Fukushima Fallout: Not In My Backyard
A rural community in eastern Japan opposes a government project to build a storage facility for radioactive waste generated by the Fukushima disaster.
Source: Nippon TV News 24
Fukushima decommissioning schedule revised to delay spent fuel removal
With the decommissioning of Fukushima No. 1 proving harder than expected, planners have pushed back plans to remove spent nuclear fuel from the cooling pools perched above the damaged reactors by a few years.
The decision was made Friday by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the tsunami-hit complex.
The spent fuel rod assemblies must be removed from the pools above reactor Nos. 1, 2 and 3 before any attempt can be made to extract the fuel that melted inside the reactors themselves.
But the delay will not impact the overall cleanup timeline for the plant, which spans 30 to 40 years, the government and Tepco said.
The first revision to the decommissioning road map in two years was made after it was decided that too much priority had been placed on speed. This would have heaped excessive pressure on workers tasked with operating in a highly radioactive environment. The road map was first crafted in December 2011.
According to the revised road map, the removal of fuel assemblies from the No. 3 cooling pool will be delayed until fiscal 2017, as it is already behind schedule. The work was expected to be finished in the first half of fiscal 2015, which ends next March.
Work to extract fuel assemblies from the pools on units 1 and 2 is now expected to begin in fiscal 2020, instead of fiscal 2017.
The subsequent extraction of the melted fuel — the most challenging part of the process — is expected to start in 2021, but the government and Tepco have not yet figured out how to do it. They are aiming to settle on a single approach in fiscal 2018.
The revised road map also aims to reduce the amount of groundwater seeping into the structurally damaged plant to less than 100 tons per day in fiscal 2016, instead of 300 tons. The influx of groundwater has become its own crisis by mingling with the highly radioactive water generated in the daily process of cooling the leaking reactors. And all of it must be stored on site until it can be cleaned.
The most important progress made at the plant so far has been the removal of all the fuel assemblies that had been stored in the cooling pool above the No. 4 reactor, which suffered a hydrogen explosion but avoided meltdown.
The revision also said the government and Tepco will begin discussions in the first half of 2016 on how to dispose of water tainted with tritium. The filters currently available can remove all radioactive isotopes from large volumes of water with the exception of tritium, a common byproduct at nuclear plants.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Regulation Authority have suggested such water be dumped into the ocean rather than be kept in tanks, to reduce the risk of accidents, but Tepco remains undecided on this given strong local opposition to the proposal, especially by fishermen.
Source: Japan Times
New book: Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
Book: Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster,Truth Dig, Jun 12, 2015 By Louise Rubacky “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster” A book by David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan and the Union of Concerned Scientists
In “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster,” a team of scientists and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist recount what happens when a catastrophe strikes that no one imagines. No one with the clout to prevent it, that is. It’s a tale of entwined worlds that must cooperate intelligently in order to protect the public. The tensions and cross-purposes among them, however, lead to indecision, inaction and increased calamity. In crisis, these worlds—the nuclear energy industry, two powerful governments, and international regulatory commissions—are about as effective as a machine lubed with super glue.
Early and often comes the warning: HUBRIS AHEAD. Words and phrases like prevailing wisdom, low risk, practically unthinkable, unlikely, government assurances, assumptions, confidence, remote possibility and a situation we had never imaginedappear throughout; they indicate attitudes about potential dangers, and point to why the earthquake and tsunami had such dire effects on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and Japan.
This chronicle, another in the continuing tragedy of the human gamble against nature, is mostly peopled by players who could be said to represent knowledge, fear, power and money. In standing, the first of these comes last. Corporate captains, regulators and leaders charged with public safety cover up or sidestep facts that, if acknowledged and addressed, could imperil their coffers or careers. As in the U.S., there’s a symbiotic and dangerous relationship between government and industry in Japan. The route from the public to the private sector is known here as the revolving door; there, the delicate name for that greasy highway is “amakudari,” translated as “descent from heaven.”…………..
