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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't something like that poured under Chernobyl after the accident which prevented the radioactive slurry from entering deep into the ground?

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The Russians handled the catastrophe better and faster. International help sender them low tech robots, Russians poured tunnels below within days/weeks with lot of human contractors. But Japan is doing little. Contaminated fluids leak into the sea that swaps to Hawaii and west coast ever since 2011. It's the local culture of loosing face that seems to be at odds with handling it and a major corruption problem. After 6 years Japan has done so little, compared to the Chernobyl Sarcophagus and all the handling inside and ever since. Why is there not more international pressure to Japan to do more and do it faster? They have to do it no matter what the costs are or if the have the resources, it doesn't matter - the rest of the world population will thank you for less pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_...

Perhaps it's a language barrier, but this comment makes no sense. The low-tech robots you speak of were uniformly useless, and the people working on the initial cleanup and containment were sent on what were essentially suicide missions. Information is easy to find; just google for stories about the Chernobyl liquidators.

Regarding the radiation, I think you've fallen victim to ignorance of basic facts about the nature of radiation and the oceans. Pretty much anywhere in the Pacific, radiation from Fukushima quickly dropped far below environmental background levels [1].

1 - http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=127297

Here's a good quote from the source above: "The highest levels of cesium (10 Bq/m3) attributable to Fukushima that we have measured were found 1,500 miles north of Hawaii. Swimming every day in the ocean there would still result in a dose 1,000 time smaller than the radiation we receive with a single dental x-ray."

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