nuclear-news

Fukushima’s nuclear waste problems piling up

Problems Keep Piling Up in Fukushima Steve Herman  VOA News 17 Feb 16 TOKYO—

Experts say Japan’s nuclear energy problems are worsening, five years after a massive earthquake unleashed a tsunami that melted down the island nation’s nuclear reactors.

Nine million cubic meters of radioactive waste, much of it soil, are stored unsheltered in black bags throughout Fukushima prefecture, preventing tens of thousands of residents from returning home.

And the problem is going to worsen before it improves.

An estimated 13 million cubic meters of toxic soil is yet to be collected and technicians have yet to solve the contamination issue inside the Fukushima-1 Nuclear Power Plant. Government and industry officials acknowledge cleaning everything up — including decommissioning the crippled reactors — will take at least another 40 years and cost as much as $250 billion.

And that timeline and the costs – considered overly optimistic by some industry experts – are based on nothing major going wrong. If another major earthquake hits and results in a tsunami, there will be major setbacks, admits the nuclear plant’s manager, Akira Ono.

Thousands of workers are dedicated to keeping under control the plant’s six reactors, four of which either melted down or were severely damaged.

Japan has never decommissioned a nuclear reactor, much less reactors as damaged as those at Fukushima.

It has resisted offers from foreign companies to help formulate an adequate cleanup plan.

“Unfortunately the cleanup effort continues to suffer from an inability to face the long-term decisions that have to be made in order to develop and implement an efficient plan,” said former U.S. diplomat Kevin Maher, who was running the State Department’s Japan desk when the earthquake struck.

The cleanup plan, he argues, should be driven by where to ultimately dispose the contaminated debris, fuel and water.

“Instead, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) continues to delay those decision, so we see the continual buildup of more stored water, because TEPCO can’t decide what to do with it. An experienced program management company could make those decisions,” said Maher, a senior advisor at NMV Consulting in Washington.

Even if Fukushima residents with homes inside the exclusion zone are allowed to return, the thousands of bags of radioactive soil in the prefecture may give them pause……..

The question of whether Fukushima can ever be adequately decontaminated is also an open one.

Japan’s environment minister has had to walk back remarks she made about the government’s decontamination target.

Tamayo Marukawa last Friday apologized for saying the government aimed to reduce the radiation level near the Fukushima-1 plant to an annual dose of one millisievert or less, a goal that has no scientific basis. (The average yearly human dose globally from naturally occurring sources is about three times that amount, according to scientists.)……..http://www.voanews.com/content/problems-keep-piling-up-in-fukushima/3194401.html

February 19, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2016