“Fukushima” makes a fine reference volume for understanding nuclear power production and its still-critical dangers. It’s also a mosaic of determined reconstruction, and serves as a play-by-play guide to What Not to Believe during an industrial accident. As the prescient journalist I.F. Stone warned for decades about governments: They all lie. And so it goes for most large corporations, whose PR shields give “spinning”—formerly known as lying—a shiny sophistication. Eight days into the crisis, Chuck Casto, the NRC rep in Japan working on no sleep and with little cooperation, said, “I’m just trying to figure out who the power player is over here.” This too is a crux of the story, and others about high-stakes arenas. ….http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/fukushima_the_story_of_a_nuclear_disaster_20150612
Gov’t OKs long-term Fukushima cleanup plan despite unknowns
TOKYO —The Japanese government on Friday approved a revised 30- to 40-year roadmap to clean up the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, but many questions remain.
The plan, endorsed by cabinet members and officials, delays the start of a key initial step — the removal of spent fuel in storage pools at each of the three melted reactors — by up to three years due to earlier mishaps and safety problems at the plant.
Three of the plant’s six reactors melted following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The fourth, which was offline and had no fuel in the core at the time of the accident, suffered damage to its building, and its fuel storage pool was emptied late last year.
Despite the delay, experts need to locate and study melted fuel inside the reactors and develop robots to start debris removal within six years as planned.
Experts believe melted fuel had breached the reactor cores and mostly fell to the bottom of the containment chambers, some possibly sinking into the concrete foundation.
The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has conducted limited surveys of the reactors using remote-controlled robots.
The roadmap says the initial plan to repair damage in the containment chambers and fill them with water to conduct debris removal underwater is more technically challenging than previously thought, and alternative plans need to be studied.
Radiation levels at the reactors remain high and the plant is still hobbled by the massive amount of contaminated water.
Some of the uncertainties and questions:
___
THE FUEL RODS: Kept cool in storage pools on the top floor of each of the three reactors, they need to be removed to free up space for robots and other equipment to go down to the containment chambers. The 1,573 units of fuel rods – mostly used but some of them new – are considered among the highest risks at the plant, because they are uncovered within the reactor building. To remove them, the building roofs must be taken off and replaced with a cover that prevents radioactive dust from flying out. Each building is damaged differently and requires its own cover design and equipment. The government and plant operator TEPCO hope to start the process in 2018, three years later than planned.
___
THE MELTED FUEL: Once the spent fuel rods are out of the way, workers can turn their attention to what is expected to be the hardest part of the decommissioning: Removing the melted fuel from the three wrecked reactors. The biggest questions are where the melted fuel is and in what condition. Radiation levels are too high for humans to approach. Based on computer simulations and a few remote-controlled probes, experts believe the melted fuel has breached the cores and fallen to the bottom of the containment chambers, some possibly seeping into the concrete foundation.
A plan to repair the containment chambers and fill them with water so that the melted fuel can be handled while being kept cool may be unworkable, and experts are now studying alternative methods. How to reach the debris – from the top or from the side – is another question. A vertical approach would require robots and equipment that can dangle as low as 30 meters (90 feet) to reach the bottom. Experts are also trying to figure out how to get debris samples out to help develop radiation-resistant robots and other equipment that can handle the molten fuel.
___
CONTAMINATED WATER: The plant is still plagued with massive amounts of contaminated water – cooling water that must be added regularly, and subsequently leaks out of the reactors and mixes with groundwater that seeps into the reactor basements. The volume of water grows by 300 tons daily. TEPCO runs it through treatment machines to remove most radioactive elements, and then stores it in thousands of tanks on the compound. Water leaks pose environmental concerns and health risks to workers. Nuclear experts say controlled release of the treated water into the ocean would be the ultimate solution.
___
RADIOACTIVE WASTE: Japan currently has no plan for the waste that comes out of the plant. Under the roadmap, the government and TEPCO are supposed to compile a basic plan by March 2018. Waste management is an extremely difficult task that requires developing technology to compact and reduce the toxicity of the waste, while finding a waste storage site is practically impossible considering public sentiment. This raises serious doubts about whether the cleanup can be completed within 40 years.
Source: JapanToday
Contaminated waste water in Fukushima: the unending horror
This is what passes for good news from Fukushima Daiichi, the Japanese nuclear power plant devastated by meltdowns and explosions after a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in 2011: By the end of last month, workers had succeeded in filtering most of the 620,000 tons of toxic water stored at the site, removing almost all of the radioactive materials.
