Japan to resume effort to tackle contaminated water problem at Fukushima

Japanese Government, TEPCO and the Japanese media keep on bringing back this issue, the lack of space on site to keep the accumulating radioactive water, as a mean to force the public’s acceptance for its dumping into the Pacific ocean. The two radionuclide filtering systems are not fully performing, therefore that stored water is only partially decontaminated, and still radionuclides loaded.

Storage tanks for radioactive water are seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan February 18, 2019

August 8, 2019

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan is resuming efforts to disperse a build-up of contaminated water at Tokyo Electric Power’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant that is stalling progress on cleaning up the site, the government said on Thursday.

A panel of experts will meet on Friday for the first time in eight months to consider options to get rid of the water, Japan’s government said in briefing documents it released.

The panel will consider strategies such as evaporation of the water and injection deep underground, in addition to a recommendation by Japan’s nuclear regulator to release the treated water into the ocean, a more conventional technique.

Regular meetings of the panel had stopped nearly three months after Tokyo Electric (Tepco) admitted it had not managed to completely remove potentially dangerous radioactive particles from treated water held in tanks.

The admission had been a setback for the company and the government, as the water hampered clean-up of the site where three reactors melted down after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

In 2016, the Japanese government estimated that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would be 21.5 trillion yen (£166.6 billion), or about a fifth of the country’s annual budget.

Tokyo won the bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics around six years ago, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declaring that Fukushima was “under control” in his final pitch to the International Olympic Committee.

At nuclear sites around the world, contaminated water is treated to remove all radioactive particles except tritium, a relatively harmless isotope of hydrogen hard to separate from water and released into the environment.

But because of missteps such as last year’s admission that it had not removed everything except tritium from the tanks, Tepco faces difficulties winning the trust of regional fisherman who oppose the water’s release into the ocean.

Some countries, including South Korea, still have restrictions on produce from areas around the Fukushima site.

Tepco has completed replacement of older tanks that had experienced leaks with stronger ones, the government said.

It is expected to run out of tank space by mid-2022, the government added, adding to the urgency to resolve the problem.

https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/08/japan-to-resume-effort-to-tackle-contaminated-water-problem-at-fukushima

1.This Month

Radiation Containment A New Concern In Russian Nuclear Incident | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Fukushima 2020 Olympics Nightmare: Is PM Abe Criminally Insane?

Accelerating Sea-Level Rise with Increase in Extreme Weather Frequency, Severity, and Duration

Arctic-Sea Ice Collapse: Greenland Vulnerability; Global Sea-Level Rise; Extreme Weather Mayhem

EVENTS

Did You Know about these important public meetings?

1. Thursday, August 22, 2019 from 4 to 5 pm – Joni Arends will be interviewed by Xubi Wilson on KSFR-FM 101.1 “Living on the Edge” show. She will discuss New Mexico, the nuclear weapons industry, and the sacrifices that are continuing to be extolled from the People by that industry everyday and in every way.

2. Thursday, August 22, 2019 from 5:30 to 7 pm – LANL’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) public meeting about The Environmental Management Cleanup Forum: Legacy Waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory, at the Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Avenue, Santa Fe.
EM Cleanup Forum Save the Dates_08022019

3. Friday, August 23, 2019 from 9 am to 4:30 pm – New Mexico Interim Radioactive and Hazardous Committee meeting at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos, Wallace Hall, 4000 University Drive, Los Alamos. Presenters include: James C. Kenney, Secretary of the NM Environment Department (NMED); Kelly Beierschmitt, Deputy Director of Operations, LANL; and Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen about DOE Order 140.1 with Jonathan Plaue, with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Topics include: the 2016 NMED Order on Consent for LANL, and the chromium and co-located perchlorate plume. https://www.nmlegis.gov/Committee/Interim_Committee?CommitteeCode=RHMC

4. Monday, August 26, 2019 from 3 to 5 pm – WIPP draft Five-Year Strategic Plan at the Hotel Santa Fe, 1601 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM. Unfortunately, at posting time, the draft plan is not available for review prior to the meeting.

5. Wednesday, August 28, 2019 from 10:30 – 12:30 – WIPP draft Five-Year Strategic Plan at the Skeen-Whitlock Building, 4021 National Park Highway, Carlsbad, NM.

6. Thursday, August 29th from 11 to 1 pm – Cold War Patriots are hosting a meeting for DOE/NNSA/LANL/Sandia/WIPP workers and former workers about how to navigate the complex EEOICPA and RECA government programs at St. John’s Methodist Church in Santa Fe. https://coldwarpatriots.org/

PETITION

Free Julian Assange, before it’s too late. Sign to STOP the USA Extradition

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope