State to lift evacuation order for most of Fukushima village of Iitate from March 31
FUKUSHIMA – The central government has said it is considering plans to lift its evacuation order for most of the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, effective March 31.
The village is nearby the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which experienced a meltdown disaster in 2011.
Yosuke Takagi, state minister of economy, trade and industry, conveyed the plan to Mayor Norio Kanno and other officials of the Fukushima Prefecture village at a meeting on Wednesday.
The government plans to make an official decision on the lifting shortly, along with a program to be launched in July to allow residents to stay overnight at their homes as part of preparations for permanent returns.
The evacuation order will be lifted for areas with less radiation from the three reactor meltdowns at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. plant, which was damaged in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
As of the end of May, 5,917 residents in 1,770 households, or over 90 percent of the overall population of the village, were registered as citizens of such areas.
The government plans to finish decontamination work on houses by the end of this month and on farmland, roads and other facilities by the end of this year.
Visiting the village’s temporary office in the city of Fukushima on Wednesday, Takagi said the government aims to get the residents to return home by “resolving a series of challenges one by one.”
Kanno said, “We still have a long way to go and have to rebuild our village in a new form.”
The evacuation order will remain in place for highly contaminated areas, where 268 residents in 75 households are registered as local citizens.
DPJ leaders deny urging cover-up of Fukushima meltdown
Naomi Hirose, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., speaks in Tokyo on June 16 after an investigation team released its report on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Former government leaders vehemently rejected suggestions in a report that they were pulling the strings behind a suspected meltdown cover-up when the Fukushima nuclear disaster was unfolding in 2011.
The report, compiled by an investigation panel commissioned by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled nuclear power plant, said Masataka Shimizu, who was TEPCO president at the time of the accident, instructed employees not to use the term “meltdown,” leading to a delay in the official announcement.
But the report also implied that Shimizu was acting on orders from high up in the government.
Yukio Edano, who was chief Cabinet secretary of the Democratic Party of Japan-led government when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis on March 11, 2011, described the report as preposterous.
“As far as I know, it is unthinkable for government officials back then to ask TEPCO to do such a thing,” Edano, now the secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Party, told reporters on June 16.
He accused the panel of merely skimming the surface of the matter and sidestepping the truth behind the instructions to avoid using the term “meltdown.”
“It is utterly irresponsible for the panel to say that it did not uncover that (Shimizu) was instructed by who and what,” he said.
The third-party panel of legal experts said in the report released on June 16 that it can be assumed that Shimizu understood that he was requested by the prime minister’s office to seek its approval beforehand if the company were to announce the “meltdown.”
The panel also said it would be difficult to conclude that TEPCO’s delay in declaring the meltdown was a “deliberate cover-up.”
“Since TEPCO released information on radiation levels inside the reactors and other related data at that time, just not using the term meltdown cannot be described as an act of a deliberate cover-up,” the panel said.
TEPCO declared the meltdown at three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in May 2011, two months after it occurred.
According to the report, Shimizu entered the chief Cabinet secretary’s office, which is located at the prime minister’s office building, by himself on March 13, 2011. The following day, Sakae Muto, vice president of TEPCO, explained the conditions of the reactors at the plant.
During the news conference, Shimizu handed a memo to Muto through a TEPCO public relations official, telling him not to use the word “meltdown” on the instructions of the prime minister’s office, according to the panel.
Naoto Kan, who was prime minister at the time of the disaster, denied giving the instruction to TEPCO.
“I myself have never given directions to TEPCO not to use the expression ‘meltdown,’” Kan, a member of the Democratic Party, said in a statement.
One reason for the lack of clarity in the report is that Shimizu, who was interviewed twice for a total of four hours, said, “I do not remember very well” with regard to who gave what instructions.
Another TEPCO employee interviewed by the panel said Shimizu “was under tremendous pressure and must not have a detailed recollection.”
The panel interviewed about 60 former and current TEPCO officials but no government officials and bureaucrats who were involved in dealing with the crisis.
“Our authority to investigate is limited, and it is difficult (to uncover the entire truth) in such a short time,” said Yasuhisa Tanaka, the lawyer who headed the investigation.
