The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s coastal location leaves it open to tsunamis
March 11, 2019
Eight years after the accident in Fukushima, preparations are underway to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant operated by Tepco. But residents fear a second disaster.
Decades ago, nuclear power was supposed to be the perfect solution for Japan’s thirst for energy and for its rural economies. And in the sleepy town of Kashiwazaki, in the prefecture next to Fukushima, the solution was supposed to be the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, run by the power company Tepco — the company responsible for the 2011 Fukushima accident.
When in full operation, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant is the biggest in the world, capable of servicing 16 million households. But all of its seven reactors have been idle since the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. This is Tepco’s only remaining nuclear power plant apart from the tsunami-stricken plants in Fukushima, in the neighboring prefecture.
8 Years On: Number of Kids Dives in Disaster-Hit Fukushima Municipalitieshttps://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2019031300954/8-years-on-number-of-kids-dives-in-disaster-hit-fukushima-municipalities.html Mar 15, 2019 Fukushima, March 15 (Jiji Press)–In 10 Fukushima Prefecture municipalities where elementary and junior high school have reopened after the lifting of nuclear evacuation advisories, the number of students stood at 758 as of May 1, 2018, about 10 pct of the level before the March 2011 disasters.
During protracted evacuations, many child-rearing families rebuilt their lives in new locations, leading to the sharp fall in the number of students in Fukushima.
As a result, the local governments are facing difficulties in school operations.
In the Yamakiya district of the town of Kawamata, the evacuation advisory was removed in March 2017, six years after the nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 plant, heavily damaged by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
Elementary and junior high schools reopened in the town in April 2018, but five six-graders are the only elementary school children. With no freshman joining this spring, the elementary school plans to suspend its operations in April.
As population declines, Fukushima Prefecture to lose 15 of its 96 high schools, Japan Times , FUKUSHIMA MINPO, MAR 15, 2019
The Fukushima Prefectural Board of Education will reduce its number of prefecture-run high schools by 15 by the end of fiscal 2023 as the region continues to struggle with a dwindling number of students due to a declining birthrate.
The mergers will be implemented over the span of three years from fiscal 2021 and will reduce the number of high schools in the prefecture from 96 to 81.
Twenty-five schools will be merged and reorganized into 13 under the plan, which will integrate schools located in close proximity of one another. Each school will retain four to six classes per grade.
Japan Times, KYODO YAMAGUCHI 15 Mar 19- A district court on Friday rejected a plea by residents to halt a reactor at the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture.
The decision by the Iwakuni branch of the Yamaguchi District Court is in line with rulings made by other regional courts and allows the No. 3 reactor to continue operating. The plant is managed by Shikoku Electric Power Co.
Unit No. 3, the sole remaining reactor at the plant, passed the state safety screening process that was revamped in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. But concerns remain about its safety, which led residents to turn to the courts to seek an injunction.
Of the more than 30 reactors in Japan, excluding those set to be decommissioned, only a few are in operation.
A previous order forcing a halt in operations was issued by the Hiroshima High Court in December 2017, citing the risk of an eruption at the caldera of Mount Aso about 130 kilometers away. The decision was overturned in September 2018 and the utility company restarted the unit a month later. …….
The plaintiffs pointed out that pyroclastic flows from possible catastrophic eruptions could reach the plant.
IRSN 11th March 2019 IRSN publishes a study on social consequences of the 3/11 nuclear accident
in Fukushima prefecture. Result of the French-Japanese research project
Shinrai, the report “The 3/11 accident and its social consequences – Case
studies in Fukushima prefecture” analyses post accidental policy in
Fukushima prefecture, particularly the questions linked to return or
non-return to evacuated towns and villages. The report also compares the
concrete experience of the inhabitants and the decision-makers with a
number of principles that underlies international post accidental policy
and recommendations.
Fukushima grapples with toxic soil that no one wants https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/fukushima-toxic-soil-disaster-radioactiveEight years after the disaster, not a single location will take the millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil that remain, Justin McCurry in Okuma 12 Mar 2019
Workers at a soil separation facility for decontamination work in Okuma. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters
Not even the icy wind blowing in from the coast seems to bother the men in protective masks, helmets and gloves, playing their part in the world’s biggest nuclear cleanup.
Away from the public gaze, they remove the latest of the more than 1,000 black sacks filled with radioactive soil and unload their contents into giant sieves. A covered conveyor belt carries the soil to the lip of a huge pit where it is flattened in preparation for the next load. And there it will remain, untouched, for almost three decades.
It is repetitive, painstaking work but there is no quick way of addressing arguably the most controversial physical legacy of the triple meltdown that occurred eight years ago at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
In the years after the disaster, about 70,000 workers removed topsoil, tree branches, grass and other contaminated material from areas near homes, schools and public buildings in a unprecedented ¥2.9tn (£21bn) drive to reduce radiation to levels that would enable tens of thousands of evacuees to return home.
The decontamination operation cleaned generated millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil, packed into bags that carpet large swaths of Fukushima prefecture.
Japan’s government has pledged that the soil will moved to the interim storage facility and then, by 2045, to a permanent site outside of Fukushima prefecture as part of a deal with local residents who do not want their communities turned into a nuclear dumping ground.
But the government’s blueprint for the soil is unravelling: so far, not a single location has agreed to accommodate the toxic waste.
While workers inside the ruined nuclear plant struggle to contain the build-up of more than 1m tonnes of radioactive water, outside, work continues to remove, process and store soil that will amount to 14m cubic metres by 2021.
The task is expected to take another two years, according to Jiro Hiratsuka, an environment ministry official who is guiding a small group of foreign journalists, including the Guardian, around the interim storage facility.
“We are required by law to find a final storage place outside Fukushima, so it can’t be kept here indefinitely,” Hiratsuka said. “It’s true that we have yet to find an appropriate location, but a lot will depend on how much space we need and the level of radioactivity in the soil.”
There is opposition, too, to the idea of using soil with lower radiation levels – or less 8,000 becquerels per kilogram – as the foundation for roads, embankments and other infrastructure in Fukushima.
The storage facility straddles the towns of Okuma and Futaba, located west of the power plant, where radiation levels are still too high for residents to return. So far, 2.3m cubic metres of soil – about 15% of the total – have been brought to the site.
The operation involves thousands of workers, including drivers who make 1,600 return trips every day. So far, 355,000 trucks have been used – and officials say they need more.
“I am aware that some people are saying it would be better to keep it here, but the people of Okuma and Futaba have had a really tough time, and they agreed the soil could be kept here on the condition that it would eventually be moved out of Fukushima,” Hiratsuka said.
A poll by the Asahi newspaper and a local broadcaster found that almost two-thirds of evacuated residents felt anxious about radiation despite official claims that decontamination work had been a success.
A Greenpeace investigation revealed high levels of radiation in areas that had been declared safe, and accused the government of misleading the international community about the risks faced by returning evacuees and decontamination workers.
“Some areas still have significantly high levels of radiation,” said Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany who is based in Japan. “They are much higher than background radiation before the accident.”
Minoru Ikeda, who took part in the decontamination effort, said workers cut corners to meet strict deadlines. “There were times when we were told to leave the contaminated topsoil and just remove the leaves so we could get everything done on schedule,” he said. “Sometimes we would look at each other as if to say: ‘What on earth are we doing here?’”
He was sceptical of official claims that a permanent home would be found the for soil. “I don’t believe for a minute that they will be able to move all that soil out of Fukushima,” he said. “The government has to come up with a plan B.”
Times 11th March 2019 The towns around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are among the
most perilously radioactive in the world, yet in their own strange way they have never been busier. The people who lived here fled in a rush after the meltdown of the nuclear reactors, but a new citizenry has established itself and is thriving in the unusual conditions. They squat in family groups in the wooden interiors of the traditional Japanese houses. They
thrive on the fruit on the trees and the water that flows around the old rice fields. They are hairy, tusked and weigh 200lb.
They are the radioactive wild boars of Fukushima. It is eight years today since the massive earthquake and tsunami that smashed into Fukushima Dai-ichi, and a good deal has changed since the terrible weeks that followed. The spewing
reactors have been largely contained, although it will be a lifetime before they are fully dismantled. The radiation in the towns has been reduced and in those marginal areas where the levels are lowest people have been permitted to return.
Even when gas and electricity are reconnected, their once thriving towns have few shops, schools or social services. But there is another obstacle to their return: the takeover of the evacuation zone by wild animals. In the absence of Man, nature has marched off the forested mountains and taken over his former home. Raccoons and rats, monkeys and
palm civets have all taken advantage of the empty houses to find food, shelter and a convenient place to breed. But none has better adapted, or done more damage, than the wild boar.
