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Page added on April 2, 2016
‘Ice Wall’ Is Japan’s Last-Ditch Effort To Contain Fukushima Radiation
The nearly mile-long structure consists of underground pipes designed to form a frozen barrier around the crippled reactors.
• The $312 million system was completed last month, more than a year behind schedule.
• Nearly 800,000 tons of radioactive water are already being stored onsite.
Japanese authorities have activated a large subterranean “ice wall” in a desperate attempt to stop radiation that’s been leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for five years.
The wall consists of a series of underground refrigeration pipes meant to form a frozen soil barrier around the four reactors that were crippled during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
Construction of the $312 million government-funded structure was completed last month, more than a year behind schedule, the Associated Press reports. The nearly mile-long barrier is intended to block groundwater from entering the facility and becoming contaminated.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, which owns the plant, activated the system Thursday, a day after obtaining approval from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority.
In a video detailing the ice wall’s design, TEPCO said the technology has been successfully used to prevent water intrusion during the construction of tunnels, but this is the first time it has been used to block water from entering a nuclear facility.
“We will create an impermeable barrier,” the company said, “by freezing the soil itself all the way down to the bedrock that exists below the plant. When groundwater flowing downhill reaches this frozen barrier it will flow around the reactor buildings, reaching the sea just as it always has, but without contacting the contaminated water within the reactor buildings.”
TEPCO says the ice wall will be activated in stages over the next several months and is one of several measures the company is taking to reduce the amount of water being contaminated on the site.
POOL New / Reuters Nearly 800,000 tons of radioactive water are already being stored in more than 1,000 industrial tanks at the nuclear plant, according to the AP.
While hopes are high that the ice wall will prove successful in stopping additional radioactive water from seeping into the Pacific Ocean, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, urged caution.
“It would be best to think that natural phenomena don’t work the way you would expect,” he told reporters Wednesday, according to the AP report.
The activation of the ice wall comes just weeks after a TEPCO official reported that robots designed to access the dangerous interior of the plant and seek out the melted fuel rods were “dying” from the high levels of radiation.
The video below details how the ice wall is expected to work.
48 Comments on "‘Ice Wall’ Is Japan’s Last-Ditch Effort To Contain Fukushima Radiation"
Kenz300 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:00 am
Nuclear energy is toxic to people and the planet…..
Nuclear energy is poisoning the planet…………
5 Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout
http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/05/5-years-after-fukushima/
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:30 am
Nuclear is NOT the answer. Nuclear radiation lasts for thousands of years and its effects are a long lasting legacy. How many more nuclear disasters must happen before humanity wakes up to the fact among other facts.
markisha on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:33 am
While they were making profit they took every single penny , now ice wall is funded with the tax payer money , or better with new worthless paper, this is nice while can last
penury on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:44 am
When even the people who install the thing and make money from it, admit that it will not work, we have a problem. Better make that a predicament.
curlyq3 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 10:15 am
It is truly pathetic how people will cling to these absolutely ridiculous “interventions” as if they might change the inevitable consequences they now face with Nuclear outside of containment … all Nuclear will reach the Biosphere at some point in time … decaying, unstable elements will not be “contained” and once in the Biosphere can not be recovered.
curlyq3
geopressure on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 10:27 am
It sounds like a good plan to me…
We should switch to Molten Salt FliBe Reactors… or better yet, direct-feed crude oil power generation…
Bob Owens on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 10:43 am
I cannot imagine a project more likely to fail than this one. What are these people smoking? I want some.
Anonymous on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:40 pm
This has to be the dumbest idea-ever. It wont work, and cannot work. The only thing it will succeed at, is wasting time and money. This ‘ice wall’,is a PR exercise, nothing more. I suspect its real purpose, is plausible deniability.
This is will be the third time Japan has been burned by nuclear fire, and ALL by americans. You’d think an intelligent and cultured people like the Japanese would have learned by now you cant trust the american barbarians, them or their shoddy tech, but no…..
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:46 pm
10 Devastating Radiation Accidents They Never Tell You About
http://listverse.com/2016/03/26/10-devastating-radiation-accidents-they-never-tell-you-about/
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:55 pm
How like the TPTB, to hide the mess they were making of this planet. No more hiding it it is all around us. I live very near Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant that they NOW say is leaking. for how long haha.
Practicalmaina on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 3:41 pm
Yeah getting some of that spray rubber sealant you see in the infomercials and dumping it in some holes seems to be more likely to work in my eyes, Tepco is probably charging the tax payers for this electricity black hole project.
peakyeast on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 4:16 pm
I have to agree – the icewall is not a solution. Its an endlessly costly solution – that I think has a large chance of being abandoned and thus continuing the pollution.
J-Gav on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 5:09 pm
Radiation’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 5:16 pm
Ice wall? Something wrong with concrete?
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 5:30 pm
Here is one advantage I found to ice frozen wall over concrete “Several features make freeze walls better barriers than those fashioned from steel, concrete, or clay—alternatives that the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s panel considered and rejected. A key advantage cited by Phillips is the freeze wall’s self-healing capacity. For example, water flowing into cracks caused by an earthquake—an ever-present threat at Fukushima—would freeze to reëstablish the barrier. “That’s a really great asset,” says Phillips.
Anonymous on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:29 pm
If the NRA rejected concrete or steel etc, its not because the ice is that much better, it has more to do with the fact that it would be near-on physically IMPOSSIBLE to build a containment barrier with those materials. Remember, these guys dont even know where the reactor core even is. Care to try to build a barrier of [whatever] under and around that?
And the freezing only works as long as there is a complex and functioning society and civilization capable of maintaining such a complex system. Never mentioned, or only hinted at, the movement of water around that area is a perfectly natural occurrence. Water will never stop trying to flow in and out of that area no matter what TEPCO does. Eventually, the equipment maintaining that barrier will fail, and nature will keep doing what it does. Who wants to bet TEPCO will be around freezing the ground 20 thousands years from now? Any takers? No, it was picked because it was the least difficult thing to do, even though its basically worthless. But it sounds great on paper don’t it?
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:54 pm
Well for that matter Plate tectonics and planet geology means that radioactive waste that has been “safely” deposited underground, will eventually be much more exposed. Not to mention what Curly said about unstable decaying elements that are hard to great any barrier for. I think we all know that our civilization does not think much about the future especially the longer term one. So all this is no surprise. Yes it does sound great as in they are doing something. Never mind that it really will be ineffective over the long term.
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:54 pm
create any barrier for.
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 7:01 pm
“DEATH by INSANITY and GREED”. The Epitaph chiseled into the Homo Sapiens tombstone. If anyone thinks humanity will survive this century, he/she needs to look around.
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 7:09 pm
Absolutely Mak, the long list of baked in catastrophes that we have fashioned from our toxic to Earth and to all living beings civilization is impressive. Nothing can be done now to salvage anything worth salvaging. http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2016/04/02/the-stark-realities-of-baked-in-catastrophes/
Dave thompson on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:12 pm
So how many more of these wonderful technological contraptions/devices are located around the world, at sea level? Should we be worried? Sea levels are rapidly rising, are the presidential candidates talking about this pressing issue? Perhaps Trump can build a wall?
Randy Brasmtedt on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:20 pm
3 of the 4 reactors involved in the Fukushima disaster did a China Syndrome type of event. The corium burned through the containment into the soil and contacted the shallow water table. The corium still cannot be found and steam explosions were heard in the week after the meltdown process started. Steam explosions are caused by molten metal rods contacting the water table below the reactor facility. Much worse than Chernobyl.
Boat on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:38 pm
Dave,
The US has a working reactor downstream of a dam with fault lines around. You can’t make up shyt that dumb.
