Showdown in apathetic Fukushima finds justice minister scrambling for survival
Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki of the Liberal Democratic Party (left) campaigns in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 3. Right: Democratic Party candidate Teruhiko Mashiko speaks in Fukushima on June 6.
FUKUSHIMA – Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki is feeling threatened.
With his electoral district in Fukushima Prefecture reduced to one seat from two for Sunday’s Upper House election, he needs to beat Democratic Party rival Teruhiko Mashiko, something he failed to pull off the last time around.
If the Cabinet minister loses, it will end his career and deal a humiliating blow to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. And with Mashiko enjoying joint backing from opposition parties including the DP, the Fukushima race represents a showdown between the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito ruling bloc and the opposition.
Addressing supporters last Sunday, Mashiko couldn’t have described the dynamics more succinctly.
“My opponent is no longer the justice minister. It’s Prime Minister Abe,” he said. “He’s really desperate. He’s been doing everything he can to unseat me. What an honor.”
Abe, for his part, has bent over backward to help Iwaki, joining him on the campaign trail right after the Diet closed for the summer on June 1 and sending a string of big-name politicians to Fukushima to campaign for him.
Failed strategy
Abe is said to have appointed the third-term Upper House lawmaker as justice minister in October to ensure re-election. He apparently felt he couldn’t afford to lose LDP influence in the sensitive constituency that was heavily damaged by three reactor meltdowns in March 2011.
But past election results show that Iwaki is facing an uphill battle on Sunday — the first since Fukushima became a single-seat constituency in 2013.
Not once in the past three Upper House elections has Iwaki defeated his main challenger, always finishing second. The last time he and Mashiko competed was in 2010, when Fukushima was a two-seat constituency. Mashiko won by 3,000 votes.
To make things worse, Iwaki’s appointment as justice minister appears to have backfired.
Earlier this year in the Diet, he was repeatedly driven into a corner as opposition lawmakers blitzed him with highly technical legal questions. His struggle to respond was televised nationwide. He majored in law at Sophia University.
“We all share the understanding that Iwaki, as a member of the current administration, cannot lose. If he does, the damage to the Abe administration will be immense,” his secretary, Izuru Onodera, said.
Lingering nuclear woes
While the election is being played as a vote on Abenomics, the two candidates in Fukushima are localizing the agenda.
In recent campaign trips in the prefecture, most of their speeches have focused on how they would steer Fukushima’s recovery. Five years into the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, about 100,000 residents still remain displaced within and outside the prefecture.
While Iwaki trumpets the LDP’s decisiveness and legislative advantage, Mashiko is vowing to decommission all 10 reactors in the prefecture.
Standing before a crowd of supporters in Koriyama on Monday, Iwaki stressed that the LDP is the party that can steer Fukushima toward recovery and accused the DP of engaging in an “irresponsible tie-up” with the radical Japanese Communist Party.
“We cannot entrust the future of Fukushima to a mishmash opposition coalition fraught with ideological differences,” Iwaki said. “As a Cabinet member, I have the responsibility to facilitate government efforts to reconstruct Fukushima.”
Mashiko, meanwhile, reaffirmed his pledge to decommission the 10 reactors and denounced Iwaki’s ambiguous stance on the matter. Although the LDP’s Fukushima chapter has vowed to dismantle the reactors, Iwaki is apparently refusing to back that pledge publicly to avoid contradicting Abe’s pro-nuclear central government.
During campaigning activities Monday, Iwaki told The Japan Times that he will “respect” the Fukushima chapter’s stance on the reactors, before speeding off in a van.
Voter apathy
Neither candidate appears to have made much of an impression with voters.
Fukushima resident Yuriko, 54, who only wished to be identified by her first name, said she will vote but might cast a blank ballot in protest.
“I feel it will make no difference no matter who wins,” the company employee said when approached on a street in Koriyama. She said she doesn’t even know who is running.
A 25-year-old man who also requested anonymity said he only cares about one topic — employment. Even the issue of Fukushima’s recovery hardly struck a nerve.
“Everyone was affected by the disaster to a different degree and I wasn’t much of a victim. As a Fukushima resident, I’m mildly curious about how the reconstruction effort proceeds, but that topic doesn’t motivate me into any sort of action,” he said.
Expectations are even dimmer among those whose lives were upended by the calamity.
On a recent visit to a remote temporary housing unit in Nihonmatsu, evacuees from the town of Namie near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant were downright apathetic about the election.
They are too preoccupied with their uncertain future, not to mention the daily inconveniences of the evacuation, to even think about the poll, they said. Not a single supermarket or hospital exists near the housing unit, forcing them to drive long distances to complete even the smallest part of their daily routine.
Nobuhiro Fujita, 68, a former farmer and carpenter, said he wasn’t interested in Sunday’s election.
“All I can think about is my own life. I don’t know what is going to happen to my house in Namie. I don’t have time to wonder about the election,” he said.
Although he wants to go home, Fujita, who suffers from numbness in his leg, said he is stuck in limbo.
“I do want to return to Namie, but even if I do, my rice field has been left unattended for too long and is now ruined. With my bad leg, I can’t do any carpentry work, either.”
A 48-year-old company employee and father who asked to be identified only by his surname of Yoshida, also took a dim view of the historic race.
“After being left like this for five years and counting, I can’t really trust the candidates to put their words into action, no matter what they say they will do for us,” he said.
“I’m resigned.”
Don’t Say Meltdown: Japan’s Coverup and US’ ‘Radioactive Russian Roulette’
Japan finds itself in the midst of a fresh scandal, as the president of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has publicly admitted that the company staged a cover-up during the disastrous Fukushima nuclear meltdown in March of 2011.
Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear spoke with Kevin Kamps, from Beyond Nuclear, about the coverup and its possible implications for the US.
Kamps documented how TEPCO knew about the meltdown from the beginning, and understated the true extent of the damage. “They clearly did conceal the three meltdowns for two months,” he said. “They [TEPCO] knew really within the first day or two that they had a meltdown, and they simply covered it up for as long as they could.”
Kamps pointed out a recent report in which the company attempted to dodge responsibility for their duplicity. “What’s interesting now is this panel report is trying to shift the blame from Tokyo Electric to the serving government at the time, which was the Democratic Party of Japan. They’re trying to blame Prime Minister [Naoto] Kan and his chief spokesman Yukio Edano, both of whom have really come out swinging against this report, saying it’s preposterous [and that] they made no order to TEPCO to not use the word ‘meltdown,’ but that’s what TEPCO’s trying to say, that’s it’s the government’s fault.”
