Why doesn’t the news media explore the question of what is happening to Fukushima’s bags of radioactive nuclear debris?
Fukushima evacuation: 340,000 people told to leave over landslide fears after flooding, Mirror UK , By Bradley Jolly, Online journalist, 25 OCT 2019The 143,699 households in Fukushima, Japan, have been evacuated over flooding fears after Typhoon Hagibis lashed across the area. More than 340,000 people were today told to leave their homes over landslide fears due to flooding .
Some 143,699 households in Fukushima, one of the worst affected cities, were evacuated today.
Fukushima Prefecture, the evacuation advisory, fears the danger of landslides remains very high.
Alarming photos show muddy water spill from rivers and pedestrians wade through waist-deep floods.
Almost 30,000 soldiers and rescue workers have been sent in to save stranded residents across the region.
The recent typhoons have so far killed 24 people. More than 9,000 homes, including 6,000 in the Chiba prefecture and 2,500 in the nearby Ibaraki prefecture, were without electricity, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Local media reported two dams were expected to release built-up water and urged downstream residents to evacuate as a precaution.
A motorway toll gate near Narita International Airport was temporarily closed for safety reasons. Heavy rain also washed out the second round of the PGA Tour’s first tournament held in Japan, the Zozo Championship in Inzai City, where Tiger Woods was tied with Gary Woodland at 64 after Thursday’s opening round.
Fukushima is on Honshu, Japan’s largest island.
It is about 40 miles away from Japan’s idyllic east coast.
Distribution and origin of highly radioactive microparticles in Fukushima revealed, Science Daily
Date:
October 16, 2019
Source:
University of Helsinki
Summary:
New method allows scientists to create a quantitative map of radioactive cesium-rich microparticle distribution in soils collected around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP). This could help inform clean-up efforts in Fuksuhima region.
Distribution, number, source, and movement of the microparticles in the environment has remained poorly understood
A large quantity of radioactivity was released into the environment during the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. The released radioactivity included small, poorly soluble, cesium-rich microparticles. The microparticles have a very high radioactivity per unit mass (~1011 Bq/g), but their distribution, number, source, and movement in the environment has remained poorly understood. This lack of information has made it hard to predict the potential impact of the radioactive microparticles.
However, a study just published in the scientific journal Chemosphere, involving scientists from Japan, Finland, France, and the USA, addresses these issues. The team, led by Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya, Ryohei Ikehara, and Kazuya Morooka (Kyushu University), developed a method in 2018 that allows scientists to quantify the amount of cesium-rich microparticles in soil and sediment samples.
They have now applied the method to a wide range of soil samples taken from within, and outside, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear exclusion zone, and this has allowed them to publish the first quantitative map of cesium-rich microparticle distribution in parts of Fukushima region.
Ed. note. Since we published the article below, Nuclear Hotseat has corrected the misleading information about 2667 bags of radioactive debris being washed away.
2,667 Radioactive Bags From Fukushima Swept Away By Typhoon Hagibishttps://newspunch.com/1667-radioactive-bags-fukushima-swept-away-typhoon-hagibis/, October 14, 2019Baxter DmitryAs Typhoon Hagibis hammered Japan on Saturday, thousands of bags containing radioactive waste at Fukushima were reportedly carried into a local stream by floodwaters.Experts warn the radioactive bags could have a devastating environmental impact across the entire Pacific region, reportsTaiwan News.
According to Asahi Shimbun, a temporary storage facility containing 2,667 bags storing radioactive contaminants from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster were “unexpectedly inundated by floodwaters brought by Typhoon Hagibis.“
Torrential rain flooded the storage facility and released the bags into a waterway 100 meters from the site.
Officials from Tamara City in Fukushima Prefecture said that each bag is approximately one cubic meter in size.
Authorities were only able to recover six of the bags by 9 p.m. on Oct. 12 and it is uncertain how many remain unrecovered while the potential environmental fallout is being assessed.
The radioactive waste swept away by Typhoon Hagibis represents the latest setback for Fukushima officials who have struggled to adequately quarantine the radiation.
StatesmanJournal reports: Seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.
Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.
Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.
Also for the first time, cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen, is reporting.
In both cases, levels are extremely low, the researchers said, and don’t pose a danger to humans or the environment.
Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the crippled nuclear plant following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. More radiation was released to the air, then fell to the sea.
What to do with the enormous amount of water, which grows by around 150 tonnes a day, is a thorny question, with controversy surrounding a long-standing proposal to discharge it into the sea, after extensive decontamination.
The water comes from several different sources: Some is used for cooling at the plant, which suffered a meltdown after it was hit by a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in March 2011.
Groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem.
A thousand, towering tanks have now replaced many of the cherry trees that once dotted the plant’s ground.
Each can hold 1,200 tonnes, and most of them are already full.
“We will build more on the site until the end of 2020, and we think all the tanks will be full by around the summer of 2022,” said Junichi Matsumoto, an official with the unit of plant operator TEPCO in charge of dismantling the site.
TEPCO has been struggling with the problem for years, taking various measures to limit the amount of groundwater entering the site.
There is also an extensive pumping and filtration system, that each day brings up tonnes of newly contaminated water and filters out as many of the radioactive elements as possible.
HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE
The hangar where the decontamination system runs is designated “Zone Y” – a danger zone requiring special protections.
All those entering must wear elaborate protection: a full body suit, three layers of socks, three layers of gloves, a double cap topped by a helmet, a vest with a pocket carrying a dosimeter, a full-face respirator mask and special shoes.
Most of the outfit has to burned after use.
“The machinery filters contain radionuclides, so you have to be very protected here, just like with the buildings where the reactors are,” explained TEPCO risk communicator Katsutoshi Oyama.
TEPCO has been filtering newly contaminated water for years, but much of it needs to go through the process again because early versions of the filtration process did not fully remove some dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium 90.
The current process is more effective, removing or reducing around 60 radionuclides to levels accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for water being discharged.
But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: Tritium.
Tritium is naturally present in the environment, and has also been discharged in its artificial form into the environment by the nuclear industry around the world.
There is little evidence that it causes harm to humans except in very high concentrations and the IAEA argues that properly filtered Fukushima water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean without causing environmental problems.
“ABSOLUTELY AGAINST IT”
But those assurances are of little comfort to many in the region, particularly Fukushima’s fishing industry which, like local farmers, has suffered from the outside perception that food from the region is unsafe.
Kyoichi Kamiyama, director of the radioactivity research department at the regional government’s Fisheries and Marine Science Research Centre, points out that local fishermen are still struggling eight years after the disaster.
“Discharging into the ocean? I’m absolutely against it,” he told AFP.
At the national government level, the view is more sanguine.
“We want to study how to minimise the damage (from a potential discharge) to the region’s reputation and Fukushima products,” an Industry Ministry official said.
The government is sensitive to fears that people inside Japan and further afield will view any discharge as sending radioactive waste into the sea.
No decisions are likely in the near-term, with the country sensitive to the international spotlight that will fall on Japan as it hosts the Olympic Games next year.
Environmentalists are also resolutely opposed to any discharge into the sea, and Greenpeace argues that TEPCO cannot trusted to properly decontaminate the water.
The solution, said Greenpeace senior nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie, “ultimately can only be long-term storage and processing.”
Dumping Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Into Pacific Ocean Is ‘Only Option’, Japan Sayshttps://www.sciencealert.com/fukushima-is-running-out-of-space-to-store-contaminated-waterARIA BENDIX, BUSINESS INSIDER 12 SEP 2019 On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by the most powerful earthquake in the nation’s history – a magnitude 9 temblor that triggered a tsunami with waves up to 133 feet (40 meters) high. The disaster set off three nuclear meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Eight years later, Fukushima holds more than 1 million tons of contaminated water.
The water comes from two main sources. First, the tsunami caused the reactor cores to overheat and melt, so cleanup workers injected water into the cores to cool them. In the wake of the accident, groundwater also seeped in beneath the reactors and mixed with radioactive material.
To store this contaminated water, the plant currently has 1,000 sealed tanks. But the water is still accumulating. There’s enough room to keep the liquid contained through summer 2022, but after that, there will be no space left.
At a news briefing in Tokyo, Japan’s environment minister, Yoshiaki Harada, said that come 2022, “the only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute” the contaminated water.
The Japanese government, however, is waiting on a verdict from a panel of experts before making a final decision about what to do with the water.
Meanwhile, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement that the “only environmentally acceptable option” would be to continue to store the water and filter it for contaminants.
But that would require more tanks and an expensive filtration process.
Dumping the water could reduce cleanup costs
Only two events have ever been designated “level 7” nuclear accidents by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): Fukushima and Chernobyl.
The majority of radiation released during the Fukushima disaster wound up in the Pacific Ocean, but the meltdown also forced the evacuation of more than 200,000 people from nearby areas – about 43,000 of whom still haven’t returned.
Shortly after the tsunami, Fukushima plant workers constructed storage tanks to house the contaminated water used to cool the reactor cores. But they also had to contend with the radioactive groundwater, since cracks in the downed reactors’ foundations allowed liquid to seep in from below.
