How Much Spent Nuclear Fuel Does the Fukushima Daiichi Facility Hold?

[AlaskaDenise]

Scientific American has the answer in numbers we can actually understand!!!
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As Japan attempts to cool overheating nuclear fuel with seawater, experts worry that the damaged spent-fuel pools pose the greatest threat....

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The spent fuel pools are of significant concern, Marvin Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management consultant, said in a Wednesday press briefing organized by the nonprofit organization Physicians for Social Responsibility. Resnikoff noted that the pools at each reactor are thought to have contained the following amounts of spent fuel, according to The Mainichi Daily News:

? Reactor No. 1 fuel pool: 50 tons of nuclear fuel
? Reactor No. 2 fuel pool: 81 tons
? Reactor No. 3 fuel pool: 88 tons
? Reactor No. 4 fuel pool: 135 tons
? Reactor No. 5 fuel pool: 142 tons
? Reactor No. 6 fuel pool: 151 tons

? Also, a separate ground-level fuel pool contains 1,097 tons of fuel; and some 70 tons of nuclear materials are kept on the grounds in dry storage.

The reactor cores themselves contain less than 100 tons of fuel, Resnikoff noted.

Read the rest of this excellent article at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-fuel-fukushima

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[AlaskaDenise]

Re: How Much Spent Nuclear Fuel Does the Fukushima Daiichi Facility Hold?

US reactor pools store more spent fuel than Japan's

(03/17/11 21:07:39)

WASHINGTON -- U.S. nuclear plants use the same sort of pools to cool spent nuclear-fuel rods as the ones now in danger of spewing radiation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, only the U.S. pools hold much more nuclear material. That's raising the question of whether more spent fuel should be taken out of the pools at U.S. power plants to reduce risks.

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The Japanese plant's pools are far from capacity, but still contain an enormous amount of radioactivity, Lyman said. A typical U.S. nuclear plant would have about 10 times as much fuel in its pools, he said......



Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/03/17/1761835/us-reactor-pools-store-more-spent.html#ixzz1GzEId1vy

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