Kamps explained that, at first, TEPCO spokespeople described the meltdown as “‘core damage,’ in that the solid nuclear fuel, the fuel rods in the core of these three reactors, had suffered damage, had released some of their radioactive activity out into the environment.”
“But a meltdown indicates that you’ve lost complete control of the integrity of the nuclear fuel cores, they have literally melted down because of the hellish thermal heat levels and have formed a molten mass that can then burn its way through the reactor pressure vessel and even the containment structures, into the earth. And they knew, by their own regulations and their own instruction manuals, that 5% or more core damage equals a meltdown, and they knew that, in unit 1, they had 55% core damage, they knew in unit 3 they had 25% damage, they knew this within a couple days.”
Loud & Clear host Brian Becker asked Kamps if TEPCO is aware of what happened to the cores. Kamps replied, “They still don’t know where the cores are. Tokyo Electric optimistically assumes that they are still located within containment structures, which are obviously damaged or even destroyed, because of the levels of radioactivity that have escaped and is still escaping. They don’t know for sure.”
Kamps noted the drastic impact that nuclear reactor meltdowns have on the environment in contaminating soil and groundwater, and that similar incidents are possible in the US because the same technology is still being used. “We have 22 reactors in the United States that are of the same design of Fukushima-Daiichi,” he said. “We have another eight that are closely related, so that’s 30 of these radioactive Russian-roulette games going on in the United States.”
http://sputniknews.com/asia/20160706/1042496696/japanese-company-covers-up-meltodown.html
Writing History and the Legacy of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident
Official histories are always full of omissions and strategic ambiguities. History is, after all, written by those in power.
Howard Zinn, among many others, taught us (i.e., the governed or the “people”) the importance of documenting alternative histories that reflect the perspectives and empirical realities experienced by everyday people and by marginalized authorities whose unwillingness to parrot official narratives leads to their censure.
The official Fukushima narrative is predicated upon four assumptions, all of which I call false:
1. The plant is officially in cold shutdown and radiation contamination is contained
2. No one died from the disaster and long term deaths are likely to be trivial
3. Fukushima produced less environmental contamination than Chernobyl
4. The indisputable ocean contamination produced by Fukushima is now gone
Assumptions 2 and 4 are evident in this article published by the Japan Times declaring that the Pacific Ocean is back to “normal”:
Pacific Ocean radiation back near normal after Fukushima: study. AFP-JIJI Jul 4, 2016 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/04/national/science-health/pacific-ocean-radiation-back-near-normal-after-fukushima-study/#.V3vWMKKYK5o
SYDNEY – Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, according to a study released Monday….
…Although no one is recorded as having died as a direct result of the nuclear accident, tens of thousands of people were uprooted, with many still unable to return home because of persistent contamination. Much could be said about this article but in this post I will focus on the assumption that levels of radioactivity in ocean water are returning to normal.
That statement can be both true and not-true simultaneously. The radionuclides may no longer be suspended in tested waters but that doesn’t mean they are gone and that the Pacific ocean eco-system has returned to “normal.”
In fact, it is empirically and logically impossible for most of the radionuclides from Fukushima in the ocean to have disappeared.
Radionuclides have a known decay pattern. Iodine-131 has an approximately 8 day half-life while Cesium-137 has an approximately 30 year half-life. Americium-241 has a 432 year half life.
While the Iodine-131 is probably gone, the Iodine-129 (with a 15.7 million half-life) is still there and contributing to radioactive contamination already present from dumping, atmospheric testing and nuclear accidents. As Wikipedia explains, “Most 129I derived radioactivity on Earth is man-made, an unwanted long-lived byproduct of early nuclear tests and nuclear fission accidents.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine
Radionuclides with long half-lives contaminating the ocean are STILL THERE, still in the ocean, but perhaps they are no longer suspended in surface waters but rather have been absorbed by biological life or are suspended at lower levels in the water column.
BIOACCUMULATION
Official authorities can make the claim that the water has returned to “normal” (whatever that is after decades of dumping of waste and the effects of testing and accidents) because they are not examining how radionuclides have been sequestered in biological life.
In 2014, I conducted a historical search for bioaccumulation using the JSTOR index, focusing on the radionuclides known to present the majority sources of radiation derived from nuclear fallout: 241Am, 90Sr, 137Cs, 238Pu, 239Pu, and 240Pu (DOE, 1997, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp156-c6.pdf).
Search results from the JSTOR index indicate that bioaccumulation was first studied in the late 1950s by scientists looking at the dispersion of radionuclides in the environment. They tended to be funded by government: for example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory funded research on bioaccumulation of radionuclides in “the marine environment.”
The research cited below finds clear evidence of bioaccumulation of a wide range of radionuclides by aquatic life: Marine organisms concentrate cesium 3-30 times over the levels in the surrounding water, although concentration can be much higher, by two or three orders of magnitude (Polikarpov 1966; Wolfe, 1971), especially in animals situated at the top of the food chain, as modeled by Alva and Gobas for killer whales (Hat Tip Enenews poster but forgot source [sorry]):
Alva, Juan & Gobas, Frank (2011, October 4). Modeling the Bioaccumulation Potential of Cesium-137 in a Marine Food Web of the Northwest Pacific, Canada[9080]. Paper presented at SETAC North America 32nd Annual Meeting in Session 498: Environmental Radiation: What Do We Know and What Should We Know for Assessing Risks http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233869698_Modeling_the_Bioaccumulation_Potential_of_Cesium_137_in_a_Marine_Food_Web_of_the_Northwest_Pacific_Canada
Other highly chemically and radiologically genotoxic radionuclides, such as Americium and Plutonium, are highly BIO-AVAILABLE. For example, research conducted by Fisher, Bjerregaard and Fowler (1983) found that Plutonium, Americium, and Californium concentrate readily in marine plankton:
Nicholas S. Fisher, Poul Bjerregaard and Scott W. Fowler (1983). Interactions of Marine Plankton with Transuranic Elements. 1. Biokinetics of Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, and Californium in Phytoplankton. Limnology and Oceanography, 28(3) (May, 1983), pp. 432-447 Published by: American Society of Limnology and Oceanography. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2835825
“The results suggest that Pu, Cf, and Am would associate with marine particles which could transport them vertically, transfer them into the marine food web, or both”Page 445; Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the reactive transuranic elements (e.g. Pu, Am, Co are likely to reach an equilibrium between surfaces of suspended particles and ambient seawater and that the adsorptive properties of particles scavenging these (and other) metals are governed by organic coatings (Balistrieri et al. 1981).
