The No. 3 reactor of the Shimane nuclear power plant stands in the foreground, with the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors in the background.
June 2, 2018
The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster provided graphic evidence of the lasting and far-reaching damage that can result when this technology goes askew.
Electric utilities that operate nuclear power plants have a duty to respond with utmost sincerity to safety concerns among local governments and communities, especially cities and towns within 30-kilometer emergency planning zones. Utilities should treat local governments within the zones, which are required to develop emergency evacuation plans under stringent new regulations introduced after the March 2011 emergency, equally as the governments in nuclear host communities.
Chugoku Electric Power Co. recently took the first step toward the start of operations of the Shimane nuclear power plant’s new reactor, whose construction was halted following the Fukushima catastrophe.
The utility, based in Hiroshima, asked the Shimane prefectural government and the Matsue city government to approve its application to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) for safety screening of the No. 3 reactor under the new regulatory standards.
The No. 3 reactor was close to completion when the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant went in a triple meltdown. Work to install the necessary safety measures is expected to finish in the first half of 2019.
This facility could become the first new nuclear reactor in Japan to start operation after the Fukushima disaster, an event that triggered tighter safety standards for nuclear plants.
The new reactor, if cleared for operation, will be in service until around 2060 under the principle that imposes a 40-year limit on the operational life of a reactor.
The reactor is part of a complex that has the distinction of being the only nuclear power plant located in the capital of a prefecture.
Within 30 km of the plant lie three other cities in Shimane as well as the cities of Sakaiminato and Yonago in neighboring Tottori Prefecture. Some 470,000 people live in the 30-km zone.
In 2011, authorities in Tottori Prefecture and the two cities signed an agreement with Chugoku Electric Power that commits the utility to put top priority on the safety of local residents in operating the plant.
These local governments have been demanding that the utility apply the procedures for obtaining consent for reactor operations from the Shimane and Matsue governments also to the local governments in Tottori Prefecture.
In April this year, the prefectural and municipal governments in Tottori formed a joint task force to assess the safety of the new reactor with the help of the utility.
Chugoku Electric Power’s move to seek the consent of only the Shimane prefectural government and the Matsue city government to start the process of bringing the reactor online has caused “considerable confusion” among the local communities in Tottori Prefecture, according to Tottori Governor Shinji Hirai.
“I feel bewildered” at the way the utility is going ahead with the plan, Hirai said with obvious and justifiable discontent.
Safety agreements between nuclear plant operators and local governments generally require utilities to secure the advance consent of the local governments when new reactors are built or important changes are made to existing facilities. In most cases, however, the scope of the local governments covered is limited to the prefectures and municipalities where the plants are located.
But an agreement was reached this spring between Japan Atomic Power Co. (JAPC), the operator of the Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, and five surrounding municipalities that commits JAPC to seek approval from these municipalities within the 30-km zone before bringing its idled reactor back on stream. They include the city of Mito, as well as Tokai village, which hosts the nuclear plant, and the prefecture.
Some local governments around the Shimane nuclear plant are calling on Chugoku Electric Power to hold advance talks over the operation of the new reactor with all the six cities within the 30-km zone. The utility should treat all the local governments within the emergency planning zone like host communities.
When Kyushu Electric Power Co. moved to restart the No. 3 reactor at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, four of the eight municipalities in three prefectures located within the 30-km zone were up in arms over the plan. But the procedures for the restart went ahead after the town of Genkai, which hosts the plant, and Saga Prefecture gave their consent.
Shimane Governor Zenbe Mizoguchi has indicated his intention to listen to the opinions of all the surrounding local governments, including those in Tottori Prefecture. The Shimane and Matsue governments plan to propose this approach to their respective local assemblies. The case of the Genkai plant should serve as a cautionary tale for these local governments.
In the wake of Fukushima, Tomonobu Narita is at the forefront of a movement to withdraw money from banks that back environmentally harmful energy projects.
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Buddhist priest Tomonobu Narita admits he hadn’t thought much about energy policy until the Fukushima nuclear meltdown forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in 2011.
Now he’s at the forefront of a budding movement in Japan to withdraw money from banks that provide finance for environmentally harmful energy projects.
“I was taught about the idea of how changing your bank account can contribute to bettering the environment, and that was an enlightenment for me,” said Narita, the third-generation head priest of a temple in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
The campaign to “divest” from fossil fuels such as coal has gained traction in the United States, Europe and Australia in recent years, but environmental activists are now targeting Japan. They see the country as crucial to the success of international efforts to address climate change.
On top of fossil fuels — which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burned, contributing to global warming — campaigners here are working to oppose nuclear power.
While advocates of nuclear power say it can provide carbon emissions-free energy, critics say the overall dangers are too high.
Residents are still barred from returning to some of the towns closest to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, where three reactor meltdowns occurred after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
Most of the country’s nuclear plants remain offline amid safety checks and legal challenges.
Driven by concern about nuclear power, Narita recently shifted some of his temple’s funds to a financial firm that is rated as one of Japan’s 45 “earth-friendly” banks. This means the bank is not known to provide finance for the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors.
Narita told NBC News he planned to explain the decision to his counterparts in other temples, believing that “we need to be more mindful of what we’re blessed with.”
Tomonobu Narita is the head priest of Totsuka Zenryo Temple in Yokohama, Japan.
