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© 2012 AFPFrance's Areva offers to reprocess spent Fukushima fuel
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© 2012 AFP
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SirFrancisWinchesterIV
Good luck with that, though the government here will probably politely decline and go it alone, as things have gone so well under their astute leadership.
wanderlust
Reprocessing is not the issue, it is removal of the fuel. First they'd have to get it out of the pools, nearly 11 metres deep, with no working cranes and lifts, and high levels of radiation in the vicinity. The spent fuel cells, nearly 5m in height, must be lifted absolutely vertically, to remove them, as they are so closely packed. I think in this case, if it was possible, TEPCO or JNF would have been doing it already.
nandakandamanda
Another problem is the Japanese habit of mixing spent fuel rods with fresh ones, packing the pools even more densely than the norm elsewhere in the world. The fresh ones come out of active reactors, such as Fukushima Reactor No. 3, during regular maintenance checks. They'll have to be extra careful drawing the old ones up and out, I can imagine.
nath
I do not think there are any fuel rods left to remove.
globalwatcher
Let's remove the fuel first, and then we can talk about it.
Thomas Anderson
What's the point of reprocessing?
Cos
That's still better than storing it in your backyard.
Utrack
Looking at the underwater photos of SFP 3 of the twisted metal and knowing that a 35 ton piece of machinery dropped into it JapanGal maybe right about No 3. But for SFP of No 4 it maybe do-able. I think I remember reading the workers were looking for space at one time to store the spent fuel assemblies so Areva sounds like a knight in shining armor.
nandakandamanda
Well they dropped the extractor as they were trying to remove it from where it had fallen inside Monju's reactor vessel, so let's hope they can lift this 35 ton crane out smoothly.