Funny, when you calculated how many total rods there are you used 80 rods = 1 assembly. But when you calculated how many rods have been removed, you used 60 rods = 1 assembly.

And yes, the 22 assemblies have been removed. And with your original formula of 80 rods = 1 assembly, that makes more than 1500 rods that have been removed.

This post was edited by Rocinante on Nov 20 2013 02:08pm

there are certainly many factors to consider and i am well aware that what i did there does not reflect accurately what were/is going to happen
did just focus on the hysterical "the whole pacific ocean will be covered ..." which is a just a panic creating attention seeking statement
to be correct one would have to take into account that a lot of the heavier molecules would start sinking (but could be consumed by eg fish etc)
also there would be some leakage between hemispheres (even though water and air currents are mainly separated)

there are three key problems with fukushima
1. tepco and the japanese government have and still are playing down the difficult situation
2. many tasks should have been tackled earlier but they are slow investing the money
3. they did/do not want to acknowledge that they lack some of the necessary technical expertise to deal with it

Rocinante,
yes, maybe I have messed up the numbers, but if we say tepco has to remove 1500 elements it is true, that these elements are build of smaller parts that make the actual fuel rods can be neglected imho,
there are 1500 elements that have to be removed, and they try to remove 22 in the first week.
I think you cant argue against that statement.

brmv,
I agree with your post, and the post/poll was not about consequences but if people think tepco will succeed.

And there was only one sentence that I strongly disagree with from you:

So if something goes bad, aka fuel element drops down breaks creates chain reaction,
tepco will have to wait until there are ways found how to operate in a highly contaminated area.
This is already the case with reactor unit 1 and 3 iirc, you simply cant enter these areas because the melted core that is somewhere in the ruins makes it a death zone to humans.
Yes, even after a worst case scenario somebody has to do something about it, but this will not take one year like the plan is, but more like one decade or more.

and that is exactly why i said "but will be completed eventually because it has to"
how it is going to be completed is a different matter
and the total clean-up is not expected to take one year or even years but decades, see
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/19/national/fukushima-job-feared-too-perilous-for-tepco/#.Uo9Aiif4s-Y
the article starts:
Fukushima job feared too perilous for Tepco
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has finally moved into the decommissioning process at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, despite doubt over its ability to manage a highly dangerous effort that will take decades.

from the very beginning (just search for the posts on pard at the time) i have warned that the problem might escalate to a level similar if not even worse than chernobyl
and i have voiced serious concerns at the competence of tepco (against all those who claimed the japanese have the best engineers) as well as suggested that there is the need to get foreign experience involved (especially american and french)
and i am still convinced that there is a need for a concerted effort involving specialists from other countries, apart from the already mentioned americans and french take russians and germans, both countries have a lot of specialists in the relevant fields
the biggest worry is that a major earthquake might hit the area and the only way to achieve some control would require 'suicide squads' to be send in

I was talking about that the fuel removal of #4 will take something over 1 year to be complete, not cleaning up the hole mess.
Guess I should have made that more clear

taken from tepco.co.jp

for a long write-up on the current position and some of the challenges: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/03/fukushima-daiichi-tsunami-nuclear-cleanup-japan

... there are 1,533 fuel assemblies in the pool at building four. ... The job will take until the end of 2014. And that is with no glitches. ... a further 1,573 fuel rod assemblies held in similar pools in the buildings for reactors one, two and three. ...
To fully decommission Fukushima Daiichi might take 40 years and no one expects a cakewalk. Independent researchers point to the litany of mishaps that has blighted the cleanup. They doubt the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) is up to the task, and want a global team of experts to take over. ...

the comment on tepco fits what i have been saying since day one,
and the final comment in the article:

"The straight story is the Japanese didn't have a nuclear response plan. There were a lot of human errors during what happened at Fukushima. It was old technology, badly maintained, and the regulator was not respected. Those are the facts. They have to be faced and dealt with."

good read, thanks for posting

would you go back?

And I dont think any country has a response plan that includes "after a fallout we will clean the site over the next few decades" If you mention that something like that could happen you dont get a license.
Our nuclear plants are safe, because if they where not safe, we would not run them. -German chancellor Angela Merkel

This post was edited by Hell Knight on Dec 4 2013 05:08am

The damage is already done. But hopefully further damaged can at least be reduced....

We fucked this world up nicely already.

No update on how many fuel has been removed since 22 days.
This link goes to the official tepco press releases:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html
After they created the image I linked earlier I thought they would do something like that periodically.