This left cleanup crews with more dirty water to store and treat than they’d anticipated.
To purify all this water, plant workers at first used zeolites – volcanic materials that cling to a radioactive isotope called cesium. Then in 2013, they filtered the water for strontium, another toxic radioactive substance. But they had trouble filtering out an isotope called tritium, since it binds easily to water.
Greenpeace later said the government had been deterred by the price tag of all the viable methods; one system from a company called Kurion would have cost around US$1 billion to set up, plus several hundred million dollars to operate each year.
‘The sea is not a garbage dump’
Water containing tritium isn’t very dangerous for humans – dumping tritium-laced water into the ocean is common practice for coastal nuclear plants. But it could endanger the local marine species, including fish, which provide a source of income for people living near the power plant.
In 2018, Fukushima’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), also revealed that isotopes like strontium lingered in the water, which meant that about 80 percent of the plant’s treated water still had radiation levels above the government’s standard for ocean dumping.
Some tanks had radiation levels that were 20,000 times greater than the government’s safety standards.
Sending that contaminated water into the ocean could allow it to travel to nearby shores in South Korea, where it could contaminate that local seafood supply, too.
“The sea is not a garbage dump,” Jan Hakervamp, a nuclear-energy expert at Greenpeace, told Business Insider.
“The sea is a common home for all people and creatures and must be protected.” his article was originally published by Business Insider.
Diplomats from 22 countries and regions attended a briefing at the Foreign Ministry, where Japanese officials stressed the importance of combating rumors about safety at the plant, which was decimated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, while pledging transparency.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, said last month that it would run out of storage space for the water in 2022, prompting South Korea to raise safety questions amid tensions with Japan that have intensified over trade and history. South Korea was among those represented at Wednesday’s briefing.
Water must be continuously pumped into the four melted reactors at the plant so the fuel inside can be kept cool, and radioactive water has leaked from the reactors and mixed with groundwater and rainwater since the disaster.
The plant has accumulated more than 1 million tons of water in nearly 1,000 tanks. The water has been treated but still contains some radioactive elements. One, tritium — a relative of radiation-emitting hydrogen — cannot be separated.
Tritium is not unique to Fukushima’s melted reactors and is not harmful in low doses, and water containing it is routinely released from nuclear power plants around the world, including in South Korea, officials say.
The water has been a source of concern, sparking rumors about safety, especially as Japan tries to get countries to lift restrictions on food imports from the Fukushima area ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Import restrictions are still in place in 22 countries and regions, including South Korea and China.
“In order to prevent harmful rumors about the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant from being circulated, we believe it is extremely important to provide scientific and accurate information,” Yumiko Hata, a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official in charge of the Fukushima accident response, said at the briefing. “We appreciate your understanding of the situation and continuing support for the decommissioning work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.”
Officials said there were no complaints from the diplomats Wednesday about Japan’s handling of the water.
More than eight years after the accident, Japan has yet to decide what to do with the radioactive water. A government-commissioned panel has picked five options, including the controlled release of the water into the Pacific Ocean.
As disputes between Japan and neighboring South Korea escalated over export controls and colonial-era labor used by Japanese companies, Seoul last month announced plans to step up radiation tests of Japanese food products, and asked about the contaminated water and the possibility of its release into the sea.
Experts say the tanks pose flooding and radiation risks and hamper decontamination efforts at the plant. Nuclear scientists, including members the International Atomic Energy Agency and Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, have recommended the water’s controlled release into the sea as the only realistic option scientifically and financially. Local residents oppose this, saying the release would trigger rumors of contamination, which would spell doom for Fukushima’s fishing and agriculture industries.
The panel recently added a sixth option of long-term storage.
Fukushima tragedy: The day of black snow https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/23925/fukushima-tragedy-the-day-of-black-snow/ by Sean Lee 30 August 2019 Toru Anzai is a former resident of Iitate, a small village in Fukushima, Japan, and dearly missed the bamboo shoots that grew in his hometown. During autumn, the bamboo shoots would blanket the mountains that overlooked the residents’ homes in the village. The residents would climb the mountains, gather the plants, and prepare them for dinner. But ever since that tragic day, no one climbed the mountains, and the wild plants vanished from their dinner tables. For Anzai, the bamboo shoots became sad reminders of what used to be.
Anzai remembers the day as the “black snow” day. He heard the explosions on 12 March, 2011. Black smoke rose from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the smell of burning iron pervaded the village. It started to rain. The rain turned into snow. The snow was black.
The black snow filled Anzai with an ominous dread, and soon, his fears became reality.