Phytoplankton particles with associated transuranics may sink slowly, transporting these elements to deeper waters and sediments (Bowen et al. 1980; Santschi et al. 1980), or they may be ingested by herbivores in surface waters. Once ingested, radionuclides may be assimilated into food chains (Lowman et al. 1971; Koide et al. 1981) or defecated in the form of fast-sinking fecal pellets (Higgo et al. 1977).
It is interesting that radionuclides such as Cesium and Americium bioaccumulate in different areas of organisms, and at different concentrations with Americium levels higher than Cesium, as illustrated by this study:
Metian, Marc, Warnau, Michel, Teyssie, Jean-Louis, Bustamante, Paco (2011) Characterization of Am-241 and Cs-134 bioaccumulation in the king scallop Pecten maximus: investigation via three exposure pathways. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 102(6), 543-550 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2011.02.008
[Abstract] In order to understand the bioaccumulation of Am-241 and Cs-134 in scallops living in sediments, the uptake and depuration kinetics of these two elements were investigated in the king scallop Pecten maximus exposed via seawater, food, or sediment under laboratory conditions. Generally, Am-241 accumulation was higher and its retention was stronger than Cs-134.
This was especially obvious when considering whole animals exposed through seawater with whole-body concentration factors (CF7d) of 62 vs. 1, absorption efficiencies (A(0l)) of 78 vs. 45 for seawater and biological half-lives (T-b1/2l) of 892 d vs. 22 d for Am-241 and Cs-134, respectively. In contrast, following a single feeding with radiolabelled phytoplankton, the assimilation efficiency (AE) and T-b1/2l of Cs-134 were higher than those of Am-241 (AE: 28% vs. 20%; T-b1/2l: 14 d vs. 9 d).
Among scallop tissues, the shells always contained the higher proportion of the total body burden of Am-241 whatever the exposure pathway. In contrast, the whole soft parts presented the major fraction of whole-body burden of Cs-134, which was generally associated with muscular tissues. Our results showed that the two radionuclides have contrasting behaviors in scallops, in relation to their physico-chemical properties.
Through absorption and adsorption radionuclides in the water column are readily assimilated by phytoplankton, whereupon they are either consumed – resulting in biomagnification – or fall towards the bottom of the ocean. A significant percentage (estimated at about a 1/2 of cellular load) of Pu and Am accumulated by plankton fall to intermediate depths, where they remain suspended, resulting in the “enrichment of waters of intermediate depth with Pu or Am lost from sinking algal cells” (Fisher et al, 1983).
In other words, the radioactive and chemically toxic radionuclides are still present but are not suspended in surface waters. They are interred in biological life!
FUKUSHMA IS A CONTAMINATED-WATER PRODUCING MACHINE AND IT AINT’ OVER YET
TEPCO has been dumping radioactive water deliberately for years. I have documented this claim in my 2013 and 2016 monographs (see Nadesan Fukushim and the Privatization of Risk 2013 AND Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy, and Ecological Sustainability 2016).
Moreover, Fukushima is STILL leaking contaminated water into the ocean. That water is highly radioactive, as evidenced by rising ground water contamination at the plant. That is why TEPCO built the ice-wall, which has not been successful according to company officials.
You can see documentation of rising ground water contamination here:
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ground-water-contamination-rising-at.html
There exists good evidence that part of the reactor fuel from units 1-3 is located in the underground river that empties into the Pacific Ocean:
This scenario will result in endless contamination of the ocean with rising levels of Strontium contamination, according to the German Risk Studies.
The “German Risk Study, Phase B” found that a core meltdown accident could result in complete failures of all structural containment, causing melted fuel to exit the reactor foundation within five days (cited in Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari 1989).
Moreover, the study found that even in the event of an intact building foundation, passing groundwater would be in direct contact with fuel, causing leaching of fission products. Strontium leaches slower than cesium. A follow-up German study, “Dispersion of Radionuclides and Radiation Exposure after Leaching by Groundwater of a Solidified Core-Concrete Melt,” predicted that strontium contamination levels would rise exponentially years after a full melt-through located adjacent to a river (Bayer, Tromm, & Al-Omari, 1989).
The study’s experimental conditions are roughly similar to Daiichi’s site conditions, including groundwater emptying into an adjacent river, whereas Daiichi is physically situated above an underground river emptying into the sea.
The study predicted concentrations of Strontium-90 in river water would spike relatively suddenly, but maintain extraordinarily high levels of contamination for years: “The highest radionuclide concentration of approx. 1010 Bq/m3 is reached by Sr-90 after some 5000 days.”
CONCLUSIONS
The alternative narrative I have written here is precisely that, alternative. I am a peon. I have no authority to speak as a “social scientist,” as I have been reminded by trolls and certain polemical scientists over the last 5 years.
However, my lack of official expertise does not mean I am wrong.
The contradictions and elisions marring the official narrative will become more glaring with time, as Pacific life continues its inexorable collapse, offering fodder for those like myself who persist in challenging the genocidal authority of the nuclear-security state with alternative narratives, which lack official legitimacy but are no less true because of that deficiency.
REFERENCES
Bayer, A., Al-Omari, I., & Tromm, W. (1989). Dispersion of radionuclides and radiation exposure after leaching by groundwater of a solidified core-concrete (No. KFK-4512). Available http://www.irpa.net/irpa8/cdrom/VOL.1/M1_97.PDF
Gesellschaft fur Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) Deutsche Risikikostudie Kernkraftwerke, Phase B Report GRS-89 cited in Bayer, A., Al-Omari, I., & Tromm, W. (1989). Dispersion of radionuclides and radiation exposure after leaching by groundwater of a solidified core-concrete (No. KFK-4512). Available http://www.irpa.net/irpa8/cdrom/VOL.1/M1_97.PDF
“TEPCO Announced Record Cesium Level Found in Groundwater Beneath Fukushima Levee” The Asahi Shimbun (February 14, 2014): http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201402140041). The article said that cesium found in groundwater under a coastal levee near unit 1 spiked from 76,000 Becquerels per liter on February 12, 2014 to 130,000 Becquerels per liter on February 13, reaching the highest level of cesium ever detected at that location
Record strontium-90 level in Fukushima groundwater sample last July. (2014, February 7). The Japan Times. Available http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/07/national/record-strontium-90-level-in-fukushima-groundwater-sample-last-july/#.U2XIw17K3yh
Source : Majia’s Blog
https://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2016/07/writing-history-and-legacy-of-fukushima.html
A Massive Campaign of Disinformation to Trivialize Fukushima Health Risks
I am being nice, I did not add a 4th monkey to this picture, to represent the selling-out “scientists”….
