What will happen to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station once it’s cooled?
No one will ever be able to use it again. “The reactors suffered an accident that was hundreds of times bigger than the one they were designed for,” Prof. Motta said. The saltwater poured into the reactors has a corrosive effect, he added, so that alone would deem them irreparable. It will take at least two years for the plant to cool down completely, said Prof. Luxat. Then, it will likely become the subject of intense international study. “At that point, they can go and most probably do some remote inspections, which is what they did at Three Mile Island,” he said. “They want to understand what actually happened.” Scientists dressed in protective gear will drill into the top of the reactor, without even entering it, and gather samples to study under microscopes. “They’ll look at the different structures of the materials and whether there was melting, how much melting there was, how much oxidation occurred so they can actually characterize what occurred in an almost forensic way.” Once
