let's talk, I was an engineer/scientist for IBM. My specialization area was solid state physics, but a large part of my publications and patents were in the area of laser machining, optical inspection and optical components for laser machining systems. When I was younger, I worked as one of a group developing software for a finite element process modelling system for semiconductor processing, & writing software for electrical testers for oxide depth, doping, and silicon doping profiles. When you do your course work in physics, you take a lot of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and atomic physics, all of which have application in this crisis. However, I have never worked as a nuclear engineer, myself, although I have had to handle radioactive substances in several projects that I was working on. I have been extremely interested in energy issues for some time, exactly because my area of specialization in optical systems and components build makes me very aware of the way photovoltaic solar is being both oversold for what it can do, and for being clean, when it is not.
Additionally, as a child growing up here in Groton, I was at the launching of the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. There have been up to 100 floating reactors in submarines near my home town since I was a little, little girl. And there are two big commercial reactors within 7 miles of my home today. Consequently, it has been important to me since I was young to understand exactly what goes on with them, what my risks are, what my children's risks are.
So I would say I am an educated amateur of the subject.
In some ways, predictions IMO, need sociologists, because different countries seem to have behaved very differently to what they have learned from Daiichi, and from nuclear accidents in their past.
Russia has had more nuclear accidents than any other country, and its solution has always been to create an exclusion zone around the debacle and walk away from it. The overwhelming fact of Russia is its huge size. It can throw away huge tracts of land the size of Rhode Island to avoid the expense of cleaning up. However, it has plenty of coal, natural gas, and oil, and it still likes nuclear power. Furthermore, it has not shut any of the flawed RMBK reactors (same model as Chernobyl's that exploded). Likewise, Ukraine, actual home of Chernobyl, is heavily vested in nuclear power and does not seem to be getting that excited about Fukushima.
The Poles are considering starting up a new reactor to sell power to the Germans. The Czechs are already doing the same. I think to both, they do not want to be at the end of Russia's Gazprom natural gas line, with the Russians able to coerce them by threatening to turn the switch off and on.
The French chose long ago to have nuclear power their main source, between 75 and 80 percent of their power these days. Furthermore, last I checked, electricity was their number 4 export, and they had some of the cheapest electrical power to the customer in Europe. The Greens could only get 100 people to an anti-nuclear rally. The French seem happy with their choice, and Fukishima has not changed that. They have no oil, gas or coal, and wish to be independent of other countries.
The English are continuing on the same nuclear path they were treading before, saying, we have no tsunamis and no earthquakes. Furthermore, we have lots of rain and not much sunshine; solar does not do it for us. Also, average wind in GB has dropped below what was predicted-they are less thrilled with wind than you might think. Likewise, being an island nation, you can't just run a gasline to it.
In the US, it is unclear what will happen. The only state where people seem severely upset about their own local reactors is Vermont, and they were that way before Fukushima. OTOH, many of our people in the media are very loud about reactors. Our government is split, but their are pronuclear folk in both parties. Surprisingly, Yucca Mt. waste storage is looking like being funded again. With respect to our past nuclear accidents, we have been brought, if only by legal action, to clean up their results.
And new reactors are moving ahead in South Carolina and Georgia, perhaps other states, too.
To return to the question of our most iffy reactor situation, in VT, the legislature voted to close Vermont Yankee, but unfortunately Yankee contracts to sell power to Massachusetts and other parts of New England, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the US agency that determines whether a reactor is safe, not the state of VT. The state can only judge whether it is usually operational, and if not, to close it. Yankee has both a good performance and a good safety record, so Entergy, which owns Yankee, is suing Vermont, as it is indeed an interstate commerce issue, and so the jurisdiction for the case is federal.
The Canadians do not seem to be rushing to close their Candu reactors, which have performed very well over time, except for the original one at Chalk River in the early 1950's.
