Fukushima operator’s mounting legal woes to fuel nuclear opposition
Four and a half years after the Fukushima disaster, and as Japan tentatively restarts nuclear power elsewhere, the legal challenges are mounting for the crippled plant’s operator.
IWAKI, Japan: Four and a half years after the Fukushima disaster, and as Japan tentatively restarts nuclear power elsewhere, the legal challenges are mounting for the crippled plant’s operator.
They include a judge’s forced disclosure of a 2008 internal document prepared for managers at Tokyo Electric Power Co warning of a need for precautions against an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe.
Also, class actions against Tepco and the government now have more plaintiffs than any previous Japanese contamination suit and, overruling reluctant prosecutors, criminal charges have been levelled against former Tepco executives for failing to take measures to prevent the 2011 meltdowns and explosions.
Radiation from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 forced 160,000 people from their homes, many never to return, and destroyed businesses, fisheries and agriculture.
The criminal and civil legal cases do not threaten financial ruin for Tepco, which is now backstopped by Japanese taxpayers and faces far bigger costs to decommission the Fukushima plant and clean up the surrounding areas.
Rather, the cases could further increase opposition to nuclear restarts – which consistently beats support by about two-to-one – as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government pushes to restore nuclear to Japan’s energy mix to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuel.
“The nuclear plant disaster has upended our way of life,” evacuee and former beekeeper Takahisa Ogawa, 45, testified recently in a court in Iwaki, near the Fukushima power station. “We’ve lost the support we counted on.”
PROVING NEGLIGENCE
Ogawa and other plaintiffs are seeking 20 million yen (US$160,000) each in damages from Tepco. More than 10,000 evacuees and nearby residents have brought at least 20 lawsuits against the utility and the government over the handling of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant 220 km (130 miles) north of Tokyo.
The biggest class action, with 4,000 plaintiffs, seeks to dramatically increase Tepco’s liability by proving negligence under Japan’s civil law, rather than simply proving harm and seeking compensation, said lead attorney Izutaro Managi.
Japan recently approved increasing the amount of compensation payments through a government-run fund to 7 trillion yen (US$56 billion).
Prosecutors twice declined to charge former Tepco bosses over their handling of the disaster, citing a lack of evidence, but a citizens’ panel overruled them last month. It’s unlikely the three former executives, who will be summoned to give evidence in court, will be convicted as it is hard to prove criminal acts in this type of case, said Nicholes Benes of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan.
A first trial is not expected to start until next year at the earliest.
The legal actions against Tepco are “serious for the industry” as it seeks to gradually bring some of Japan’s 43 idled nuclear reactors back online, said Tom O’Sullivan, an independent energy consultant and former investment banker.
“With potentially up to 25 reactors coming online, board members of other electric power companies must be quite nervous about what could happen if something goes wrong,” he said. “Most reactors have been switched off for four years so switching them back on is going to be potentially problematic, not to mention the risk of natural disasters.”
“UNAVOIDABLE”
It’s unclear what bearing the various lawsuits against Tepco might have on one another, but a common thread is that it should have anticipated the possibility of a devastating quake and tsunami and taken steps to reduce the impact.
The company maintains that the severity of the 9.0 magnitude quake and 13-meter wave could not have been predicted.
But the document introduced as evidence in the shareholders’ suit after a judge forced Tepco to produce it, appears to challenge that. The “Tsunami Measures Unavoidable” report, dated September 2008, was filed with the Tokyo District Court in June, but has not been widely reported.
The unnamed authors prepared the report for a meeting attended by the head of the power station and marked the document “to be collected after discussion.” It’s not clear whether senior executives in Tokyo saw the report at the time.
The report called for Tepco to prepare for a worse tsunami than it previously assumed, based on experts’ views.
“Considering that it is difficult to completely reject the opinions given thus far of academic experts on earthquakes and tsunami, as well as the expertise of the (government’s) Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, it is unavoidable to have tsunami countermeasures that assume a higher tsunami than at present,” says the report.
“This is prime evidence that Tepco recognised the need for tsunami measures,” said Hiroyuki Kawai, lead attorney in the shareholders’ suit. “This will have an important impact on the lawsuit.”
Tepco, in a court filing, counters that the document “does not mean there was a risk that a tsunami would strike and did not assume any specific tsunami countermeasures.”
Asked to comment further on the internal report and the range of legal problems facing the company, Tepco spokesman Kohji Sakakibara told Reuters, “We cannot answer these questions because they pertain to lawsuits and because they suppose a hypothetical determination of negligence. However, the company is making appropriate assertions in the lawsuits and expects that in the end the courts will render fair judgements.”
The shareholder lawsuit, filed in March 2012, seeks to establish responsibility for the disaster and demands 5.5 trillion yen (US$44 billion) in damages from current and former executives. A verdict is not expected for at least a year.
“This is likely to become a long battle where lawsuits go on for several decades or half a century,” said Shunichi Teranishi, a professor emeritus of environmental economics at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, comparing it to the Minamata mercury poisoning disaster in the 1950s, where lawsuits continue to be filed to this day.
Source: Channel News Asia
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/fukushima-operator-s/2054688.html
Japan’s Plutonium Problem
OXFORD, England — When Japan marked the 70th anniversary of Nagasaki’s obliteration by a plutonium bomb on Aug. 9, its own cache of weapons-usable plutonium was more than 47 metric tons — enough to make nearly 6,000 warheads like the one that flattened Nagasaki.
Japan, an industrial powerhouse but resource-poor, has long depended on nuclear energy. Before the earthquake and meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, it was generating nearly one-third of its electricity from nuclear power, and had plans to increase that share to 50 percent by 2030. Japan’s 48 standard reactors burn uranium fuel, a process that yields plutonium, a highly radioactive and extremely toxic substance.
These reactors were shut down after Fukushima. But Japan still stores nearly 11 tons of plutonium on its territory (the rest is abroad for now), and stockpiling plutonium remains hazardous: There is seismic instability, but also the risk of theft by terrorists. Yet just this week, Japan put one reactor back online, and another four have been approved for restart by the end of FY2015.
For this, one can thank a powerful network of utility companies, conservative politicians and bureaucrats in Japan, who peddle the notion that plutonium constitutes a sort of thermodynamic elixir. A byproduct of burning uranium, plutonium itself can be processed in so-called fast-breeder reactors to produce more energy. That step also yields more plutonium, and so in theory this production chain is self-sustaining — a kind of virtuous nuclear-energy cycle.
In practice, however, fast-breeder technology has been extremely difficult to implement. It is notoriously faulty and astronomically expensive, and it creates more hazardous waste. By the 1990s, many countries that experimented with fast-breeder reactors, including the United States, had phased them out.
But Japan doubled down. The government invested heavily in Monju, a prototype fast-breeder reactor, and the nuclear industry went on a charm offensive. It introduced Mr. Pluto, a puckish animated character, who claimed plutonium was safe enough to drink. It set up so-called PR centers next to nuclear plants: An exhibit at the one near Monju declared that the reactor was “necessary because plutonium can be used for thousands of years.”