After numerous false starts and technical glitches, most of the stored water has been run through filtration systems to remove dangerous strontium-90, as well as many other radionuclides. TEPCO, the Japanese utility that operates the power plant, trumpeted the achievement: “This is a significant milestone for improving the environment for our surrounding communities and for our workers,” said Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s chief decommissioning officer, in a press release.
But it’s not quite so easy to bounce back from a nuclear disaster of this scale. For one thing, don’t take TEPCO’s statement too literally: No one is living in the “surrounding communities”—they’re far too contaminated for human habitation. Furthermore, the filtered water is still full of tritium, a radioactive version of hydrogen. (When two neutrons are added to the element, it becomes unstable, prone to emitting electrons.) Tritium bonds with oxygen just like normal hydrogen does, to produce radioactive “tritiated water.” It’s impractical—or at least extremely difficult and expensive—to separate tritiated water from normal water.
Hence TEPCO’s dilemma—which gets bigger by the day.The enormous volume of water comes from the ongoing need to keep the three melted-down reactor cores cool. More than four years after the disaster, pumps still must pour a constant stream of water into the pressure vessels that contain the radioactive cores. But the meltdowns and explosions rendered those vessels leaky, so TEPCO collects the water that seeps out, as well as rainwater that flows down the hills and through the shattered buildings.
TEPCO has been filling fields with vast arrays of storage tanks to cope with the accumulating water. The company’s 40-year plan for decommissioning the plant calls for the construction of an underground “ice wall” to freeze the soil around the reactor buildings and divert rainwater, and for plugging the leaks in the buildings. But TEPCO has run into problems with the ice wall—the underground tunnels carrying coolant haven’t gotten cold enough to sufficiently freeze the surrounding ground—and the more long-term solution of plugging the reactor buildings’s leaks is still a distant goal. In the meantime, TEPCO keeps building tanks.
Some experts, including the eminently respectable IAEA, have suggested that TEPCO may have to simply dump the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean. Tritium traditionally hasn’t been considered very dangerous to human health. Although tritiated water can reach all parts of the body, like normal water, it’s also expelled quickly from the body, like normal water. If released into the ocean, the contaminated water would quickly be diluted, and it wouldn’t bioaccumulate in fish (unlike strontium-90, for example, which is taken up by bones).
But is tritiated water really so harmless? It’s currently getting a second look from regulators in the United States. Last year, the EPA announced plans to review safety standards for tritiated water, which has leaked from many a nuclear plant. As this excellent Scientific American article explains, there’s considerable uncertainty over whether the stuff is more dangerous than we previously thought.
The amount of tritium in Fukushima Daiichi’s water is not negligible. The World Health Organization’s standard for tritium in drinking water is 10,000 becquerels per liter (34 ounces). According to Mayumi Yoshida, a TEPCO communications officer, Fukushima’s stored water contains between 1 and 5 million becquerels per liter. Yet Yoshida noted that operational nuclear power plants around the world discharge water with a much higher level of tritium than that.
Does that imply that the company is considering discharging its water into the sea, I asked? “Nothing has been decided but to keep storing at the site,” Yoshida said. “We will discuss thoroughly with the government, the oversea and domestic experts, the fishermen, and the surrounding residents, which way would be the safest and the best for everyone, before deciding anything.”
It’s hard to imagine that those discussions will be productive. Releasing the water into the ocean sounds like a non-starter in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, where fishermen are already furious with TEPCO. Fishing has been suspended around the coastal Fukushima Daiichi plant since the accident, and repeated leaks of radioactive water have angered the fishing associations still further.
If the water can’t be released as-is for political reasons, TEPCO’s only options are to keep building tanks or to accept its extremely difficult and expensive fate, and figure out how to remove the last bit of nuclear taint from its enormous holdings of problematic water.
Source: DiaNuke.org
West Coast of North America to be Slammed by 2016 with 80% As Much Fukushima Radiation As Japan
A professor from Japan’s Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (Michio Aoyama) told Kyodo in April that the West Coast of North America will be hit with around 800 terabecquerels of Cesium- 137 by 2016.
EneNews notes that this is 80% of the cesium-137 deposited in Japan by Fukushima, according to the company which runs Fukushima, Tepco:
(a petabequeral or “PBq” equals 1,000 terabecquerels.)
