and every problem imaginable and expectable that might occur in-between them.

Fukushima is a boiling clusterfuck that everyone there is doing their immedate best to stop from blowing up. It is noting compared to the sheer intensity of what the aftermatch of the tsunami caused.

If Fukushima would be the ONLY problem the Japanese have, then yes, the speed of the responce would rightfully be critizied.
However, every firefighter and emergency worker was already massively busy saving lives while the people in Fukushima were only learning what the problem was. Getting from that point to getting the solution implemented requires many, many steps.
Steps that requires time to form, time to implement and time to happen.

Look, I'm no expert but I've seen what an aftermatch of a catastrophe looks like: I was a volunteer of the cleaning-up of Devecser after the Red Sludge hit it.
During a situation like that, people are not grasping to resolve the situation, they are grasping to get control of the situation at all.

It is easy to say that things are not happening fast enough, that ideas are not being implemented fast enough from an armchair in a warm, safe comfortable home. However, in a catastrophe-situation the chaos are overwhelming, because that is what a catastrophe produces: sheer, utter and incredible chaos everywhere and I'm not just talking a physical location: it causes chaos in people, in institutions, in authority, everything.

What is simple, quick and easy in everyday life can be nightmarish, ridiculously long and very complex under a catastrophe situation: that is why a catastrophe is a BAD thing rather than an inconvience.

The problem grows a thousandfold when you are trying to do it with something that involves many human beings. It is not a simple thing. It is not an easy thing. It is easy to talk about what you would do in an emergency situation and a very different thing when you actually in one.

If you have read the reports, many international experts are criticizing the lack of information coming out from Japan that is preventing them from doing a proper analysis and to offer good technical advice.

Have you considred that Japan needs manpower and equipment, not good advice at the moment? They have their own nuclear experts after all.

And again, the people that could make up-to-date broadcasts in Japan may be of better used in actually handling the situation to save Japanese lives rather than keep foreigners up-to-date.

They only requested boric acid supplies from South Korea when they realized that they had lost control of the situation. Wouldn't it not be more prudent to get the supplies for Day 1?

:eyeroll:

See my previous assesment at how you are playing armchair-catastrophe-responce manager.

[PeZook]

There's a dude who compiled a map of known radiation levels across Japan.

Of course the guy is trying to scaremonger (read the little blurb to the left and you will see what I mean) by pretending the doses he shows are somehow large, but if on keeps one's head on and calculates what's what, you will see that the elevated average level in Fukushima is so terrible that you'd need to hang around for 66 days, give or take, to get a dose equivalent of one chest x-ray. Other provinces are pretty much at background radiation levels.

[Sky Captain]

Regarding the location of spent fuel pool on upper floor of reactor building. They need it there to be able to safely remove the spent fuel when defueling the reactor. During defueling operation the whole upper level of the building including the top of now opened reactor vessel is flooded to allow underwater transfer of spent fuel rods from reactor core to spent fuel pool. Underwater transfer is recquired for radiation shielding and also if fresh spent fuel rod were pulled out of water it would rapidly owerheat and catch fire. Relocating the spent fuel pool elswhere would make refueling operations far more difficult and dangerous.

[Neko_Oni]

I don't have time for a lengthy post about this, but to correct a few of AndroAsc's misconceptions.

The Japanese government did not lie about there being water in the spent fuel pools. If you read Japanese news sites you would have seen that the Japanese government says ''Yes there is now water in the pool'', then a few hours later the US government says ''No water in the pool OMFG''. Because they were operating on old information. The Japanese government has said they will try to improve the speed of information flow, but they are obviously fairly busy right now. If you want up to date information you either read it in Japanese or find the English language versions of the Japanese sources.

Secondly the evacuation radius. The US has the luxury of making an 80km evacuation radius because there aren't that many Americans in Japan. If the Japanese government made an 80km radius evacuation zone they run into the issue of where all those people are going to go. The arena (Saitama Arena) near where my fiance lives is going to be used for such a purpose, but it can only hold so many people. To claim that the two nations are in a similar position with regards to evacuating people is idiotic.

[cosmicalstorm]

Another impressive tsunami video.

[someone_else]

Source? I want to throw these figures at the anti nuclear histrionic crowd.

Source for those numbers is:
“An Analysis of Electricity Generation Health Risks: A United Kingdom Perspective”
D.J. Ball, L.E.J. Roberts, and A.C.D. Simpson,
Centre for Environmental and Risk Management, School of Environmental Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK (1994)

May not be reliable, but this can be interesting at least.
And an image to convey that data in an easier way.

If there was a functional equivalent to Yucca Mountain that the Japanese could relocate spent fuel to, in all probability there would be no major hazard from Fukushima.

I have my doubts on that. The fuel in the pools must stay in pools due to such fuel being still damn hot with radioactive decay (some guy aggressively eyeballed 7-8 MW of heat in a pool somewhere above in this thread, it's maybe less). I doubt you can move it safely (and affordably) until it finally gave up trying to melt itself and instant-rad-kill anything the area.
Whatever goes to Yucca Mountain-like facilities is likely the fuel that at Fukushima is somewhere ground-level in cold storage, and that has no risk of giving you any real problem even if the facility is nuked.

That said, I support the creation of such long-term storage facilities in god-forsaken places, although I'd prever recycling such stuff as fuel if possible.

