nuclear-news

Radiation hot spots have spread to three holding areas for hundreds of hastily built tanks storing water contaminated by being flushed over three reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011.

The rising radiation levels and leaks at the plant further inflamed international alarm, one day after the Japanese government said that it would step in with almost $500 million of funding to fix the growing levels of contaminated water at the plant.

Readings just above the ground near a set of tanks at the plant showed radiation as high as 2,200 millisieverts (mSv), Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said Wednesday. The previous high in areas holding the tanks was the 1,800 mSv recorded Saturday.

Both levels would be enough to kill an unprotected person within hours. The NRA has said the recently discovered hot spots are highly concentrated and easily shielded……..

The world is watching to see if we can carry out the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, including addressing the contaminated water issues,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Cabinet ministers, who met to approve the plan.

The government intervention responds to only a tiny slice of the Fukushima crisis triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which destroyed safety sytems and caused three reactor meltdowns. The cleanup, including decommissioning the ruined reactors, will take many decades and likely rely on unproven technology.

The measures do not address the full problem of water management at the plant or the bigger issue of decommissioning. The sensitive job of removing spent fuel rods is to start in the coming months. The ultimate fate of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), also remains unclear, as does the question of who will eventually foot the bill: Japanese taxpayers or the embattled TEPCO……….

Critics said the government was mainly trying to cool down international media coverage ahead of the Olympics decision.

“At a moment when international public opinion is worrying about the long-term consequences of repeated leaks at the site, Tokyo seems to be obeying the short-term logic of waiting until the Olympics decision is over,” Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear energy analyst based in Paris who frequently visits Japan, said by email.

A more sustainable option, he said, would be to seek global support to confront Fukushima’s unprecedented challenges…….. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/3/japan-to-fund-icewalltostopreactorleaks.html