Japan’s Tepco fights for return to nuclear power after Fukushima, DW, 11 Mar 19
Eight years after the accident in Fukushima, preparations are underway to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant operated by Tepco. But residents fear a second disaster. Kiyo Dörrer reports from Kashiwazaki.
Decades ago, nuclear power was supposed to be the perfect solution for Japan’s thirst for energy and for its rural economies. And in the sleepy town of Kashiwazaki, in the prefecture next to Fukushima, the solution was supposed to be the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, run by the power company Tepco — the company responsible for the 2011 Fukushima accident.
When in full operation, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant is the biggest in the world, capable of servicing 16 million households. But all of its seven reactors have been idle since the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. This is Tepco’s only remaining nuclear power plant apart from the tsunami-stricken plants in Fukushima, in the neighboring prefecture.
But amid the controversy, in 2017 Japan’s nuclear regulation authority gave the go-ahead to launch the lengthy process toward a restart of two of Tepco’s reactors, which are located about 250 km (155 miles) east of the Fukushima plants, on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The reactors No. 6 and No. 7 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant, which are being prepared for a restart, are both the same type as those that melted down in Fukushima.
This time everything is going to be different, the deputy head of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, Toshimitsu Tamai, assures visitors on a tour of the facility. To banish fears of a second Fukushima, Tepco has built a 15-meter (49-foot) wall that is supposed to be able to withstand the highest tsunamis imaginable………..
Majority of residents against the nuclear reactors
But the local residents aren’t all buying Tepco’s story. Hopes of an economic boost ring hollow in the almost deserted shopping streets; the once bustling town center is now full of shuttered storefronts. Like many other country towns, Kashiwazaki has fallen victim to economic problems caused by the aging population and a growing rural exodus — trends no nuclear power plant can change.
According to the exit polls held in last year’s governor’s race, over 60 percent of residents of Niigata Prefecture, in which Kashiwazaki lies, are against the restart of the nuclear power plant. Locals have been alarmed by multiple mishaps during the preparations. In December 2018, the cables connecting reactor No. 7 with emergency backup power caused a fire for unknown reasons. And as recently as February 28, radioactive water leaked out of the core inside one of the idle reactors.
“To be honest, we just keep thinking: not again! They take one step forward and three steps back,” says Tsutomu Oribe, who runs a sushi restaurant in central Kashiwazaki. “We’ve all learned too well what could happen.”
‘You’re Contaminated’: The Stigma Against Japan’s Fukushima Survivors, Broadly, 12 Mar 19,
A 2011 quake and tsunami led to a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, killing thousands and displacing more. Two ‘nuclear refugees’ explain why returning home is more complicated than it seems.
…….. While the nuclear disaster is becoming a distant memory for most Japanese, for some others it is their everyday reality. Nuclear refugees and evacuees face discrimination, separation from loved ones, and in some cases, they are even forced to return to the former evacuation zone.
The government, worried about people getting exposed to radiation, declared a 20-km evacuation zone around the plant and uprooted close to 165,000 people. As of today, there are still 50,000 people who haven’t returned to Fukushima.
Keiko Owada, 66, is one of them. When I meet her in Tokyo, she refers to the Japanese capital as her home for the past seven years. That will soon change due to the government’s decision to withdraw her free housing subsidies.
Because decontamination work has made progress and food declared safe from radiation, it has been deemed safe to return to most villages within the evacuation zone. The same goes for Owada’s village Naraha, where the evacuation order was lifted two years ago.
Owada is not excited about the prospect of returning to Naraha. “Would I continue to get financial support for my apartment here in Tokyo, I would have stayed here, yes. I’ll tell you why: there is no hospital in Naraha, only a small hospital for first aid. There is no supermarket, only a small convenience store. And the reason is simple: only a few people have returned.”
Life as an evacuee hasn’t always been easy, Owada explains. “It wasn’t like people were treating me any different, but my neighbors never greeted me. I think it’s because of the compensation I received and the free housing. They knew I was from Fukushima, that’s why.”
According to Owada, some of the other evacuees in Tokyo she knows have faced harsher treatment. “I know of others whose cars were damaged on purpose because they had a Fukushima license plate. That’s why I never parked my car in the middle of the parking lot, but always in a corner, so no one could see it.”
If anything, Owada’s story illustrates how many evacuees continued to live in fear. Displaced from their homes, dropped in a new community—the disaster is anything but over for them. ……….
