Canopy to cover damaged reactors (JAPAN)

[AsahinaKimi]

An artist's concept of a canopy that will cover the damaged reactor buildings at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. (Tokyo Electric Power Co.)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is planning the construction of giant canopies that will cover the severely damaged reactor buildings at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, TEPCO officials said.

The canopies are meant to prevent the spread of radioactive materials from the reactor buildings that suffered damage from hydrogen explosions soon after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the officials said May 13.

Each canopy will made of steel-beam scaffolding onto which polyester sheeting will be spread. The structures will stand about 55 meters tall, and the top will measure 47 meters by 42 meters.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201105140154.html

[ProdigalJunkMail]

1. why does that look a lot like the things they tried to cap the well with??? nt

[joshcryer]

2. They need robots to remove the radiating material and dump it into the deep ocean!

This is just prolonging a radiation threat for centuries!

[Bennyboy]

3. No Duct tape?

Seriously do they think this will work? ow will they build it?

[readmoreoften]

5. Beat me to it.

[CoffeeCat]

4. Paging ANY engineer...

So, they think that capping the buildings with a polyester tent will contain all of the steam and radioactive
isotopes?

How?

How could polyester hold onto tons of radioactive material like that? Wouldn't it explode or leak out?

Plus, this doesn't address the nuclear reactions and melting down that continues to happen, correct?

[readmoreoften]

6. They don't think it will contain it. They're just trying to reign in the worst of the chunks and

particles when the bits fly around. It's a bandaid and they're well aware of it.

[CoffeeCat]

7. So you're telling me...

...that this is their "junk shot"?

Bring on the golf balls!


;)

[Brother Buzz]

8. They already did their 'Junk Shot' on the spent fuel rod pools. This is their "Top Hat"

Get with the plan, Stan.

[CoffeeCat]

10. Yes, and if they pull a rabbit out of that hat...

...it will have three heads, green fur and a platypus bill.

[Brother Buzz]

13. This time for sure!

[woo me with science]

9. They should just build a gigantic school desk.

We were told as children that hiding under them would protect us from nuclear fallout.

[Canuckistanian]

11. Just DO it already

Christ, they've done everything but wave magic wands at this problem. Cover it up, before we're all drinking milk with Strontium-90 and eating vegetables with radioactive Cadmium isotopes

[Gregorian]

12. The worst is probably over, in the event that things don't reignite.

It's only a guess. But there was probably an exponential decay in the amount of particulates dispersed into the atmosphere. The first day was probably worse than all the rest of the days combined. But containment now is still important. Especially if things start up again. Or maybe they still are. Only a few know the truth.

I'm just really angry right now. I had to lay into an engineering colleague today. He was laughing about how overblown this whole thing is. A real nuclear one man bandwagon. I can't believe how smug some of these keenly intelligent people can be. There are many forms of intelligence. Knowledge of facts is only a small portion of the truth. He was correct regarding nuclear replacing coal. But we don't need the risks associated with either.

We're winning this war. We must keep pushing against those who think this is all just dandy. It's a risk we cannot take any longer. The amount of nuclear particles in the atmosphere from coal burning over the last century is horrible. It's time to end all of this. We have enough problems to deal with. And only one planet. We have the ability to essentially kill this place.