Tanaka and another panel member, Zenzo Sasaki, a former prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, were also in charge of the third-party investigation into the accident conducted in 2013.
That investigation, based on interviews of TEPCO officials, came under fire for “only arbitrarily presenting TEPCO’s argument that is convenient to the company.”
The findings by the latest panel showed TEPCO officials looking into the nuclear disaster were aware of Shimizu’s order not to use “meltdown,” but TEPCO’s in-house investigation team did not include it in its report in 2012, apparently believing it was not significant enough to mention.
“TEPCO’s efforts to share information inside the company were insufficient,” Tanaka said. “It lacked consideration for local governments, which should have been top priority.”
The revelation that Shimizu ordered the avoidance of “meltdown” fueled feelings of distrust toward TEPCO among local governments hosting TEPCO nuclear power plants.
“We are still in this stage of the investigation even five years after the accident,” said Toshitsuna Watanabe, mayor of Okuma, which co-hosts the crippled Fukushima plant.
Hirohiko Izumida, governor of Niigata Prefecture, home to TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, called for a further investigation to reveal the whole picture of the Fukushima disaster.
“We need to step up efforts to uncover what has not been sufficiently investigated before,” he said. “TEPCO, as an organization, should make a sincere response without hiding anything.”
The latest panel was established in March at the request of the Niigata prefectural government’s technology committee, which aims to determine why TEPCO waited until May 2011 to announce the triple meltdown.
TEPCO initially said it did not have the criteria for defining and determining a meltdown.
But it announced in February this year that the company “found” an in-house manual that explained whether a meltdown was taking place.
Utility Head Blamed for Late Mention of Fukushima ‘Meltdown’
An outside investigation team appointed by the operator of Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant said Thursday that an instruction from the company’s then-president to avoid using the term “meltdown” delayed the full disclosure of the status of three reactors.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. described the condition of the three reactors as less serious “core damage” for two months after a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant.
The panel of three TEPCO-commissioned lawyers said the company used the milder term despite knowing that the damage far exceeded its meaning, because of the instructions by then-President Masataka Shimizu. The report said he was apparently under pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office, but that the panel did not find direct evidence of that.
TEPCO reported to the authorities on March 14, 2011, that the damage, based on a computer simulation, involved 25 to 55 percent of the fuel but did not say it constituted a “meltdown,” the report said. The company’s internal manual defined a “meltdown” as a core condition with damage exceeding 5 percent of the fuel.
In May 2011, TEPCO finally used the description after another computer simulation showed fuel in one reactor had almost entirely melted and fallen to the bottom of the primary containment chamber, and that the two other reactor cores had melted significantly.
TEPCO has been accused of softening its language to cover up the seriousness of the disaster. But the investigation found TEPCO’s delayed acknowledgement did not break any law.
In the 70-page report, the lawyers said Shimizu instructed his deputy not to use the word “meltdown” during news conferences immediately after the crisis when officials were peppered with questions about the reactor conditions. TEPCO’s vice president at the time, Sakae Muto, had used the phrase “possibility of meltdown” until March 14, 2011.
Video of a news conference that day shows a company official rushing over to Muto when he was about to respond to a question about the conditions of the reactors, showing him a memo and hissing into his ear, “The Prime Minister’s Office says never to use this word.”
Yasuhisa Tanaka, the lawyer who headed the investigation, said interviews of 70 former and current TEPCO officials, including Muto and Shimizu, showed that Muto had planned to use the word “meltdown” until he saw the memo, which has since not been found.
“Mr. Shimizu’s understanding was the term ‘meltdown’ could not be used without permission from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Tanaka told a news conference at TEPCO headquarters. “The notion that the word should be avoided was shared company-wide. But we don’t believe it was a cover-up.”
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s nuclear regulatory unit at the time of the accident, was also reluctant to use the word. Two spokesmen were replaced between March 12 and 13, 2011, after suggesting meltdowns had occurred.
Government and parliamentary investigations have suggested officials, seeking to play down the severity of the Fukushima Dai-ichi crisis, resisted using the term. Tanaka said his investigation, which did not interview government officials, could not track down what exactly happened between Shimizu and the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Prime Minister’s Office has denied putting any pressure on TEPCO and the safety agency over language. But previous investigations of the accident show it demanded they coordinate with the office and unify approaches before making any announcement.
