nuclear-news

No end in sight to the cleanup and the costs of Fukushima radiation

“Fukushima is mountainous and such large-scale and highly concentrated contamination has not taken place on earth before in an area like this. How things will go is unpredictable.”

Japan faces costly, unprecedented radiation cleanup, By Yoko Kubota, TOKYO | Thu Aug 25, 2011 (Reuters) – Nearly six months after the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan faces the task of cleaning up a sprawling area of radioactivity that could cost tens of billions of dollars, and thousands may not be able to return home for years, if ever.

-Tokyo has been slow to provide a plan for rehabilitation, leading some residents near the plant exposed to high levels of radioactive cesium in homes and food, have started their own cleanup instead of waiting for the government to act…..

DAUNTING TASK

Still, the tasks Japan faces are daunting.

The accident at the Fukushima plant, about 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, is likely to have released about 15 percent of the radiation that went into the air in the 1986 Chernobyl accident, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

But that is still more than seven times the amount of radiation produced by Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979, and includes cesium 137, which has a half life of 30 years.

“The technology for decommissioning and cleaning up plants has been studied for a while, but we hardly have any experience in decontaminating materials that were released into the environment,” said Tetsuo Iguchi, a Nagoya University professor.

“Fukushima is mountainous and such large-scale and highly concentrated contamination has not taken place on earth before in an area like this. How things will go is unpredictable.”

August 26, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan