From our very own New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Nothing like a good nuclear catastrophe to boost American jobs and corporate profits.
“Each of these problems is solvable and have been solved before,” said Hiroshi Sakamoto, a senior vice president at Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation, who returned to Japan to lead the team. (It has dubbed itself “Mt. Fuji,” short for Management Support for Fukushima United States and Japan Initiative.)...
Already, dozens of engineers from Toshiba, which helped build four of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors, have been joined by experts from the United States to begin the decommissioning work, a job so big that the planning needs to start even now, in parallel with the efforts to contain the crisis.
The team includes experts from Westinghouse, whose majority owner is Toshiba; the Shaw Power Group, a civil engineering firm; and the Babcock & Wilcox Company, an energy technology and services company, one of whose specialties is the disposal of hazardous materials.
Look at the job security.
...Among myriad problems, the engineers must find a way to dispose of the fuel, remove the reactors, tear down the buildings, and clean up nearby land and water...
That's the American spirit. See a window of opportunity and jump on it.
...Because of the emergency, Toshiba’s engineers — those who are helping Tokyo Electric and those planning the decommissioning — are working without a formal contract. But the Japanese-American team submitted a proposal to Tokyo Electric on April 4 that lays out a 10-year plan to turn the site into a green field...
Toshiba has not been told when a decision will be made on the proposal, which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars...
Ten years and a green field. Imagine that.
Most of all, the team is waiting for the engineers at Fukushima Daiichi to cool the reactors so it can begin work.
“All things hinge,” said David Richardson, a president at Babcock & Wilcox, “on having safe access.”
I wonder if they must wait ten years or 100 years for the reactors to cool and to have safe access???
American corporations--ready and waiting to benefit from the next disaster. A few more nuclear catastrophes and we can really boost the economy.
There's a silver lining for some and fallow fields and heartbreak for others.