TEPCO has said the delay in confirming the meltdown didn’t affect the company’s emergency response at the plant. Although the reactors have been stabilized significantly, the company is still struggling with the plant’s decades-long decommissioning.
Delays in the announcement of meltdowns surfaced earlier this year in a separate investigation in which TEPCO acknowledged that a company manual had been overlooked, reversing its earlier position that it had no internal criteria for a meltdown. TEPCO has eliminated the definition of a meltdown from the manual that was revised after the Fukushima accident.
Tepco chief likely banned use of ‘meltdown’ under government pressure: report
The president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. during the Fukushima nuclear crisis told employees not to publicly use the term “meltdown,” apparently in response to government pressure, a third party report released Thursday said.
The report, compiled by three lawyers, said it is highly likely the government at the time pressured Masataka Shimizu, then Tepco’s president when the monstrous earthquake and tsunami disabled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, about the utility’s disclosures in the early stages of the crisis.
The report said someone in the government, then headed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party of Japan, was unhappy Tepco had revealed a photo of the blown-up building for reactor No. 1 on March 12 without telling the government in advance.
The Prime Minister’s Office then called Shimizu the same day. After Shimizu returned to Tepco’s Tokyo headquarters, he told his fellow executives that they needed to check with the Prime Minister’s Office whenever disclosing information to the public, according to the report.
The report also said Shimizu sent a note on March 14 to Vice President Sakae Muto, who was overseeing the plant and holding a news conference, to warn him not to say meltdown.
“Considering this fact, it is presumable that the Prime Minister’s Office requested Shimizu to be careful about admitting to a meltdown in public,” the report said.
The panel thought this was a critical point that required further investigation but was unable to track down a specific bureaucrat who made such a request. Yasuhisa Tanaka, who headed the panel, said it conducted hearings with 60 Tepco employees but did not talk to anyone from the government side.
Tepco did not acknowledge that a reactor meltdown had occurred until May 15, 2011 — two months after the fact.
Asked whether Tepco was intentionally covering up the meltdowns, Tanaka said that was probably not the utility’s intention at the time.
“Looking at the situation back then, we think it was difficult for Tepco to use the term meltdown because even the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency couldn’t use it” due to apparent government pressure, Tanaka said.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was Japan’s nuclear watchdog at that time.
The panel spent about three months investigating why Tepco could not publicly reveal the meltdowns occurred earlier than it did.
In February, nearly five years after the crisis, Tepco announced it should have declared the meltdowns earlier, citing the existence of a company manual that listed what constitutes a meltdown. The manual says that meltdown is a state in which 5 percent or more of the fuel rods is damaged.
As of March 14, 2011, Tepco estimated that 55 percent of the fuel rod assemblies in reactor No. 1 and 25 percent of those in reactor No. 3 were damaged but did not declare that they had melted until May that year.
Niigata Prefecture has been pressuring Tepco to look into why it took about two months for the utility to admit to a meltdown.
Niigata hosts Tepco’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, which the firm desperately wants to restart, but Niigata Gov. Hirohiko Izumida has stressed that he won’t give the green light until the Fukushima crisis has been thoroughly investigated.
Tepco had explained to Niigata that it did not use the term meltdown because there was no clear definition of it. But it found the manual in February, which contradicted the explanation and led to the third-party investigation.
The report said that workers at the Fukushima plant were apparently following the manual but seemed to avoid using the term meltdown, presumably because there was a common understanding within the company not to use it.
Tokyo Electric changed its name in April to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.
Panel: Use of words ‘core meltdown’ banned
A panel report says a former president of Tokyo Electric Power Company had instructed its officials not to use the words “core meltdown” in explaining the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The panel says the president banned use of the words following what he said was an instruction from the prime minister’s office.
TEPCO admitted meltdowns at 3 of its reactors at the Fukushima plant 2 months after the March 2011 accident. It had instead explained that the reactors’ cores had been damaged.
A third-party panel was set up by the utility in March to investigate responses to the accident. It submitted the probe results on Thursday.