Ace on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:51 pm
What a bunch of doomsdayers we’ve become. For starters the title says last ditch, as if they’ve tried everything else and if this doesn’t work it’s game over. Worst case if this doesn’t work, is radiation levels in sea water of the coast remain elevated, so Fukushima fisheries remain closed. They can only keep building holding tanks until there’s no more room, so more treated water that still has tritium gets released to the ocean. All this could lead to a potential increase in the cancer rate if seafood isn’t continued to be monitored carefully and contamination gets into the food supply. A potential increase in the cancer rate, no matter how small, is not good and should be prevented if at all possible, but it’s not the end of the world.
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 10:50 pm
Ace, contamination is already in your food supply. What monitoring? According to the government that level of radiation is ‘harmless’. I suggest you buy yourself a good Geiger counter for when you shop. LOL
BTW: Tell the 500,000+ Americans that dies from cancer EACH YEAR that it is not ‘the end of the world’. Terrorism is nothing compared to cancer.
dooma on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 12:33 am
Onlooker, It seems that it is not going to happen in our lifetimes.
I just learnt that Vietnam is just about to build a massive nuclear power station to secure it’s growing energy needs into the next century. Sad is it not?
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 12:58 am
Blow Up Fukushima with a Hydrogen Fusion Bomb.
See, like this:
http://cdn.unilad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/kim7.jpg
And, the stock price of the ice-wall company will go back down into the toilet, where it belongs.
Another fringe bonus, all those whining hippy greenies will shut the funk up about Fukushima and the radioactive water tanks, and then we can enjoy a good night’s sleep.
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 1:00 am
Where ya gonna get the electricity to cool off a mile of underground ice wall?
So lets build a nuclear power plant to keep the ice wall frozen ………….. LOL
theedrich on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 1:46 am
“… robots designed to access the dangerous interior of the plant and seek out the melted fuel rods were ‘dying’ from the high levels of radiation.”
So. Another case of geniuses at work, trying to repair catastrophes caused by other geniuses.
In the U.S., Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the national permanent repository for nuclear waste. However, NIMBY opposition caused Senator Harry Reid, assisted by the Negroid Prez, to block the project for personal political gain.
Meanwhile nuclear waste is continuing to cook all over the country, with no prospect of avoiding an eventual disaster due to unforeseen but inevitable events.
Anonymous on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 4:22 am
Wasn’t the one of the main reasons Yucca fell through was, more recent surveys and geological evaluations showed that Yucca was nowhere near as suitable a site as its proponents initially believed, or told everyone that’s what they believed? Not to pour cold water on your race-baiting there, but I dont think Obombers skin tone had much to do with any of it. I remember Yucca being discussed for decades, and it went nowhere under all those snow-white Jew uS prez’s either.
Problem is, aside from the Finns, no one is even working on a repository because suitable sites are extremely rare(do any even exist? I honestly don’t know and I think Im not alone in that).
All we need is a location(s) that can hold 300k+ tons of radioactive waste, maintenance free for anywhere from a few centuries to a 1/4 million years, give or a take. Ideally with zero chance of leakage. Nothing to it-right?
dooma on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 5:00 am
Three dicks, you should really stick to stormfront. I think everyone here knows that your president is black.
I bet you wouldn’t yell out “niggers” to a couple of six foot plus African Americans?
You are a pathetic keyboard warrior. Your country is made up of immigrants you tool. Get used to it. Actually, the world is made up of different people. So go and live on the moon. Or pretend and just stop breathing…
Davy on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 5:17 am
“Character Traits And Skills That Are Hard To Find During A Crisis”
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2845-character-traits-and-skills-that-are-hard-to-find-during-a-crisis
“Many Americans cannot yet relate to the concept of full spectrum crisis, but most of us have at least experienced localized disasters. In order to understand what a national emergency might look like, one simply needs to examine the microcosm of localized disasters and then imagine the same exact problems but magnified 1,000 times.”