After the black snow shrouded the village, Anzai described in an interview how he started to feel throbbing pain on his skin. It was almost like being sunburned after sunbathing for too long. Both of his legs darkened then peeled in white patches. The only remedy to the peeling was applying medicinal ointment.
Soon after, his entire body began to suffer. The headaches came, followed by shoulder pains. Then the hair loss occurred. Three months after the disaster, he left behind his home and evacuated to survive. Unfortunately, the tragedy did not end there.
Three years later, Anzai started having strokes and heart attacks. A stent was placed in his blood vessel; the tube held open his narrowed blood vessel and kept the blood flowing to his heart. With treatment, his pain somewhat subsided, but whenever Anzai visited Iitate, the pain throughout his entire body relapsed. While these symptoms have not been conclusively connected to the radiation exposure, Anzai believed that they were the realities of the black snow day.
Anzai’s temporary housing was very narrow and consisted of a living room and a bedroom. He had moved into this subsidised housing complex eight years ago. He was one of the first of the 126 families. Often, evacuees gathered around the common area and shared fond memories of their hometowns with each other. Whatever solace could be found, the evacuees found it in each other.
Since allegedly completing the decontamination operation in Iitate, the Japanese government have been urging people to return to their village. In fact, Fukushima prefectural government had ended housing subsidies this past March, and by the end of the month, most people had left the complex. Only around ten families were still looking for a new place to live.
Absently gazing into the dark, clouded sky, Anzai spoke bitterly. “I was kicked out of my hometown for doing nothing wrong. It was heartbreaking. Now, Iitate is polluted, and some of my neighbours have died. When the government asked me to evacuate last minute, I left. Now, they want me to go back. Back to all of the radioactive contamination. I’m so angry, but I don’t know what to do. We have repeatedly petitioned the government, but they’re not willing to listen. Our government has abandoned us.”
Prior to the nuclear incident, there were about 6,300 residents in Iitate. Eight years later, only a little over 300 evacuees have returned at the government’s persistent urging. Most of the returning residents were elderly, aged 60 or older. Even counting the non-natives who had recently relocated to the village, the total figure hovered around only 900 residents.
Iitate’s old and new residents are exposed to radioactive substances on a daily basis. The Japanese government claimed to have completed the decontamination work, but a full decontamination is impossible due to the village’s terrain. More than 70% of Iitate is forest, and unlike in the farmlands, the removal of contaminants that have fallen among the mountainous forest is nearly impossible.
Each year, Greenpeace Germany conducts extensive research on Fukushima villages including Iitate. The findings confirm that the radiation exposure in these villages exceeds the established international safety standards. Anzai believes that the Japanese government is behind the forced homecoming of the Iitate residents.
“The government hopes to publicise good news: the nuclear accident has been dealt with, and the residents have returned home. People who had no choice but to leave are now being pressured to return and put their lives on the line,” lamented Anzai.
The Japanese government hopes to release more than one million tonnes of highly radioactive water into the Fukushima coast. If the contaminated water becomes flushed into the ocean, the contamination will only add to the harm already inflicted by the Fukushima accident. Furthermore, the ocean currents will shift the radioactive materials through the surrounding waters including the Pacific Ocean.
The industrial pollution and toxins have already caused much distress to our oceans. Discharging the Fukushima’s radioactive water will only worsen the situation, and we cannot, and should never, let this happen.
Fukushima: Nuclear-contaminated water raises 2020 Games site fears,The Weather Network, Caroline Floyd , Meteorologist 14 Aug 19, Beginning late next July, Tokyo and several other sites around Japan will welcome elite athletes from around the world for the 2020 Summer Games. One of the sites carries with it a stigma that organizers are hoping to help heal — Fukushima.
Some scheduled baseball and softball events will take place at Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium, located about 70 km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
There may be another hitch in the road to recovery, however, and it’s looming on the horizon for next year.
Tremendous amounts of water flooded the reactors in the wake of the disaster, both from the tsunami itself and from water added to cover the melted reactors and allow them to cool as part of the efforts to clean up the site and decommission the plant. Since then, groundwater has also infiltrated the site. All of this water has been contaminated by radioactive substances, like cesium and tritium. While the cesium can be removed via processing, tritium generally remains, meaning the still-contaminated water must be stored.
TEPCO, the utility which operated the reactor, has installed about 1,000 large storage tanks at the site to hold the contaminated water; currently, more than 1.05 million tons of radioactive water are being stored in the tanks, and roughly 150 tons are added every day.