The panel report says then-TEPCO president Masataka Shimizu instructed a vice president, who was attending a news conference 3 days after the accident, not to use the words “core meltdown.”
The report says the ban was conveyed to the vice president through a public relations officer and that it was explained as an instruction from the prime minister’s office.
But the panel says it did not carry out investigations of the prime minister’s office and that it could not gain details of the instruction through interviews with Shimizu and other officials. Such details include which member of the prime minister’s office gave it and how.
Another panel set up by the Niigata prefectural government has also been investigating TEPCO’s handling of the accident.
TEPCO earlier told the Niigata panel that it did not use the words “core meltdown” because there is no concise definition of them and that using the words may have given misleading information.
The third-party panel referred to the fact that it took more than 2 months for TEPCO to admit core meltdowns.
The panel report says it cannot say this was improper because TEPCO officials could not determine whether core meltdowns had taken place by inspecting the reactors at that time.
But the report also says core meltdowns were being mentioned within the company at that time and that it could have admitted the phenomena externally.
A panel jointly set up by Niigata Prefecture and TEPCO is expected to carry out further investigations of the matter.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160616_32/
Fukushima 172 Children Thyroid Cancers Distribution
Distribution of 172 children who were 18 years old or younger at the time of the Fukushima nuclear accident and who were diagnosed with thyroid cancer or suspected of thyroid cancer as of March 31, 2016. 131 children out of 172 were confirmed to have thyroid cancer.
Radioactive soil turns up at Fukushima high school
FUKUSHIMA–Highly radioactive soil that should by law be removed by the central government has been left dumped in the corner of a schoolyard here because the construction of a local storage site for waste has been stalled.
Students at the school were not given an official warning that the radioactive soil was potentially hazardous to their health.
When a teacher scooped up soil samples at the site and had their radiation levels measured by two nonprofit monitoring entities–one in Fukushima and another in Tokyo–the results showed 27,000-33,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.
The law stipulates that the central government is responsible for disposing of waste measuring more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.
But as a central government project to build an interim storage site for highly radioactive waste near the nuclear power plant has been stalled, the school appears to have no alternative to indefinitely keeping it in the schoolyard.
Principal Seiichi Takano at Fukushima North High School said the school does not plan to take extra safety measures with regard to the storage of the polluted dirt, saying the waste is not believed to be outright dangerous.
“The prefectural board of education has not set any criteria for us to conclude at what levels of radiation are hazardous to people,” he said.
The fallout is a result of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which unfolded following the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011.
Before the cleanup operation at the school in the city’s Iizaka district on May 24-25, the teacher who took the samples called on school officials to take precautionary measures and issue an alert for students.
“Since it is highly radioactive, we should remind students and staff of the potential danger while taking a step to prevent the spread of polluted dust during cleanup,” said the teacher.
Highly radioactive dirt, which was mixed with tree branches and plants amounted to 20 cubic meters, according to cleanup workers. It was packed in bags and dumped in an area near the parking lot for bicycles used by students.
School officials say they plan to bury the bags by digging deep holes on the school premises to temporarily store them, but they have no idea when they will finally be removed.
The polluted dirt in the latest cleanup first came to the attention of school officials in March when a preliminary survey detected 1.6 microsieverts per hour of radiation at a point 1 meter from the surface of the ground near the bicycle parking lot. The survey is routine before any cleanup gets under way in earnest.
A cleanup operation is conducted with the aim of lowering radiation exposure to below 0.23 microsieverts per hour, a long-term goal the central government has set to limit residents’ annual additional exposure to a maximum of 1 millisievert.
In the previous decontamination operation, the school’s playground was cleaned in August 2011 before classes were resumed for that academic year after a break after the nuclear accident.
A large amount of contaminated soil–far more radioactive than in the current incident–is still buried in the schoolyard for temporary storage.
Cleanup resumed only this spring for the rest of the school premises and its neighborhood in line with a general cleanup plan in Fukushima.
An official with the prefectural board of education said it is not considering additional safety measures concerning the storage of polluted soil kept at the school.
“We are going to ensure safety by taking an approach similar to the existing one before the polluted soil is transported to the interim storage facility,” said a board official.