When Kamata got in touch with relatives living in other parts of Japan, she was shocked to hear one sister-in-law’s initial response. “After the disaster, I wanted to flee to Chiba [a prefecture next to Tokyo], my sister-in-law picked up the telephone and told me I didn’t have to come to their house. ‘You’re contaminated,’ she told me.”……….
As Kamata remembers what life was like back in Fukushima, she uses a handkerchief to wipe a tear from her cheek. She barely speaks to her friends anymore.
https://havanatimes.org/?p=149927 March 9, 2019 By Akio Matsumura HAVANA TIMES – On March 11, we commemorate the 8th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. To an outside observer, this anniversary passes as a technical progress report, a look at new robot, or a short story on how lives there are slowly returning to normal.
Yet in Japan, the government has not figured out how to touch or test the irradiated cores in the three crippled reactors, which continue to contaminate water around the site of the melt down. The government does not know where it will put that radioactive material once it can find a way to move it.
Meanwhile, the government and site operator are running out of room to store the contaminated water, which is filling up more and more tanks. The cleanup is estimated to take forty years and the cost is estimated at $195 billion.
The latest publicly released findings of radiation levels are from 2017, when Tokyo Electric Power Company had to use a remote-controlled robot to detect the levels in Reactor 2, since no human can approach the crippled reactor.
The rates read 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the March 2011 meltdown. We have no reason to believe that they have fallen since then. Remote-control robots are being used in the other reactors as well, indicating that radiation levels are similarly high there.
Even using the robot, work can only be carried out for very short times, since the robots can only stand 1000 sieverts of exposure – less than two hours in this case.
This is an extremely high amount of radiation. After TEPCO published the rate, the Asahi Shimbun reported that “an official of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences said medical professionals have never considered dealing with this level of radiation in their work.”
The Japan Times quoted Dr. Fumiya Tanabe, an expert on nuclear safety, who said that the “findings show that both the preparation for and the actual decommissioning process at the plant will likely prove much more difficult than expected.”
Fukushima’s Children Need International Attention
There have been many victims of this disaster. Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Local fishermen are worried that the government will proceed with its plan to dump the storage tanks of contaminated water into the ocean.
Others worry that the flow of the radioactive wind and contaminated water are reaching North America and will continue to do so for the next forty years.
Above all of these important issues, it is the children of Fukushima who most need our attention. They are at risk of higher rates of cancer because of their exposure to the contamination from the initial explosion. In Chernobyl, the only comparable case we have, more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer were found in children according to the UN through 2005.
There is evidence that thyroid cancer rates are higher among Fukushima’s children than the national population, but it is a latent disease: it is still too early to tell what the full impact will be. But it is clear the case needs action.
Scientists will always offer different opinions, swayed first by uncertainty, but also, sadly, by politics, money, and ambition.
Some will claim that the evidence has been exaggerated, underestimated, or that perhaps we’re at too early a stage to be certain. Or that we need more time to clarify the results. I have seen many instances of these arguments at the United Nations and international science conferences. Why do we wait and make another mistake?
Helen Caldicott, a medical doctor and founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, part of a larger umbrella group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, wrote: “The truth is that most politicians, businessmen, engineers and nuclear physicists have no innate understanding of radiobiology and the way radiation induces cancer, congenital malformations and genetic diseases which are passed generation to generation. Nor do they recognize that children are 20 times more radiosensitive than adults, girls twice as vulnerable as little boys and fetuses much more so.”
UNICEF Can Lead
We face many complex challenges of climate change, poverty alleviation, and national security. The health and welfare of children must always be our top priority. They are our future; our deepest purpose is to care and provide for them. By deciding not to fully investigate the effects of Fukushima, we fail them.
We all agree with that personally, but which institution is best positioned to carry out the mission? To me, UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is the only answer. Indeed, putting children above national security is at UNICEF’s core.
Maurice Pate, an American humanitarian and businessman who joined UNICEF at its inception in 1947, agreed to serve as the Executive Director upon the condition that UNICEF serves the children of “ex-enemy countries, regardless of race or politics.” In 1965, at the end of Pate’s term, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize.
To this day, its mission includes a commitment to “ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children – victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, all forms of violence and exploitation and those with disabilities.” The children of Fukushima deserve the protection of UNICEF.