TEPCO continues to install new tanks, but according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, “space limitations mean that by the end of 2020, a maximum storage capacity of about 1.34 million tons will be reached.” Officials have added that if the groundwater infiltration was decreased, it will be possible to stretch that date until summer 2022.
Some scheduled baseball and softball events will take place at Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium, located about 70 km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
There may be another hitch in the road to recovery, however, and it’s looming on the horizon for next year.
Tremendous amounts of water flooded the reactors in the wake of the disaster, both from the tsunami itself and from water added to cover the melted reactors and allow them to cool as part of the efforts to clean up the site and decommission the plant. Since then, groundwater has also infiltrated the site. All of this water has been contaminated by radioactive substances, like cesium and tritium. While the cesium can be removed via processing, tritium generally remains, meaning the still-contaminated water must be stored.
TEPCO, the utility which operated the reactor, has installed about 1,000 large storage tanks at the site to hold the contaminated water; currently, more than 1.05 million tons of radioactive water are being stored in the tanks, and roughly 150 tons are added every day.
TEPCO continues to install new tanks, but according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, “space limitations mean that by the end of 2020, a maximum storage capacity of about 1.34 million tons will be reached.” Officials have added that if the groundwater infiltration was decreased, it will be possible to stretch that date until summer 2022.
While more tanks can be installed, a long-term solution is still being sought and, so far, most of them aren’t going over well with the locals.
One suggestion before the central government is to dilute the water after processing and gradually release it into the Pacific. Another is to build a long-term storage facility near the plant site. Fukushima residents, and fishermen in particular, have expressed strong opposition to both ideas, not over fears of the wastewater itself but because of the negative publicity and continuing stigma that would damage their livelihoods……
Setting a deadline on the current storage situation puts additional pressure on Japanese authorities and the public to reach a consensus.
The effort to safely decommission Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant just got hit by a looming deadline.
In about three years, the plant will run out of space for the massive quantities of treated but still-radioactive water that officials have been storing there, according to The Associated Press. While a government panel came up with a few possible courses of action, the most feasible one at the moment is to simply dump the water into the Pacific — a bleak sign for nuclear disasters in the future.
Maximum Capacity
At the moment, Fukushima has over 1 million tons of water stored in almost 1,000 on-site tanks, the AP reports. Plans are in place to build enough to store nearly 1.4 million more tons, but that even those will reach capacity by mid-2022.
Local fishers and residents of the area say that dumping the water would devastate the area’s fishing and agriculture industry, per the AP. Other options considered by the panel include vaporizing the radioactive water or injecting it deep underground.
“When we talk about Fukushima’s reconstruction, the question is if we should prioritize the decommissioning at the expense of Fukushima people’s lives,” University of Tokyo professor of disaster social science Naoya Sekiya told the AP. “The issue is not just about science.”
Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, CBS News, CORRESPONDENTLesley Stahl, Produced by Richard Bonin and Ayesha Siddiqi , 28 July 19
Eight years after a powerful earthquake and tsunami caused a massive nuclear meltdown in the Daiichi Power Plant, Lesley Stahl reports on the unprecedented cleanup effort
More than eight years have passed since a monster earthquake and tsunami struck Northeast Japan and triggered what became, after Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
As we first reported last fall, when three of the plant’s six reactors melted down, hot fuel turned to molten lava and burned through steel walls and concrete floors. To this day, no one knows exactly where inside the reactor buildings the fuel is. And it is so deadly, no human can go inside to look for it. So the Japanese company that owns the crippled plant has turned to robots.
There are four-legged robots, robots that climb stairs and even robots that can swim into reactors flooded with water. They’re equipped with 3D scanners, sensors and cameras that map the terrain, measure radiation levels and look for the missing fuel.
This is part of a massive clean up that’s expected to cost nearly $200 billion and take decades.
Lesley Stahl: Has anything like this cleanup, in terms of the scope, ever happened before?
Lake Barrett: No, this is a unique situation here. It’s never happened in human history. It’s a challenge we’ve never had before………..
Lesley Stahl: Why not just bury this place? Why not do what they did at Chernobyl? Just cover it up, bury it, and just leave it here all– you know, enclosed?
Lake Barrett: Number one this is right next to the sea. We’re 100 yards from the ocean. We have typhoons here in Japan. This is also a high earthquake zone. And there’s gonna be future earthquakes. So these are unknowns that the Japanese and no one wants to deal with………
Lesley Stahl: How many tons of radioactive waste was developed here?
Lake Barrett: Probably 500 to 1,000 tons in each building.
Lesley Stahl: So how long will it be lethal?
Lake Barrett: It will be lethal for thousands of years.
Lesley Stahl: What we’re talking about really is three meltdowns?
