#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Now A Silt Curtain to the Rescue!

So the "tracer", aka Japanese onsen bath salt, failed to show where the hell the water was going, and it was decidedly not to the pit by the ocean that's been spewing radioactive water into the ocean.

Now, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has come up with another brilliant idea: use the silt curtain to contain the radioactive water in the ocean.

Huh?

A silt curtain is used to contain dirty water from polluting the river or the ocean during constructions and dredging operations. The silt curtain acts to prevent silt or silt-like material from spreading uncontrollably.

So what is silt? Silt is a type of mud whose diameter is less than 1/16 millimeter but larger than 1/256 millimeter (clay).

Is NISA's Nishiyama saying this silt curtain, designed to block a particle larger than 1/256 millimeter in diameter, is going to stop radioactive materials - iodine-131, cesium-137, and who knows what else - from spreading?

Somebody, please, an adult who have worked with his own hands, tell him and his colleagues at NISA, and management at TEPCO, to get real and seek real advice from adults.

NISA, TEPCO, they think they are smart. They think they can come up with a clever solution, even if they've never done any hands-on engineering. A crack is found that's leaking. Well let's plug it with concrete! And they use regular concrete and just dump it in, probably by hand, exposing workers to very, very high radiation, when they have a high-pressure concrete pumps on site.

Actually, the radiation inside the pit was so high that the dosimeter couldn't measure. The dosimeter the inspector was carrying only measures up to 1,000 milli-sievert.

Then they thought of tracer after the diaper polymer with sawdust idea went bust. But instead of tracer that adults use, they dumped milky white bath salt. When that failed, they came up with a silt curtain.

They don't know what they're doing. They probably never have mixed concrete themselves in their lives.

All the while they direct the media on all-out campaign to portray a Japan that's strongly recovering from the greatest disaster since World War II, trotting out one nuclear expert after another telling the populace it's all so safe, nothing to worry about, and there is definitely water in the Spent Fuel Pools because US Energy Secretary and Nobel prize winner said so (he didn't).

If any of the so-called leaders of the world cares about Japan, he or she would be extremely politically incorrect and tell the Japanese to shut up, stop pretending, do all that's necessary to safeguard the population from radiation, disclose all the information, get rid of the people like Nishiyama, and start working with people who actually know what and how to do things.

Well, no hope there, I know. Look who Obama has sent to Japan, for example. GE's Immelt, so GE can win some more business from TEPCO, which, it is safe to assume at this point, will be paid for by the Japanese people.

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