Fairewinds in the News: Gendai Business Online Feature Article
Gendai Business Online’s top ranked article is an exclusive interview with Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen titled, American nuclear expert warns: “There is a possibility that now in Fukushima recontamination is occurring.” With more than 10,000 likes on Facebook, this Japanese article delves into the truth about nuclear contamination from Fukushima Daiichi as uncovered by Arnie Gundersen during his most recent trip to Japan. Fairewinds, with the help of Japanese translators, provides you with an English translation:
On a mid-February morning, just before the 5th anniversary of the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, a group of young girls in the city of Minami-Soma rode their bikes to school past a shocked and saddened pedestrian. That upset observer was Arnie Gundersen, nuclear reactor expert and Chief Engineer with Fairewinds Associates. Mr. Gundersen has 45 years of experience as a design, operations, and decommissioning nuclear engineer. He has engaged in research of the effects of the meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI) and conducts independent research of the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. Mr. Gundersen is in ongoing conversations with both the US and Japanese media concerning the dangers of nuclear reactors and nuclear power operation. Invited by “Peace News Japan” and several other civil groups, Mr. Gundersen visited the Fukushima prefecture five years after the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi.
“What surprised me at this visit to Japan [his third since the meltdowns] is that the decontaminated area is contaminated again,” Mr. Gundersen said while explaining why it was such as sad shock to witness the girls on their bicycles. “This was not what I had expected. I had thought that we would not find such high doses of radiation in the decontaminated area. But, sadly, our results prove otherwise.”
During his Japan visit, Mr. Gundersen collected samples of dust from the rooftop of Minami-Soma city town hall, the floor mat of a 7-Eleven convenience store, and the roadsides of Minami-Soma city. Although the official data cannot be released before the publication of formal scientific papers, it is evident that high doses of radiation, usually found in nuclear waste, was detected from these samples.
“This means that highly radioactive dust is flying around the city. In other words, the decontaminated land is contaminated again. Little girls are affected by the radiation 20 times as much as adult men. The Japanese government’s standard of 20 mSv is based on exposure assessments for adult men. The girls on their bicycles are actually being affected by a radiation dose equivalent to as much as 400 mSv.”
Mr. Gundersen also pointed out that human lungs are heavily affected by internal exposures to radiation.
“At this visit, I wore a radiation proof mask that can filter out 99.98% of radiation for six hours. I sent my filter to the lab, and they found a high dose of Cesium. But, unfortunately, the Japanese government only cares about the number on a Geiger counter and does not consider the internal exposure. This has resulted in a hazardous downplay of this kind of data and human lungs are affected by the serious internal exposure.”
Why is the recontamination happening? One of the reasons is that the government did not decontaminate thoroughly. Mr. Gundersen witnessed first-hand the poor decontamination of the prefecture.
“In the house I visited, only half of the garden area was decontaminated because only that half fell into the category of a contaminated area. It should not be like that. The other half would be contaminated too. Furthermore, one person discovered highly radioactive dust in their driveway where decontamination had occurred. So, of course, this person notified the related offices but the related offices told them that it was not necessary to decontaminate the driveway again because it had already been done once. It’s unbelievable. This person’s house is located near a ravine and the opposite side of the ravine is designated a non-habitable zone.”
Another reason for recontamination is that the radiation from the mountains are coming back to the city by way of wind and rain. Mr. Gundersen noted the extreme radioactive contamination of the mountains.
“We tracked wild monkeys in the mountains and found a high dose of radiation in their feces. I received the meat of a wild pig as a gift and since I could not bring it back to the US [it is illegal to bring meat back to the United States from Japan], tested the meat on a Geiger counter. The meat showed 120 counts/min. I think that the Japanese government should spend more money to decontaminate the mountains but they don’t appear to have that kind of political will. I also worry that contamination in the rivers is not monitored as rain from the mountains flow down into the rivers.”
Due to the heavy radiation contamination of the mountains, vegetables grown in that area exceed the government’s standard by 1500 Bq. These vegetables were sold at the MichinoEki in Tochigi prefecture, and the bamboo shoot grown in this contaminated region was used for elementary school lunches in Utsunomiya. These school lunches contained more than twice as much radiation as the government’s standard.