--------------------------------------------------------------

@AndroAsc: to get reliable news about what's going on, I usually go to see articles made by people that know the shit they are talking about, and not chimps that skipped science class like the majority of people in news agencies (or worse, outright biased to make anything look sensational).

Like Nuclear Energy Institute, for example.
Hell, even Greenpeace is doing a remarkably decent work in relaying facts and not totally overblown crap.

[Broomstick]

If there was a functional equivalent to Yucca Mountain that the Japanese could relocate spent fuel to, in all probability there would be no major hazard from Fukushima.

I have my doubts on that. The fuel in the pools must stay in pools due to such fuel being still damn hot with radioactive decay (some guy aggressively eyeballed 7-8 MW of heat in a pool somewhere above in this thread, it's maybe less). I doubt you can move it safely (and affordably) until it finally gave up trying to melt itself and instant-rad-kill anything the area.
Whatever goes to Yucca Mountain-like facilities is likely the fuel that at Fukushima is somewhere ground-level in cold storage, and that has no risk of giving you any real problem even if the facility is nuked.

That said, I support the creation of such long-term storage facilities in god-forsaken places, although I'd prever recycling such stuff as fuel if possible.

You keep the spent fuel in the water pools for a few years until it's considerably less radioactive (half life, you know?) THEN you transport it to Yucca Mountain or its cousin.

Have you ever seen a nuke waste transport cask? They're absolutely massive. They provide some decent shielding on their own.

[Simon_Jester]

No, someone_else has a point. The fuel that is most dangerous in a fuel pond is the stuff fresh out of the reactor- which isn't going into deep storage just yet.

He's right, Broomstick. Or I think he is.

[Broomstick]

My point is that the Very Dangerous Fuel won't stay that way indefinitely. Part of the problem, though, is even when it becomes safe to transport there is nowhere for it to go, so it continues to sit, indefinitely, in the on-site pools. If the stuff that could be transported to long-term storage was, in fact, put into long-term storage there'd be less total spent fuel on the plant grounds which would reduce the hazard considerably.

PART of the problem is our collective failure to deal, long term, with this crap in a safe manner.

[someone_else]

You keep the spent fuel in the water pools for a few years until it's considerably less radioactive (half life, you know?) THEN you transport it to Yucca Mountain or its cousin.

Simon raised the point that if the fuel in the pool could be transferred to a god-forsaken place like yucca mountain, we wouldn't have problems with the pools like we have now. (or at least I understood it that way)
I answered that the fuel that sits in the pools is the one too violently hot and aggressively radioactive to be trasported around safely (i've seen experts saying that such rods would melt themselves within hours of being extraced from the pool).

So even if we had a zillion Yucca Mountains, we would still be there babysitting the damn pools if cooling systems failed.

[salm]

Why can´t you just build a second conatainment thingy around the cooling pools? Somebody said that putting the pool in the same conatinment as the reactor would be bad in case of an accident. So it should be possible to simply put them into a independant containment.

[Broomstick]

Then you have the problem of moving highly dangerously radioactive fuel rods from the reactor and its containment to the fuel pool with its separate containment. Having them close together minimizes the transit time when the fuel rods are most dangerous to handle.

[Sky Captain]

Best use of spent ligh water reactor fuel would be to burn it down in a breeder reactor since light water reactors use nuclear fuel extremely wastefuly consuming only 1 - 2% of total energy locked in nuclear fuel. Just dumping and burrying spent reactor fuel would be a waste of valuable energy resource. Even depleted uranium could be used as a fuel in a breeder. A waste from breeder reactor also would contain various elements valuable in medicine and industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor

[salm]

Then you have the problem of moving highly dangerously radioactive fuel rods from the reactor and its containment to the fuel pool with its separate containment. Having them close together minimizes the transit time when the fuel rods are most dangerous to handle.

And you couldn´t build the second containment right next to the first one? The way I understand it, now the cooling pool is right next to the reactor. The reactor is contained but the pool is not. So you´d simply have to build an independant containment around the pool. The transit time wouldn´t increase because the distance would be the same. The only difference is that the pool gets it´s own containment.

[someone_else]

So it should be possible to simply put them into a independant containment.

Serious containment buildings are pretty expensive, also rather heavy. A containment vessel doesn't prevent a melt down, but just contain it. That means you will pay a lot up front when you're making it and a lot afterwards when is time to clean up the mess. They have to make some profits over these reactors, remember? Broomstick has another good point.

It would have been vastly easier and cheaper and safer to bunker up their primary (and secondary) backup diesel generators to run cooling systems. Both primary and secondary diesel backups have been destroyed by tsunami.
That was the major fault of Fukushima's power plant.
If those generators were online, they could have saved all the reactors and avoided all this mess.

[Broomstick]

Right. Mostly, it's engineering details. They have to be far enough apart for meaningful separation in case of a problem, and you need a way to safely get the fuel rods from reactor to pool, plus systems that will keep things under control in case of an emergency. The devil is always in the details, though.

[Skgoa]

Maybe this would give more impetus to pebble bed reactors, of which as of last year China had the only working prototype, since Germany abandoned the technology because of the nuclear is bad mmkay crowd.

Actually, the german reactor ran for years and produced quite a lot of energy, untill the idea was abandoned due to mostly economic reasons.