Japan activates its subterranean Fukushima ice wall
Advanced refrigeration system, nearly a mile long, is meant to keep contaminated water from the damaged nuclear plant from escaping into the sea. Michael d'Estries
April 3, 2016, 3:16 p.m. The battle to keep the earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan from threatening the environment just entered an icy new phase.
Last week, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the company that owns the plant, received permission from the Japanese government to activate a process that will generate a massive subterranean ice wall around the plant. The unprecedented scale of the $300 million project is something of a last-ditch effort to stop the release of contaminated wastewater into the sea.
?We will create an impermeable barrier by freezing the soil itself all the way down to the bedrock that exists below the plant,? TEPCO said in a statement. ?When groundwater flowing downhill reaches this frozen barrier, it will flow around the reactor buildings, reaching the sea just as it always has, but without contacting the contaminated water within the reactor buildings.?
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In the late 90's, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory used this same technique on a much smaller scale to isolate radioactive waste entering groundwater in Tennessee. Whereas that particular cleanup only took six years, Fukushima is expected to last decades. It's unknown if the solution will prove successful over that length of time....