This is not news for those who have been paying attention. For example, we noted 2 days after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that the West Coast of North America could be slammed with radiation from Fukushima.
We pointed out the next year that a previously-secret 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents, and there could be “pockets” and “streams” of highly-concentrated radiation.
The same year, we noted that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna tested in California waters were contaminated with Fukushima radiation.
In 2013, we warned that the West Coast of North America would be hit hard by Fukushima radiation.
And we’ve noted for years that there is no real testing of Fukushima radiation by any government agency.
Indeed, scientists say that the amount of the West Coast of North America could end up exceeding that off the Japanese coast.
What’s the worst case scenario? That the mass die-off of sealife off the West Coast of North America – which may have started only a couple of months after the Fukushima melt-down – is being caused by radiation from Fukushima.
Source: Washington’s blog
Start of reactor fuel removal at crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant may be delayed up to three years
The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are planning to push back the start of removing spent fuel at the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex by two to three years from the current schedule, according to government sources.
Under an envisioned revised road map for decommissioning reactors 1 to 4 at the plant, which was ravaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, work to begin removing the spent fuel from the No. 3 pool is expected to be delayed until fiscal 2017, the sources said Tuesday. Originally that work was to begin in the first half of fiscal 2015.
Removal work on the Nos. 1 and 2 pools, which was supposed to begin in fiscal 2017, is now expected to start in fiscal 2020.
There is no change to the overall timeline for decommissioning the plant within 30 to 40 years after the nuclear calamity, according to the sources.
The government is expected to hold a Cabinet meeting as early as Friday to officially reflect the changes in the road map.
The government and Tepco, the plant operator are moving to revise the road map for the first time since June 2013. They apparently believe the existing plan has placed too much priority on speeding up decommissioning efforts and put a heavy burden on workers at the complex.
Source: Japan Times
No One Knows What to Do With Fukushima’s Endless Tanks of Radioactive Water
This is what passes for good news from Fukushima Daiichi, the Japanese nuclear power plant devastated by meltdowns and explosions after a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in 2011: By the end of last month, workers had succeeded in filtering most of the 620,000 tons of toxic water stored at the site, removing almost all of the radioactive materials.
After numerous false starts and technical glitches, most of the stored water has been run through filtration systems to remove dangerous strontium-90, as well as many other radionuclides. TEPCO, the Japanese utility that operates the power plant, trumpeted the achievement: “This is a significant milestone for improving the environment for our surrounding communities and for our workers,” said Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s chief decommissioning officer, in a press release.
But it’s not quite so easy to bounce back from a nuclear disaster of this scale. For one thing, don’t take TEPCO’s statement too literally: No one is living in the “surrounding communities”—they’re far too contaminated for human habitation. Furthermore, the filtered water is still full of tritium, a radioactive version of hydrogen. (When two neutrons are added to the element, it becomes unstable, prone to emitting electrons.) Tritium bonds with oxygen just like normal hydrogen does, to produce radioactive “tritiated water.” It’s impractical—or at least extremely difficult and expensive—to separate tritiated water from normal water.
Hence TEPCO’s dilemma—which gets bigger by the day. The enormous volume of water comes from the ongoing need to keep the three melted-down reactor cores cool. More than four years after the disaster, pumps still must pour a constant stream of water into the pressure vessels that contain the radioactive cores. But the meltdowns and explosions rendered those vessels leaky, so TEPCO collects the water that seeps out, as well as rainwater that flows down the hills and through the shattered buildings.
TEPCO has been filling fields with vast arrays of storage tanks to cope with the accumulating water. The company’s 40-year plan for decommissioning the plant calls for the construction of an underground “ice wall” to freeze the soil around the reactor buildings and divert rainwater, and for plugging the leaks in the buildings. But TEPCO has run into problems with the ice wall—the underground tunnels carrying coolant haven’t gotten cold enough to sufficiently freeze the surrounding ground—and the more long-term solution of plugging the reactor buildings’ leaks is still a distant goal. In the meantime, TEPCO keeps building tanks.