Recontamination is happening due to poor decontamination and residents of Kawauchi village in Fukushima prefecture claim that the decontamination in the forests is not enough. However, the government continues to push for the end of people’s relocation and force the return to recontaminated areas.
“If I had a little child, I would never let them live there,” Mr. Gundersen pointedly states.
Mr. Gundersen also found that Tokyo remains contaminated. He measured dust collected from the sidewalk in front of MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) and found a high dose of radiation. That dust is in the air that will be inhaled by the visitors and athletes of the 2020 Olympic Games. Needless to say, the current residents are inhaling it every day. “Mr. Abe should not take the advice from IAEA, MITI and TEPCO seriously,” Mr. Gundersen insists. “Instead, he should have an independent organization conduct research and listen to the advice from them.”
Over double density of Cesium-134/137 as safety limit detected from served school lunch in Utsunomiya city
According to Utsunomiya city government, they detected over double density of Cs-134/137 as safety level from school lunch after serving it to the students this May.
It was bamboo shoot contained in the school lunch of 5/10/2016 as an ingredient.
It was already served and consumed by 560 students and teachers at an elementary school when they obtained the analysis result.
It was 234 Bq/Kg in total of Cs-134/137 (food safety limit is 100 Bq/Kg). The city government comments no health problem was reported related to the contaminated bamboo shoot.
http://www.city.utsunomiya.tochigi.jp/oshiraselist/19078/035312.html
http://www.city.utsunomiya.tochigi.jp/dbps_data/_material_/localhost/gakkoukenkou/20160614.pdf
Test run for Fukushima Daiichi 3 cover installation
Sections of the cover upon the base of the fuel removal machine
In preparation for the installation of a fuel removal machine and a protective cover over unit 3 of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, workers have carried out a practice run of installing roof modules onto the base of the fuel handling machine.
Plans were announced in November 2012 for a cover to be constructed to encase the unit’s damaged reactor building, protecting it from the weather and preventing any release of radioactive particles during decommissioning work.
The section of the reactor building that sheltered the service floor of unit 3 was wrecked by a hydrogen explosion three days after the tsunami of March 2011 – leaving the fuel pond exposed and covered by debris including many twisted steel beams.
The fabrication of the cover has been under way since November 2013 at the Onahama works in Iwaki city. It has been made in sections so that once it is transported to Fukushima Daiichi, the time to assemble it can be shortened and the radiation exposure to the workers on site can be significantly reduced, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said.
A separate structure will be built to facilitate the removal by crane of used fuel from the storage pool. This 54-metre-tall structure will include a steel frame, filtered ventilation and an arched section at its top to accommodate the crane. Measuring 57 metres long and 19 metres wide, it will not be fixed to the reactor building itself, but will be supported on the ground on one side, and against the turbine building on the other.
A detailed replica of a portion of the Fukushima Daiichi site has been created at Onahama to enable workers to train in highly realistic conditions, Tepco said. Training began in May and will continue through June.
On 10 June, workers at Onahama assembled sections of the cover on the base of the specially-made fuel removal machine and slid them into place to make a roof, Tepco announced.
Although the largest pieces of rubble have already been removed, once installed the remotely-operated fuel removal machine will be used to clear the remaining rubble and the 566 fuel assemblies from the unit’s storage pool. The removal of debris and fuel using the system is scheduled to begin in fiscal 2017.
The fuel removed from unit 3 will be packaged for transport the short distance to the site’s communal fuel storage pool, although it will need to be inspected and flushed clean of dust and debris.
Dry run kicks off to build huge dome over damaged reactor
a massive cover will be built over the No. 3 reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant during a practice run at Onahama port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 10.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture–A dress rehearsal is under way to install a huge “hat” over a crippled reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The bulky dome-shaped cover is meant to stop the spread of radioactive material and protect equipment necessary to retrieve 566 bundles of nuclear fuel rods from a storage pool in the No. 3 reactor building.
The simulation is designed to get workers fully drilled so they can set up the cover quickly, reducing the time they are exposed to radiation.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled plant, has started simulating the process at Onahama port in Iwaki.