5 years have past, we are now submerged by a massive campaign of lies, spinned propaganda, that everything is now fine about Fukushima. Some articles spreading plain nonsense, lies without any fear to be accused to be lying. Some our friends even sharing those B.S. articles on their FB pages or FB group without even having the intelligence to write an introduction to those articles, exposing the lies of those articles.
As an example, this article “Scientists Find New Kind Of Fukushima Fallout” where they say: ““He cautions that any internal radiation from particles containing cesium-137 would be much less than the doses people got from external radiation, which would come from cesium-137 and other radioactive elements in the soil or the environment around them.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/samlemonick/2016/06/30/scientists-find-new-kind-of-fukushima-fallout/#636c0d6a4126
Which is absolute bullshit, nonsense, a lie, It completely ignores what science and multiple studies have already well established, that internal radiation is 100 times more harmful than external radiation.
Also the recently released report from the conclusions of a major 5 year review, with multi-international authors who are all working together as part of a Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) Working Group. The report is being presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Japan.
http://phys.org/news/2016-06-fukushima-oceans-years.html#jCp
Which says: ” Uptake by marine life. In 2011, around half the fish samples in coastal waters off Fukushima had radiocesium levels above the Japanese 100Bq/kg limit, but by 2015 this had dropped to less than 1% above the limit. High levels are still found in fish around the FDNPP port. High levels of 131I were measured in fish in April 2011, but as this has a short radioactive half-life, it is now below detection levels. Generally, with the exception of species close to the FDNPP, there seem to be little long-term measurable effects on marine life.”
It takes 12 years for the TRITIUM to lose half of its radioactivity and 120 years for it to lose it all, And 30 years and 300 years for CESIUM, and tens of thousands of years to the PLUTONIUM etc But according to their report the Pacific is now clean just after 5 years.
That report also says: “Risk to Humans. The radiation risk to human life is comparatively modest in comparison to the 15,000 lives were lost as a result to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. So far, there have been no direct radiation deaths. The most exposed FDNPP evacuees received a total dose of 70 mSv, which (if they are representative of the general population) would increase their lifetime fatal cancer risk from 24% to 24.4%. However, there are still over 100,000 evacuees from the Fukushima area, and many industries such as fishing and tourism have been badly hit.”
Thus that report is completely ignoring the well proven harmful effects of a constant low dose radiation on human life, and of course completely omitting to talk about the dangers of internal exposure by contaminated food and liquid for the Fukushima population.
When I shared this report on my blog, I wrote an introduction saying: “This report raises certainly a lot of questions about today’s scientific community unbiasedness and independance from governmental and corporated powers.”
A marine biologist came to argue with me on Twitter, reproaching me to not accept science. I answered to him that I do respect science but I won’t stand for bias, for that “science” which is being influenced, bought, twisted or silenced by financial and political interests.
Reuse of radioactive soil feared to trigger illegal dumping
Piles of black bags containing radioactive soil are seen at a temporary storage site in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 11, 2016. The Environment Ministry is set to conduct a demonstration experiment there possibly later this year, in which radiation doses will be measured on mounds using soil generated from decontamination work.
Reuse of radioactive soil feared to trigger illegal dumping
An Environment Ministry decision to allow reuse of radioactively contaminated soil emanating from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in public works projects has prompted experts to warn against possible dumping of such soil under fake recycling.
The ministry formally decided on June 30 to allow limited use of soil generated from decontamination work after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster in mounds under road pavements and other public works projects, as long as the soil contains no more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. The decision was made despite questions raised during a closed meeting of the ministry over incompatibility with the decontamination criteria for farmland soil.
The Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors sets the safety criteria for recycling metals and other materials generated from the decommissioning of nuclear reactors at no more than 100 becquerels per kilogram, and requires materials whose radiation levels exceed that level to be buried underground as “radioactive waste.” The figure of 100 becquerels is derived from the International Commission on Radiological Protection’s standards that annual radiation exposure of up to 0.01 millisieverts poses negligible health risks.
However, the Fukushima disaster has disseminated radioactive materials outside the crippled nuclear plant across far wider areas than expected. Under the special measures law on decontamination of radioactive materials, which was fully put into force in January 2012, waste whose radiation levels top 8,000 becquerels per kilogram is called “designated waste” and must be treated by the government, while waste with radiation levels of 8,000 becquerels or lower can be treated in the same way as regular waste. The figure of 8,000 becquerels comes from the upper limit of annual radiation exposure doses for ordinary citizens under the reactor regulation law, which is set at 1 millisievert. Regarding the double safety standards of 100 becquerels and 8,000 becquerels, the Environment Ministry had earlier explained that the former is for “reuse” and the latter for “waste disposal.”
However, the recent Environment Ministry decision to allow the reuse of contaminated soil in public works projects runs counter to its earlier explanation. The ministry is trying to reconcile that difference by insisting that the radiation levels of tainted soil could be kept under 100 becquerels if mounds using such soil were covered with concrete and other materials to shield radiation. During a closed meeting of the ministry that discussed the matter, some attendants raised questions over inconsistencies with the decontamination criteria for farmland soil.
In April 2011, in the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries restricted rice planting in paddies whose radiation levels topped 5,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil. While the restriction was effective for just one year, the same criteria has been in place for ensuing decontamination, where surface soil of more than 5,000 becquerels is removed and surface soil under that level is replaced with deeper layers.
It is inconsistent to strip away soil of more than 5,000 becquerels while recycling soil with the same level of radiation. However, attendants of the closed meeting never discussed the matter in detail, nor did the issue come up for discussion at an open meeting.
The radioactivity concentration of contaminated soil is higher than that of earthquake debris, whose treatment caused friction across the country on the heels of the Fukushima crisis. Therefore, officials attending an open meeting of the ministry discussed the introduction of incentives for users of tainted soil, with one saying, “Unless there are motives for using such soil, regular soil would be used instead.”
Kazuki Kumamoto, professor at Meiji Gakuin University specializing in environmental policy, criticized the ministry’s move, saying, “There is a high risk for inverse onerous contracts, in which dealers take on contaminated soil in exchange for financial benefits.” There have been a series of incidents involving such contracts, in which waste was pressed upon dealers under the guise of “recycled materials,” such as backfill material called ferrosilt and slag generated from iron refining.
“If contaminated soil was handed over under inverse onerous contracts, there is a risk that such soil could be illegally dumped later. Reuse of tainted soil would lead to dispersing contamination,” Kumamoto said.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160705/p2a/00m/0na/012000c
How about a bit of Fukushima sake?
Cups of sake are distributed to visitors at a tourism facility in Fukushima on May 18, after Fukushima Prefecture won the most awards at the Annual Japan Sake Awards.