The exhibit did not say Monju was a failure. The reactor became operational in 1994, but was shut down the next year after a leak caused a coolant to catch fire. Then came a botched cover-up, more than a decade of repairs, a failed restart and another accident. Monju has cost about $12.5 billion so far and produced only a tiny amount of energy.
In 1993 Japan also started spending a fortune on a reprocessing facility at Rokkasho, which would transform nuclear waste into fuel by separating plutonium and usable uranium from other waste. The process also is extremely expensive, and it, too, creates huge amounts of waste. Scheduled to begin operations in 2016, the plant could add as many as eight tons of plutonium to Japan’s stockpile each year.
While Japan’s record with nuclear waste is abysmal, no other state has found a safe or economically sustainable way to reuse such substances, especially not plutonium. Britain has announced it will abandon its costly and highly toxic reprocessing efforts by around 2020. The United States has a program to recycle nuclear byproducts into a mixed-oxide fuel known as MOx, a blend of uranium and plutonium. But the Obama administration has put it on stand-by because of ballooning costs.
France, which is at the forefront of MOx conversion efforts, has also struggled and is expected to phase out its MOx program by 2019. Instead, it has announced plans to start building in 2020 a new kind of fast-breeder reactor, known as ASTRID. This reactor is designed to generate energy by converting high-level nuclear waste into less dangerous residues, which require storage for several hundred years rather than many thousands of years, as is the case with plutonium. But this project has been delayed until at least 2030.
By far the best way to handle plutonium is to store it in secure long-term repositories underground. Having long banked on conversion, neither France nor Britain has permanent facilities; they keep plutonium in interim storage at reprocessing plants. Only two states have begun building viable long-term storage. Finland is constructing a vast facility blasted out of granite, which should be usable as of 2020. In the United States, underground chambers that can accommodate 12 metric tons of plutonium have been dug in New Mexico.
Considering Japan’s many vulnerabilities, particularly seismic activity, nuclear waste should no longer be stored there. The Japanese government should pay its closest allies to take its plutonium away, permanently.
Britain already holds about 20 tons of Japan’s plutonium, and France, about 16 tons, under contracts to reprocess it into usable fuel. Under current arrangements, this fuel, plus all byproducts (including plutonium), are to be sent back to Japan by 2020. Instead, Japan should pay, and generously, for that plutonium to stay where it is, in secure interim storage. And it should help fund the construction of secure permanent storage in Britain and France.
The Japanese government should also pay the United States to take the nearly 11 tons of plutonium currently in Japan. This proposal will seem controversial to some Americans, but the two states already have arrangements for the exchange of nuclear material. (With Finland, however, the proposition is a political nonstarter.) But it will take many years to build additional permanent storage in the United States — and overcome likely opposition in Congress — so in the meantime, Japan’s plutonium should be stored in interim facilities at American plants.
Handling Japan’s plutonium would be a great burden for receiver countries, and Japan should pay heftily for the service. But even then the expense would likely amount to a fraction of what Japan spends on its ineffectual plutonium-energy infrastructure: By the most conservative estimate, the Rokkasho facility is expected to cost $120 billion over its 40-year lifetime.
The benefits of this policy would extend far beyond Japan. An earthquake near Rokkasho could trigger an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe; preventing such an accident is in the whole world’s interest. And by funding the construction of long-term storage facilities overseas, Japan wouldn’t just be solving its plutonium problem. It would also be helping other states mitigate their own.
Peter Wynn Kirby is a nuclear and environmental specialist at the University of Oxford.
Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/opinion/japans-plutonium-problem.html?_r=0
Japanese volcano alert issued just miles from newly reopened nuclear reactor
Officials have raised their alert to its second highest level after it detected a spike in seismic activity in a volcano on Saturday near the offshore volcano Sakurajima, Agency France Presse reported.
They have warned an evacuation of the city of just over 600,000 people may be necessary.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency said: “The possibility for a large-scale eruption has become extremely high for Sakurajima.”
It warned residents to exercise “strict caution” and prepare for evacuation.
An official told Sky News: “There is the danger that stones could rain down on areas near the mountain’s base, so we are warning residents of those areas to be ready to evacuate if needed.”
It comes as a nuclear reactor 50 kilometres (31 miles) away was switched back on for the very first time on Tuesday after it was closed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
Critics had warned that the reopening of the Sendai plant, the first in Japan’s renewed nuclear programme, was premature and Japan’s nuclear reactors are still vulnerable to natural disaster.
In October last year, the meterological agency warned that another volcano, Ioyama, near to Sendai plant was at risk of an eruption.
Japan is on the so called “Ring of Fire” along the Earth’s tectonic plates where earthquakes and volcanos are thought to be more common.
According to the agency there are more than 100 active volcanoes in Japan making it one of the most seismological volatile places on earth.
The last major eruption of Sakurajima was in 2013 where an estimated 63 people were killed.
Source: The Independent
North American Animal Decline Since Fukushima
The biological effects of Fukushima contamination are likely to extend far beyond Japan. The use of seawater to cool the reactors produced spherical, uranium peroxide clusters called buckyballs, which are noted for their durability and transportability.
Radioactive Sulfur-35 (35S) was detected in Southern California from 20-28 March 2011. The researchers concluded that neutron leakage transformed salt water chlorine (35Cl) into radioactive 35S through a process of multistage decay.
During roughly that same time period, separate researchers from California State Long Beach sampling kelp offshore found Iodine-131, which has an approximate eight day half-life. The researchers concluded that the iodine-131 was likely deposited by precipitation contaminated with Fukushima fallout.
Contamination transported by wind and precipitation is supplemented by dispersion of radionuclides by ocean currents. Research conducted by Stan-Sion, Enachescu, and Pietre identified arrival of the ocean-borne plume of radionuclides from the initial days of the Fukushima disaster in La Jolla, California, evidenced by a 2.5 factor increase in Iodine-129 and Iodine-127 activity peaking June 18 2013 (date collection ended July 2013).
More plumes of contaminated water are no doubt forthcoming given (1) ongoing dumping of water contaminated with tritium and (2) relentless leakage of water contaminated by the entire range of fission isotopes, with Strontium-90 emerging as particularly salient given spiking levels in Fukushima’s port during the spring of 2015.
Although there is no way of proving causation, a vast number of adverse mortality events occurring in sea life up and down the North American Pacific Coast raises questions about whether Fukushima and tsunami contamination may have interfered with the food cycle or increased susceptibility to disease.
In 2011 and unusual mortality events were reported for Alaskan walruses, seals, and polar bears, all of which were found to be “suffering from hair loss, skin sores, and unusually lethargic behavior.” No cause was ever identified. Unusual mortality events for California sea lions were reported by the NOAA in 2013, escalating to catastrophic losses in 2015.
Dolphin populations in California also experienced significant mortality events in 2013 and were found to have significantly impaired immune systems. Sardines in the Pacific Northwest experienced also experienced a significant reduction in numbers in 2013, with the November population estimate of 378,000 tons constituting a steep drop from the 1.5 million tons estimated in 2000. 378,000 tons represented the lowest reported in over ten years. The King Salmon population in Alaska declined 73 percent from 2011 to 2012 (Jim Carlton, Wall Street Journal (August 4, 2012) p. A3).