The Germans have a large Green Party, quite a few reactors that have never given anyone any trouble, and a long-term uneasy relationship to them. I do not quite understand why, although it may have to do with the press going on and on about radioactive mushrooms and radioactive wild boars. Some Germans claim it is the women who vote Green Party, and that's why (?) I didn't quite get that, but that's what 2 of them said. Another claimed (again talking about radioactive wild boars and truffles) that German engineers could make the weaknesses of solar and wind become unimportant, because the engineers are wonderful. Again, then why does she distrust the reactors made by German engineers? I still don't understand the Germans on this subject.
The Italians decided to close all reactors after Chernobyl. Berlasconi was considering changing that policy, but they will be holding a referendum on it. I expect no new nuclear plants in Italy, but that has been the Italian direction for some time.
The Swiss and Belgians look like one or both will be closing their plants. In Switzerland, there was a 25,000 person antinuclear rally, and the next day the government said it would close its nuclear plant (s). The Swiss do not seem to like demonstrations. These are the two countries taking a perhaps unexpected change of direction.
This is kind of a long rundown, but it seems to me that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi has affirmed people in different countries in whatever path they were treading already with respect to nuclear power before the disaster.
So in Japan, the original path was to build nuclear, perhaps some of the plants in questionable places, like Daiichi, near a subduction fault. I would hope that better site planning would be done in future if any new plants are to be built. I would hope that if any new plants were to be built, they would not be Boiling Water Reactors like the ones at Daiichi. What I am most eager to see in Japan is what is done to recover the contaminated land and fields and waterways. Japan is densely populated. They did not throw away Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I am hoping that Fukushima prefecture will be restored in the next 20 years.
At this time, the government is planning to go with at least 20% unreliable sources of electricity. I am not sure at all how the Japanese people will like late, unairconditioned trains, manufacturing plants with brownouts, 'smart grids' that turn off the electricity at their homes when the windmills are not turning, working on weekends rather than at nights, and the other results of drastically cutting the available electrical power. It is possible, that like the Ukrainians, who at first were going to close the other Chernobyl reactors, and then did not, and eventually replaced them with new reactors. The Ukrainians did not like the high price of buying fuel from Russia.
I have listed in this thread a number of things that I hope someone will work with to help remediate land and water. I hope to see new innovations in that direction in Japan.
The first four reactors will all of course be scrapped, and the area somewhat cleaned up; but it will take at least 10 years.. This is expensive but doable. The US has coped with a similar situation at Hanford and at the Idaho National Lab. A great deal has been learned. I am very interested and excited to see how Tepco and the Japanese government are coping now and will cope in future with the clean up.
The interesting question is whether the reactors not at Daiichi will be allowed to restart, after a complete safety check out is done.
I think, let's talk, that you will be better able to guess what way the Japanese people will choose, ultimately. Will they prefer high expense, unreliable power? Global warming gas producing power whose fuel they must buy at exhorbitant cost from other countries? Will they choose to go back to some nuclear power, but with better safety controls? I do not feel confident enough in my knowledge of Japan to say.
As to the plants, the cooling plans for the spent fuel pools will work, since the plan for Unit 2 has already worked. The same technology is going to be used on the reactors themselves. There is no reason that the heat exchangers won't work on the reactors as well, especially given that they are all pretty well cool already.
TEPCO has shown a lot of ingenuity with storing and cleaning up water--they have been warning that the water may run over, but they have a huge barge docked there, nominally for low concentration water. I think they are angling to get the government's OK to pump some of the intermediate contaminated water into the barge, and then say they will dilute that with the output of the water purification system they are installing later this month in concert with Areva. They can always pump it back through the water purification system at some later date.
My one worry for the current situation is the endless pumping of nitrogen into reactor one, to avoid hydrogen explosion. The pressure there keeps slowly increasing. That is something you cannot do forever-at some point, they have to decide to back off on adding nitrogen. The fact that they are trying to put on a better pressure gauge today leads me to believe that they are concerned about this too, but they haven't discussed it.