Nuclear disaster a ‘springboard’ for Fukushima sake brewers
FUKUSHIMA–After a change in preference among the nation’s imbibers, Fukushima Prefecture rapidly gained ground as the top sake-producing area in Japan.
And then the nuclear disaster struck in March 2011.
But the triple meltdown that forced entire towns to flee and scared consumers off Fukushima products ended up fueling the rise of sake brewers in the prefecture.
Using its traditional system of public-private cooperation, Fukushima Prefecture not only took over the sake-brewing crown from Niigata Prefecture, the northeastern prefecture has also widened its lead.
Any sympathy that sake brewers had for their Fukushima rivals after the nuclear disaster has now been replaced by competitive words in the field.
Inokichi Shinjo, 65, chairman of the Fukushima Prefecture Sake Brewers Cooperative, could not hide his delight on May 18 while seeing the results of the Annual Japan Sake Awards.
“This achievement will help establish Fukushima’s reputation as the best sake-producing area in the country,” Shinjo said.
In the contest, in which the quality of young sake is judged, 18 products from Fukushima Prefecture were among the 227 brands that won the gold prize for having exceptionally good quality.
It was the fourth straight year for Fukushima to be the top prefecture in terms of number of gold prize-winning products in the competition.
The Annual Japan Sake Awards started in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), and sake from Hiroshima and Hyogo prefectures, as well as other traditional sake-producing areas, dominated the competition until the 1980s.
In the 1990s, more consumers turned to “tanrei karakuchi” (clean and dry) sake. Niigata Prefecture, known for its tanrei karakuchi products, placed first for four consecutive years starting in 1998.
Most of the sake entered in the contest are specially brewed for the occasion. But Fukushima Prefecture has overwhelmed Niigata Prefecture in the Sake Competition, where commercially available sake are evaluated.
Last year, 20 breweries in Fukushima Prefecture entered the Sake Competition.
The prefecture topped the list, with 18 brands from Fukushima, including Aizu Chujo, Nagurayama, Sharaku, Aizu Homare and Hiroki, among the 103 products selected as winners. None of the products from the 13 breweries from Niigata Prefecture were chosen.
HOW DID FUKUSHIMA TOP NIIGATA?
Fukushima-brewed sake rose in popularity after drinkers switched to “hojun amakuchi” (mellow and sweet) sake, noted for a natural flavor of rice, from tanrei karakuchi.
The turning point came in 1994, when the Juyondai sake brewed in Yamagata Prefecture, north of Fukushima Prefecture, was marketed and introduced in a magazine. The sake immediately won high praise, and prompted many brewers to produce hojun amakuchi sake, particularly in other parts of the Tohoku region.
The “Fukushima-style” system, in which citizens and public officials work together, was established to improve the quality of sake through the effective use of advanced brewing technologies.
The characteristics of rice for sake change each year, depending on the climate.
Under the system, the Aizu-Wakamatsu technical assistance office of the prefecture-run Fukushima Technology Center analyzes the year’s rice in advance and advises each brewer on the best way to produce sake.
“The mechanism enabled breweries to produce high quality sake unlike in the past,” said Kenji Suzuki, 54, head of the office’s brewing and food division.
Kenji Hiroki, 49, president of the Hiroki Shuzo Honten brewing company in Aizu-Bange, which makes Hiroki, one of the most famous sake brands in Fukushima Prefecture, said the system has also helped to prevent a trend that has hampered other traditional businesses: a lack of successors.
“Young people in their 20s and 30s have returned to local breweries to take over their parents’ businesses,” Hiroki said.
He also noted that many sake products brewed in Fukushima used to be traded at very low prices.
“The trend encouraged brewers to share their techniques to improve their circumstances together,” Hiroki said. “Even the (2011) nuclear crisis worked as a springboard for us.”
NUCLEAR DISASTER EFFECT
After the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, companies in the prefecture had difficulty selling products because of persistent fears of radiation contamination.
The prefecture’s sake brewers cooperative has been emphasizing the safety of Fukushima-made sake, saying “both rice for sake and water are carefully examined according to strict standards.”
Such thorough checks also helped to ensure the rice and water were top quality.
Noted Fukushima breweries started joint advertising campaigns to sell their products in Tokyo. The publicity not only helped to increase sales but also spread the word about high quality of Fukushima Prefecture’s sake.
Rivals in other parts of Japan have been inspired by the efforts of Fukushima sake makers.
“Brewers from Fukushima Prefecture always point out each other’s problems when they meet, and it provides me with a good stimulus,” said Tadayoshi Onishi, 41, president of the Kiyasho Shuzo brewery in Mie Prefecture, which produces the popular Jikon brand.
Although sake production has generally declined around Japan, Fukushima brewers’ production is 10 percent higher than the level before the nuclear accident.
Shuichi Mizuma, 66, representative director of the Niigata Sake Brewers Association, expressed confidence that his prefecture would reclaim the title of “the kingdom of sake.”
“The tide often changes,” he said.
Koichi Hasegawa, 60, president of Hasegawasaketen Inc., a major sake retailer in Tokyo, said Fukushima Prefecture’s top position is not secure.
“People will soon be fed up with hojun amakuchi sake,” he said. “Shochu recently made waves as well. And Japanese consumers are frighteningly swayed by the latest trends.”
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201607050001.html
Japanese photojournalist documents nuclear crises in Chernobyl, Fukushima
Ryuichi Hirokawa, a Japanese photojournalist, has documented the world’s two worst nuclear crises — in Chernobyl three decades ago, and the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
With this year marking the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Hirokawa, 72, has released a photo book titled “Chernobyl and Fukushima” compiling his reports on the lives of victims of the catastrophes.
After years of reporting on the two disasters, Hirokawa said he has concluded that nuclear power “is not something human beings can handle or control.”
Born in 1943 in a Japanese community in Tianjin, China, Hirokawa was the first non-Soviet journalist to enter the Exclusion Zone following the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April 1986.
He has since visited the area more than 50 times and established in April 1991 a foundation for children suffering from leukemia, thyroid cancer and other diseases caused by exposure to a high level of radiation, in response to requests from their mothers.
The foundation has provided these children with medicine and medical equipment and also built recuperation facilities in Ukraine and Belarus.
One of the photos from Hirokawa’s book shows a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl named Tanya lying on a bed at her home. She was 4 years old and lived in a town close to the Chernobyl plant when the disaster occurred.
A decade later, she suddenly felt agonizing pain all over her body. Her thyroid cancer had spread, including to her brain.
“I could do nothing for the girl. All I could do was watch her die,” Hirokawa said. “It was that feeling of helplessness that drove me to support sick children there.”