Some experts, including the eminently respectable IAEA, have suggested that TEPCO may have to simply dump the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean. Tritium traditionally hasn’t been considered very dangerous to human health. Although tritiated water can reach all parts of the body, like normal water, it’s also expelled quickly from the body, like normal water. If released into the ocean, the contaminated water would quickly be diluted, and it wouldn’t bioaccumulate in fish (unlike strontium-90, for example, which is taken up by bones).
But is tritiated water really so harmless? It’s currently getting a second look from regulators in the United States. Last year, the EPA announced plans to review safety standards for tritiated water, which has leaked from many a nuclear plant. As this excellent Scientific American article explains, there’s considerable uncertainty over whether the stuff is more dangerous than we previously thought.
The amount of tritium in Fukushima Daiichi’s water is not negligible. The World Health Organization’s standard for tritium in drinking water is 10,000 becquerels per liter (34 ounces). According to Mayumi Yoshida, a TEPCO communications officer, Fukushima’s stored water contains between 1 and 5 million becquerels per liter. Yet Yoshida noted that operational nuclear power plants around the world discharge water with a much higher level of tritium than that.
Does that imply that the company is considering discharging its water into the sea, I asked? “Nothing has been decided but to keep storing at the site,” Yoshida said. “We will discuss thoroughly with the government, the oversea and domestic experts, the fishermen, and the surrounding residents, which way would be the safest and the best for everyone, before deciding anything.”
It’s hard to imagine that those discussions will be productive. Releasing the water into the ocean sounds like a non-starter in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, where fishermen are already furious with TEPCO. Fishing has been suspended around the coastal Fukushima Daiichi plant since the accident, and repeated leaks of radioactive water have angered the fishing associations still further.
If the water can’t be released as-is for political reasons, TEPCO’s only options are to keep building tanks or to accept its extremely difficult and expensive fate, and figure out how to remove the last bit of nuclear taint from its enormous holdings of problematic water.
Source: Nautilus
http://nautil.us/blog/no-one-knows-what-to-do-with-fukushimas-endless-tanks-of-radioactive-water
Plan to end rent subsidies for some Fukushima evacuees under fresh fire
One expert knowledgeable about the evacuees says, “The reason that a plan to end these subsidies has arisen even though the financial burden is not large may be that government officials want to try and force voluntary evacuees to return to their homes, without respecting the evacuees’ own judgments on the matter.”
A plan to end rent subsidies for some evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has come under fresh fire, as it emerged that those subsidies are costing at most 8.09 billion yen this fiscal year.
The evacuees under consideration for having their subsidies cut — at the end of fiscal 2016 — are voluntary evacuees living in homes other than temporary housing structures built for evacuees. The total Fukushima Prefecture relief budget for disaster evacuees this fiscal year, including non-voluntary evacuees, is over 28.8 billion yen, so the subsidies being considered for being cut account for less than 30 percent of the relief budget.
One expert knowledgeable about evacuees says, “The reason that a plan to end these subsidies has arisen even though the financial burden is not large may be that government officials want to try and force voluntary evacuees to return to their homes, without respecting evacuees’ own judgments on the matter.”
Voluntary evacuees are people who evacuated from areas outside of those where the government ordered evacuations. Until November 2012, Fukushima Prefecture did not allow them to use emergency temporary housing set up for evacuees in the prefecture, and many voluntary evacuees moved outside of the prefecture.
According to the Fukushima Prefectural Government, for this fiscal year it allocated about 20.73 billion yen for the temporary homes of non-voluntary evacuees within the prefecture, and 8.09 billion yen for those of evacuees outside the prefecture. The evacuees outside the prefecture include non-voluntary evacuees, but the exact numbers are not known. A Fukushima Prefectural Government official says, “Non-voluntary evacuees have been using compensation for their lost real-estate to buy homes, and most of the people getting rent subsidies outside of Fukushima Prefecture are probably voluntary evacuees.”
Within the prefecture, voluntary evacuees live in around 300 homes, which are not temporary housing structures, but subsidies for their rent are included in the “out-of-prefecture” budget, so the 8.09 billion yen covers all voluntary evacuees from the prefecture.
According to the Cabinet Office, as of April 1 this year, there were evacuees living in 18,742 homes in Fukushima Prefecture other than temporary housing structures, and according to the Fukushima Prefectural Government, evacuees were living in around 10,000 such homes outside of the prefecture. Both numbers include voluntary and non-voluntary evacuees. Neither the Fukushima Prefectural Government nor the central government has yet released exact figures on the number of homes for voluntary evacuees other than temporary housing built after the disaster, nor have they released exact numbers for the total rent paid for them.