In 2014, starfish were afflicted with a devastating and inexplicable wasting disease up and down the coast of North America.
An unusual mortality event was reported for Alaskan whales in 2015. North American Pacific coast sea birds have also been impacted. Adverse mortality events have afflicted murres and shearwater. Autopsies indicated the shearwaters had a high parasite count and were starving. Auklets living along entire north American pacific coast have also experienced a steep population declines that were described as “just massive, massive, unprecedented” by Julia Parish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team.
Land animals in Alaska and California also experienced significant and inexplicable population declines.
Western Arctic caribou experienced a decline of 27 percent between 2011 and 2013. Monarch butterfly populations that migrate to a specific area in Mexico experienced a record low in 2013, with their numbers contained by 2.9 acres in 2013, compared to 12 acres between 2003 and 2012. In 2013 California race horses were afflicted with a mysterious affliction that caused them to drop dead suddenly. Bees in California also experienced a significant population decline in 2013: “A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.” The moose population, already in decline prior to Fukushima, fell still further between 2010 and 2014 with one population in Minnesota cut in half between 2010 and 2014.
These data points suggest a trend of accelerating population declines in sea and land life that became very apparent in 2013.
NOAA officials and scientists queried by the media have not provided definitive answers, often describing the events as perplexing and befuddling. In 2015, large numbers of dying sea lions on California beaches heightened media inquiry.
The most commonly forwarded explanation for their condition was an unprecedented toxic algae bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia, often described as red tide, which produces a neurotoxin named domoic acid. Unusually warm water was figured as responsible for this algae bloom off the coast of California, but no research has been released about potential radionuclide contamination of the bloom, nor were radionuclide results of sampled deceased animals made publicly available, although another species of red tide aglae has been shown to bioaccumulate radionuclides.
Climate change is being forwarded as the generalized and encompassing cause for all animal mortality events, but this explanation ignores the potential contribution of other factors, especially radiation bioaccumulation effects in the wake of the Fukushima crisis.
Moreover, tritium and noble gasses produced by Fukushima (among other radionuclides), particularly Krypton-85, may have played a role in altering climatic and ocean conditions.
Atmospheric levels of Krypton-85 have increased tremendously throughout the atomic age, raising scientific concerns about atmospheric effects. A 1997 study found significant increases in Krypton-85 in the atmosphere from nuclear explosions and reprocessing, noting that in the mid-1940s there existed less than 5 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per liter of krypton, but by the end of that decade levels had risen to 100 dpm per liter. Samples from the 1990s measured “tens of thousands” of disintegrations per minute per liter. Krypton-85 increases air ionization and electrical conductivity.
A study on Krypton-85 published by the IAEA notes: “There are unforeseeable effects for weather and climate if the krypton-85 content of the earth atmosphere continues to rise. There may be a krypton-specific greenhouse effect and a collapse of the natural atmospheric-electrical field.” Concerns about Krypton-85 levels caused the EPA to announce new regulatory efforts in 2014.
Fukushima reactors 1 through 3 were estimated to have lost their full inventory of Krypton-85, resulting in a release of 44.1 PetaBecquerels, whereas Chernobyl produced 33 PetaBecquerels.
This estimate for Fukushima does not include emissions from the fuel in reactor 4’s spent fuel pool, although that pool was known to have lost water for at least five days. Remember that research from Stohl et al. on Fukushima’s noble gas releases concluded that unit 4 must have also contributed to releases.
The estimate of 44.1 PetaBecquerels of Krypton-85 also does not include ongoing noble gas emissions reported by TEPCO in 2012 and 2015.
Increased ionization of the atmosphere by Krypton-85 may have impacted atmospheric conditions, contributing to the “record drought” in the western US reported in the summer of 2012. Moreover, ionization from the decay of Krypton-85 and other radionuclides could also be contributing to ocean acidification. Many radionuclides, such as tritium and cesium, are water soluble and noble gasses saturate the sea surface, although colder temperatures increase uptake. Radioactive decay can cause oxidation, which promotes acidification. Some algae are better adapted to acidification, including red algae ones that produce domoic acid. Acidification of the world’s oceans was an escalating problem before the Fukushima disaster. The impacts of the unprecedented release of radionuclides, including Krypton-85, Tritium, and Cesium, from Fukushima may be contributing to an array of factors that together present “tipping points” for already stressed ocean life.
As noted in previous chapters, marine defaunation is escalating, reaching critical proportions in some species. Mass animal mortality events can be triggered by complex inputs whose synergies produce “tipping points.” A mass mortality event is defined as a:
rapidly occurring catastrophic demographic events that punctuate background mortality levels. Individual MMEs are staggering in their observed magnitude: removing more than 90% of a population, resulting in the death of more than a billion individuals, or producing 700 million tons of dead biomass in a single event. (1)
Although well documented, science lacks understanding of the major features and characterizations of MMEs, including causes and trends. Scientists studying MMEs have found they are increasing in number and seem connected to a rise in disease emergence, biotoxicity, and events resulting from multiple interacting stressors. MMEs with the largest magnitude resulted from multiple stressors, starvation and disease. Tipping points occur through the convergence of multiple stressors.
SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF BIOACCUMULATION OF RADIONUCLIDES IN PACIFIC OCEAN LIFE NEEDED NOW!
SOURCE
[i] Samuel Fey, Adam Siepielski, Sébastien Nusslé, Kristina Cervantes-Yoshida, Jason Hwan, Eric Huber, Maxfield Fey, Alessandro Catenazzi, and Stephanie Carlson “Recent shifts in the occurrence, cause, and magnitude of animal mass mortality events,” PNAS (2014 early edition), www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1414894112., 1.
Source: Majia’s Blog
http://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2015/08/north-american-animal-decline-since.html
Sendai plant begins producing electricity after nearly 2 years of nuke-free nation
Plant workers applaud as the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear plant starts
electricity generation and transmission on Aug. 14.
SATSUMA-SENDAI, Kagoshima Prefecture–Marking the end of 23 months of a nuclear power-free Japan, the Sendai nuclear power plant began generating and transmitting electricity on Aug. 14.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. activated the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai plant on Aug. 11, to become the first nuclear reactor brought back online under new safety regulations instituted by the Nuclear Regulation Authority after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The nation had been without nuclear power since September 2013.
At 9 a.m. on Aug. 14, utility workers connected an electrical generator with power cables from the plant’s central control room. The workers applauded when it was confirmed that the reactor began power generation and transmission for the first time in more than four years.
In a statement released the same day, Yoichi Miyazawa, the minister of trade and industry, said the start of generating and transmitting power at the plant “represents an important step forward to achieving a well-balanced energy mix and a more stable supply of electricity.”
The output from the reactor was expected to reach 30 percent of its full capacity of 890,000 kilowatts on Aug. 14, and will be raised gradually to reach full power generation in about 10 days.
The reactor is expected to begin commercial operations in early September unless the NRA detects safety problems during its final inspection.
Michiaki Uriu, Kyushu Electric Power president, said in a statement that the company will continue its efforts to improve safety at the plant with “determination to prevent an accident similar to the one at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant from occurring.”