A quarter of a century later, another devastating nuclear disaster occurred at Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings’ Fukushima No. 1 plant.
When Hirokawa rushed to the scene shortly after the calamity started, the needle of his radiation detector went off the scale in surrounding areas, including in the town of Futaba and the village of Iitate.
“It was shocking because it never happened even in Chernobyl,” he said.
Maps comparing radiation levels in Chernobyl and Fukushima, which he attached at the end of his book, show that radiation levels detected in still inhabited areas in Fukushima are almost the same as those in ruined Chernobyl villages.
“I can’t tolerate the Japanese government’s policy of allowing children to stay in areas contaminated by such high levels of radiation,” he said.
He has also worked to halt operations of the Sendai nuclear plant in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, in the wake of a series of strong earthquakes in Kyushu in April.
Hirokawa sent a petition to Kyushu Electric Power Co. calling on the utility to immediately halt the Sendai plant, which is the only nuclear plant operating in Japan.
Tepco admits molten nuclear fuel is transferred in multiple places of Reactor 2
Tepco admitted the molten fuel is transferred to multiple places in Reactor 2 by 6/30/2016.
Tepco had been implementing the muon scanning investigation with KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization).
Tepco describes the research result as it is highly likely that major part of the molten nuclear fuel remains in the bottom of the reactor with structures of the inside of the reactor. They also detected a part of the molten fuel on the wall of the reactor. This means the molten fuel was separated and remaining in different locations. Tepco did not mention the percentage of the detected fuel.
Tepco did not identify the location either so it is not clear if the fuel remains inside of the Reactor Pressure Vessel or its outer structure, Primary Containment Vessel.
http://nstimes.com/archives/64086.html
Ministry green-lights reuse of radioactive soil for public works projects
The Ministry of the Environment formally decided on June 30 to allow limited use of radioactively contaminated soil in public works projects, but sidestepped estimates from a closed-door meeting that the soil may have to be monitored for up to 170 years.
The ministry decided that soil could be reused for embankments as long as the radioactivity of cesium it contained did not exceed 8,000 becquerels per kilogram. Under the Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors, contaminated soil can be used freely if the level of radioactivity is 100 becquerels per kilogram or less.
It earlier emerged that the ministry calculated in a closed-door meeting that some soil would have to be monitored for 170 years — well beyond the life of embankments. However, in its basic policy the ministry simply stated, “Safety and administration methods will be examined during verification processes in the future.”
It is expected that up to around 22 million cubic meters of waste contaminated with radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster will end up piled up at an interim storage facility straddling the border between the Fukushima Prefecture towns of Okuma and Futaba. The central government plans to dispose of the waste for good outside the prefecture by March 2045, but hopes to reuse as much of it as possible to reduce the amount.
Under the ministry’s basic policy, reuse of the soil will be limited to public works where the body in charge of administering it is clearly established, and the radiation dose at a distance of 1 meter is no more than 0.01 millisieverts per year. When using contaminated soil with a level of radioactivity of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram, it would be placed under at least 50 centimeters of cover soil, which would then be covered with sand and asphalt.
During the closed-door meeting, it was calculated that it would take 170 years for the radioactivity of tainted soil to naturally decrease from 5,000 to 100 becquerels per kilogram — much longer than the durability of soil mounds, at 70 years.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160701/p2a/00m/0na/006000c
Fukushima and the oceans: What do we know, five years on?
This report raises certainly a lot of questions about today’s scientific community unbiasedness and independance from governmental and corporated powers.
A major international review of the state of the oceans 5 years after the Fukushima disaster shows that radiation levels are decreasing rapidly except in the harbour area close to the nuclear plant itself where ongoing releases remain a concern. At the same time, the review’s lead author expresses concern at the lack of ongoing support to continue the radiation assessment, which he says is vital to understand how the risks are changing.
- The accident. The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 led to the loss of power and overheating at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants (FDNPP), causing extensive releases of radioactive gases, volatiles and liquids, in particularly to the coastal ocean. The radioactive fall-out on land is well-documented, but the distribution of radioactivity in the seas and onto the wider oceans is much more difficult to quantify, due to variability in the ocean currents and greater difficulty in sampling.
- Initial release of radioactive material. Although the FDNPP accident was one of the largest nuclear accidents and unprecedented for the ocean, the amount of 137Cs released was around 1/50th of that released by the fall out of nuclear weapons and 1/5th that released at Chernobyl. It is similar in magnitude to the intentional discharges of 137Cs from the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant Sellafield.
- Initial fallout. The main release of radioactive material was the initial venting to the atmosphere. Models suggest that around 80% of the fallout fell on the ocean, the majority close to the FDNPP. There was some runoff from the land, peaking around 6 April 2011. There is a range of estimates of the total amount of 137Cs release into the ocean, with estimates clustering around 15-25 PBq (PetaBecquerel, which is 1015 Becquerel. One Becquerel is one nuclear decay per second). Other radioisotopes were also released, but the focus has been on radioactive forms of Cs given their longer half-lives for radioactive decay (134Cs = 2 yrs; 137Cs = 30 yrs) and high abundance in the FDNPP source.
- Distribution in water. Cs is very soluble, so it was rapidly dispersed in the ocean. Prevailing sea currents meant that some areas received more fall-out than others due to ocean mixing processes. At its peak in 2011, the 137Cs signal right at the FDNPP was tens of millions of times higher than prior to the accident. Over time, and with distance from Japan, levels decrease significantly. By 2014 the 137Cs signal 2000km North of Hawaii was equivalent to around six times that remaining from fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests from the 1960’s, and about 2-3 times higher than prior fallout levels along the west coast of N. America. Most of the fallout is concentrated in the top few hundred metres of the sea. It is likely that maximum radiation levels will be attained off the North American coast in the 2015-16 period, before declining to 1-2 Bq per cubic metre (around the level associated with background nuclear weapon testing) by 2020. Sea-floor sediments contain less than 1% of the 137Cs released by the FDNPP, although the sea-floor contamination is still high close to the FDNPP. The redistribution of sediments by bottom-feeding organisms (more common near the coast) and storms is complex.
- Uptake by marine life. In 2011, around half the fish samples in coastal waters off Fukushima had radiocesium levels above the Japanese 100Bq/kg limit, but by 2015 this had dropped to less than 1% above the limit. High levels are still found in fish around the FDNPP port. High levels of 131I were measured in fish in April 2011, but as this has a short radioactive half-life, it is now below detection levels. Generally, with the exception of species close to the FDNPP, there seem to be little long-term measurable effects on marine life.