Lake Barrett: Yes. It was truly Hell on Earth.
No one is gonna send a worker in there because they’d be overexposed in just a matter of seconds.”
The meltdowns triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of everyone within a 12-mile radius – about 160,000 people in all. Weeks later, TEPCO officials engaged in so-called kowtow diplomacy – allowing townspeople to berate them as they prostrated themselves in apology.
Thousands of workers were sent to the countryside to decontaminate everything touched by radiation including digging up dirt and putting it in bags – lots of bags.
At the plant they’re capturing contaminated groundwater, about 150 tons a day, and storing it in tanks, as far as the eye can see.
Lake Barrett: Water is always the major challenge here. And it’s going to remain a major challenge until the entire cores are removed.
The closer workers get to the reactors, the more protective gear they have to wear, as we discovered………..
In the years since the accident, much of the damage to the building has been repaired.
But it’s still dangerous to spend a lot of time here. We could stay only 15 minutes.
Lesley Stahl: There’s this number I’ve been seeing, 566.
Lake Barrett: Right. That’s telling you the radiation level that we’re in. It’s fairly high here. That’s why we’re gonna be here a short time.
Lesley Stahl: How close are you and I, right this minute, to the core?
Lake Barrett: The– the melted cores are about 70 feet that way.
Lesley Stahl: Seventy from here–
Lake Barrett: From here.
Lesley Stahl: –is the melted core?
Lake Barrett: Correct, that’s right over in here. We don’t know quite where other than it fell down into the floor.
Lesley Stahl: So if you sent a worker in right now to find it, how long would they survive?
Lake Barrett: No one is gonna send a worker in there because they’d be overexposed in just a matter of seconds.
Enter the robots.
Lesley Stahl: This is the robot research center.
Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. This is for remote control technology development.
In 2016, the Japanese government opened this $100 million research center near the plant where a new generation of robots is being developed by teams of engineers and scientists from the nation’s top universities and tech companies………
But even with all the high-tech training and know-how, the robots have run into problems. For the early models, it was the intense levels of radiation – that fried their electronics and cameras.
Lake Barrett: Their lifetime was hours. We hoped it would be days, but it was for hours………
when Scorpion went inside, it hit some debris and got stuck after traveling less than 10 feet. ……
Finally, in 2017, the swimming robot [Little Sunfish] made its foray into the heart of the reactor. ………. It beamed back images reveali ng clumps of debris, fuel rods, half-destroyed equipment and murky glimpses of what looks like solidified lava — the first signs, TEPCO officials say, of the missing fuel.
Lake Barrett: These robotic steps so far have been significant steps. But it is only a small step on a very, very long journey.
Lesley Stahl: This is gonna take you said decades with an “S.” How many decades?
Lake Barrett: We don’t know for sure. The goal here is 40– 30– 40 years. You know, I personally think it may be even 50– 60, but it’s–
More than eight years after one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, towns around Japan’s nuclear power plant struggle to rebuild, 2019 Jul 28, BYBrit McCandless Farmer
The streets are motionless. Items hang untouched on clotheslines, bleached by the sun. A clock shows 2:46, and it always will. More than eight years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, surrounding towns are still frozen in time.
“At the moment, there are huge areas that are still ghost towns,” correspondent Lesley Stahl told 60 Minutes Overtime in the video above. “People can come back into some of the areas because they have been decontaminated. But people are afraid to go back home.”
In March 2011, meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere. Wind then carried that debris, contaminating all the towns in its path. The government evacuated more than 150,000 people.
Today, residents of those towns are reluctant to return, even as the Japanese government works to assure the towns’ safety.
“They’ve sent millions of workers out to literally wipe down rails, power hose leaves on trees, clean the tops of houses, dig up all the topsoil from a tree, a garden bed,” said 60 Minutes associate producer Ayesha Siddiqi. “It’s so detailed. Every single last crevice of the town will be cleaned up somehow.”
A lot of residents have moved homes—and moved on, rebuilding their lives elsewhere. Others are afraid of returning to an area that had been covered with radioactive particles. Still, some people are starting to filter back in.
“This is their home, had always been their home,” Stahl said. “But I don’t know if they’ll ever restore the surrounding towns and have really whole, healthy communities.”
To watch Lesley Stahl’s report on how robots have finally found the reactors’ melted uranium fuel, click here.
Toxic water level at Fukushima plant still not under control, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, July 28, 2019 Almost six years after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe famously declared the contaminated water problem at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant “under control,” today it remains anything but.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues to face difficulties in dealing with water contaminated with radioactive substances at its crippled plant.
