Why is it difficult to destroy the nuclear power plant Fukushima?

The task of repairing, destroying or terminating the Fukushima plant is extremely difficult, and there is no precedent in the world.

The Fukushima affair is now completely different from the previous two cases in that it was damaged by the earthquake, tsunami, and not because of an unsuccessful experiment like the Chernobyl affair, or workers malfunctioning like Three Mile . Both of the previous cases, people know the cause, and find a solution right away.

The Fukushima affair, due to earthquakes and tsunamis, has varying degrees of deterioration, and occurs in all six reactors, of which the heaviest are 4, 2, 3, 4, and people. not knowing where the damage is and how much it is, so the solutions must always be groped step by step.

But groping it takes time. It took time, like for example at Chernobyl, only a minute late to explode, so the task of repairing, destroying or terminating the Fukushima plant was extremely difficult, and there was no precedent. gender.

The French manufacturing company Areva, and the American company Babcox-Wilcox, sent experts to Japan to help Japan solve the Fukushima incident, but in fact, to study the solutions together. Both in France, and the United States, or Russia, there is no precedent of nuclear dams and tsunami damage.

Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima after the second blast on March 14. Photo: Getty Image

The US government also sent a team of over 150 nuclear weapons experts to Japan, mainly to collect data, monitor the situation, check radioactive levels, and research solutions with experts. Japan, but there is no better prejudice than Japan.

The United States has the largest number of nuclear power plants in the world, 106 factories, but it only ensures 20% of electricity for the United States. France uses 80% of nuclear power. Japan uses 26%. And that is an important reason that both the US, France, and Germany . want to help Japan resolve the Fukushima incident. An important reason for the decision is that they themselves want to study the incident to gain experience, when an earthquake happens in their own country .

One of the high-level opinions of the US was to request the Japanese Government to use seawater to cool down , and the Japanese government had to use helicopters to pour seawater into the factories. But seawater has salty salt, causing rust and corrosion of pipes in the factory. Many people say, this may be a cause of leaking radioactive gas. Currently, the use of cooling seawater has ended.

On April 3, Japan succeeded in finding a 20 cm wide crack that spilled radioactive contaminated water into the sea. And on April 6, Japan used liquid glass to block this leak, causing the concentration of radioactivity in the sea water to decrease more than before.

Currently, the US has used barges shipped from the US to 10,000 tons of fresh water to help Japan cool down rice. Fresh water from other regions in Japan has also been transported to Fukushima to cool down rice cookers.

Now, the most important task is to restore the cooling pump system . If the cooling pump system works, the chilled water circulates inside the factory, like a refrigerator. Cooling water will heat up when cooling the fuel rods, then run to the cooling system, cool it, then run into the fuel bar tank to cool the fuel bar. Just like that, no additional cooling water is needed from the outside.

If you have to pump water to cool from outside, there must be a place to discharge, to inject new water.

But want to repair the cooling pump system, remove all contaminated water from the pipes, and clean sea salt to avoid corrosion, only clean water to cool, so workers can get into the house machine to repair pumps. As for radioactive water in the factory, workers cannot get into the cooling pump.

About 60,000 tons of radioactive water needs to be removed from the factory, replaced by clean water, so workers can enter and repair the pump . Currently, temporary tanks have stored 20,000 tons, and US barges carry 10,000 tons of clean water to cool, after pumping all into the factory, it will receive 10,000 tons of radioactive water to temporarily store. How about 30,000 tons?

Experts have to think of a way to discharge less radioactive water into the sea, to get more radioactive contaminated water. That is, in two bad things, choose less bad things. An artificial island containing 10,000 tons of water is also being towed to Fukushima, maybe 10 days to arrive.

After recovering the cooling pump system, it was then possible to think of destroying the nuclear power plant under a controlled route.

Currently, there is a nuclear power plant in Japan, Ibaraki province, which is being dismantled according to plan because of the end of its use value.The process of dismantling and cooling of Ibaraki factory started in 1998, and it was only completed in 2021 . At that time, the used fuel rods really do not create thermonuclear reactions. And the materials of that factory, like iron, steel, cement . will have to be sawed, and buried deep underground.

A normal nuclear power plant, without incident, but the process of dismantling takes effort, time like that, if the factory has trouble. Investors who propagated about nuclear power development did not mention this. Only after the Fukushima incident, information on nuclear power gradually became more clear.

A longtime Japanese nuclear power expert told NHK television that nuclear experts in Japan only have experience and knowledge of building, operating nuclear power plants, not having experience and knowledge. treatment of nuclear power plants damaged by earthquake, tsunami. And that is also the general situation of nuclear power science in the world.

The voices of criticism of the Japanese government's nuclear power policy are rising.

' A lot of earthquakes like that, but why do so many nuclear power? ', questions like that are ringing everywhere. Last week, the Japanese government officially put an indefinite suspension on its new nuclear power development policy.

Without Fukushima, how can the Japanese Government make this decision?