- Risk to Humans. The radiation risk to human life is comparatively modest in comparison to the 15,000 lives were lost as a result to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. So far, there have been no direct radiation deaths. The most exposed FDNPP evacuees received a total dose of 70 mSv, which (if they are representative of the general population) would increase their lifetime fatal cancer risk from 24% to 24.4%. However, there are still over 100,000 evacuees from the Fukushima area, and many industries such as fishing and tourism have been badly hit.
http://phys.org/news/2016-06-fukushima-oceans-years.html#jCp
NRA casts doubt on TEPCO ice wall project at Fukushima nuke plant
In March this year, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) began work on a subterranean wall of frozen soil mainly on the seaward side of the disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, with most of another wall on the landward side begun in June. The purpose of the barriers is to stop the flow of groundwater into the plant buildings — a problem that has resulted in enormous volumes of contaminated water. However, three months since the freezing process began, TEPCO is ominously silent on the ice wall’s effectiveness, and the plan is quickly approaching its do-or-die moment.
The problem itself is simply put. Every day, some 850 metric tons of groundwater flows down from the mountains and under the Fukushima No. 1 plant property. Some of the water collects in the shattered reactor buildings, coming into contact with melted nuclear fuel and other radioactive substances and becoming heavily contaminated. TEPCO needs to stop the groundwater from getting into these buildings.
In September 2015, the utility started digging a chain of wells called subdrains to catch and drain the groundwater. This is just one of many countermeasures tried so far, including the ice wall. Work on the latter began in June 2014, and eventually 1,568 pipes were sunk along a 1.5-kilometer perimeter around the No. 1-4 reactors and turbine buildings. The plan calls for coolant chilled to minus 30 degrees Celsius to be pumped into the pipes, freezing the soil around them to a depth of about 30 meters and creating a solid barrier.
“Ice walls are often used in public works projects, but the one at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is by far the largest ever tried,” says Mie University associate professor Kunio Watanabe. When building a tunnel, for example, ice walls are used to prevent groundwater from flowing into the construction area after the bedrock has been fractured. In Japan, the method has been used on some 600 such projects since 1962. The largest ice wall ever created was about 37,700 cubic meters, during construction of a subway line in Tokyo. The Fukushima plant ice wall is nearly double that, at about 70,000 cubic meters.
TEPCO tested the method in April 2015, freezing one section of the subterranean wall. To stop contaminated groundwater from flowing into the ocean, the utility started injecting coolant in the pipes on the seaward side and part of the landward wall in late March in an attempt to create about an 820-meter-long subterranean barrier — or 55 percent of the eventual total length. Saying that the temperatures were dropping according to plan, the utility started freezing operations on most of the remaining landward section at the beginning of June, and now only seven sections totaling 45 meters on the landward side are left.
TEPCO has stated that “the ice wall is going according to plan.” However, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has pointed out that the volume of groundwater collecting in waterfront wells has not decreased, casting doubt on TEPCO’s claim.
At a meeting this month, NRA committee member Toyoshi Fuketa stated, “This is not a wall in a true sense. Perhaps it’s more akin to a bamboo screen, with groundwater trickling through the gaps.” TEPCO has responded that the quick flow of the groundwater likely makes it hard to freeze the soil in some places, and it is proceeding with work to create cement barriers to slow the water down.
There are also worries that the large volumes of highly contaminated water already collecting in the reactor and turbine buildings could leak into the environment if only the landward ice wall proves effective and the seaward wall has gaps. While TEPCO is looking to expand the ice wall, the NRA has not altered its stance that it must first confirm the effectiveness of the freezing operations already undertaken. The ice wall has already cost 34.5 billion yen in government funds.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160630/p2a/00m/0na/006000c
Scientists Find New Kind Of Fukushima Fallout
THIS IS ABSOLUTE B.S. , THIS IS DISINFORMATION, SPREADING NONSENSE!
It completely ignores what science and multiple studies have already well established, that internal radiation is 100 times more harmful than external radiation: “He cautions that any internal radiation from particles containing cesium-137 would be much less than the doses people got from external radiation, which would come from cesium-137 and other radioactive elements in the soil or the environment around them.”
A Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) employee, wearing a protective suit and a mask, walks in front of the No. 1 reactor building at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Some of the radioactive material that escaped the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in 2011 took a form no one was looking for, scientists have discovered. Now they have to figure out what it means for Japan and for future disasters.
Radioactive cesium—specifically, cesium-137—is one of the waste products of nuclear power. It’s also one of the most dangerous substances in a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
One reason why is that the type of radiation it emits is particularly damaging to our bodies. Another is that cesium-137 dissolves in water. That means it can spread quickly through the environment and get into the plants, animal and water we consume.
Until now, scientists and disaster experts thought cesium-137 fallout from the Fukushima reactor meltdown was in this soluble form. That guided their cleanup efforts, like removing and washing topsoil, and helped them map where radiation might spread.
It turns out that wasn’t entirely true. Satoshi Utsunomiya, a geochemist at Kyushu University in Japan, announced over the weekend that he had found cesium-137 in a new form: trapped inside tiny glass particles that spewed from the damaged reactors. These particles are not water soluble, meaning we know very little about how they behave in the environment—or in our bodies. He found the particles in air filters placed around Tokyo at the time of the disaster.
According to Utsunomiya, high temperatures inside the malfunctioning reactors at the Fukushima plant melted and broke down the concrete and metal in the buildings. Silica, zinc, iron, oxygen and cesium-137 fused into millimeter-wide glass microparticles, each about the size of a pin’s head. Lifted into the atmosphere by the fires raging at the plant, they then blew about 240 kilometers southeast to Tokyo.
“As much as 89% of all of the cesium [in Tokyo] was in fact in these particles. It’s profound,” says Daniel Kaplan, a geochemist at Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. He attended Utsunomiya’s lecture describing the findings at the ongoing Goldschmidt Conference in Yokohama, Japan.
Kaplan says similar particles were observed near the Chernobyl reactors after the explosion there in 1986. But they were only seen within about 30 kilometers; beyond that, cesium-137 was only observed in rain.
The discovery could change how we model fallout from nuclear disasters. Kaplan explains that it might add a new variable to the models we use to predict where radioactive particles will go and how long they’ll stay there. It might also change how we treat cesium-137 during cleanup and monitoring.
It is probably still too early to say what this means for people living in Tokyo or elsewhere in Japan. Kaplan thinks the amount of radiation they received probably hasn’t changed. Whether they got it from water-soluble cesium-137 or from these particles, the radiation dose was the same—and for Tokyo residents, that number was within the margin of safe exposure.
