[ RadSafe ] Thinking outside the tank

[Brennan, Mike (DOH)]

It occurs to me that the engineers working Fukushima Daiichi problems
may be missing a bet.  They need to dewater a number of spaces in order
to do repair work, while at the same time continue to put water on the
reactors and SNF pools to keep them cool, with issues of bringing in
enough non-salt water for cooling, and taking a lot of flak for pumping
tanks of lower contaminated water into the ocean.  I wonder if they have
looked at using the water from the holding tanks for cooling, and
building a recirculation system, sucking water out of spaces, running it
through screens to remove the big pieces, maybe running it through some
quick and dirty filter system, then dump it into the tanks, to be used
as cooling water.  Yes, it is contaminated, and will crap up their
pumps; but is there anyone who thinks that equipment isn't already
contaminated?  And it's not like they can contaminate the reactor
facilities more.