“We will gradually increase the output while closely monitoring the condition of the plant,” he said.
Kyushu Electric officials said the utility will proceed cautiously with operation of the No. 1 reactor as its operations had been suspended for a periodic inspection in May 2011.
It will be the first time that electricity generated at a nuclear plant will be supplied to households and businesses since the No. 4 reactor at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture went offline in September 2013.
Kyushu Electric, which relied on nuclear energy for about 40 percent of its power supply before the Fukushima disaster unfurled, plans to restart the No. 2 reactor at the Sendai plant in mid-October.
It has also applied for NRA safety screening to resume operations of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at its Genkai plant in Saga Prefecture.
Preparations for restarts are progressing at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors of Kansai Electric’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture and the No. 3 reactor of Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture.
The restart of the Sendai plant is likely to give momentum to efforts by the electric power industry and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to restart idle nuclear reactors nationwide.
But municipalities located near nuclear power plants have yet to map out effective evacuation plans for people in local medical and welfare facilities in the event of nuclear accidents.
A shortage of buses and other transportation modes to evacuate residents remains unsolved, while it also is unclear if utility companies can effectively shut down reactors when a Fukushima-level accident takes place at a nuclear plant.
Opinion polls have shown that more Japanese are opposed to the reactor restarts than those who support them.
Source: Asahi Shimbun
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201508140058
Fukushima evacuees return home during Bon to visit ancestors’ graves
Kuniyuki and Reiko Sakuma, along with their daughter Rie Hosoya, right, clean the graves of their ancestors in Okuma, 500 meters from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, in Fukushima Prefecture on Aug. 13.
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Clad in masks, caps and other protective gear, a handful of evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster returned to their hometown here to pay their respects at the graves of their ancestors.
Kuniyuki Sakuma, 65, and his wife, Reiko, 66, visited the tomb of Sakuma’s father on Aug. 13, located just 500 meters from the embattled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Their visit coincided with the traditional Bon festival in which people stop by their ancestors’ graves.
Sakuma and his wife remain evacuated in Iwaki, also in the prefecture, due to the lingering high levels of radiation in Okuma. About 110,000 people remain evacuated from their homes in Fukushima Prefecture.
A year after the onset of the 2011 nuclear disaster, Sakuma’s father, Kunimaru, died of a ruptured aneurysm while living in temporary housing as an evacuee. Kunimaru had taken great pride in running a successful pear farm in Okuma and often expressed his desire to return to his farm.
Although his tomb is currently in Okuma, Kunimaru’s final resting place remains unknown as the grave site is marked for the construction of an interim facility to store contaminated soil and material from cleanup efforts at localities surrounding the nuclear plant.
Sakuma said the Environment Ministry has provided no information on what will become of his father’s tomb.
On Aug. 13, airborne radiation levels at the grave site measured more than 100 times the levels in Iwaki.
Sakuma said he understands that returning to Okuma to live is unrealistic. But he added that he cannot readily abandon the land where his parents once resided.
During their one-hour visit, Sakuma and his wife also stopped by their Okuma home to find their garden overrun with weeds.
“I wonder if my father would be upset if I move the grave somewhere else,” Sakuma said. “I would not have to be worried about this kind of thing if the nuclear disaster had not occurred in the first place.”
Source: Asahi Shimbun
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201508140038
Tepco readies to install unit 3 cover
From World Nuclear News, a pro-nuclear website
The installation of a protective cover over unit 3 of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan can start as soon as the removal of rubble from the reactor building is completed, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said.
Plans were announced in November 2012 for a cover to be constructed to encase the unit’s damaged reactor building, protecting it from the weather and preventing any release of radioactive particles during decommissioning work.
The section of the reactor building that sheltered the service floor of unit 3 was wrecked by a hydrogen explosion three days after the tsunami of March 2011 – leaving the fuel pond exposed and covered by debris including many twisted steel beams.
The fabrication of the cover has been under way since November 2013 at the Onahama works in Iwaki city. It has been made in sections so that once it is transported to Fukushima Daiichi, the time to assemble it can be shortened and the radiation exposure to the workers on site can be significantly reduced, Tepco said.
A separate structure will be built to facilitate the removal by crane of used fuel from the storage pool. This 54-metre-tall structure will include a steel frame, filtered ventilation and an arched section at its top to accommodate the crane. Measuring 57 metres long and 19 metres wide, it will not be fixed to the reactor building itself, but will be supported on the ground on one side, and against the turbine building on the other.
On 2 August, Tepco announced that it had removed the fuel handling machine, the largest remaining piece of rubble, from the unit’s used fuel pool at the top of its reactor building. Its removal followed months of preparation and clears the way for the remaining rubble and the used fuel in the storage pool to be removed.
The assembly of the protective cover over unit 3 will start once all the rubble is removed.
Tepco said there are a total of 566 fuel assemblies inside the unit’s pool and the cover will prevent radioactive substances from scattering during their removal.
The fuel removed from unit 3 will be packaged for transport the short distance to the site’s communal fuel storage pool, although it will need to be inspected and flushed clean of dust and debris.
Source: World Nuclear News
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Tepco-readies-to-install-unit-3-cover-1308155.html
VOX POPULI: Trickery ensures nobody gets blamed if nuclear restart goes wrong
The Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 1961, undertaken by the United States to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, ended in dismal failure. It left a stain on the administration of President John F. Kennedy, which was still only in its third month.
Kennedy is said to have been reluctant to go ahead with this campaign. But he accepted responsibility for the failure and said at a news conference, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”
This famous Kennedy quote drips with sarcasm. When something goes right, everyone wants to claim credit. But when something goes wrong, nobody comes forward to assume responsibility.
I am probably not the only person who was reminded of this quote by the appalling irresponsibility of the people involved in the new National Stadium project.
And there is also the matter of the reactivation of the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co. In taking the first step back to nuclear power generation, the parties concerned left their own responsibilities completely vague, perhaps in order to dodge criticism from people opposed to nuclear power generation, or as a precaution just in case something goes wrong later.
Kyushu Electric Power is primarily responsible for restarting the reactor, but it was the government that gave the green light.
The government stresses that Japan has “the most stringent safety requirements (for nuclear reactor operation) in the world.” But the Nuclear Regulation Authority, the nation’s nuclear watchdog, says that “accidents can happen even if the safety requirements are met,” and that it withholds “judgment on whether reactors should be restarted or not.”
There are just too many questions that remain unanswered.
In a collusive relationship, it is easy for everyone to practice obfuscation to escape responsibility. The Fukushima disaster of March 2011 was evidence of the government’s failed energy policy. It also destroyed the “safety myth” of nuclear power generation. The grave responsibility of the political, bureaucratic and academic communities should have been thoroughly scrutinized then, but the matter was never really pursued.
As a result, many of the helpless and innocent residents who had to leave their hometowns are still living in “exile” today.
After one year and 11 months of zero nuclear power generation nationwide, electricity generated by nuclear energy will start reaching consumers again Aug. 14. Electricity is electricity, no matter what the source. Where it comes from is irrelevant so long as it delivers cool air from the air-conditioning unit and turns lights on.