The bad thing about water-soluble cesium-137 is that it can easily get into our bodies from soil by way of plants and animals. This new discovery alleviates that concern. But it opens up a new possibility we know little about.
“If the particles are in the air—because that’s how they get to Tokyo—then when you are aspirating this air you should find them in some ways on your lungs,” says Bernd Grambow, who studies nuclear waste chemistry as head of the SUBATECH laboratory in France.
Water-soluble cesium-137 that makes it into our lungs passes into the bloodstream and is peed out within a few weeks. But Grambow says we really don’t know what happens to insoluble cesium-137-containing particles if they get in our lungs. Some of them are likely coughed out or removed by our lungs’ other normal processes. As for the rest, Grambow says we don’t know how long they might remain.
He cautions that any internal radiation from particles containing cesium-137 would be much less than the doses people got from external radiation, which would come from cesium-137 and other radioactive elements in the soil or the environment around them. “We don’t know very much, and my point is only that they should be studied,” Grambow says.
Utsunomiya’s next step is finding out how much of the cesium-137 that ended up in soils in Tokyo and elsewhere was in these glass particles. That way, researchers will be able to better understand how cesium made its way out of the reactor and into the environment.
How far up the ladder did the #Fukushima cover up really go?
Tokyo – About the only country today where a public apology is still accepted is in Japan, and quite honestly, this writer has always thought life would be so much more simpler if that’s all it took to right a profound wrong.
That is what took place last week when CTV News reported Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) President Naomi Hirose acknowledged in public the company had delayed its disclosure of the meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Hirose’s apology on the cover-up was to be expected after the news came out that an investigation had found Hirose’s predecessor had instructed staff to avoid using the term, “meltdown” after the disaster in March 2011. “I would say it was a cover-up,” Hirose told a news conference. “It’s extremely regrettable.”
Hirose said he would take a 10 percent pay cut and another executive will take a 30 percent pay cut for one month each to show how sincere the apology really is. I hope all the children with thyroid abnormalities and all those displaced refugees from Fukushima Prefecture are willing to accept a one-month pay reduction by TEPCO executives as compensation for their troubles.
An investigative report submitted by three company-appointed lawyers on June 16, 2016, said TEPCO’s then-President Masataka Shimizu instructed officials to avoid using the specific description “meltdown” under alleged pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office, although the company’s attorneys say they have no direct evidence of this.
So TEPCO officials used the less damaging term “core damage” for two months, leaving the Japanese population and the rest of the world to think the disaster wasn’t that bad. Boy, was the world ever fooled? Of course, former officials at the Prime Minister’s Office have denied there was any pressure exerted on TEPCO, but what else would they be expected to say?
It wasn’t until May 2011 that TEPCO officials used the scary “M” word reports the Associated Press, and that was because computer simulations showed the fuel in one reactor had melted to the point it had fallen into the bottom of the primary containment chamber, and the other two reactor’s cores had melted far worse than previously thought.
It is interesting that every investigation so far had put the blame for the Fukushima disaster squarely on the shoulders of TEPCO. The first independent investigation authorized by the National Diet in its 66-year history was commissioned in 2011. That investigation reported: “It was a profoundly man-made disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response. “Governments, regulatory authorities and Tokyo Electric Power lacked a sense of responsibility to protect people’s lives and society.”
The big question for me is simple. Did Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put enough pressure on TEPCO officials that the disaster was downplayed to the world? Abe’s government has not been very forthcoming about anything to do with Fukushima over the past five years, as this writer has reported previously in Digital Journal.
And owing to the fact that Mr. Abe has been adamant in saying Japan needs its nuclear power plants, anything he says about Fukushima I would take with a grain of salt. Digital Journal reported that on March 6, this year at a press conference, Abe insisted that safety of nuclear plants was the government’s “top priority.” He also said the government would “not change its policy” in which reactors that meet the new standards can be restarted. So, yes, I think he probably did speak sternly with TEPCO officials in March 2011.
Outgoing Fukushima plant chief says long road still ahead
The crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has seen improvements over the past three years but it will continue to be a difficult project during its decades-long decommissioning, the outgoing chief of the plant said Thursday.
Akira Ono, who headed the plant for three years until Thursday, said improvements include removing spent fuel rods from the damaged reactor building 4 and reducing the amount of groundwater seeping into reactor buildings, which then mixes with highly contaminated water.
“As for the working environment, workers can now have hot meals at a new, large rest station. In March, we were also able to widen the areas where they can work with their regular clothes” as radiation levels have decreased, Ono said.
Under the high radiation atmosphere, workers have to wear protective suits and full-face masks that are uncomfortable and make it hard to communicate with each other.
But the plant still needs to ensure facilities and equipment are operating more smoothly, and also further improve working conditions over the next two to three years in order to handle decommissioning work expected to take 30 to 40 more years, Ono said.
The Fukushima No. 1 plant faced an electric outage this week, which shut down some of the cooling facilities for its underground ice walls.
Ono said that the decommissioning work will also face other challenges, including identifying the exact location of melted fuel rods.
Shunji Uchida, who will be heading the plant from Friday, said he will spearhead efforts to create a strong foundation for the long decommissioning task ahead.
Ono takes on a new role at the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation, a body funded by the government and regional utilities to research technologies for decommissioning work.
Japan approves guidelines of reusing soil from Fukushima for public works
TOKYO, June 30 (Xinhua) — Japan’s Ministry of the Environment approved Thursday guidelines of reusing contaminated soil from the Fukushima nuclear disaster for national public works despite public concerns over safety.
According to the guidelines, Japan would allow tainted soil generated from the Fukushima decontamination work with the radioactive cesium level lower than a certain limit varying from 5,000 to 8,000 becquerels per kilogram according to different uses, to be reused in national public works.
The tainted soil, while reused, shall be covered with clean earth, concrete or other materials, so as to make the amount of radiation sustained by residents living nearby less than 0.01 mSv a year after the construction is completed, according to the guidelines.
The reuse is aimed to cut the amount of radioactive soil from Fukushima disaster to be shipped to other prefectures for final disposal, according to the ministry.
The decision was made despite public concerns that contaminated materials would still leach out as roads or other public works in which the tainted soil is used might decay or collapse during earthquakes, floods or other national disasters or fail over time.
Earlier estimates by a working group of the ministry showed that it would take as long as 170 years before the soil’s radiation levels drop to legal safety standards, while public works such as roads are often durable for just 70 years.
Under the Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors, the safety standards for reusing materials generated from the Fukushima decontamination work are less than 100 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/article_xinhua.aspx?id=330465
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- April 2026 (317)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 