“From my personal experience with local crises, I can say that the worst threat comes not from the event itself, but the ways in which people choose to deal with the event. That is to say, for smart, courageous and prepared people with the right traits and skills, there is no such thing as a crisis. For stupid people who overestimate their abilities or who let fear dominate their thinking, any crisis becomes an insurmountable moment of utter terror.”
“The right people in the right place at the right time — no crisis. The wrong people in the right place at the right time — total destruction. Therefore, the key to surviving any crisis is to have the right people in place, and to be well away from the wrong people.”
“Here are some of the increasingly rare character traits and skills that make a crisis manageable for any community.
The Ability To Act Without Permission
The Ability To Teach
The Ability To Think Outside Of The Box
The Ability To Stay Calm
The Ability To Direct Force Intelligently
The Ability To Psychologically Process Carnage
The Ability To Self-Sacrifice
The Ability To Recognize When Others Are More Qualified To Accomplish A Task”
Davy on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 5:19 am
“Trump: “The Country Is Headed For A Massive Recession; It’s A Terrible Time To Invest In Stocks”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-02/trump-country-headed-massive-recession-its-terrible-time-invest-stocks
“Donald Trump continued to streamroll over all conventional narratives when during a massive 96-minute interview with the Washington Post on Thursday which was released today, in which he talked candidly about his aggressive style of campaigning and offered new details about what he would do as president, he said that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, which, the traditionally cheerful WaPo said embraces “a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts.”
Kenz300 on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 7:40 am
Fukushima Should Have Served as Wake-Up Call for U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/10/fukushima-wake-up-call-nrc/
7 Top NRC Experts Break Ranks to Warn of Critical Danger at Aging Nuke Plants
http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/09/nrc-experts-warn-dangers-nuclear/
Asteroid Miner on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 9:15 am
There is a billion tons of uranium dissolved in ocean water naturally. We can get it. http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200704/000020070407A0057435.php
“Cost Estimation of Uranium Recovery from Seawater with System of Braid Type Adsorbent” 2006
That is, uranium that has always been dissolved in the oceans. There is so much radioactivity in the oceans that there is no way we can change it by adding a little heavy water. Where did you think we got the heavy water from in the first place, anyway? The land is also radioactive since the beginning of the Earth, and it varies from place to place. See the movie “Pandora’s Promise.”
Compute your radiation exposure from mostly natural causes here:
http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/dosechart/
Please read this book: “Radiation and Reason, The impact of Science on a culture of fear” by Wade Allison. The Wade Allison in England, not the other Wade Allison at Harvard.
http://www.radiationandreason.com/
Professor Allison says we can take up to 10 rems per month, a little more than 1000 times the present “legal” limit. The old limit was 5 rems/lifetime. A single dose of 800 rems could kill you, but if you have time to recover between doses of 10 rems, no problem. It is like donating blood: You see “4 gallon donor” stickers on cars. You know they didn’t give 4 gallons all at once. There is a threshold just over 10 rems/month. You are getting .35 rems/year NATURAL background radiation right where you are right now if you are where I am.
Natural Background Radiation is radiation that was always there, 1000 years ago, a million years ago, etc. Natural Background Radiation comes from the rocks in the ground and from exploding stars thousands of light years away. All rocks contain uranium. Radon gas is a decay product of uranium.
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 9:29 am
And we can also consume a certain level of cyanide each month and not die. That doesn’t make it OK. Sooner or later, you accumulate the fatal dose.
Just because a person is called professor does not make him correct or even reliable. Most American professors are owned by the corporate elite thru grants and high salaried positions. Remember, often an “Expert” is nothing more than a drip under pressure.
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 9:32 am
AM, and the English professors are also owned by the corporate elite. A poison is a poison. You sound like a nuclear apologist.
chepe on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 9:52 am
the gaming community globally is massive. that is a lot of creative minds. why dont they get together and “play” Fukushima? perhaps they can solve the dilemma. current experts cannot. gamers will not stop until they are able to win.