—— *Akio Matsumura is also the Secretary General of the Global Forum Moscow Conference hosted by President Gorbachev at the Kremlin in 1990 as well as of the Parliamentary Earth Summit Conference hosted by Brazil National Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 1992
Trust fails to recover from nuclear disaster, Borneo Bulletin March 10, 2019 Simon Denyer ……….facts and spreadsheets supplied by the government are one thing.
Rebuilding trust among locals may be significantly harder, thanks to a culture of cover-ups and denials that contributed to the nuclear accident and continues to dog Japan’s efforts to restart its nuclear industry, experts say.
…….. at least 24 countries and territories ban some produce from Fukushima. South Korea and China still impose a total food ban. The US prohibits Fukushima produce such as mushrooms, leafy vegetables and broccoli. Fishermen now only ply the seas two days a week: Fish from Fukushima, which once enjoyed a high reputation in Tokyo’s fish market, is no longer the flavour of the day.
The government blames “harmful rumours”, a phrase that dominated the two-day press tour and has been labelled the fourth disaster to hit Fukushima, after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.
Yet there is a much deeper trust deficit that remains extremely hard to overcome.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the ill-fated plant, spent two months after the nuclear disaster denying that a meltdown had occurred. TEPCO later apologised for a “cover-up” that remains the source of much bitterness among people here.
Katsunobu Sakurai, former mayor of the nearby town of Minamisoma, said TEPCO gave out very little information about the disaster during a chaotic evacuation that ultimately led to the deaths of 3,700 people, including many elderly people whose medical care was interrupted.
In 2012, TEPCO was forced to admit that it had failed to heed safety warnings before the accident, or even consider the risk of a large tsunami, because it feared doing so would undermine public confidence in the industry.
Experts say TEPCO has still failed to come clean about the problems associated with decommissioning the reactors and
Bags of nuclear waste generated after the meltdown of one of Fukushima’s nuclear power plants in 2011 are now stored in the nearby town of Naraha. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Shiho Fukada.
decontaminating the environment.
“To me, talking about ‘harmful rumours’ sounds like they are making someone else the bad guy or villain, as if they are blaming people for saying negative things because they don’t understand science and radiation,” said Riken Komatsu, a community activist in Onahama.
“But those who have lost our trust do not have the right” to talk about harmful rumours, Komatsu added.
The government and TEPCO say the nuclear power plant itself could take 30 or 40 years to decommission and estimates the cleanup will cost 22 trillion yen (USD200 billion).
But in 2015, the plant’s manager told London’s Times newspaper that the technological challenges involved in removing hundreds of tonnes of molten radioactive fuel from three reactors could mean decommissioning will take 200 years.
The Japan Center for Economic Research, a conservative think tank, estimates the cleanup bill could come to 50 trillion to 70 trillion yen (USD460 billion to 640 billion).
One of the biggest problems involves groundwater that seeps into the reactor buildings, mixes with cooling water and becomes radioactive.
TEPCO has been trying to limit water contamination ever since the accident, creating a mile-long “ice wall” of sunken, frozen soil around the reactors to keep water out, and another concrete wall to prevent it from reaching the ocean.
In 2016, TEPCO admitted that the ice wall was only slowing – but not preventing – water seeping in. Today, around 100 cubic metres of groundwater still become contaminated at Fukushima every day, and one million tonnes of radioactive water is stored in 994 huge tanks around the site.
A new tank fills up every seven to 10 days, and storage space is running out.
TEPCO had initially claimed that 26 out of 27 radioactive nuclides had been removed from that water through an advanced treatment system, living only tritium behind.
But after reports by Kyodo news and local media, and a protest by fishermen, the company acknowledged last September that 80 per cent of the tanks contain water that is still contaminated with dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium-90, a bone-seeking radionuclide that causes cancer.
Launching his successful bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the situation at Fukushima was “under control”. One of his predecessors, Junichiro Koizumi said the water crisis showed that was a lie.
8 years on, contaminated water remains big problem for Fukushima clean-up, Japan Today, Mar. 10 By Kiyoshi Takenaka OKUMA
Eight years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, a fresh obstacle threatens to undermine the massive clean-up: 1 million tons of contaminated water must be stored, possibly for years, at the power plant.
Last year, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said a system meant to purify contaminated water had failed to remove dangerous radioactive contaminants.
That means most of that water – stored in 1,000 tanks around the plant – will need to be reprocessed before it is released into the ocean, the most likely scenario for disposal.