“That small action when combined [with the actions of others] leads to a bigger effect, so I hope for divestment to have that kind of spread in Japan,” he said during an interview at Totsuka Zenryo Temple.
In the next room, about 100 people gathered to hear from the veteran American climate campaigner Bill McKibben, who co-founded the global divestment and climate action movement known as 350.org and has organized rallies around the world.
McKibben described being jolted into action by a visit to Bangladesh more than a decade ago when he saw people die from dengue — a mosquito-borne viral illness that is projected to worsen in that country as the globe warms. McKibben said he viewed it as “very unfair” that Bangladesh would bear major impacts from climate change when it had not been the source of most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“They’re suffering from a problem that they didn’t cause, a problem that we caused,” McKibben said. “And so, when I went back to the United States, I decided that the time had come to fight — in a good, nonviolent, Buddhist peaceful way,” he quipped to the temple crowd.
Now, McKibben said, it was important for the divestment movement to spread to Japan “because Japanese banks are now the biggest lenders of money for coal projects around the world.”
Japan’s Mizuho provided an estimated $11.5 billion in loans to the world’s top coal-plant developers from January 2014 to September 2017, according to analysis published by BankTrack, a pro-renewable energy network. That led to Mizuho being assessed as the most prolific lender in that category, followed by another Japanese financial group, MUFG, in second place, while Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation came in at fifth.
These banks have signaled that they are weighing their future lending criteria.
Mizuho said on its website that it was currently discussing the “best due diligence methods” for reducing environmental and social risks, while MUFG told investors it would strengthen its focus on financing renewable energy.
A spokesperson for Sumitomo Mitsui told NBC News: “Coal-fired thermal power generation is considered as a relatively low-cost power generation method; however, since we consider that the impact on climate change is significant, we are considering [reviewing] our current credit policy.”
Still, the number of ordinary people in Japan actively divesting from fossil fuels remains small: Just 146 individuals have so far reported divestments worth 568.2 million yen ($5.1 million) since the campaign launched late last year, according to 350.org Japan.
Takejiro Sueyoshi, a former senior banking executive who is now a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, believes it will require strong government leadership for banks to take a more assertive step toward renewables.
“Many people are very well aware of this matter, but what they are saying is: ‘Personally I understand that, but under the current situation no Japanese government [has set] any new direction, new policy, new strategy.’”
This was because the Japanese business culture tended to be “government-oriented,” he explained. “When the Japanese central government says ‘do this,’ they follow. And if the Japanese central government does not say anything about something, no institutions or companies will [act].”
Some senior government figures, at least, seem to be paying attention. The foreign minister, Taro Kono, recently blasted his country’s lackluster embrace of renewable sources like wind and solar as “lamentable.”
Japan’s target for renewables to make up 22 percent to 24 percent of its overall energy mix by 2030 is low, Kono said in a speech in January. He pointed out that such technology already accounts for about a quarter of the total global energy mix, and there had been a “dramatic decrease” in the price of renewables.
“We have prioritized keeping the status quo for fear of change,” said Kono, whose climate advisory panel warned the following month that Japan was facing increasing scrutiny from other countries about its plans to build dozens of new coal-fired power plants.
As the government and experts continue to debate the best way forward in terms of policy, campaigners will step up their efforts to build community momentum for change.
Narita, the Buddhist priest, said he had not sought media attention for his decision to divest but simply wanted to do his part “to contribute to society.” The action is grounded in his beliefs.
“Right now the greenery that we have, the earth, the soil — everything is a product of the things that people who have come before us have left behind, so we can’t just treat those things carelessly,” Narita said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/16/is-fukushima-doomed-to-become-a-dumping-ground-for-toxic-waste Despite promises of revitalisation from Japan’s government, seven years on from the nuclear disaster the area is still struggling This month, seven years after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns and explosions that blanketed hundreds of square kilometres of northeastern Japan with radioactive debris, government officials and politicians spoke in hopeful terms about Fukushima’s prosperous future. Nevertheless, perhaps the single most important element of Fukushima’s future remains unspoken: the exclusion zone seems destined to host a repository for Japan’s most hazardous nuclear waste.
No Japanese government official will admit this, at least not publicly. A secure repository for nuclear waste has remained a long-elusive goal on the archipelago. But, given that Japan possesses approximately 17,000 tonnes of spent fuel from nuclear power operations, such a development is vital. Most spent fuel rods are still stored precariously above ground, in pools, in a highly earthquake-prone nation.
The Fukushima prefecture government is currently promoting a plan, dubbed The Innovation Coast, that would transform the unwelcoming region into a thriving sweep of high-tech innovation. Much of the development would be directed towards a “robot-related industrial cluster” and experimental zones like a robot test field.
The test field would develop robots tailored for disaster response and for other purposes on a course simulating a wide range of hurdles and challenges already well represented in Fukushima itself. Large water tanks would contain an array of underwater hazards to navigate, mirroring the wreckage-strewn waters beneath the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where a number of meltdown-remediating underwater robots have met a premature demise in recent years.
Elsewhere on the robot test field, dilapidated buildings and other ruins would serve as a proving ground for land-based disaster-response robots, which must navigate twisted steel rods, broken concrete and other rubble. Engineered runways and surrounding radiation-hit areas would serve as prime territory for testing parlous aerial drones for a range of purposes in various weather conditions – which would be difficult or impossible to achieve elsewhere in relatively densely populated Japan.