But if we unthinkingly go back to a society where nuclear power generation is simply taken for granted, we would be wasting the bitter lessons we learned from the Fukushima disaster.
Source: Asahi Shimbun
Is the Pacific Ocean Japan’s private dumpyard?
An article coming from the Yomiuri Shimbun, a pro-government media, its director and Prime Minister Abe are very best friends.
Read between the lines, funny enough the title says it all: the most important part of the Tepco Fukushima Daiichi decommissioning plan is to be able to dump as much contaminated water as possible into the Pacific Ocean.
Mind you Tepco has been already doing that all along since the beginning, but in a sneaky manner. With the now obtained approval of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, Tepco will be able to do it in the open and in a grand manner.
Mind you, what Tepco calls decontaminated water, is contaminated water which has been only partially decontaminated, as the two decontamination systems Alps and Kurion can only filter, remove, 62 radionuclides out of the 1270 radionuclides present in that contaminated water.
This confirms what we already knew of Tepco’s intentions, somehow Tepco and the Japanese Government since day one have been considering our Pacific Ocean to be their contaminated water private dumpyard.
Why other countries of the Pacific region are not protesting against this constant radioactive water duumping which has been ongoing now for more than 4 years?
Release of treated water into sea a step toward Fukushima decommissioning
A solid step has been taken toward the decommissioning of the reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations has approved TEPCO’s plan to release water into the ocean after it has been decontaminated.
Under the plan, TEPCO will pump up water from wells, called subdrains, around reactor buildings at the plant. This water will then be treated and discharged into the sea. There are expectations that this will reduce the volume of contaminated water generated when groundwater accumulates inside buildings wrecked by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.
As preconditions for accepting the subdrain plan, the prefectural fisheries federation listed five demands, including improving public channels of information regarding the plan’s stringent water management and safety. These conditions were set out of the federation’s concern about groundless rumors surrounding the plan. TEPCO must sincerely handle these demands and ensure the water release plan is translated into action soon.
Regarding water quality management, TEPCO plans to set a stringent goal of cleaning the water to a level that exceeds international standards for drinking water. It is conducting water purification tests using a special-purpose treatment system. We hope the utility will release this data and carefully explain the system to clear up any anxiety felt by the public.
Initially, the volume of groundwater seeping into the buildings at the nuclear plant reached about 400 tons a day.
Since May 2014, TEPCO has been pumping up groundwater from other wells on the hill near the plant and releasing it into the sea before it flows into the buildings and becomes contaminated. This process has reduced the daily volume of water entering the buildings to about 300 tons a day.
TEPCO believes realization of the plan to pump water from the subdrains and discharging it into the sea after treatment could halve the volume of water entering the wrecked buildings to about 150 tons per day.
Undoubtedly, this will significantly reduce the labor required for managing contaminated water at the plant.
A boost for ‘ice wall’
The fisheries federation stated that the reduced risk of ocean contamination was one reason for its decision to give the green light to the plan.
An impermeable wall has been built along the port in front of the wrecked plant to prevent contaminated water from reaching the sea. The wall contains an opening about 10 meters wide, so it is not completely closed off. The federation viewed the flow of contaminated water through this opening into the port as a problem.
This opening was left because completely blocking off the groundwater would have the effect of a dam, and the water level behind it would rise. There were fears this would increase the volume of water entering the buildings.
By pumping up groundwater through the subdrains, the impermeable wall can be sealed off and any rise in the water level can be prevented. This should help to dispel groundless rumors.
There are also expectations that pumping up groundwater and reducing the water level will enable greater progress in TEPCO’s construction of an “ice wall,” in which soil around the reactor buildings will be frozen to stop groundwater from entering the buildings.
However, even after treated water is discharged into the sea, contaminated water will continue to accumulate. A veritable forest of about 950 large tanks, which combined hold about 690,000 tons of water, already stands within the plant’s premises. Sooner or later, it will become difficult to secure space to install any more tanks.
Purification of the water stored in these tanks is progressing steadily. At some point, discharging this water into the sea also will need to be considered.
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
Why was the Sendai nuclear power plant restarted?
Two of Japan’s reactors—Units 1 and 2 of the Kyushu Electric Power Company’s Sendai nuclear power plant—have just restarted, and Unit 1 should begin generating electricity on August 14. Like all other Japanese nuclear power plants, Sendai was shut down after the events at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, in which an earthquake, a tsunami, egregious design mistakes, and a poor safety culture combined to form “a cascade of stupid errors” that led to a triple meltdown.
This is the first restart of any of Japan’s 43 operable commercial reactors since Fukushima, and it is happening despite many unresolved questions concerning nuclear safety regulations. When it comes to safety, the Sendai nuclear power plant is definitely not at the head of the class: The utility owning the power plant was given a pass despite a very problematic history. (At one point, a regulatory commissioner called the plan to restart Sendai “wishful thinking”.)
There is certainly no nationwide re-emergence of nuclear power in Japan. Indeed, there have been vocal public protests against the Sendai restart. One of the protestors even included a former prime minister of Japan.
So, why is it happening? What are the ostensible reasons for a restart? Were they valid?
A three-pointed rationalization. The justification for a restart was based upon three key points: the type of reactors to be used at Sendai were considered inherently “safer;” the chance of a similar natural disaster(s) was considered to be minimal; and the concerns of the local communities were dismissed as inconsequential.
Let us look at each of these items in turn.
Pressurized water reactors are considered inherently safe. Because strict new standards for the regulation of nuclear power plants were imposed in July 2012—the result of the belated adoption of a tougher global standard—Japan’s newly formed Nuclear Regulation Authority deemed that pressurized water reactors (PWRs) such as those used at Sendai were safer than the boiling water reactor technology used at the ill-fated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Consequently, facilities with PWRs were given a longer time span—five years—to introduce severe accident countermeasures when the new regulation standards come into force.
For example, a nuclear power plant using a pressurized water reactor is not required to immediately install a filtered containment venting system to prevent large-scale radioactive contamination to the environment if the containment vessel inside is damaged. The Nuclear Regulation Authority’s reasoning is that the risk of containment vessel damage is low in a pressurized water reactor because it is so much larger than in a boiling water reactor, thus allowing considerably more time before any accident measures must be put into effect. Building on this logic, the agency then gave a temporary exemption to the requirement to install the venting system to any facility using PWRs. This relieved the plant operators of heavy burdens in terms of both finances and preparatory work. All 10 of the nuclear power plants (representing six different electric companies) that applied for the waiver use pressurized water reactors.
But PWRs are not inherently safe at all; for example, their steam generators are a serious concern. In 1991, the steam generator in the pressurized water reactor at Mihama Unit 2 of Kansai Electric Power in Japan was damaged, and the emergency core cooling system had to activated. Though caused by something as simple as the failure of the mount of a metal fitting, the resulting accident was rated at Level 3, or “serious incident,” on the seven levels of the International Nuclear Event Scale. Similarly, in 2013, Unit 2 and Unit 3 of the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California had to be closed due to a radiation leak from the plant’s virtually new steam generators; the two units subsequently had to be retired and the plant is now in the process of a costly decommissioning, predicted to cost $3 billion. And San Onofre used pressurized water reactor technology.
