Fukushima To Become Nuclear Dump?

mdsolar writes "Japan's atomic energy specialists are discussing a plan to make the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant a storage site for radioactive waste from the crippled station run by Tokyo Electric Power Co."

Re:Nuts!

[Riceballsan]

"known to be hit by magnitude 9.0 earthquakes" is a tad excessive of a way to put it. Particularly due to the fact that it is inaccurate to put it as plural. There has been a total of 1 9.0 earthquake there, in recorded history. I'm not completely disagreeing with the possible risk I'm not sure what the damage a smaller earthquake would do to a nuclear waste storage facility, just the way you phrased it sounds kind of silly. It's akin to saying "look at the idiots building the freedom tower, in an area known for having planes crash into tall buildings".

Re:Why are nuclear plants so hard to shut down?

[mortonda]

This has been repeated many times here on slashdot. The reaction stopped, but the core is still VERY hot and has to be cooled for a while. This is what failed. When the core gets hot enough, the fuel melts the containment and falls to the bottom, and might start reacting again.

I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I wonder if we could come up with some sort of design that would allow the fuel rods to mechanically fall in different directions to spread out the heat.. ideally without any extra power needed.

Safest

[mdsolar]

Be careful. The safest thing is to not create nuclear waste in the first place. That is only common sense.

Re:Words

[SomeKDEUser]

No, not all of it, but as long as something can be reused, it is not "waste". It becomes waste only when nothing can be gotten out of it. "Recycling" is not "Reusing". Reading comes before nuclear engineering, so I guess it is back to small school for you?

Also, pet peeve of mine about rabidly anti-nuclear people who are against any and all storage facility for nuclear waste:
  - Even if the world decided to shut down all plants tomorrow, long term storage would still be needed (in fact, especially if the world decided to shut down all plants)
  - Even if all the waste from plants magically evaporated, there would still remain all of the scientific/medical waste (a very significant fraction of the total).
I cannot help but think that people holding a strong opinion both against storage and against nuclear power are brain-damaged. And in the event of them needing it, they should be denied radiotherapy. And X-Rays. I would deny them smoke detectors, but that would not be fair for their neighbours.

Of course, storing anything at the Fukushima site for the long term is idiotic bordering on criminal. This is a separate issue.