Reprocessing could take nearly two years and divert personnel and energy from dismantling the tsunami-wrecked reactors, a project that will take up to 40 years.
It is unclear how much that would delay decommissioning. But any delay could be pricey; the government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of plant dismantling, decontamination of affected areas, and compensation, would amount to 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion), roughly 20 percent of the country’s annual budget.
Tepco is already running out of space to store treated water. And should another big quake strike, experts say tanks could crack, unleashing tainted liquid and washing highly radioactive debris into the ocean.
Fishermen struggling to win back the confidence of consumers are vehemently opposed to releasing reprocessed water – deemed largely harmless by Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) – into the ocean.
“That would destroy what we’ve been building over the past eight years,” said Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations. Last year’s catch was just 15 percent of pre-crisis levels, partly because of consumer reluctance to eat fish caught off Fukushima.
SLOW PROGRESS
On a visit to the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant last month, huge cranes hovered over the four reactor buildings that hug the coast. Workers could be seen atop the No. 3 building getting equipment ready to lift spent fuel rods out of a storage pool, a process that could start next month.
In most areas around the plant, workers no longer need to wear face masks and full body suits to protect against radiation. Only the reactor buildings or other restricted areas require special equipment.
Fanning out across the plant’s property are enough tanks to fill 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Machines called Advanced Liquid Processing Systems, or ALPS, had treated the water inside them. …..
The utility has promised to re-purify the water if the government decides that releasing it into the ocean is the best solution. It is the cheapest of five options a government task force considered in 2016; others included evaporation and burial.
TEPCO and the government are now waiting for another panel of experts to issue recommendations. The head of the panel declined an interview request. No deadline has been set.
……… STORING INDEFINITELY
Another option is to store the water for decades in enormous tanks normally used for crude oil. The tanks have been tested for durability, said Yasuro Kawai, a plant engineer and a member of Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, a group advocating abandoning nuclear energy.
Each tank holds 100,000 tons, so 10 such tanks could store the roughly 1 million tons of water processed by ALPS so far, he said.
The commission proposes holding the tritium-laced water, which has a half life of 12.3 years, in tanks for 123 years. After that, it will be one thousandth as radioactive as it was when it went into storage.
No Safe Dose – Berkeley
Although experts caution that tanks would be vulnerable to major quakes, Japan’s trade and industry minister, Hiroshige Seko, said the committee would consider them anyway.
“Long-term storage … has an upside as radiation levels come down while it is in storage. But there is a risk of leakage,” Seko told Reuters. “It is difficult to hold the water indefinitely, so the panel will also look into how it should be disposed of eventually.”
Space is also a problem, said Akira Ono, TEPCO’s chief decommissioning officer. By 2020, the utility will expand tank storage capacity by 10 percent to 1.37 million tons, and about 95 percent of total capacity will probably be used by the end of that year, he said.
“Tanks are now being built on flat, elevated spots in stable locations,” Ono said. But such ideal space is getting scarce, he added.
‘Recovery Olympics’ moniker for 2020 Games rubs 3/11 evacuees the wrong way, Japan Times, BY MAGDALENA OSUMISTAFF WRITER, 11 Mar 19,This is the fourth in a series examining how the northeast and the nation are progressing with efforts to deal with the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.ISHINOMAKI, MIYAGI PREF. – The town of Rifu on the outskirts of Sendai is set to host 10 soccer matches during the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in line with the organizers’ plan to tout the games as the “Recovery Olympics.”
For Rifu, expectations are high the 2020 Games will draw international attention and lure more tourists, as Tohoku’s tourism sector struggles to recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2001. As part of the plan, an arena in Miyagi Prefecture is set to get a face-lift for the games. …….
The central government hopes the quadrennial sports event will serve as a platform to show that the nation has recovered from the disasters.
But recovery wasn’t one of the original themes for the Tokyo Games. The concept was added when it became apparent Tokyo wouldn’t be able to secure all the venues needed in the capital or its vicinity. When organizers thus turned to the disaster-hit prefectures of Miyagi and Fukushima, which will host the softball and baseball games, the recovery spin was born, with officials saying the event would contribute to reconstruction.
Moreover, the reconstruction plan for the Tohoku region is expected to end when fiscal 2020 closes in March 2021, putting an end to various central government subsidies that helped both victims and municipalities.
“The Tokyo 2020 Games have become a goal for us to show the region has recovered,” said Yasuki Sato, a Miyagi Prefecture official tasked with coordinating the preparations.