The planned site for the test field would link with a secluded test area about 13km south along the coast to coordinate test flights over the exclusion zone’s more or less posthuman terrain.
Naturally, unlike Fukushima’s human residents, robots would be oblivious to the elevated radiation levels found outside the Fukushima Daiichi facility. In addition, prefectural officials have suggested that the exclusion zone environs could play host to a range of other services that don’t require much human intervention, such as long-term archive facilities.
Proud long-time residents of Fukushima, for their part, see all this development as a continued “colonisation” of the home prefecture by Tokyo – a well-worn pattern of outsiders using the zone for their own purposes, as were the utility representatives and officials who built the ill-fated plant in the first place.
Years of colossal decontamination measures have scraped irradiated material from seemingly every forest, park, farm, roadside, and school ground. This 16 million cubic metres of radioactive soil is now stored in provisional sites in and around the exclusion zone, waiting to be moved to an interim storage facility that has hardly been started and for which nearly half of the land has not yet even been leased.
The state has promised to remove all the contaminated soil from Fukushima after 30 years, and government officials have been scrupulous in insisting that this will be the case – for soil. Yet in a nation with about 17,000 tonnes of highly radioactive spent fuel rods and no willing candidates for secure repositories, it is only a matter of time before it becomes possible for politicians to publicly back the idea of transforming the area around Fukushima Daiichi into a secure repository.
Government officials, including those tasked with nuclear waste storage, describe the quintessentially Japanese strategy of saki-okuri, or calculated postponement, in the context of nuclear waste storage. Such perception management is a subtle business, but by quietly and unrelentingly pushing back the day of reckoning – slowly changing the terms of debate – the broadly distasteful prospect of storing Japan’s most dangerous material in its most tragically maltreated region would become gradually less intolerable to Japanese sensibilities.
The expanse of Fukushima in and around the exclusion zone represents an already contaminated area with, since 2011, far fewer residents to protest against such plans. Such a rare opportunity for relatively unopposed intervention in a struggling area will surely prove irresistible to the nuclear lobby.
Fukushima has been marginalised, disenfranchised, and outmanoeuvred for decades. After all, the electricity from Fukushima Daiichi went straight to the capital, not to Fukushima itself, which bore the risks. Since 2011, Fukushima has been saddled with the staggering burden of the meltdown’s aftermath that, despite government PR, will encumber and stigmatise its citizens for at least several decades.
•Peter Wynn Kirby is a nuclear and environmental specialist at the University of Oxford
Japan’s divestment campaign pits Buddhist priest against banks In the wake of Fukushima, Tomonobu Narita is at the forefront of a movement to withdraw money from banks that back environmentally harmful energy projects.
by Daniel Hurst May.29.2018 NBC News, YOKOHAMA, Japan — Buddhist priest Tomonobu Narita admits he hadn’t thought much about energy policy until the Fukushima nuclear meltdown forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in 2011.
Now he’s at the forefront of a budding movement in Japan to withdraw money from banks that provide finance for environmentally harmful energy projects.
“I was taught about the idea of how changing your bank account can contribute to bettering the environment, and that was an enlightenment for me,” said Narita, the third-generation head priest of a temple in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
The campaign to “divest” from fossil fuels such as coal has gained traction in the United States, Europe and Australia in recent years, but environmental activists are now targeting Japan. They see the country as crucial to the success of international efforts to address climate change.
On top of fossil fuels — which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burned, contributing to global warming — campaigners here are working to oppose nuclear power.
While advocates of nuclear power say it can provide carbon emissions-free energy, critics say the overall dangers are too high.
Residents are still barred from returning to some of the towns closest to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, where three reactor meltdowns occurred after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
Most of the country’s nuclear plants remain offline amid safety checks and legal challenges.
Driven by concern about nuclear power, Narita recently shifted some of his temple’s funds to a financial firm that is rated as one of Japan’s 45 “earth-friendly” banks. This means the bank is not known to provide finance for the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors.
Narita told NBC News he planned to explain the decision to his counterparts in other temples, believing that “we need to be more mindful of what we’re blessed with.”
“That small action when combined [with the actions of others] leads to a bigger effect, so I hope for divestment to have that kind of spread in Japan,” he said during an interview at Totsuka Zenryo Temple. ………
Japan’s Mizuho provided an estimated $11.5 billion in loans to the world’s top coal-plant developers from January 2014 to September 2017, according to analysis published by BankTrack, a pro-renewable energy network. That led to Mizuho being assessed as the most prolific lender in that category, followed by another Japanese financial group, MUFG, in second place, while Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation came in at fifth.
These banks have signaled that they are weighing their future lending criteria………
Takejiro Sueyoshi, a former senior banking executive who is now a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, believes it will require strong government leadership for banks to take a more assertive step toward renewables. …….
Without doubt, the road ahead of TEPCO is a long one, beset with challenges greater than those faced to date. The Mid- and Long-Term Roadmap—the Japanese state-curated document outlining the decommissioning of Fukushima—envisions operations stretching a full 30-40 years into the future. Some have suggested it’s an optimistic target, others say that the plan lacks details on key, long-term issues such as permanent solid-waste storage beyond the onsite repository currently being employed. Certainly it is the case that key decisions remain. ……..