Natural disasters can be predicted. There are many glaring problems with this argument, not the least of which is the tendency of, say, volcanoes to behave in ways we don’t foresee. This is of major concern in Japan, which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates interact and a large chunk of the planet’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes takes place. Kyushu Electric Power claims that volcanic eruptions can be readily predicted, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority accepted this argument. But many volcanologists insist that it is scientifically impossible to predict the eruption of a volcano—and there are many volcanoes and calderas near the Sendai nuclear power plant. According to a survey conducted by Kyushu Electric Power, catastrophic eruptions have been occurring on a 90,000-year cycle at the Aira Caldera, located 53 kilometers, or about 33 miles, from the Sendai site, with the latest eruption about 30,000 years ago. (There have been many smaller, near-continuous eruptions in the caldera since 1955.) Furthermore, sediment from the pyroclastic flow of a volcano has been discovered only 5 kilometers, or roughly 3 miles, from the reactors at Sendai.
Another problem comes from trying to determine the maximum acceleration likely to occur at the time of an earthquake. This is an issue of tremendous concern, because there are about 1,500 earthquakes of varying sizes in Japan every year. In the words of the World Nuclear Association: “Because of the frequency and magnitude of earthquakes in Japan, extra attention is paid to seismic activity in the siting, design, and construction of nuclear power plants. The seismic design of such plants is based on criteria far more stringent than those applying to non-nuclear facilities.”
Yet one of the reasons that the authority announced fast-track approval for Sendai was based upon a recalculation of the largest earthquake that could reasonably be expected to occur at the site of this nuclear power plant—which was found to be larger and more devastating than before, based upon the known seismicity of the area and local active faults. Known as “peak ground acceleration,” this figure is expressed in the number of centimeters per second squared, also known as “Galileo units” or Gal. Setting the value of a specific region’s peak ground acceleration is difficult scientifically; guessing just how bad an earthquake can get is the cause of many safety design revisions and much expense. In the case of the Kyushu Electric Power Company, however, the company not only said on its restart application that an earthquake was likely to be worse than previously expected (620 Gal rather than the earlier estimate of 540 Gal), it cavalierly said that its current reactor would be able to handle the higher figure. The NRA apparently considered this platitude about the resiliency of the company’s Sendai plant to be a statement of scientific fact and sufficient in terms of safety.
And some seismologists insist that an earthquake at Sendai is likely to be even more severe—they say that the earth could shake much more than 620 centimeters (about 20 feet) per second squared. For example, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a Kobe University professor and seismologist, has been warning about the problem of nuclear power plant accidents caused by earthquakes since his first book on the topic in 1994—17 years before what happened at Fukushima Daiichi. (Ishibashi even coined a term in the Japanese language to describe the problem: “gempatsu shinsai,” or “nuclear earthquake disaster.”) He insists that the intensity of a more severe earthquake is underestimated because the current value does not take into consideration other phenomena, such as an interplate earthquake.
And in any case, the 620 Gal figure comes from earthquake data collected from the north end of Japan, while the Sendai nuclear power plant is located at the south end, where conditions may be different. So, we don’t precisely know just how severe the peak ground acceleration will be at Sendai.
There is no available scientific literature on the influence of a major earthquake on delicate devices such as the steam generators used in pressurized water reactors.
Concerns of the local communities were dismissed. After the Nuclear Regulation Authority granted its approval in regards to the safety requirements, the final hurdle was to secure approval from two of the local governments: Kagoshima prefecture and Satsumasendai city. If they agreed, then the Sendai facility could restart.
Other neighboring communities, including six cities and two towns, had asked that the prefecture and the city include them in the list of “local governments of the nuclear power plant site.” They based their request on the fact that they would likely be affected by any radioactive contamination—after all, the plume caused by the Fukushima accident spread over 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the reactor site. But only those communities within 8 to 10 kilometers (about 5 to 6 miles) from the Sendai nuclear power plant were allowed to participate.
And even those within that radius were sometimes barred from having their concerns heard. A neighboring city, Ichikikushikino, is located just 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) from the Sendai plant, but that city’s request to be heard was denied by the governor of Kagoshima prefecture governor, Yuichi Ito, and by the mayor of Satsumasendai city, Hideo Iwakiri. This refusal is assumed to be based on two reasons: In addition to the difficulty of summarizing the different opinions on the nuclear restart, prefecture and city officials were concerned about having to decrease their own constituents’ share of the subsidy benefits that are to be provided by the plant to local governments. In the end, only Kagoshima prefecture and Satsumasendai city approved the restart in November 2014.
Other actions by the prefecture governor caused problems, as well. The prefecture’s disaster prevention plan was supposed to include an evacuation program for people requiring special assistance in any medical or welfare facilities located within 30 kilometers (about 20 miles) from the Sendai nuclear power plant. The prefectural governor, however, declared that an area within 10 kilometers (roughly 6 miles) from the power plant was more than sufficient as the target area for this program. Therefore, the number of applicable facilities was reduced from 244 facilities to to only 17 facilities, or less than one-tenth the original number. Furthermore, an evacuation facility that had been constructed by repairing an old elementary school, Yorita Elementary, turned out to have insufficient protective measures against radiation, even though the total construction cost for the facility was the equivalent of $760,000.
The real reasons for the restart. The decision to restart the reactor at Sendai is probably based upon the “dismal science:” economics.
It seems that financial considerations and worries about the health of the national and local economies triumphed over safety concerns; an article in the Japan Times says that when Kyushu Electric tried to turn to other means of generating electricity—such as thermal power—its costs more than doubled. “The huge costs have weighed heavily on its earnings. The company is aiming to shore up its earnings by reactivating idled nuclear power reactors. Kyushu Electric expects that the restart of the Sendai Number 1 reactor will save the company about 7.5 billion yen (over $60 million) per month.”
Kyushu Electric Power had previously tried raising the price of electricity after their nuclear power plant was stopped, but that still was not enough—their deficit continued. The best hope of profitability comes from restarting nuclear power plants.
This concern for their bottom line may be understandable, but it seems to come at the expense of public safety and open, democratic, rational decision-making. Kyushu Electric Power has used questionable means to promote its agenda. For example, at an informational meeting for local residents about nuclear power plant operation only three months after the Fukushima accident, Kyushu Electric Power sent in undercover employees pretending to be ordinary citizens, who then stood up and spoke in favor of nuclear power. The company also tried to manipulate public opinion by sending in “fake e-mails” in support of the restart of nuclear power plants to a television broadcaster. The president of Kyushu Electric Power resigned after the ruses were discovered.
Meanwhile, Kyushu Electric Power still refuses to hold talks with citizen groups and neighboring local governments, even after the plant has been cleared to restart. They also refused an offer from nearly 100 citizen groups this March to hold a discussion, and did not accept a petition containing more than 100,000 signatures. The company continues to refuse the requests of many local governments within the 30 kilometer (20 miles) radius of the Sendai site.
Economics also played a role in another way: The prefecture and the nearest city are financially dependent on nuclear energy. For a long time, the prefecture governor has been clearly stating that he endorses the restart. After the prefectural assembly election this April, he revealed that the reason the restart was approved in November 2014 was to avoid having it become an election issue.