On June 10, TEPCO invited reporters to witness part of the drill in which portions of the cover measuring about 18 meters high were moved on a rail for about 50 meters.
The No. 3 reactor building, where a meltdown occurred after the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami, still has an extremely high reading of radiation.
TEPCO plans to begin retrieving the fuel rods during fiscal 2017, starting in April next year.
The drill is expected to continue through this month to ensure there are no flaws in the working procedures and safety measures.
TEPCO plans to first decontaminate the No. 3 reactor building and put up shields so that radiation levels drop when the massive cover is installed.
The cover used in the drill will be dismantled and then shipped to the power plant for reassembly and use in the actual retrieval.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201606130029.html
Parts of the cover to be placed over the No. 3 reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are shown during a drill at Onahama port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 10
Tepco admits they concealed the fact of meltdown
On 5/30/2016, a director of Tepco, Anegawa admitted that Tepco concealed the fact of meltdown in 311.
He stated that in the press conference of that day. He says it was obviously meltdown, but Tepco avoided mentioning the term of “meltdown”. He thinks that was concealment.
In Tepco’s internal manual, meltdown is defined to be when over 5% of reactor core is damaged. However Tepco did not mention meltdown even though they knew 55 ~ 70% of the core was damaged by 3/14/2011.
Anegawa commented ordinary engineer would call such a state meltdown even without a manual.
At this moment, third-party inspection committee is investigating Tepco for its arbitrariness.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/tepconews/library/archive-j.html?video_uuid=y3a6i6b2&catid=61697
http://fukushima-diary.com/2016/06/tepco-admits-they-concealed-the-fact-of-meltdown/
Advisory lifted for most of evacuated village of Katsurao close to crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant
Radioactive waste contained in thousands of black plastic bags are placed in rice paddies in the village of Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, where an evacuation advisory was lifted for most of the village Sunday.
FUKUSHIMA – The government Sunday lifted its evacuation advisory for most of Katsurao, a village near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
This is the first time that an evacuation advisory has been lifted for an area tainted with relatively high levels of radiation with annual doses projected at between more than 20 millisieverts and less than 50 millisieverts.
The government’s move allows 1,347 people in 418 households to return home for the first time since the March 2011 disaster at the plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.
But only a few people are expected to return home for the time being due to inconveniences in everyday life in the village. Municipal bus services remain suspended while shops have yet to resume operations.
The village government plans to offer free taxi services for elderly people so that they can go to hospitals and commercial facilities outside the village.
Earlier this month, the village’s chamber of commerce and industry started services to deliver fresh foods and daily necessities to homes.
The evacuation advisory remains in place for 119 people in 33 households from the remaining Katsurao area where annual radiation doses are estimated at over 50 millisieverts.
Evacuation lifted for Fukushima village; only 10% preparing return
Lights appears at only a few houses in Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 11, the eve of the government’s lifting of the evacuation order following the 2011 nuclear accident. Waste from decontamination operations is covered with sheets in the foreground. (Yosuke Fukudome)
The government on June 12 lifted the evacuation order for Katsurao, a village northwest of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but most of the residents appear reluctant to return home.
The lifting of the order covers more than 90 percent of the households in Katsurao. The entire village was ordered to evacuate after the crisis at the Fukushima plant started to unfold on March 11, 2011.
Katsurao is the fourth municipality in Fukushima Prefecture that had the evacuation order lifted, following the Miyakoji district in Tamura, the eastern area of Kawauchi village and Naraha.
Government officials said cleanup and other efforts have reduced radiation levels in Katsurao to a point that poses little problem. The lifting of the evacuation order means that 1,347 people from 418 households, out of 1,466 people from 451 households in Katsurao, can return to their homes to live in the village.
But only 126 people from 53 households, or 10 percent of those eligible to return, have signed up for a program for extended stays in the village to prepare for their return, according to Katsurao officials.
The officials said they believe that many evacuees would rather go back and forth between temporary housing and their homes in Katsurao for the time being, given the situation in the village.
Medical institutions and shops have yet to resume operations in Katsurao. And nearly half of the rice paddies there are being used for the temporary storage of radioactive waste produced in the cleanup operation.