By all accounts, it is hard to gauge the costs for the Fukushima clean-up. Kohta told Ars that works completed to date have cost about 500.2 billion yen, or $4.7 billion—a tremendous sum, to be sure, but fractional compared to the estimate of 8 trillion yen ($74.6 billion) approved by the Japanese state last May for the complete decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi.
THE REMEDIATION OF FUKUSHIMA —Remediating Fukushima—“When everything goes to hell, you go back to basics”ars Technica It may take 40 years for the site to appear like “a normal reactor at the end of its life.”WILLIAM STEEL –
Seven years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has come a long way from the state it was reduced to. Once front and center in the global media as a catastrophe on par with Chernobyl, the plant stands today as the site of one of the world’s most complex and expensive engineering projects.Beyond the earthquake itself, a well understood series of events and external factors contributed to the meltdown of three of Fukushima’s six reactors, an incident that has been characterized by nuclear authorities as the world’s second worst nuclear power accident only after Chernobyl. It’s a label that warrants context, given the scale, complexity, and expense of the decontamination and decommissioning of the plant.
How does a plant and its engineers move on from such devastation? The recovery initiatives have faced major challenges, constantly being confronted by issues involving radioactive contamination of everything from dust to groundwater. And those smaller issues ultimately complicate the remediation effort’s long-term goal: to locate and remove the nuclear fuel that was in the reactors……….
the severity of the accident is probably most keenly felt in the scale of the cleanup. The incident has necessitated the ongoing cleanup and decommissioning of the plant—something that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s owner and operator, is responsible for. Even though the plant is seven years into the cleanup and has accomplished a great deal, we won’t see a conclusion for decades yet. ……
Reactor investigations
While they’re now stable in terms of nuclear activity, Units 1-3 remain highly contaminated. As such, while the structural integrity of these buildings has been restored, relatively little work has been undertaken within them. (One notable exception is removal of contaminated water from condensers, completed last year.)
Over recent years, a variety of remotely operated devices and imaging technologies have performed investigations of these units. The intention has been to gather information on internal physical and radiological conditions of the PCVs—the heavily reinforced bell-shaped structures that host reactors. TEPCO wants, and needs, to understand what has happened inside. Some things are known: once melted, fuel mixed with structural materials including steel and concrete to form something known as corium. But precisely where the corium ended up, how much there is, and whether it’s submerged are just some of the questions in play.
The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), which was established in April 2013 to guide R&D of technologies required for reactor defueling and decommissioning, is supporting TEPCO in seeking answers. IRID is composed of multiple stakeholders, including Japanese utilities and the major nuclear vendors Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba.
Naoaki Okuzumi, senior manager at IRID, described for Ars the investigative approaches and technologies. Early work utilized Muon tomography, which Okuzumi described as “a kind of standard practice applied to each unit… to locate high density material (fuel) within PCVs.” It yielded low-resolution data on the approximate location of corium. But with pixels representing 25cm-square cross-sections, the information has been useful only in so far as validating computational models and guiding subsequent robotic investigations.
The latter task hasn’t been easy. In addition to the challenge of navigating the dark, cramped labyrinths of tangled wreckage left behind, TEPCO has had to contend with radioactivity—the high levels act something like noise in electronic circuits. The wreckage has made access a challenge, too, although varying points of ingress have been established for each PCV.
The circumstances mean that TEPCO hasn’t been able to simply purchase an off-the-shelf kit for these investigations. ”An adaptive approach is required because the situation of each PCV is different… there is no standard with investigating the PCVs by using robots,” said Okuzumi, describing an approach that has translated into devices being specially developed and built in response to conditions of each PCV.
But they’re making progress. As recently as January 2018, corium was identified for the first time inside Unit 2 using an enhanced 13m-long telescopic probe and a revised approach designed to overcome problems encountered during investigations in 2017. The situation was hardly easier at Unit 3, where the PCV is flooded to a depth of around 6.5m. Here, it took a remotely operated, radiation-shielded submersible called ‘Little Sunfish’ to locate corium in July 2017.
Altogether the investigations—featuring a litany of robotic devices—have revealed that little fuel remains in any of the cores of Units 1-3. In Unit 2, a large amount of corium is present at the bottom of the RPV; in Units 1 and 3, almost all fuel appears to have melted through the RPVs entirely and into the concrete floor of PCVs beneath. The information is crucial, as we’ll come to see, for future deconstruction work at the reactors, but it continues to be extended as investigations continue…………
the amount of contaminated water now being generated—a mix of groundwater, rainwater and water pumped into reactors for cooling—has decreased from about 520m3/day to about 140m3/day between last December and February. Even so, treating that amount of contaminated water is proving taxing.
Water treatment is happening at large-scale facilities that have been built onsite, including a multi-nuclide removal facility. Here, a so-called Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) reduces concentrations of cesium isotopes, strontium, and other radionuclides to below legal limits for release. But one radionuclide remains: tritium……….