Satsumasendai city receives more than $12 million in grants annually from the nuclear industry, which it uses to pay for its public and educational facilities, receiving about $270 million over the years. According to the Satsumasendai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the overall economic benefit of the restart of the Sendai nuclear power plant is approximately $25 million to the local economy yearly.
There are also questions of transparency in the dealings of local government authorities with Kyushu Electric Power. According to an article published this January by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, construction companies run by members of the Kagoshima prefectural assembly received 26 orders for construction work at Sendai, representing $2.5 million of work, in the three years since the Fukushima accident. Not surprisingly, these members of the prefectural assembly endorsed the restart of the Sendai nuclear power plant.
According to a survey conducted this May by a major local newspaper, Minami–Nippon Shimbun, 59.9 percent of those polled were against a restart of the Sendai nuclear power plant. But their opinions may not be regarded as important because they have no economic significance. In this way, strict regulations are not being applied to nuclear decisions, even after the Fukushima accident. Economics was considered more important than human life: That is why the Sendai nuclear power plant was able to restart.
Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://thebulletin.org/why-was-sendai-nuclear-power-plant-restarted8644
Hajime Anbe says he cannot abide the reactivation of the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant’s No. 1 reactor as an evacuee of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster, in Shimotsuke, Tochigi Prefecture.
The tone of Hajime Anbe’s voice, usually soft, becomes forceful when asked about the reactivation of the No. 1 reactor at Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima Prefecture.
“I cannot believe that a nuclear reactor has been restarted when the prospects of decommissioning the stricken Fukushima plant are still unclear,” he says. “It’s absurd, and rattles the nerves of those of us who have had to evacuate.” As a result of the Fukushima crisis, the 79-year-old Anbe has been forced to flee his home in the prefectural town of Namie and is temporarily living in Shimotsuke, Tochigi Prefecture. He is among the 110,000 people still evacuated, four years and five months since the disaster broke out.
Anbe has a bitter past. In the latter half of the 1960s, Tohoku Electric Power Co. announced the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in Namie and neighboring areas. The planned site was approximately one kilometer east of Anbe’s home. Convinced that such a plant would bring more jobs to his town, Anbe agreed to allow the road behind his home to be used as a route to the plant. He worked to obtain the support of other local residents and took care of the road, cutting the grass that grew on it.
Ultimately, due to residents’ objections and other factors, the plan fell through. Looking back, Anbe says, “I completely believed in nuclear power’s ‘safety myth.’ I should’ve done more research.”
His love for his hometown goes back 70 years, to the end of World War II. When his two older brothers returned from the battlefield, they expressed relief that even though Japan had lost the war, they had a hometown to return to. They told him that now that peace had arrived, they should work to make their hometown into a great place. With that ambition in his heart, Anbe took over the family’s farming business, expanded their farmland to six hectares, and devoted himself to growing rice.
His home in Namie is in a zone designated as preparing for the lifting of an evacuation directive. Because he believes his hometown will cease to exist unless its residents return, Anbe is planning to go back as soon as the evacuation order is lifted. An increasing number of residents are giving up any hopes of returning, however, disappointed that the crisis is far from being brought under control.
“Our hometown survived the war, but this time it might really disappear,” Anbe laments. And that fear is what pushes him to object to the reactivation of nuclear reactors, which feels to him like pretending the Fukushima disaster never happened.
Source: Mainichi
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150812p2a00m0na007000c.html
Japan resumes nuclear reactor operation for 1st time in 2 years
Kyushu Electric Power Co. on Aug. 11 restarted the No. 1 reactor at its Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, making it the first reactor to be reactivated under new safety regulations established in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
It was the first time in about two years for a nuclear reactor to operate in Japan, after the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture were shut down in September 2013. The Kagoshima plant’s 890 megawatt No. 1 reactor had been inactive for around four years, three months.
At 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 11, a lever in the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant’s central control room was operated to remove rods controlling nuclear fission from the reactor. The reactor is expected to reach criticality at about 11 p.m. the same day.
After the reactor reaches criticality, Kyushu Electric Power Co. will check that it can be safely shut down, and if there are no problems, power generation and transmission will begin on Aug. 14. The power company will bring the reactor to full operating capacity in stages while checking the temperature and pressure inside the reactor.
If Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) finds no problems with the reactor during an inspection, commercial operation will resume in early September.
Operation of the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant was suspended in May 2011 for a regular inspection. Since the reactor has been offline for a long time, possible trouble caused by deterioration of pipes and other equipment has been feared. It is rare globally for a reactor to be restarted after being offline for more than four years.
NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka has commented that various problems are envisaged, and the nuclear watchdog is therefore seeking solid safety precautions. The power company has said it will quickly release information if there is any trouble or if equipment malfunctions.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. has also had the nuclear plant’s No. 2 reactor undergo preoperational checks, and if there are no problems, the reactor is expected to be restarted in mid-October.
Japan has a total of 54 nuclear reactors. In the wake of the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, reactors were gradually shut down, and in May 2012 no reactors were in operation. In July that year, the government restarted the No. 3 and 4 reactors at the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture as a special measure, but they were shut down in September 2013 for regular inspections, again leaving Japan with no reactors in operation.
Applications have been filed with the NRA to screen 25 reactors at 15 nuclear power plants in Japan. In addition to the No. 1 and 2 reactors at the Sendai plant, other reactors to have received safety approval from the regulator are the No. 3 and 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture, and the No. 3 reactor at Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture. All of these reactors are pressurized water reactors, different from those at the Fukushima plant.
The Fukui District Court has issued a temporary injunction halting activation of reactors at the Takahama plant, and there are no immediate prospects of the plant’s reactors being restarted.
It is unclear whether local consent can be obtained for restarting the Ikata plant reactor, and it is unlikely that it will be reactivated this year.
Source: Mainichi
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150811p2a00m0na017000c.html
Why are Radioactive Emissions Increasing at Fukushima Daiichi?
Fukushima Daiichi continues to contaminate the atmosphere with radionuclides. TEPCO acknowledged in July of 2012 that units 1 through 4 at the plant were emitting approximately 10,000,000 Bq per hour.[i]
It appears as if emission levels have increased since 2012. According to documents interpreted by Fukushima Diary, TEPCO asserted May 25, 2015 that ongoing emissions were estimated at a rate of 2,336,000,000 Bq per hour of noble gas and 960,000 Bq per hour of of Cs-134/137.[ii]
Fukushima Diary pointed out that Reactor 3 emissions increased over 2014. Reactor 4’s emissions were reported as 95,000 Bq/hour of Cesium134/137 despite TEPCO’s reported success in removing rods from unit 4.Why?
Why are atmospheric emissions rising and what does it mean for climate change? Please see discussion here: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/strangely-missing-radionuclides-effects.html
[i] T. Sugimoto (24 July 2012) ‘After 500 Days, Fukushima No. 1 Plant Still Not Out of The Woods’, The Asahi Shimbun, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201207240087, date accessed 24 July 2012.