Darkwing on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 9:56 am
Too late the damage has been done, the pacific ocean is destroyed.
arkieguide on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 10:14 am
i DO NOT THINK THIS WILL WORK – IF IT WILL WORK, i DO NOT THINK THEY CAN MAINTAIN THE ICE WALL. tHE WAY i SEE THIS ICE WALL IT IS ON THE DOWNHILL SIDE OF THE PLANT, SO IT KEEPS THE SEA WATER OUT ? bY ALL MEANS IT FIRST SHOULD HAVE BEEN UPHILL TO PREVENT THE WATER FROM ENTERING THE PLANT TO START WITH. wHY HAVE THEY NOT DUG A DIVERSION CANAL UPSTREAM FROM THE PLANT AND DROVE SHEET PILE BETWEEN THE CANAL AND THE PLANT SITE, TO STOP THE WATER BEFORE IT CAN BECOME CONTAMINATED ? tHIS ICE WAL
L CAN NOT BE MAINTAINED FOR VERY LONG.
chepe on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 11:32 am
you are alive, it is not too late. sunflowers, planted in styrofoam floating in a pond at chernobly absorbed cesium at 8000 times the concentration in the water. build the robots, looking for the fuel rods, out of nanotechnology-anything. look at the amazing technology we have created. never give up. we live here
onlooker on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 11:43 am
Reluctantly may have to agree with Dark.
http://www.naturalnews.com/049446_Pacific_Ocean_fisheries_Fukushima_radiation.html#
Pacific Ocean life devastated by Fukushima radiation: Fisheries populations have crashed 91 percent
onlooker on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 11:46 am
Combine this with recent news about the Great Barrier Reef off Australia and we seem to be witnessing the beginning of the end of our oceans. Of course this in turn will reverberate across all living species on the planet. Astonishing and beyond tragic. I would also say at this time let us all cease to pinpoint this place or that as the worse, what we are witnessing is wholesale – wide scale planetary devastation.
Ace on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 12:19 pm
makati1, I own a Gc,. A nice little survey meter that picks up alpha beta and gamma, but it’s not nearly sensitive enough to pick up contamination in food. There’s a flip side to testing. Anyone, including hard core anti-nuke activist, can send samples off to a lab for testing, so saying the government isn’t testing food is a copout. There’s plenty of articles about food testing that’s going on in Japan, by both the government and private citizens.
Practicalmaina on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 6:01 pm
I was pretty sure they fired that ice wall dup a while ago, it is designed to sustain an ice wall eproarily for a tunnel, not to withhold thousands of gallons of heavily radiated water, fleecing of the tax payer, and utility customers. What gets me is just how bad they screwed the pooch to begin with. 50 grand per reactor in solar pv or something along those lines could have made the disaster much less by at least providing enough pumping and control ability to keep it below critical heat maybe an extra hour, maybe 2, maybe enough to prevent the explosions and complete meltdowns at all. On a multi billion dollar device how can you justify not having that foresight.
Would continuosly doping the in flowing water with Boron help to somehow absorb and slightly mitigate at least some of the radiation?
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 8:52 pm
Ace, I would not trust any lab that is government run or has government funding, which is most, if not all, of them. And any news source in the affected countries will not be reliable. They are censored heavily. Lies are what we get, not facts. The rising cancers caused by radiation is more indicative of the situation than any lab report.
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 10:13 pm
That’s ok. They can ship their problem to the Us.
“Plutonium from Japan to be disposed of underground in New Mexico”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/02/national/politics-diplomacy/plutonium-japan-disposed-underground-new-mexico/#.VwDirj9Gut8
LOL
Kenz300 on Wed, 6th Apr 2016 8:45 am
Wind and solar power are safer, cleaner and cheaper….