Without a feasible alternative for cleaning up the tritium, the (only) solution for ALPS-treated water has been storage. Well over a thousand tanks, each holding 1,200 cubic meters, now store tritium-laced water at the south end of the plant. ………
The ultimate plan for stored water is unknown; tritium has a half life of a dozen years, so physics won’t clean up the water for us. Some kind of controlled, monitored discharge—the likes of which is typical within the nuclear industry—is possible, according to Barrett. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency has endorsed such a plan, which was proposed by the Atomic Energy Society of Japan in 2013. The plan involved diluting tritiated water with seawater before releasing it at the legal discharge concentration of 0.06MBq/L and monitoring to ensure that normal background tritium levels of 10Bq/L aren’t exceeded.
Discussions at both national and international levels would need to come first. Part of the difficulty here harkens back to societal dynamics surrounding risk and contamination: “In nuclear there is no such thing as absolute zero—sensitivity goes down to the atom. This makes discussion about decontamination or levels of acceptable contamination difficult………
Toward permanent solutions
In some sense, much of the restoration of order at Fukushima has been superficial—necessary but concerned with handling consequences more than root causes (see, TEPCO interactive timeline). Ultimately, Fukushima’s reactors must be decommissioned. Broadly, this work involves three phases: removing used fuel assemblies that are stored within ten-meter-deep spent fuel pools of each reactor building, management of melted-down reactors and removal of corium debris, and deconstruction of reactor buildings and the greater plant.
At Unit 4, spent fuel removal operations took around 13 months and concluded in December 2014. ……In all, 1,533 fuel assemblies were removed and transferred to a common spent fuel pool onsite.
Defueling of pools at Units 1 through 3, which suffered meltdowns, isn’t going to be as straightforward. For one, there’s some expectation of debris and circumstances requiring extraordinary removal procedures. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some structurally bent fuel assemblies caused by large pieces of concrete or steel,” said Barrett. Additionally, although radiation in Unit 3 has been reduced sufficiently to allow rotating shifts of workers to install defueling equipment, the already painstaking operations will have to be conducted remotely. The same is likely true for Units 1 and 2.
At Unit 3, the next in line for defueling, preparation is already well underway. In addition to decontamination and installation of shielding plates, TEPCO has removed the original fuel handling crane, which had fallen into the pool seven years ago, and installed a new fuel handling crane and machine. An indication of extraordinary containment methods being used, workers have built a domed containment roof at Unit 3. TEPCO’s Kohta told Ars, “Removal of spent fuel [at Unit 3] is scheduled to begin from around the middle of 2018;” meanwhile, Unit 1 is also in a preparatory stage and Unit 2 will be handled last.
Further down the line still, corium will have to be removed from melted-down reactors. It’s a daunting task, the likes of which has never been undertaken before. The reactors held varying, but known, amounts of uranium oxide fuel, about 150 tonnes each. But how much extra mass the fuel collected as it melted through reactor vessels is uncertain.
“At TMI there was exactly 93 tonnes in the reactor. Once we were done digging out fuel debris, we’d removed 130 tonnes. At Fukushima, I expect maybe a factor of five to ten more mass in core debris. It’s an ugly, ugly mess underneath the PCVs,” suggested Barrett.
High-powered lasers, drills and core boring technologies for cutting, and strong robotic arms for grappling and removing corium are already under development, according to IRID, but precise methodologies remain undecided……….
Without doubt, the road ahead of TEPCO is a long one, beset with challenges greater than those faced to date. The Mid- and Long-Term Roadmap—the Japanese state-curated document outlining the decommissioning of Fukushima—envisions operations stretching a full 30-40 years into the future. Some have suggested it’s an optimistic target, others say that the plan lacks details on key, long-term issues such as permanent solid-waste storage beyond the onsite repository currently being employed. Certainly it is the case that key decisions remain. ……..
Times 30th May 2018 Hitachi ‘won’t pay’ for nuclear accidents at proposed Wylfa plant on Anglesey. Hitachi could seek to absolve itself of financial responsibility for any accidents at its proposed new nuclear power station in north Wales.
The Japanese conglomerate has decided to continue with work developing the planned Wylfa plant on Anglesey after progress in financing talks with the government, which Hitachi is already relying on for a package of loan guarantees, subsidies and potential direct investment to make the project viable.
However, the company wants further concessions to reduce its risks, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported. Reports in several Japanese media outlets have claimed that the Wylfa plant could cost as much as three trillion yen, or almost £21 billion — making it even more expensive than Hinkley Point C.
EDF decided to build Hinkley Point only thanks to a 35-year subsidy contract from the government, which locks consumers into paying a fixed price for the power it generates and has been criticised for its high cost.
The Nikkei reported that some of Hitachi’s directors also wanted “safeguards that reduce or eliminate Hitachi’s financial
responsibility for accidents at the plant”. Nuclear operators are already obliged to take out insurance to cover their liabilities in case of an accident. If they are unable to secure insurance from the market, the government is obliged to step in and provide it instead. It is unclear what alternative arrangement or safeguards Hitachi might be seeking. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/hitachi-wont-pay-for-nuclear-accidents-at-proposed-wylfa-plant-on-anglesey-gtm28q0k3
Toshiba exits US nuclear project https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180531_37/31 May 18 Japanese electronics maker Toshiba is walking away from a nuclear energy project in the US. The firm says it won’t take part in building or operating the nuclear plant.
There are 2 reactors on the drawing board. Toshiba executives say the project is no longer financially viable.
They say an increase in shale production has caused a fall in electricity sales.