[ii] Lori Mochizuki, “Still 960,000Bq Cs-134/137 and 2,336,000,000Bq noble gas discharged from reactors to the air every single hour,” Fukushima Diary (June 6, 2015), http://fukushima-diary.com/2015/06/still-960000bq-of-cs-134137-and-2336000000bq-of-noble-gas-discharged-from-reactors-to-the-air-every-single-hour/
TEPCO documents: http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2015/images/additional_amount_150525-j.pdf http://www.tepco.co.jp/life/custom/faq/images/d150430_08-j.pdf.
Source: Majia’s Blog
http://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2015/08/why-are-radioactive-emissions.html
Volcano issues unaddressed in nuclear plant restart
Japan has seen its first nuclear power reactor restart in more than two years despite persisting safety issues related to volcanic eruptions.
The No. 1 reactor at Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture came back online on Tuesday.
But the utility has not designated a site for relocating nuclear fuel in the event of a massive volcanic eruption, claiming that warning signs would give Kepco enough time to prepare and transfer the fuel.
The utility and the Nuclear Regulation Authority have also decided there is little chance of a major volcanic eruption in the next several decades.
In the event of a major eruption, however, pyroclastic flows could reach the plant and disable cooling functions for its reactors and spent fuel, which could trigger massive radioactive emissions.
There are five major calderas around the Sendai plant, suggesting that massive eruptions have occurred there.
The plant currently stores 1,946 fuel assemblies in spent fuel pools. The sheer volume makes it hard to find a relocation site big enough to take them.
A panel of volcano experts advising the NRA has compiled a report indicating that there are currently no technologies that can precisely predict the timing and scale of a major eruption.
Toshitsugu Fujii, a member of the panel and chairman of the Meteorological Agency’s Coordinating Committee for Prediction of Volcanic Eruptions, has said that the panel’s opinion is not necessarily consistent with that of the NRA.
According to experts, the commonly held view is that it is impossible to predict a major eruption from warning signs because such eruptions occur only once every 10,000 years in Japan, so the data are scant.
The panel has proposed launching an advisory organization to the NRA to help deal with volcanic eruption forecasting. Due to time constraints, however, the launch of the organization is expected to be in September at the earliest.
The panel has also pointed out that the NRA should set standards for judgments on whether an impending eruption would be huge, but the time-line for setting such criteria is undecided.
Evacuation-plan worries
Two hospitals and 15 welfare facilities for elderly people within 10 km of the Sendai plant should have evacuation plans in the event that a serious nuclear accident occurs. However, concerns remain.
The prefectural government initially asked welfare facilities within 30 km of the plant to draw up evacuation plans in line with a central government policy. But it later changed course. Kagoshima Gov. Yuichiro Ito insisted that it would be enough if evacuation plans within 10 km are in place and that those beyond that would be unworkable.
The Otama-san no Ie elderly group home, the welfare facility closest to the nuclear plant — about 1 km south of the plant’s main gate — included an evacuation destination beyond 30 km of the plant and four routes to it in its plans.
“This is supplementary to local governments’ evacuation plans,” said Keiji Miyauchi, general manager of the group home.
Under the group home’s evacuation plans, residents will be first taken to a nearby shelter built by the Satsumasendai city government. The shelter, equipped with a filtered venting system that can block radioactive materials, has four days’ worth of water and food.
But Miyauchi said: “The group home has only a staff of two during the night shift. It would be difficult to take 18 elderly residents, some of whom are in wheelchairs, to the shelter.”
Miyauchi is also concerned about the evacuation routes. “Roads would be congested because they are narrow,” he said. “Some roads may be destroyed and made inaccessible if an earthquake occurs.”
Broad evacuation plans are available but details cannot be fixed, said an official at another elderly facility within 10 km of the nuclear plant. “Needs among elderly people change depending on the season,” the official said.
The facility has an evacuation agreement in place for an elderly home located beyond 30 km from the nuclear plant to accept its residents. But how to care for these evacuees remains uncertain.
“A facility alone can’t determine what to do after evacuations, and this is a matter that needs to be decided by the central or prefectural government,” the official said.
Source: Japan Times
Trillions of becquerels of radioactive material still flowing into sea” at Fukushima
Officials: “Trillions of becquerels of radioactive material still flowing into sea” at Fukushima — Map shows nuclear waste coming up from bottom of ocean far offshore — Japan TV Journalist: “Contaminated seawater will circulate around globe… disaster like a huge cloth expanding everyday”
Interview with NHK journalist Morley Robertson, by the Center for Remembering 3.11, published Jun 30, 2012 (emphasis added): I begin with the radiation leakage. Radiation leakage exerts a long term effect on the environment. It contaminates our food chain, the groundwater and the ocean. And the contaminated seawater will circulate around the globe. We never know how much this will impact on the environment… We’ll never able to study such issues with empirical certainty… [Due to nuclear testing] we have already accumulated “hidden losses” of radiation damage… how much is the [Fukushima] cesium in relation to that?… I believe we should enjoy delicious food rather than worrying about the food. I enjoyed the town’s delicacy… I didn’t mind about how the beef was produced or where it came from. As long as it is tasty, it is no problem for me. With regard to radiation, I have become more optimistic. My hypothesis is that it’s no use worrying about radiation. For people in Fukushima, they have a lot to worry about their future, like damaged reputation… One reason why we have relied on nuclear plants is because we didn’t know about the facts… We need to face the facts… Rad-waste from the nuclear cycle is said to be unsolvable even after 2.5 million years.
Part II of Robertson’s Interview, published Jun 30, 2012: In 1974, then PM Tanaka declared, “Let ‘s go nuclear!”… we were issued credit cards to buy electric goods to consume the extra electricity… It is OK to say that everything was just a lie… and 3/11 happened. So we must study everything. It is no longer about what to do with Onagawa nuclear power plant, Miyagi or Tohoku. This is about what to do with Japan. This has been revealed by our vulnerability to the accident… So when we talk about “disaster“, it’s like a huge wrapping cloth expanding everyday.
- NHK: Morley is a journalist… working in the fields of television, radio, and lecture meetings… he studied at the University of Tokyo and Harvard University.
- Robertson’s Wikipedia entry (translated from Japanese by Microsoft): In 1968, because of father’s job moved to… Hiroshima [to work] on Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission [and] undertook study of atomic bomb patients.
TEPCO, updated Mar 10, 2015: Fukushima Daiichi Contaminated Water Issue FAQ — Q1 Please explain the impact of the leaked radioactive materials on the sea. [Answer:] TEPCO announced that underground water including radioactive materials had leaked into the port… It has been implied that trillions of becquerels of radioactive materials are still flowing into the sea; however, the concentration of radioactive materials in the sea is at a level that meets the Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, except for some areas…
TEPCO, Apr 28, 2015: Comprehensive risk review was implemented, considering all the possible risks that might have an impact outside the Fukushima Daiichi NPS site… The paths through which water could leak outside the site: …
- Sources of risk — Trenches… Pits… Tanks… Accumulated water inside reactor buildings… Contamination inside the port
- Leakage routes — Ground surface… Drainage channels… Underground (groundwater）
- Destination of the contaminated material… The Sea: Unit 1-4 water intake channel… Inside the port… Outside the port
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