About 18,000 tons of highly contaminated water remain accumulated in reactor buildings and other places.
Abe made the declaration in September 2013 while Tokyo was bidding to win the 2020 Summer Games.
In reality, however, the situation is not under control even now.
In a meeting of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in June, one of its members, Nobuhiko Ban, told TEPCO officials, “I want you to show whether you have a prospect (for the reduction of contaminated water) or you have given up.”
The water level did not fall as planned in an area of a basement floor at the No. 3 reactor building for two months. Asked why the level did not drop, TEPCO officials offered only vague explanations in the meeting. Ban made the remark out of irritation.
Highly contaminated water that has accumulated in reactor buildings and turbine buildings is a major concern at the Fukushima plant. In addition to water that was used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, groundwater also has flowed into those buildings through cracks.
The concentration of radioactive substances in the highly contaminated water is about 100 million times that of the contaminated water that has been processed and stored in tanks………
Eight years since the nuclear accident occurred, the volume of highly contaminated water in the buildings has fallen to 18,000 tons. TEPCO aims to reduce the volume further to 6,000 tons by the end of fiscal 2020.
However, work to decrease the water has not progressed as expected.
As for the area in the basement of the No. 3 reactor building, it is known that water used to cool melted nuclear fuel is flowing into the area. But why the water level does not drop only in that area is not known.
If the water level in the building remains high, highly contaminated water there could leak into the ground through cracks when the groundwater level outside the building drops. If the leaks occur, the entire effort to decrease the amount of highly contaminated water will be stalled.
The NRA is also requiring TEPCO to take anti-tsunami measures because if a huge tsunami engulfs the buildings again, it could send highly contaminated water pouring into the sea
Expert says 2020 Tokyo Olympics unsafe due to Fukushima | 60 Minutes
Fukushima: an ongoing disaster, Red Flag , Jack Crawford, 15 July 2019 In March – on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster – Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”. In it, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, evokes the imminent threat of climate catastrophe to argue, “There are paths out of this mess. But on March 11, 2011 [the day of the Fukushima disaster], the world’s course was diverted away from one of the most important. I am talking about nuclear energy”. He continues by criticising public fears of nuclear as irrational: “Plane crashes have not stopped us from flying, because most people know it is an effective means of travelling”. Blix speaks for the global nuclear industry, which is increasingly attempting to present itself as the solution to climate change.
But plane crashes do not kill untold numbers and spread deadly poisons over huge areas of the planet. Fukushima was and still is a horrific and ongoing human and environmental catastrophe, exposing the horrendous risks to which the powerful are willing to subject people and the planet. It should be remembered every time a pro-nuclear bureaucrat or politician exploits genuine concern about climate change to promote this deadly industry. It should never be forgotten.
………..Today, towns such as Futaba, Tomioka and Okuma are nuclear ghost towns. In them you will find a forest of metal gates, decaying buildings, shattered glass and cars wrapped in vines. The only human faces are mannequins in store windows, still dressed in the fashion of 2011. Sprawled across the highway between towns are hundreds of black bags filled with toxic dirt. They are one of the many problems of the clean-up effort. There are about 30 million one-tonne bags of radioactive topsoil, tree branches, grass and other waste. There is no safe, long-term storage place for this material.
The clean-up is undermined by cost cutting. Workers are forced to meet strict deadlines, even if it compromises safety. “There were times when we were told to leave the contaminated topsoil and just remove the leaves so we could get everything done on schedule”, explained Minoru Ikeda, a former worker. “Sometimes we would look at each other as if to say: ‘What on earth are we doing here?’”
The task is mammoth. The government and TEPCO now say that decommissioning the failed nuclear plant will take 40 years, at a cost of ¥22 trillion (or US$200 billion). But there is significant uncertainty about how to remove the hundreds of tonnes of molten fuel from the reactors. “For the removal of the debris, we don’t have accurate information or any viable methodology for that”, admitted the plant’s manager, Akira Ono, in 2015. “We need to develop many, many technologies.”
Beyond the plant itself, the total clean-up is likely to cost between ¥50 trillion and ¥70 trillion (US$460-640 billion), according to the estimates of a right wing think tank, the Japan Center for Economic Research. Thousands of workers continue to make daily trips between the contaminated zones and company accommodation. Dodgy subcontractors recruit largely from Japan’s destitute, including the homeless, migrant workers and asylum seekers. A recent Greenpeace investigation, “On the Frontline of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Workers and Children”, found evidence of hyper-exploitation and dangerous radiation exposure. In one case, a 55-year-old homeless man was paid the equivalent of US$10 for a month’s work. “TEPCO is God”, lamented Tanaka, another homeless Fukushima worker. “The main contractors are kings, and we are slaves.”
