Q-

I certainly feel for the farmers and their livestock.

But it's very disturbing to see comments like this:

"pouring concrete over the entire facility as one way to shut it down"

I can see the appeal of this approach, in the short run covering up a multitude of blunders. But it's not a long term solution and they would not learn the details of this disaster which could prove so important for averting similar disasters. And it really wouldn't work in the long run anyway because they'd end up having to deal with it again in ten years or so when the concrete containment began to deteriorate.

It's far better to continue to try to stabilize reactor units 1-3 and spent fuel pool 4 for 5 years or so and then proceed to decommission the entire complex in a normal fashion, step by step.

There are no shortcuts in dealing with high-level nuclear waste, as the Russians and Ukrainians have discovered with Chernobyl; they're currently entombing the original tomb in traditional Russian fashion (figurine inside of figurine inside of figurine).

Charley Noble