They also point to stricter regulations introduced after the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima. Toshiba joined the South Texas Project in 2008. Executives were hoping to start operating the reactors around 2016 or 2017.
But the power company that’s heading up the project hasn’t started building them.
Toshiba is cutting its ties to the nuclear power business overseas.
The firm incurred massive losses through its former American nuclear subsidiary, Westinghouse.
“Right now the greenery that we have, the earth, the soil — everything is a product of the things that people who have come before us have left behind,” Narita told NBC News. “We can’t just treat those things carelessly.”
A government-affiliated financial institution balked at an agency’s request to pump 75 billion yen ($688 million) into Hitachi Ltd.’s nuclear power project in Britain, while the entire plan came under fire from citizen groups.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry asked the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) for the investment to help finance a new nuclear power plant designed by Hitachi Ltd. on the island of Anglesey off northwest Wales.
A DBJ executive expressed a willingness to invest but is reluctant to finance more than half of the requested amount, saying of the original figure, “The risk is big.”
Under the plan, Hitachi subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd. will be in charge of constructing two reactors for the new nuclear power plant.
Hitachi plans to disperse the risk of loss and slash its investment ratio from the current 100 percent to less than 50 percent as preconditions for the start of construction.
After the company held an extraordinary board meeting on May 28 to discuss the project, Toshiaki Higashihara, president and CEO of Hitachi, told reporters, “We have not decided anything yet.”
The company intends to make an official decision in 2019 on whether to proceed with the project. The DBJ’s reluctance to invest the full amount requested is clouding Hitachi’s financing plan.
The economy ministry, however, considers Hitachi’s project the “touchstone for exports of nuclear power technology.”
The Japanese and British governments reached a broad agreement around the end of 2017 on providing financial support for Hitachi’s project, but they have not decided on specific measures to come up with the estimated 3 trillion yen in total costs.
Under a proposed blueprint, the British government will guarantee loans worth 2 trillion yen. British companies and institutions, Hitachi, and other Japanese companies and institutions would invest 300 billion yen each to cover the remaining costs, sources said.
However, it may not be enough. Construction costs for nuclear power plants have continued to increase as tighter safety standards are being adopted around the world.
Hitachi intends to recover the construction costs through sales of electricity generated from the plant. But if it cannot sell the power at high prices, the plant could become unprofitable.
The project faces criticism from outside sources.
A community group on the island of Anglesey and a Japanese nongovernmental organization submitted to the ministry on May 28 hastily collected signatures calling for the halt of the use of taxpayers’ money for the new nuclear plant.
They also sent a letter to Hitachi, asking the company to withdraw from the project.
Objections to the nuclear plant in Wales were also expressed through a joint program of PAWB, (Pobol Atal Wylfa-B or the People Against Wylfa-B), and FoE Japan, a member of Friends of the Earth International. About 6,000 individuals or members of groups in 37 countries provided their signatures to call for the scrapping of the nuclear power plant project.
They are also demanding that the Japanese government will not guarantee loans for the project and that Japanese government-affiliated banking institutions will not extend loans.
Mei Tomos, a member of PAWB, told a meeting in Japan that it would be irresponsible to proceed with the project when there is still no solution on how to deal with radioactive waste.
Tomos urged Japanese at the gathering to express their opinions, keeping in mind the experience of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
A petition against the Wylfa Newydd nuclear plant signed by almost 6,000 people was handed to Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Pawb’s (People against Wylfa B) trip comes amid reports of UK and Japanese government investment in the project.
Technological giant Hitachi said there had been “no changes to disclose”.
Hitachi’s Horizon Nuclear Power wants to start building on Anglesey in 2020, but recent reports say the British government is to offer £13.3bn to support the project.
Prime Minister Theresa May met Hitachi’s chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi earlier this month to discuss support.
Speaking to BBC Wales from Japan, Meilyr Tomos from Pawb, said: “There’s huge uncertainty. It’s a scheme that requires two governments to prop it up, so there’s no certainty on anything at this stage.
“It’s not a commercial proposition. You need the biggest bang for your buck, that’s not something nuclear can deliver, it’s far too expensive.
The three independent candidates for Niigata governor are, from left: Chikako Ikeda, Hideyo Hanazumi and Satoshi Annaka.
May 25, 2018
NIIGATA–The election for a new governor of Niigata Prefecture was triggered by a sex scandal, but the key issue facing voters is where the candidates stand on restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, one of the world’s biggest nuclear facilities.
Campaigning officially kicked off May 24.
The outcome of the June 10 vote could have a bearing on the Abe administration’s moves to bring more nuclear plants back online.
Although the candidates are running as independents, two are supported by political parties.
In early speeches, they all outlined their position on the nuclear plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., but residents are calling on them to be less cautious and state where they truly stand.
“Many people are still suffering (because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster), and there are still many people living as evacuees,” said a female resident, 66. “Some kids have even been bullied. So I really want the candidates to state clearly that Niigata doesn’t need a nuclear plant anymore.”
On the other hand, a 70-year-old female resident argued that local people “cannot flatly oppose the restart of the nuclear plant because of the impact it will have on economy.”
For this reason, she said, “I cannot easily say I am against it.”
