Decontaminating nuclear radioactivity.

inbetween said:
Radioactivity damages your cells by bombarding them with decaying atoms and you don't even know it's happening. In the Chernobyl disaster a lot of firefighters attending the explosion scene had no idea that they were stood next to an open radioactive bomb. Quite a few of them died within a few days.

You can shield yourself from such radiation with PPE though depending on the type of decay, for some types a piece of paper is enough but for others concrete is needed. We get hit by small amounts of radiation naturally all the time. UV radiation from the sun is a good example and in high enough doses it will cause sunburn which is damage caused to your skin cells. If you use sun cream though then this literally blocks the radiation to prevent it from damaging your skin.

When your skin cells are damaged then they die which is why you get peeling skin a few days after sunburn. This can result in DNA damage where subsequently you could get skin cancer. Cancers are the main threat from repeat exposure but large exposures as with a nuclear meltdown/explosion will kill you or make you extremely ill very quickly if you're close.

You can't neutralise this because it's a natural process just like radiation from the sun is. You can shield yourself from it as I've said or you can just avoid going near the thing altogether. The big problem is the materials that are decaying will take hundreds of years to 'spend' their radioactivity and so they have to be stored safely underground out of the way until that's complete.

With places like Chernobyl they've encased the whole exploded reactor so that what's in there can't get out. With Fukushima there's a much bigger problem given several reactors melted down so I don't really know what they are doing there. Chances are they'll do the same and eventually make it as safe as possible and then bury it or encase it.
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The highly radioactive contaminated water used to cool the piles and keep them stable from Fukushima is just being put in the sea...

www.dw.com

Nuclear radiation in the deep blue sea – DW – 03/11/2020

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima sent an unprecedented amount of radiation into the Pacific. But, before then, atomic bomb tests and radioactive waste were contaminating the sea — the effects are still being felt today.
www.dw.com www.dw.com
 
Blue Maverick said:
I would think in future we would once safe be able to fire this stuff into space
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Would it be energy efficient? That's a lot of fuel power being used to first generate the reaction and then eject it at post orbital escape velocity. You couldn't fire it into orbit as the orbit would decay long before it stopped being hazardous.
 
Blue Maverick said:
I would think in future we would once safe be able to fire this stuff into space
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It’s far too heavy and there is already 400,000 tons of it worldwide.
The average payload of a space rocket is 14 tons. That is to to deliver at the height of the ISS. To get into interstellar space where it would not be dragged back it would have to be a lot less, or a much bigger rocket.
Allowing 14 tons per rocket, one rocket a day it would take 4000 weeks or 80 years to get rid of current waste.
And imagine a Challenger type disaster of a ship full of nuclear waste raining down!
 
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I hear the argument that the production of nuclear energy is both efficient and clean. However you dress it up the fact that we are faced with these two disasters surely outweighs any of the benefits of production? Not only the environmental impact but the sheer costs involved in trying to make these areas less-harmful. Japan pre-Fukushima had a burgeoning nuclear power production program but now only 6% of its energy comes from nuclear sources. 6% too much in my opinion.
 
JOGAMIGMOG said:
I hear the argument that the production of nuclear energy is both efficient and clean. However you dress it up the fact that we are faced with these two disasters surely outweighs any of the benefits of production? Not only the environmental impact but the sheer costs involved in trying to make these areas less-harmful. Japan pre-Fukushima had a burgeoning nuclear power production program but now only 6% of its energy comes from nuclear sources. 6% too much in my opinion.
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As opposed to what though? Genuine question, not trying to cause an argument, but you have to come up with a practicable solution to meet Japans energy demand. Japan have replaced Nuclear with Natural Gas. Better than coal, but still a GHG producer. ‘Choose your poison’.
 
Brightwell’s left peg said:
As opposed to what though? Genuine question, not trying to cause an argument, but you have to come up with a practicable solution to meet Japans energy demand. Japan have replaced Nuclear with Natural Gas. Better than coal, but still a GHG producer. ‘Choose your poison’.
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Millions of bonsai ponies running in hamster wheels connected to turbines, job done.
 
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