[ RadSafe ] Is it not possible to chemically treat soil to remove Cesium?

[Roger Helbig]

You would think that the vast bulk of all of this dirt is not
radioactive and that the radioactive Cesium and other elements could
be chemically removed and the remainder returned as soil or as a base
for topsoil.  What do you think?

Roger Helbig

New post on nuclear-news

Fukushima grapples with toxic soil that no one wants
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/fukushima-toxic-soil-disaster-radioactive?

by dunrenard

March 11, 2019

Eight years after the disaster, not a single location will take the
millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil that remain

Not even the icy wind blowing in from the coast seems to bother the
men in protective masks, helmets and gloves, playing their part in the
world’s biggest nuclear cleanup.

Away from the public gaze, they remove the latest of the more than
1,000 black sacks filled with radioactive soil and unload their
contents into giant sieves. A covered conveyor belt carries the soil
to the lip of a huge pit where it is flattened in preparation for the
next load. And there it will remain, untouched, for almost three
decades.

It is repetitive, painstaking work but there is no quick way of
addressing arguably the most controversial physical legacy of the
triple meltdown that occurred eight years ago at the nearby Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant.

In the years after the disaster, about 70,000 workers removed topsoil,
tree branches, grass and other contaminated material from areas near
homes, schools and public buildings in a unprecedented ¥2.9tn (£21bn)
drive to reduce radiation to levels that would enable tens of
thousands of evacuees to return home.

The decontamination operation cleaned generated millions of cubic
metres of radioactive soil, packed into bags that carpet large swaths
of Fukushima prefecture.

Japan’s government has pledged that the soil will moved to the interim
storage facility and then, by 2045, to a permanent site outside of
Fukushima prefecture as part of a deal with local residents who do not
want their communities turned into a nuclear dumping ground.

But the government’s blueprint for the soil is unravelling: so far,
not a single location has agreed to accommodate the toxic waste.

While workers inside the ruined nuclear plant struggle to contain the
build-up of more than 1m tonnes of radioactive water, outside, work
continues to remove, process and store soil that will amount to 14m
cubic metres by 2021.