{"id":18102,"date":"2016-02-22T16:40:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18102"},"modified":"2016-02-22T16:40:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:40:34","slug":"fukushima-deep-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18102","title":{"rendered":"Fukushima \u2013 Deep Trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fukushima \u2013 Deep Trouble<\/a><\/h3>\n

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The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history\u2019s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That\u2019s a lot of book boxes. Now, fill the boxes with radioactive waste. Forthwith, that\u2019s the amount of radioactive waste stored unsheltered in one-tonne black bags throughout Fukushima Prefecture, amounting to 9,000,000 cubic metres<\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more to come, another 13,000,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil is yet to be collected. (Source: Voice of America News, Problems Keep Piling Up in Fukushima, Feb. 17, 2016).<\/p>\n

And, there\u2019s still more, the cleanup operations only go 50-100 feet beyond roadways. Plus, a 100-mile mountain range along the coast and hillsides around Fukushima are contaminated but not cleansed at all. As a consequence, the decontaminated land will likely be re-contaminated by radioactive runoff from the hills and mountains.<\/p>\n

Indubitably, how and where to store millions of cubic metres of one-tonne black bags filled with radioactive waste is no small problem. It is a super-colossal problem. What if bags deteriorate? What if a tsunami hits? The \u201cwhat-ifs\u201d are endless, endless, and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe black bags of radioactive soil, now scattered at 115,000 locations in Fukushima, are eventually to be moved to yet-to-be built interim facilities, encompassing 16 square kilometers, in two towns close to the crippled nuclear power plant,\u201d Ibid.<\/p>\n

By itself, 115,000 locations each containing many, many, mucho one-tonne bags of radioactive waste is a logistical nightmare, just the trucking alone is forever a humongous task, decades to come.<\/p>\n

According to Japanese government and industry sources, cleaning up everything and decommissioning the broken down reactors will take at least 40 years at a cost of $250 billion, assuming nothing goes wrong.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Fukushima \u2013 Deep Trouble The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history\u2019s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation\u2019s soul. Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[340,12543,452,3423,580,12542],"class_list":["post-18102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-fukushima","tag-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-plant","tag-japan","tag-nuclear-meltdown","tag-nuclear-radiation","tag-robert-hunziker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18103,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18102\/revisions\/18103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}