Scandalously, organised crime has penetrated the clean-up operations. Those with debts to the Yakuza (Japanese organised crime) have found themselves shoved into hazmat suits and set to work. The subcontracting system has allowed TEPCO to turn a blind eye to such human rights abuses.
Despite triumphant optimism from some champions of nuclear, researchers continue to uncover unexpected and unpredictable consequences of the Fukushima disaster. These include the discovery of tiny, glassy beads containing extremely high concentrations of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope) among polluted dust and dirt particles. These bacterium-sized particles are easily inhaled and persistently insoluble. How they react with our bodies and the environment is not yet clear, but scientists increasingly believe them to be a health risk. The beads have been found as far from the disaster site as Tokyo.
The dangers faced by those returning to Fukushima prefecture have been a central controversy of recent years. Compelled by economic necessity, most have returned. But as of February 2019, 52,000 remain displaced, either unwilling to return or with homes in still-prohibited zones. In a recent press tour, the government repeatedly blamed “harmful rumours” for creating fear of returning as well as the Japanese public’s unwillingness to consume Fukushima’s fish and agricultural products.
“To me”, explained activist Riken Komatsu, “talking about ‘harmful rumours’ sounds like they are making someone else the bad guy or villain, as if they are blaming people for saying negative things because they don’t understand science and radiation. But those who have lost our trust do not have the right”.
Mistrust is justified. Prime minister Shinzo Abe, keen to move on from the crisis, intends to end evacuations by the time Japan hosts the 2020 Olympics. The international and (prior to the meltdowns) Japanese standard of acceptable exposure to radiation, one millisievert per year, has been scrapped. Across Fukushima prefecture, measurements five times that level are now deemed safe.
Some places measure as high as 20 millisieverts per year. These radiation levels are especially dangerous for children, who are far more sensitive than adults to even low levels of exposure. It will take decades before the cost of the authorities’ carelessness can be measured in increased cancer rates. The loss of happy, healthy human life of course can never be quantified………
those who “benefit” from the powerful nuclear industry are the same people who crave military dominance. The politicians and officials currently fighting to rebuild Japanese nuclear capability are thinking far more about the military tensions surrounding them than tackling climate change. We don’t need to a build a world full of deadly nuclear power plants to combat climate change. We need clean, renewable energy and a system that prioritises people and the planet over money and military might. https://redflag.org.au/node/6838
July 8, 2019 (Mainichi Japan) TOKYO— Radioactive cesium released into the Pacific Ocean due to the March 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is returning to Japanese shores via a shorter route than expected, according to a joint research initiative.
The findings were revealed by a team from the University of Tsukuba, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and Kanazawa University.
Until now, it was thought that cesium from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)-operated plant would be circulated around the Pacific by subtropical gyre currents for several decades before returning to Japanese waters. But in 2012, a year after the reactor core meltdowns, tests on seawater samples collected by the team showed increased cesium concentrations in East China Sea waters off Japan. Researchers say that the concentrations observed are too low to impact sea life.
The rate increased, peaking in 2014, and a year later high concentrations were also reported in the Sea of Japan. The team believes the cesium is now flowing around the Pacific Ocean again.
It is thought that seawater sank deeply into the sea after its density increased due to cooling by winter winds, causing the cesium to travel on a western-flowing underwater route.
Michio Aoyama, a visiting professor at the University of Tsukuba, said, “That the cesium would come back in such a short time was unexpected. We’ve found a previously unknown route.”
Senior JAMSTEC research scientist Yuichiro Kumamoto said of the project’s potential benefits, “Because it has visualized ocean circulation, the results could be used in the future for predictions on issues such as climate change.”
(Japanese original by Mayumi Nobuta, Science & Environment News Department)
FUKUSHIMA investigators were left “worried” after recording radiation levels 100 times normal, leading them to suggest the exclusion zone should be increased.Express UK , By CALLUM HOARE Jul 4, 2019 | “………… when Chernobyl researcher Yevgen visited as part of Amazon Prime’s “Radioactive Detectives” series, he was left shocked.
The narrator revealed in 2017: “Have the Japanese authorities determined the correct exclusion zone?
“The first big surprise is a completely unguarded borderline.
“Yevgen wants to carry out his first measurements here.
“He has to tell Kenzo that the radiation level exceeds the natural radiation 100 times over.
“The men are worried.”
Kenzo Hashimoto, a Japanese journalist claimed the exclusion zone needed to be increased as a result.
He said: “If the radiation is that high, the authorities should extend the border line even further.
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