Today's transcript of the teleconference by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) with reporters has been posted.

There's a long discussion about whether there has already been a "criticality accident" and how that would impact the region. It's an interesting discussion on what would be an even more alarming phase of this disaster but the conclusion by UCS is there is not enough information to confirm such an accident and that they still think it would be unlikely given the general situation.

Here's what I decided to harvest; the first question clarifies a point I was trying to make yesterday with regard to dealing with huge volumes of radioactive salt water:

REPORTER: Good morning. I was wondering what options you think TEPCO might have in dealing with the contaminated water, to store it or move it somewhere. And if you don't want to speculate on their options, what are the difficulties in dealing with and storing that water? Thanks.

DR. LYMAN: Thanks for the question. I mean, it looks like the first difficulty is just not having tanks to hold it, the capacity to hold it. So, there was mention of bringing in, you know, seaborne tankers. I gather there's some issues there associated with them being able to dock. So, I'm not sure if that option is realistic.

But, you know, the question is doing it quickly. I mean, you know, in the long term, they certainly would be able to manage that water. You could evaporate -- I mean, reprocessing plants that manage highly radioactive solutions are able to evaporate the water and just concentrate the radioactive isotopes, but you need special, you know, equipment to be able to do that. There's filtration, but as I said before and I also heard the Japanese confirming, that when you have such high levels of radioactive materials, it could challenge conventional filtration methods, so you would need more sophisticated techniques. But over time, you know, assuming the situation is stabilized and they were able to get at least the physical capacity to store the liquids, then they would just be left with potentially a high-level radioactive waste problem, you know, like the U.S. has in spades with liquid waste left over from defense production. But, again, they just need tanks.

(SNIP!)

This question focuses on the end-game, full decomissioning of the nuclear complex:

REPORTER: I have one follow-up.
It seems like the Reactors 1, 2 and Number 4 has to be abandoned, so what kind of steps do they have to take, you know, to successfully abandon those reactors?

DR. LYMAN: Well, I believe -- I mean, first they are going to have to achieve cold shutdown, meaning you reach a stable state where you're getting enough water to the core that the temperature remains low, well below boiling, and you have a stable supply of water to achieve that, and that will have to be achieved for the cores in the spent fuel pools.

I don't believe, you know, talk of, you know, dumping concrete over the entire site or something is plausible without first stabilizing the fuel, because, you know, you can end up with a potentially unstable situation under -- what you're burying doesn't make sense to me. So, I think it will have to proceed according to, you know, established principles of decommissioning once the fuel and the spent fuel is stabilized.
It might take years, but eventually, they will have to inspect the damage and then determine how that fuel can be removed and stored safely. I don't think just leaving it in situ there is a good solution.

So, in the case of Three Mile Island in the United States, it took several years before they even accessed the core. They determined the damage, they packaged it, and they eventually shipped it to a burial site out west.

So, you know, once the material is stabilized, then you can start worrying about how to deal with the other structures, many of which are contaminated and will probably be at least low-level waste. But you're talking about a potentially pretty long process before the site can be finally decommissioned.

And then you have to deal with the contamination of the soil. There's already been some plutonium detected. There's probably more that will be an additional expense and hazard for cleanup crews.

(SNIP!)

This question seeks to compare Chernobyl's impact with the expected impact from the Fukushima-1 nuclear complex:

REPORTER: Just a follow-up question to that.
Is Chernobyl really an apt comparison given that that was an actual explosion and that, so far anyway, that Fukushima has not blown up to that extent?

DR. LYMAN: Well, the impact of that is that the releases from Chernobyl are -- actually, there were greater concentrations further away from the site because of the height of the plume. The explosion caused mechanical damage to some fuel, which changed the characteristics of what's called the source term or the type of isotopes that were seen and released, but independent estimates are showing that there's already been a significant or a fraction of the amount of cesium that was released at Chernobyl already at Fukushima, and to the extent that you don't have a hot, long, graphite fire that's wafting it higher into the area, that would lead to more concentrated deposition closer to the plant.

So, I think when all is said and done, you know, they're going to find there are areas within the current exclusion zones that I would expect to be a pretty big concern.

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Enough to digest for now, especially so close to dinner.

But the entire transcript has a wealth of information.

Charley Noble