Local officials say they have no idea when the waste can be moved out of the village for permanent storage.
Among the Katsurao residents eligible to return are those with homes in the government-designated “residence restricted zone,” where the annual radiation dose was projected at more than 20 millisieverts and up to 50 millisieverts as of March 2012.
This was the first time evacuees from such a zone have been permitted to return home.
Only the “difficult-to-return zone” carries a higher annual radiation dose.
The government plans to lift evacuation orders for other parts of the prefecture by the end of March 2017, except for the “difficult-to-return zone,” where the annual radiation dose was estimated at 50 millisieverts or higher as of March 2012.
The additional lifting of the evacuation orders would allow 46,000 of 70,000 displaced residents to return to their homes to live.
Demolition work delay hinders Fukushima villagers’ homecoming
Farmer Hidenori Endo is seen at the empty lot where his home used to stand in Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, on June 6, 2016.
FUKUSHIMA — Though the nuclear disaster evacuation order for the Fukushima Prefecture village of Katsurao is set to be lifted on June 12, just 14 percent of demolition work needed before homes can be rebuilt has been completed.
The village currently comprises three evacuation statuses: “areas preparing for the lifting of evacuation orders” with annual accumulated radiation doses of 20 millisieverts or less; “restricted residency zones” with annual accumulated radiation doses from over 20 millisieverts to 50 millisieverts; and “difficult-to-return zones.” As of June 12, the 1,347 residents from 418 households in the former two categories will be allowed to move back home. A return schedule for the 119 residents from 33 households with homes in areas in the last category has yet to be determined as radiation levels remain high.
A survey by the village government showed that nearly 50 percent of residents wished to return home. However, as of June 8 only 126 people, or less than 10 percent of residents, had registered to stay overnight in preparation for their complete return.
The Environment Ministry began demolishing houses in 2012 for those who wanted to rebuild their homes in 11 Fukushima Prefecture municipalities subject to nuclear disaster evacuation orders. Of 347 demolition requests in Katsurao, only 14 percent have been completed. Officials say that field research and paperwork are taking time. Overall, a little less than 40 percent of requested work has been done in all 11 municipalities.
Eight municipalities — including Katsurao and the city of Minamisoma, where evacuation orders are to be lifted on July 12 — are requesting the central government to speed up demolition work as the delay is hindering residents’ return to their hometowns. A senior Katsurao village official says locals have been complaining about the demolition work not advancing as planned.
The Environment Ministry hopes to complete about 90 percent of demolition work by March 2017 by streamlining paperwork, but many residents are expected to be unable to return home even after evacuation orders are lifted, as it will take time to rebuild houses after the demolition is completed.
A ministry official explained that there are people who will be able to return home immediately after the evacuation order is lifted, and that it would be inappropriate to keep the orders in place until all the demolition work is done. At the same time, the official said that the ministry will give those who wish to return priority in the demolition work schedule.
Fukushima University social welfare professor Fuminori Tamba, who helped map out disaster recovery plans for municipalities under evacuation orders, pointed out that the lack of progress in demolitions is problematic, since securing housing is the minimum requirement for residents to return. He added that the availability of housing should be considered when lifting evacuation orders.
Katsurao farmer and cattle rancher Hidenori Endo, 74, applied for demolition of his decaying home and barn last summer. Tired of waiting, Endo paid a private firm nearly 10 million yen to tear down the buildings in May.
“I wanted to go home as soon as possible,” Endo said.
He now lives in a temporary housing unit in the town of Miharu, about 30 kilometers from his Katsurao home. Endo travels an hour by car daily to his property to restart his farming business, but taking good care of his cattle is difficult to do going back and forth. To reboot his business, Endo first needs to rebuild his home. Construction work is to begin this summer, but he does not yet know when the work will be completed, and will have to live in the temporary housing for at least another year.
The central government has set prerequisites, such as infrastructure development and operation of everyday services, for lifting nuclear crisis evacuation orders. However, housing is not included in these criteria.
“Even if I could go shopping, there isn’t much I could do if there was no place to live. It’s not right to be unable to return to home even with the evacuation order gone,” Endo lamented.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160611/p2a/00m/0na/016000c
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