Chile Forum

Guardian Readers 'Fix' the Fukushima Power Plant

As a hip, 29-year-old man-about-town, I often fall asleep at night in front of BBC News 24. This means that my dreams often contain more current affairs content than other people's. After one episode of Newsnight last week I woke up in the middle of a picnic in Fortnum and Mason's, when my Mum unexpectedly turned into a zombie version of New Statesman's Laurie Penny and started beating me over the head with a tin of caviar.

Dreams can be useful though. Some of the world's most reputable websites, like increasebrainpower.com, claim that if you sleep on a problem, you're reasonably likely to wake up with a solution. So what if I could harness this power to solve issues in the news?

One opportunity to do this came with the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami, a natural disaster which killed tens of thousands of people in Japan, resulted in a critical emergency at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and most catastrophically of all for Daily Mail readers led to the detection of trace quantities of radioactive material near Oxfordshire.

The crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant raged for weeks, with the main challenge being to find "the best ways to make the plant safe again." The answer came to me during a mid-Question Time nap last week – with the Space Shuttles recently decommissioned, surely we could use them to lift the damaged reactors into space, where they could explode in peace without causing harm to any people or wildlife, or unsettling the residents of Oxfordshire? As long as we tugged them in the opposite direction from the space station, I couldn't really see a problem with this plan.

If only there were some way for ordinary, unqualified members of the public with interesting ideas, but no actual experience or knowledge of how nuclear reactors work, to have their opinions published in a serious forum for the benefit of the energy industry and mankind.

And then something brilliant happened. The Guardian finally decided to step in and ask its readers for help: "Fukushima nuclear crisis: Send us your ideas for stopping radiation leaks." Their plea continued:

"The Fukushima plant remains in a critical condition and solutions to immediate problems are not forthcoming. That's why we're looking for your views on the best ways to make the plant safe again. In particular, we're looking for opinions from experts with knowledge of the nuclear industry, but whether you're an engineer in the field, an academic, or a nuclear plant worker, we'd like to hear from you."

Adding on the form, "please be as brief as possible," because the last thing you need in a crisis like this is a complicated solution.

Oddly my idea wasn't accepted, but many others were, representing some of the finest minds ever to have graced the Comment is Free forums.

Todd: "Build the worlds biggest tank over the whole site with pre-fab tilt slab concrete. [...] I have done similar projects on a smaller scale but not with nuclear waste."

Weston, Nuclear Radiologist: "repair the reacters befor any thing else bad happiens"

Andrew, Inventor: "water problem is un-fixable. Stop trying. Let it run off into the Pacific."

Hugh, Geology Student: "I would use explosive materials to detach the Fukushima plant from the main land, use air-bags to float it 50km out into the pacific and then sink the whole lot 7000m down to the bottom of the Japan Trench."

Max: "I suggest removing radioactive contamination there by using a small controlled explosion of a specially engineered nuclear device at the site of the stricken Fukushima plant"

OmegaSector: "IN FUTURE, ALL NEW NUCLEAR REACTOR MUST BE BUILT OVER A 1.2 km hole. Any out of control reactor, one press of a buttom and boom, the reactor will fail down 1.2 km and then seal up with soil."

Denny, Assistant to Dr Strangelove: "Small scale nuclear strike."

Kevin: "Japan has over 30,000 suicides per year — that's over 80 per day. Since these people are planning to kill themselves anyway, how about the government asking for volunteers to go in, fix piping, visually inspect the damage, etc..?"

Not Einstein: "friendly radiation... to probably cancel out its effects. Its more like injecting good cholesterols to fight off bad ones in your body. I am not versed in these nuclear technicalities but I do understand philosophy of things, and sometimes you just need to fight fire with fire."

ChemtrailsUK, I LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS: "They should have got that expert that's was on Alex Jones show. And did what He said ages ago to surround it in cadmium rods to atract the plutonium then cover in sand or quarts then as is melts into glass cover that in cement. Its way to late now. 1000 times Safety 1km out to sea of fukushima. No more sea food for me."

Harry: Moor a large tanker along side the plant. Flood the hull with water. With a large crane lift the problem reactor cores into the flooded hull, where the water will keep them cool for as long as it takes to sail the hull to a deep ocean trench and sink it.

Jon: Clearly, radioactive material such as Cesium, with a lifetime of 600 years, and Plutonium, which lasts many times longer than human history, should not be produced. It is a crime against humanity and life itself to do so.

And, er, so on.

Now to be fair to the Guardian, it's great that they tried to apply crowd-sourcing to journalism in an unusual and innovative way, and some of the suggestions offered were more sensible, and in at least one case vaguely approximated the fix that was actually applied yesterday.

But the thing is, as much as I love you all, I'm not going to ask for your help dealing with a nuclear disaster, because most of you, like me, don't have a clue. And yet there's this odd, growing trend in the world today, fed by endless news vox-pops and the general 'X-Factorization' of television, that somehow everyone's opinions are valuable and worth listening to.

Bollocks. As the late, great comedian George Carlin once said, "think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." 95% of the ideas that run through our heads are moronic, as the internet basically proves. If you want to know how to fix a power plant, or do brain surgery, or predict the effects of climate change, then ask an actual expert. Because no amount of hot air balloons can save a bad idea.

PenquistaDeCorazon wrote:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-07/earthquake-of-7-4-magnitude-hits-215-miles-northeast-of-tokyo-usgs-says.html

New 7.4 quake

FYI, some pretty amazing images...
aka...what a freak'n mess

A robotic aerial vehicle hovering at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has captured close-up video and photos that reveal the extent of the destruction in greater detail than previously seen.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant's operator, is using a T-Hawk [photo below], a remote operated flying machine created by U.S. firm Honeywell, to get a closer view of the severely damaged reactors.

honeywell t-hawk fukushima nuclear plant japan emergencyThe T-Hawk, known as a micro air vehicle, or MAV, uses a ducted-fan propulsion system that allows it to hover in place like a helicopter and fly into tight spaces where other aircraft can't go.

Last Friday, TEPCO workers, with assistance from Honeywell employees trained to pilot the T-Hawk, used the vehicle to survey the reactor buildings at Units 1, 3, and 4.

TEPCO has used manned helicopters, high-altitude drones, and ground robots to obtain images of the facility. But the T-Hawk, because pilots can hold it in place and use its camera to zoom in on features, is giving TEPCO a better look of damages in and around the buildings.

The photos and videos of the latest T-Hawk survey, released on Saturday, show piles of debris, badly damaged walls, and collapsed roofs, with smoke still coming out of Unit 3. In some images of Unit 4 it's possible to see parts of the reactor and spent fuel pool.

Developed as part of a DARPA project, the T-Hawk is currently used in Iraq and Afghanistan for surveillance, route planning, and other missions. It weighs in at 7.7 kilograms (17 pounds), and pilots can control it manually or set up autonomous flight paths from up to 9.6 kilometers (6 miles) away and for up to 40 minutes at a time.

Honeywell, based in Morris Township, N.J., said in a release that three of its employees have flown five missions so far, capturing hours of video and dozens of photos. There are two T-Hawk units flying in Fukushima and two as back-up. Honeywell said that, in addition to cameras, they are carrying radiation sensors, though TEPCO hasn't yet released any data from them.