Gosh this is gloomy... 40 years and 600 billion to clean the mess up ??!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-japan-fukushima-idUSBRE92417Y20130308

They are in a hurry.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18208-nuclear-crisis-at-fukushima-could-spew-out-more-than-15-000-times-as-much-radiation-as-hiroshima-bombing

If the building collapses, then it'll be a lot harder to remove the fuel rods. Or they could break. Or fission... gosh.

Perhaps this is good news, recently they've removed 1 of the fuel rods:

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-first-nuclear-fuel-rods-were-successfully-removed-from-fukushima

 I wonder if they can remove all of them... some think not.

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/24-3

Although note that this article is severely biased by a leftist spokesman. There are a few quotes from nuclear experts in there which are worthwile, they say that there's a possibility for more leaking of nuclear material if one of the rods ruptures, and that it would mean that some nuclear material would be impossible to recover once it leaks out. The most hyped statements about the possibility of an explosion, comes from an activist... now we all know that their vision isnt' necessarily contrained by reality.

Oh wait, the article links to an expert who is also voicing concern.

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598/

I quote: "could result in a criticality if  the rods come into close proximity to one another". But is this even possible? If they're removing the rods one at a time, they cannot come close to each other, or can they? Maybe if they drop one of the rods on top of another one, but they're not going to do that, are they?

I quote: "chain  reaction process could be self-sustaining and go on for a long  time." So the expert doesn't expect a huge nuclear explosion, but something else. A mass of burning nuclear material that will release copious amounts of pollutions for a long time. Maybe like Chernobyl? It doesn't say.

I quote: "In a fuel pool  containing damaged rods and racks, it could potentially start up  on its own at anytime. TEPCO has been incredibly lucky that this  hasn't happened so far. " So basically we're overdue for a disaster.

I quote: " Chernobyl was one reactor, in a rural area, a  quarter of the size of one of the reactors at Fukushima. There  was no 'spent fuel pool' to worry about" So the problem is a lot bigger than Chernobyl.

Gosh such an expert is such a "relief" compared to all the scaremongering. It's bad, but maybe not as bad as the worst some people want us to believe. Oh wait... further in the article the expert says that billions of people could die because of radiation, in the worst case scenario...

Gosh... let's hope that won't happen. 

Anyway... I thought they had things under control... but it's a bad situation. If the scaremongerers are right then it looks like they're taking a huge gamble with as worst-case outcome that the whole of Japan must be evacuated. This poses an interesting problem. Where do you put over 100 million people overnight? Are there enough hotel-rooms available for so many people?

But should we put our trust in scaremongers... I don't think so. They want to make us believe there's an atomic bomb buried there, which could irradiate the whole earth. But the fissionable material is not nearly dense enough to go critical like that... but still, it still has the potential to be worse than Chernobyl if I understand the expert correctly.

I quote: "We have three 100-ton melted fuel blobs underground, but where  exactly they are located, no one knows." Oow... so the expert says they will will only need to remove the spent fuel cells. The ones in the actual nuclear reactor have already molten down and are somewhere under ground, nobody knows where...

Gosh... I'm getting confused. I thought there hadn't been any meltdown. Is this story about reality or just a worst-case scenario?

Oh there actually was !!!

http://science.time.com/2011/05/24/what-fukushima%E2%80%99s-triple-meltdown-means/

How the &%# could I've missed that...

Ok I understand better now, why people were scared when the geiger counters went off globally last week. Sorry that I took it so lightly.

And even after the fuel rods are removed, they still present a clear danger... just in a different location.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561

But there are also funny stories like these:

http://concienciaradio.com/fukushima/shimatsu_nuke_explosion_possible_at_fukushima.html

Those people have a vivid imagination, not limited by any knowledge of the most basic of physics... like Fukushima can melt the whole world, that's just crazy talk.

Or this...

http://topinfopost.com/2014/01/03/underground-nuclear-explosion-at-crippled-japan-atomic-plant-shocks-world

That is obviously a joke. It's based on a report about normal earthquakes in the vicinity of Fukushima, not at Fukushima... and note the picture with the Fukushima melt-through point !!!

GeomanNL...what say you spend a little more time with education..and a little less time 'guessing' what might be right or wrong with comments on the net.

I doubt you'd recognize 'hype' if it jumped up and bit you on the bum...

You seem to have the 'eagerness' for knowledge of the new-born...but without a clue how to distinguish science from blogging.

Simply put...Fukushima was and still is a disaster, just as all 'mishaps' with nuclear reactors have been.

Please don't post further.  Take the time to get an education....then you will be able to separate bullshit from reality....

That's the sort of statement that really has me thinking 'troll'.

Classifying an 'expert' as 'another leftist activist' means your 'doubts' are simply prejudiced ramblings....fuelled by seemingly random sound-bites gleaned from various blogs on the net.

There is more to an educated response to a topic of debate than the parroting of selectively sourced net-dross.

You 'just not seeing that happening' is certainly nothing to hitch an argument to, not with the basis of research as found by googling blogs...

Ok fine, sorry. I just got a weak moment. I'm tired of all this hype. Fukushima, global warming. The media and the internet make no sense anymore, they only seem to be happy if they can exaggerate everything.

When I was 15, Chernobyl happened. That was a close call for the Netherlands; I also know what a nuclear disaster means. I also know what exaggeration means. What happened at Chernobyl was a lot worse than Fukushima.

I will clarify... when I read the article, it seemed to make sense at first, but after giving it more thought his (or her) statements are so exagerrated. Like, the current state Fukushima is in will cause millions of deaths. That's completely unfounded, hardly much radiation escaped. Chernobyl released a lot more and that didn't cause millions of deaths. She says that according to some other experts Northern Japan is already uninhabitable... it's all highly suggestive and extreme.

I don't trust an expert that makes such suggestive statements. I was wrong to even mention it. I'm sorry, it just seemed to make sense at the moment.

I'll leave it at this.

Is it possible for someone to be a troll without knowing they are a troll?

Although, judging from past posting history.... hmmm...

Ok so I'm a troll... so what, is there something wrong with being a troll? Is it my greenish teint or something? That's because of the radiation you know, I was born with it.

I dunno, why is it these 'supposedly' serious threads always end up getting somehow ugly?

And the world just keeps turning.... 

To answer your question starkers, because people consider themselves more knowledgeable than they really are and refuse to be open minded.

Reminds me of the truisms of the Building/Architecture game....

An Engineer is a person who knows a great deal about very little....and goes on to know more and more about less and less until he knows practically everything about nothing.

An Architect is a person who knows a little bit about a great deal....and goes on to know less and less about more and more until he knows practically nothing about everything.

And a Client is always right.

There's this german term:

DELLE: durch einfach liegen lassen erledigt.

Translation: by simply letting it lie, solved.

It works like a charm.

More German sayings...this one is lethal...

Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.