As someone who believes he was deceived by the nuclear power lobby during his time as prime minister, he sees it as his duty.
“Just as Confucius said, for someone not to correct themselves after making a mistake — that is a true mistake.”
As Japan’s leader, Junichiro Koizumi backed nuclear power. Now he’s a major foe.WP By Simon Denyer, Akiko Kashiwagi contributed to this report.March 10 TOKYO— With his shock of white hair, his love for Elvis and his reputation as a maverick, Junichiro Koizumi was a burst of color in the sober, dark-suited world of Japanese politics more than a decade ago.
Today, Koizumi has come out of retirement to join a battle against the entrenched business and political interests he had tangled with in the past. A man known for his simple catchphrases has a new one to impart: “Zero nuclear power.”
Eight years after the March 11, 2011, nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Koizumi is back in the spotlight, trying to harness the public’s growing distrust of nuclear power and rid his country of an industry he once promoted as prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
His reversal on nuclear power reflects a wider reconsideration across Japan after the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.
A February 2018 poll by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper found 61 percent of respondents against the nation’s nuclear power plants being restarted and 27 percent in support.
“Momentum is building,” Koizumi said in an interview. “I am getting a strong response. It’s only a matter of time.”
Embarrassed by his own role in advocating nuclear power, Koizumi says he has learned from his mistakes. But Japan’s establishment remains firmly behind nuclear plants, even as other nuclear critics often point out the dangers posed by Japan’s quakes and tsunamis, a word Japan gave the world.
“The disaster brought a severe crisis, but we can turn crisis into opportunity. We can manage ourselves with renewables,” he said. “Take Germany, for example. They saw the disaster in Japan and changed their energy policy. But of all countries, Japan has not changed. It’s truly incomprehensible.”
Japan shut down all of its 54 reactors after the Fukushima catastrophe. Explosions in three reactors sent a cloud of radioactive dust across vast swaths of northeastern Japan and forced 165,000 people to flee their homes.
But since Shinzo Abe was reelected prime minister in 2012, his government has been on a mission to get the nuclear power industry back on its feet.
Nine reactors have already been restarted, six more applications to restart have been approved by a new, nominally independent Nuclear Regulation Authority, and the government wants nuclear power to contribute 20 percent to 22 percent of the nation’s energy by 2030.
….A damning report by an independent parliamentary panel in 2012 concluded that the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was “profoundly man-made,” caused by a disregard of the risks of earthquakes by an industry determined to preserve the illusion that nuclear power was absolutely safe.
Instead of supervising the nuclear power industry, METI colluded with it, the report said. It said the risks of nuclear power were downplayed in a culture of “reflexive obedience” and a “reluctance to question authority.”
…… why are elected politicians so determined to press ahead? The answer, Koizumi asserted, lies in those same vested interests he has spent the best part of his career fighting.
……. So much money has also been invested in the industry that there is a reluctance to write investments off. But Koizumi says nuclear power is neither economic nor necessary. The country, he noted, survived without it for two years without a single blackout.
……. Other voices of criticism struggle to be heard.
Shigeaki Koga, an energy industry expert, says his career was sidelined at METI after he expressed doubts about the safety of nuclear power, until he was ultimately forced to resign. He has since emerged as a leading public critic of nuclear power.
Kunihiko Shimazaki, one of Japan’s leading seismologists, warned of the risks of earthquakes and tsunamis along the country’s northeast coast for years before the disaster struck, but his reports were generally ignored or buried. After March 2011, he served for two years with the nuclear regulator, and spoke out forcefully, but his term was not renewed.
……….. As someone who believes he was deceived by the nuclear power lobby during his time as prime minister, he sees it as his duty.
“Just as Confucius said, for someone not to correct themselves after making a mistake — that is a true mistake.”
Eight years after triple nuclear meltdown, Fukushima No. 1’s water woes show no signs of ebbing, Japan Times, BY RYUSEI TAKAHASHI, STAFF WRITER, 8 Mar 19,
This is the first in a series examining how the northeast and the nation are progressing with efforts to deal with the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.
OKUMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – Nearly a thousand storage tanks are scattered across the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, holding a staggering 1.1 million tons of treated water used to keep its melted reactor cores cool while they rust in the sun.
