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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;fatima, post: 1128901, member: 22143&quot;]While the reactors are in hardened containments the spent fuel rods most likely are not.&nbsp; When they pull a rod assembly from a plant, it&#039;s still hot enough to melt, it&#039;s extremely radioactive, and will be dangerous for 1000s of years.&nbsp; Before these rods can be transported to long term storage, they have to be placed into pools of water where it can take more than a decade for them to cool down.&nbsp; Typically these pools are near the reactor because transporting them is very dangerous.&nbsp; These pools are often not in a hardened containment dome and have all the issues of needing constant cooling water circulated over them.&nbsp;&nbsp; If this water is not maintained, it evaporates and the rods will begin to melt.&nbsp; It can be much worse than in an active reactor because often these pools will hold more rod assemblies than what would be found in a reactor.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>(modern reactors use rod assemblies that are a couple of stories tall and contain a couple of hundred rods, each reactor will have between 100-200 of these assemblies and they last several years, reactor refueling replaces a portion of the assemblies at a time every 1.5 - 2 years)</p><p><br /></p><p>This is one of the major issues with Fukushima.&nbsp;&nbsp; When they pull a fuel rod assembly they don&#039;t want to move it far.&nbsp; So these storage pools at Fukushima are located on top of the containment building in the square, lightly built roof area at the top of the reactor building.&nbsp;&nbsp; When the power failed, these pools started losing cooling water.&nbsp;&nbsp; Furthermore on 3 of the buildings, hydrogen explosions have blown the top off the building directly exposing these storage pools to the atmosphere and the end result is radiation into the environment.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is also why there is concern about the 3 reactors which were shut down.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Nuclear power serves a purpose, but it isn&#039;t the &quot;green&quot; &quot;clean&quot; nice alternative that it has been spun into over the last decade or so.&nbsp;&nbsp; There are some very serious issues and risks to using it as TMI, Chernobyl and now Fukushima demonstrate.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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