Dumping Radioactive Waste !

In 2011 the world watched in horror as Japan experienced a massive offshore earthquake that triggered a tsunami that washed ashore and killed thousands of people.  These walls of water overwhelmed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, causing three of its reactors to melt down and release radioactivity that poisoned surrounding farmland and caused the evacuation of residents.

That calamity has been ongoing. Not only are contaminated villages still uninhabited, the government has been systematically digging out and removing the top soil.  This is being bagged and stored in dumps for the hundreds of years before natural attrition reduces the radiation to a safe level.

The wrecked reactors still contain partially melted fuel rods and these need copious amounts of water to keep them cool.  That - and the water used to put out the fires - is highly radioactive and is being contained in steel reservoirs on site and now this containment is running out of room.   It is estimated that the Fukushima site contains a million tonnes of this contaminated water.

The Japanese government is waiting on the report from an expert panel to decide how to dispose of this water.   The only practical option seems to be dispersing it in the Pacific ocean.  In comparison with the water contained in the Pacific that million tonnes would be a mere drop in a bucket, but such a plan would draw a negative response from neighbouring countries.

Even if it were carried in tankers and taken to a remote part of the Pacific ocean there is the danger of schools of fish swimming through it and becoming contaminated.   The world fishing fleet ranges widely and such a plan would bring fear of contamination of the food chain.  Deliberately disposing of radioactive matter in the ocean would probably be condemned by the United Nations.

The problem is that this accumulation of radioactive water will continue indefinitely.  More water is required to keep those fuel rods cool until a method can be devised to dismantle the wrecked plant.  Even if the existing steel reservoirs are emptied this cooling process means more water will be contaminated and in need of storage.  In a few years, we will again face exactly this same problem.

In a normal, functioning nuclear facility removal of fuel rods is a relatively safe and easy process, but the explosions that accompanied the meltdown at Fukushima buried the core under steel and rubble that endanger humans working on the site.  It will probably take the development of robotics and artificial intelligence to create the safety aspect which will allow penetration and removal of the rods to bring the danger to an end.

Hopefully, this dilemma will bring world attention to the unresolved question of what to do to dispose of the radioactive waste generated by the nuclear industry.  We are still searching for a site to build storage for the waste from  the tiny nuclear reactor we run at Lucas Heights in Sydney.  Many countries draw electricity from nuclear reactors and a world dump to contain nuclear waste is becoming an urgent necessity.

This Japanese dilemma illustrates a world problem  !