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Fukushima Could be argued as a success as the power plant shut itself down correctly when the earthquake hit. It was the tsunami that damaged the pumps and dest

• jmyeet 3y ago
  There was no radiation cloud released (unlike, say, Chernobyl). This is true. But it's left a mess that will take decades and hundreds of billions to clean up. Plus all the secondary effects to this region (eg fishing). The simple argument against the idea that it's no big deal is: why not just leave it and do nothing? And the answer is "you can't". Why? Because what remains of the plant still requires active cooling, which is why there's over 1000 tanks on site storing millions of gallons of irradiated and contaminated wastewater. This problem is so large that a lot of money is spent on removing contaminants and radioactivity so the water can be heavily diluted with seawater and released into the ocean. Otherwise the tanks will just keep building up. The wastewater releases started this year (which some still strongly oppose). And this is just from keeping the core cooled. As for removing the core, this may take 50-100+ years [1] and has so many unsolved technical problems. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-decommissioning-water-release-fe953a597cc86004e525e1816d6c9c49 https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-dec...