Plant manager Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., or Tepco, plans to build more of the gigantic tanks to hold another 0.27 million tons, which is roughly the equivalent of 108 Olympic-size swimming pools. The new tanks are expected reach full capacity in four or five years
Each tank takes seven to 10 days to fill and holds between 1,000 to 1,200 tons of liquid, Tepco officials told reporters during a tour in February organized by the Japan National Press Club. It’s been eight years since Fukushima No. 1 suffered three core meltdowns triggered by tsunami following the Great East Japan Earthquake, but the situation with the tanks may be a sign Tepco has yet to get the facility under control.
“Space isn’t a big issue at this point in time, but five or 10 years from now, after we’ve started removing the melted fuel debris, we’re going to need facilities to store and preserve it,” Akira Ono, president of Fukushima No. 1 Decontamination and Decommissioning Engineering Co., a Tepco unit overseeing the decommissioning process, said at a news conference in January.
The water issue is eating up both space and resources, but a solution is unlikely to emerge anytime soon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report in November that said the physical constraints of the site “leave little room for additional tanks” beyond what Tepco has allocated.
The IAEA report went on to say it believes storing tainted water in “above ground tanks . . . can only be a temporary measure while a more sustainable solution is needed” and a “decision on the disposition path should be taken urgently.”
Beyond 2020, Tepco has not allocated any additional space for holding treated water on the site and has no plans to do so at this time. The utility said the tanks will likely become a headache if they remain at the plant.
“At that point, we may need to rethink how we’re using the space,” Ono said.
Eight years ago when the monstrous tsunami hit, the entire plant lost power and reactors 1, 2 and 3 lost coolant, causing their cores to overheat. The fuel rods consequently melted, dripping molten fuel that burned through their pressure vessels and pooled in their primary containment vessels. Reactors 1, 3 and 4 then suffered hydrogen explosions.
Tepco must inject water into the reactors indefinitely to keep the melted cores cool, but water tainted by contact with the fuel and associated debris has been leaking from the damaged containment vessels and into the basements of the reactor buildings, where tons of fresh groundwater flows in daily through holes in their damaged walls.
The contaminated water is pumped out and passed through a filtration device called the Advanced Liquid Processing System — which is supposed to remove every radionuclide except for tritium — and stored in the tanks.
Tepco has taken steps to limit the amount of groundwater seeping into the reactor buildings, including wells to intercept and divert it and an underground ice wall around the buildings to block any inflow.
According to Tepco, however, about 83 tons of water are seeping into the reactor buildings each day. Although this is an improvement from some 300 tons in previous years, Tepco must keep making more tanks.
At the moment, Tepco is waiting for a government panel’s advice on what to do with the tritium-tainted water. The panel is considering five disposal methods: ground injection, sea discharge after diluting the tritium concentration, discharging it as steam, discharging it as hydrogen, and solidification followed by underground burial……
there are concerns about the impact an ocean discharge may have on fisheries still trying to recover from the nuclear crisis.
Fishing in the area has resumed on a trial basis and workers still perform radiation checks before shipping their hauls to fish markets. The waters off Fukushima Prefecture are at the confluence of two ocean currents — the Oyashio from the north and Kuroshio from the south — which make for the good fishing grounds that have been a vital part of the agrarian prefecture’s economy.
Eight years after the meltdowns, however, residents are still struggling to convince the world that fish from the area are safe to eat. Many believe public perception alone will cripple Fukushima’s fishing industry anew if the tainted water is expelled into the ocean — even if the tritium has been reduced to below international standards.
Trust issues continue to plague Tepco after it claimed ALPS was filtering every radionuclide from the cooling water except tritium. Last August it came to light that the allegedly treated water still contained other dangerous contaminants, including iodine, cesium and strontium. Some of the concentrations were above current safety limits.
This has further angered Fukushima residents and made it harder to get their approval for dumping the water held by the tanks into the sea.
During a public hearing hosted by METI in August, participants urged the government and Tepco to consider finding an off-site location to store the water instead of discharging it into the ocean.
“Without a national debate and without the understanding of Japanese citizens or the countries importing our products, as a fisherman of Fukushima Prefecture, I strongly oppose the plan to discharge the treated water into the ocean,” Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Association, told the hearing.
“To release the ALPS-treated water into the ocean, at this time, would deal a disastrous blow to the fishermen of Fukushima and rob them of their hard work and motivation,” he said…….
Meanwhile, the crippled plant faces other serious challenges — including how to extract the molten fuel…….
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s coastal location leaves it open to tsunamis
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