It will take 30 years to clean up the Fukushima nuclear reactor! The nuclear wastewater storage limit will be reached in September 2022

Original title: The Fukushima nuclear reactor cleanup still has to wait 30 years! The nuclear wastewater storage limit will be reached in September 2022

On the 10th anniversary of the Great Japan Earthquake, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga visited Fukushima Prefecture on March 6. After the inspection, Yoshihide Suga held a press conference in Fukushima prefecture and was asked again about nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. .solve problems. However, there is no clear deadline for the decision on handling policy.Tokyo Electric Powerthe company75% of the waste generated by the nuclear leak accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was transported from all parts of Fukushima Prefecture to the medium-term storage facility in late February.Storage. However, the discussion on the location and method of disposal has been delayed and the problem persists.

Fukushima Prefecture Governor Uchihori Masao on February 17 this year.Press conferenceThe foregoing, in relation to the cleaning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.jobs“We are still very close to the starting line.”

(Comparison before and after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, all four reactors were damaged to varying degrees, the image is taken from paper)

The owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) predicts that it will take about 30 years to recover the fuel in good condition, remove the resolidified molten fuel fragments, disassemble the reactor and dispose of it. Cooling contaminated water. Fuel fragments and contaminated water present particularly difficult problems, and the schedule may even need to be delayed. The government is contemplating the decommissioning of four reactorscost8 trillion yen (approximately 76 billion yenAmerican dollar); However, the Japan Center for Economic Research estimates that this cost may be higher.

Although the four reactors are similar, they are destroyed differently by fusion and explosion. Therefore, the four reaction pairs have been or will be redesigned to support the cranes needed to safely retrieve the intact fuel stored in the upper level of the unit. Fuel phase-out is expected to last until 2031. The transformation of reactor no. 1 will be completed in 2023 and nuclear fuel cleanup is expected to begin in 2027. Reactor No. 2 will begin cleaning up nuclear fuel in 2024.

Fuel waste removal is a more difficult task and there is currently no predictable completion date. TEPCO believes that some fragments are still in the reactor core; some have fallen into the reactor pressure vessel surrounding the core.background; Some burned through the container and landed on the concrete at the bottom of the reactor. The company has tried to use remote control devices to verify the location and status of fuel in highly polluting reactors. However, “we still cannot accurately understand the molten fuel situation,” Uchibori said. In 2022,employeeWe will do itproofA remotely controlled robotic arm to retrieve a small amount of fuel waste believed to be found at the bottom of the Unit 2 reactor.

(Estimated cleanup tasks and start dates for the four reactors, photographs taken from the paper)

Another major challenge is removing contaminated water, as the water circulates in the reactor to remove residual heat from fuel waste. Pretreatment can remove many radioactive elements, but not tritium, which is an extremely difficult hydrogen isotope to capture. In the last ten years, more than 1.24 million tons of tritium-contaminated water have accumulated, more than 1,000 tanks have been filled, and almost every available corner of Fukushima Daiichi Park has been filled.

Since tritium only emits low-energy beta particles, it is not harmful to health. It also exists in seawater and in the atmosphere. In October last year, the Japanese government basically established a policy to discharge nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. Fishermen and many others strongly opposed this move, forcing the Japanese government to postpone the decision on nuclear wastewater. treatment plans.

Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said traces of ruthenium, cobalt, strontium and plutonium isotopes in treated water have also attracted attention. TEPCO stated that it would “reduce such substances as much as possible.” According to a report by Asahi Shimbun in January, the Tokyo Electric Power Company is now adding around 140 tons of nuclear wastewater every day, and it is estimated that it will reach the upper limit of storage tanks of 1.37 million tons for September 2022.

(Source: Qianzhan.com)

(Editor in charge: DF118)