Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 10

With Japan finally and grudgingly admitting that the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is at least as bad as Three Mile Island, nuclear officials are now raising the distinct possibility that the plant is beyond saving, and that the Chernobyl "concrete box" option is now on the table.

Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.

But they still hoped to solve the crisis by fixing a power cable to at least two reactors to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, the most critical of the plant's six.

It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged burying the sprawling complex was possible, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters or scrambling to restart cooling pumps may not work.

"It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.

I do feel a lot better about the situation here, at least the Japanese now have more than a short-term plan (spraying water to cool the fuel rods), they have a medium term plan (get the cooling pumps back online with power strung in from another utility) and now a long-term plan (bury the plant if necessary).

Considering the damage already done to the plant, I'm thinking we're going to see a transition this weekend to the medium-term plan and then the long term one.  I don't see how the plant can be considered safe without a complete refit of nearly all the reactors, and the PR hit at this point would be incalculable.  Nobody would want to live near this thing.  Another earthquake hits Japan, hey, how bad would it have to be to cause more chaos in an already weakened plant?

I understand the Japanese are trying to save face here, but if they are quietly admitting that putting this place under several metric craptons of sand and concrete is now an option, it's because they're planning on doing it down the road.  After all, at this point the plant looks like this: