nuclear-news

Soil separation and soil storage in Fukushima

Credits to Arkadiusz Podniesinsk

January 10, 12023

Today I visited the temporary waste dump adjacent to the power plant. I’ve been here several times, but this is the first time I’m with someone who can explain everything.

So, the temporary waste dump is a large area of 1600 hectares where contaminated soil from decontamination of areas from the whole prefecture goes. Before the disaster, most of these areas were cultivated fields, but there was also a fish processing plant, a school, a kindergarten and other public utilities. After the disaster, the entire area was bought by the government for the purpose of a landfill.

Currently, several plants have been built here that deal with sorting contaminated soil, ie. by separating wood, leaves, metals and other pollution (except radioactive contamination). The fire material is then burned and the ash is stored in special concrete containers. On the other hand, large, 15 meters high hills are dumped from the cleared soil, although when the grass grows they look more like small hills. Several layers of insulation are laid at the bottom of each mound and an irrigation system is being built that collects the flowing contaminated water to the treatment plant. Every mound has such an installation. At the end, I have attached a photo so that you can better understand the process described.

According to the name, the land will be stored here temporarily (up to 30 years) until a place for final storage is found. Research is currently underway on how to effectively reduce the amount of contaminated soil (volume reduction, recycling, new technologies) to minimize the amount of soil that will go to final landfill.

The whole thing is really impressive and above all works. It seems that the Japanese are seriously taking the issue of decontamination, although I personally don’t think that after 30 years such gigantic amounts of land should be transferred elsewhere again. Or at least I won’t see that anymore .

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January 20, 2023 - Posted by dunrenard | Fuk 2023 | Fukushima, temporary waste facility