The election is expected to come down to a battle between Hideyo Hanazumi, 60, a former vice commandant of the Japan Coast Guard, and Chikako Ikeda, 57, a former member of the prefectural assembly.
Hanazumi is supported by the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, while Ikeda is backed by five opposition parties.
The other candidate is Satoshi Annaka, 40, a former member of the Gosen municipal assembly.
The election was triggered by the April resignation of Ryuichi Yoneyama after he admitted to paying women for sexual favors.
Yoneyama, 50, had taken a cautious stance on restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex.
Hanazumi declared that he would take over an investigation started by Yoneyama to understand the fundamental cause of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in 2011, and reach his decision on the issue when the investigation ends in several years.
Ikeda stressed the significance of reviewing the Fukushima nuclear disaster, stating that continuing with the investigation is “the most basic of basics.”
She said the matter must be pursued rigorously.
Ikeda added that she would make a final decision on the restart issue after careful discussions with residents and other parties.
“I will seek a zero-nuclear Niigata Prefecture,” she said.
Scientists say there was a significant release of radioactive particles during the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident.
The researchers identified the contamination using a new method and say if the particles are inhaled they could pose long-term health risks to humans.
The new method allows scientists to quickly count the number of caesium-rich micro-particles in Fukushima soils and quantify the amount of radioactivity associated with these particles.
The research, which was carried out by scientists from Kyushu University, Japan, and The University of Manchester, UK, was published in Environmental Science and Technology.
In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, it was thought that only volatile, gaseous radionuclides, such as caesium and iodine, were released from the damaged reactors. However, in recent years it has become apparent that small radioactive particles, termed caesium-rich micro-particles, were also released.
Scientists have shown that these particles are mainly made of glass, and that they contain significant amounts of radioactive caesium, as well as smaller amounts of other radioisotopes, such as uranium and technetium.
The abundance of these micro-particles in Japanese soils and sediments, and their environmental impact is poorly understood. But the particles are very small and do not dissolve easily, meaning they could pose long-term health risks to humans if inhaled.
Therefore, scientists need to understand how many of the micro-particles are present in Fukushima soils and how much of the soil radioactivity can be attributed to the particles. Until recently, these measurements have proven challenging.
The new method makes use of a technique that is readily available in most Radiochemistry Laboratories called Autoradiography. In the method, an imaging plate is placed over contaminated soil samples covered with a plastic wrap, and the radioactive decay from the soil is recorded as an image on the plate. The image from plate is then read onto a computer.
The scientists say radioactive decay from the caesium-rich micro particles can be differentiated from other forms of caesium contamination in the soil.
The scientists tested the new method on rice paddy soil samples retrieved from different locations within the Fukushima prefecture. The samples were taken close to (4 km) and far away (40 km) from the damaged nuclear reactors. The new method found caesium-rich micro-particles in all of the samples and showed that the amount of caesium associated with the micro-particles in the soil was much larger than expected.
Dr Satoshi Utsunomiya, Associate Professor at Kyushu University, Japan, and the lead author of the study says “when we first started to find caesium-rich micro-particles in Fukushima soil samples, we thought they would turn out to be relatively rare. Now, using this method, we find there are lots of caesium-rich microparticles in exclusion zone soils and also in the soils collected from outside of the exclusion zone”.
Dr Gareth Law, Senior Lecturer in Analytical Radiochemistry at the University of Manchester and an author on the paper, adds: “Our research indicates that significant amounts of caesium were released from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in particle form.
“This particle form of caesium behaves differently to the other, more soluble forms of caesium in the environment. We now need to push forward and better understand if caesium micro-particles are abundant throughout not only the exclusion zone, but also elsewhere in the Fukushima prefecture; then we can start to gauge their impact”.
The new method can be easily used by other research teams investigating the environmental impact of the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
Dr Utsunomiya adds: “we hope that our method will allow scientists to quickly measure the abundance of caesium-rich micro-particles at other locations and estimate the amount of caesium radioactivity associated with the particles. This information can then inform cost effective, safe management and clean-up of soils contaminated by the nuclear accident”.
The Growing Dangers of the New Nuclear-Arms Race, The Trump Administration’s push for more nuclear weapons is part of a perilous global drive to miniaturize and modernize devices that already promise annihilation. New Yorker, By Eric Schlosser, 24 May 18, “…….On the morning of August 6, 1945, Setsuko Thurlow, then thirteen years old, was preparing to decode messages on the second floor of the Army headquarters in Hiroshima. About twenty girls from her school worked beside her, and thousands of other middle schoolers were employed at patriotic tasks throughout the city as part of the Student Mobilization Program. Thurlow noticed a bright bluish-white flash outside the window at 8:15 a.m. She never saw the mushroom cloud; she was in it. She felt herself fly through the air, blacked out, and awoke pinned in the rubble of the collapsed building, unable to move. Lying there in silence and total darkness, she had a feeling of serenity. And then she heard the cries of classmates trapped nearby: “God, help me!,” “Mother, help me!” Someone touched her, removed the debris on top of her, and told her to crawl toward the light.
She somehow made it out safely and realized that what was left of the headquarters was on fire. A half dozen or so other girls survived, but the rest were burned alive.
The smoke and dust in the air made the morning look like twilight. As Thurlow and a few classmates left the city center and walked toward the hills, they witnessed one grotesque scene after another: dead bodies; ghostly figures, naked and burned, wandering the streets; parents desperately searching for lost children. She reached an Army training ground in the foothills, about the size of two football fields. Every inch of ground was covered with wounded people begging for water. There seemed to be no doctors, no nurses, no medical help of any kind. Thurlow tore off strips of her clothing, dipped them in a nearby stream, and spent the day squeezing drops of water from them into the mouths of the sick and dying. At night, she sat on the hillside and watched Hiroshima burn.
Thurlow was reunited with her parents. But her sister and her sister’s four-year-old son died several days later. Her sister’s face had grown so blackened and swollen that she could only be recognized by her voice and her hairpin. Soldiers threw her body and that of her son into a ditch, poured gasoline on them, and set them on fire. Thurlow stood and watched, in a state of shock, without shedding a tear. Her favorite aunt and uncle, who lived in the suburbs outside Hiroshima and appeared completely unharmed, died from radiation poisoning a few weeks after the blast.
More than seven decades later on the afternoon of December 10, 2017, I watched Thurlow accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ican). It was a remarkable moment, as she slowly walked to the podium with a cane, and the crowd in Oslo’s City Hall gave a standing ovation. After the bombing, Thurlow attended universities in Hiroshima and Lynchburg, Virginia. Later, she earned a master’s degree in social work at the University of Toronto. She married a historian and settled in Canada. She began her anti-nuclear activism in 1954, and became a leading advocate for survivors of the atomic bombings, known as the hibakusha. A few years ago, I spent time with her in Stockholm, meeting with academics and legislators to discuss the nuclear threat. In her early eighties, she was sharp, passionate, tireless, and free of bitterness. “Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . . a great cloud of a quarter of a million souls,” Thurlow said in her Nobel speech. “Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us insure that their deaths were not in vain.”………..https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-growing-dangers-of-the-new-nuclear-arms-race
Corrosion is seen in a ventilation duct at the No. 3 unit of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture. | NUCLEAR REGULATION AUTHORITY
Corrosion and holes have been found in ventilation ducts at 12 reactors at seven nuclear plants across the country, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said Wednesday, raising concerns that workers could be exposed to radiation in the event of an accident.
The governmental nuclear watchdog released the results of a nationwide survey it had ordered following a revelation in December 2016 that corrosion had left multiple holes in the air ducts of the No. 2 reactor at Chugoku Electric Power Co.’s Shimane plant in western Japan. That reactor was not included in the survey.
Serious corrosion was found at the No. 3 unit of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and may have abnormally affected ventilation of the central control room, the watchdog said.
Although the No. 7 unit at the same plant has passed a test to resume operation, the NRA said it will inspect the impact of any corrosion found at the reactor. No abnormality associated with corrosion has been found at the remaining 10 units, it said.
Corrosion or holes were found in steel or galvanized steel ducts at Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa nuclear plant, Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant, Tepco’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, Chubu Electric Power Co.’s Hamaoka plant, Hokuriku Electric Power Co.’s Shiga nuclear plant and Chugoku Electric’s Shimane plant.
If an accident occurs, radioactive materials could flow into a plant’s central control room through such holes, putting workers in danger of radiation exposure.
At the No. 3 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, a crack as large as 13 centimeters in length and 5 cm in width was found. A total of nine holes and cracks have been discovered at the Nos. 3 and 7 units at the plant.
All the reactors with corrosion were boiling-water reactors, the same type used at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which spewed a massive amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
No problems have been detected at pressurized-water nuclear reactors, as filtering and other measures take place near air inlets.
The holes at the No. 2 unit at the Shimane plant were discovered when insulation materials covering the ducts were removed for inspection.
The holes, the largest of which measured about 100 centimeters wide and about 30 centimeters long, are believed to have been caused by dew condensation and rainwater that seeped inside the building, as well as salt deposits on the ducts, given that the corrosion extended about 50 meters from the air inlet and spread from the inner surface of the ducts.
Chugoku Electric has decided to increase the number of inspection points at sections near fresh-air inlets and bolster anti-corrosion measures, including the installation of a dehumidifier.
Asahi Shimbun 20th May 2018 [Machine Translation]Hitachi announced plans to delay the goal of starting
nuclear power plans planned in the UK for about two years to 2027. The collection of funds necessary for the project is difficult, and reconsideration of sharing has started between companies that undertake design and construction.
The continuation of the project itself is increasingly uncertain.
In the plan, two nuclear reactors will be built on Anglesey island in the UK. The goal of starting operation has been
announced as “early 20’s”.However, according to officials, the Hitachi side recently proposed a new goal “April 27” to companies and others involved in the plan. It is planned to decide whether to start construction in 2019,
but it seems to be assuming a case where this time is delayed. https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASL5M4HZ3L5MULFA001.html
Times 30th May 2018 Hitachi ‘won’t pay’ for nuclear accidents at proposed Wylfa plant on Anglesey. Hitachi could seek to absolve itself of financial responsibility for any accidents at its proposed new nuclear power station in north Wales.
Toshiba exits US nuclear project https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180531_37/ 31 May 18 Japanese electronics maker Toshiba is walking away from a nuclear energy project in the US. The firm says it won’t take part in building or operating the nuclear plant.
Fukushima radioactive particle release was significant says new research https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/uom-frp052418.php UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
nuclear-news 