Currently, evacuee homes are set to be subsidized until the end of March 2016, with a decision on whether to extend this to be made soon after discussions between the Fukushima Prefectural Government and the Cabinet Office. A plan to end subsidies for voluntary evacuees would extend the deadline for one more year, to the end of March 2017, after which voluntary evacuees would no longer receive them. Although Fukushima Prefecture has money budgeted for subsidizing voluntary evacuees, this money is in effect all paid for by the central government. Tokyo Electric Power Co. has expressed reluctance to pay for voluntary evacuees’ rent, and so far the central government has not billed them for such.
Meanwhile, this fiscal year’s Fukushima Prefecture budget for radiation decontamination measures is 64.39 billion yen, up 13.35 billion yen from the previous fiscal year. The Ministry of the Environment released an estimate in December 2013 that the total costs for decontamination and mid-term storage for radioactive waste would be 3.6 trillion yen.
Source: Mainichi
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150609p2a00m0na006000c.html
Fukushima Businesses Compensation Payments Terminated, Youth Unwilling to Return
Side Note: While the government continues to try to compel people to return to the evacuation zone, they have turned a section of Tomioka into a permanent high level radioactive waste dump. The dump will take anything over 8000 bq/kg in contamination including trash, contaminated plant matter and building rubble from the evacuation zone. This is in addition to the temporary soil dump being built in Futaba and Okuma.
A new plan was announced by TEPCO and the Japanese government that would terminate compensation payments to businesses impacted by the disaster. The plan includes giving businesses a lump sum payment to cover compensation through fiscal 2016. If a business still needs compensation after that date they will need to take up a new fight against TEPCO who said they would consider more payments on a case by case basis.
This cut off times with the government plan to reopen large sections of the evacuation zone even though radiation levels remain unsafe. At the same time they announced the payment cut off they stressed that they would be putting money into “revitalization” efforts in the evacuated areas.
New polling found a majority of younger residents originally from the towns in the evacuation zone have no intention of returning and see themselves living somewhere else as adults.
While the government continues to try to compel people to return to the evacuation zone, they have turned a section of Tomioka into a permanent high level radioactive waste dump.
Sources:
Fukushima youths ready to desert irradiated hometowns, survey finds
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/05/national/fukushima-youths-ready-desert-irradiated-hometowns-survey-finds/#.VXf-AEZZNBS
Ministry to nationalize Fukushima site to bury radioactive waste
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201506060036
Fukushima business owners at a loss over plan to terminate compensation
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201506080034
Rain May Have Caused Radiation Spike At Fukushima Drainage Canal
The rain did it. That’s it. It has nothing to do with 3 cores in meltdown under the plant sitting in the aquafier pissing 400 tons plus a day of Radioactive water from the basements down into the ocean 24/7. It’s just the rain.
TEPCO reported a small radiation spike at the K drainage canal on June 6th. .59 inches of rain fell during June 6th according to the historical weather data.
The amount of rain was small but appears to have caused a notable spike in the drainage system. Since multiple locations feed into the K drainage canal it is hard to say what area specifically contributed to the rise but it is a clear indicator that rain does continue to play a role.
in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan’s govt to nationalise private site for nuclear waste dump
Ministry to nationalize Fukushima site to bury radioactive waste, Asahia Shimbun June 06, 2015 By YU KOTSUBO/ Staff Writer FUKUSHIMA--The Environment Ministry said it will nationalize a privately owned site in Fukushima Prefecture to dispose of radioactive waste generated by the 2011 nuclear disaster there.
The decision effectively makes the government responsible for safety of the site.
Environment Minister Yoshio Mochizuki met with Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori, Tomioka Mayor Koichi Miyamoto and Naraha Mayor Yukiei Matsumoto on June 5, and told them that the government will purchase a site in Tomioka to bury the radioactive waste. A transportation route to the site runs through Naraha.
The material to be buried includes “designated waste,” whose concentration of radioactive materials exceeds 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.
“We made the decision to secure the safety of the project,” Mochizuki said during the meeting held at a Fukushima prefectural government office.
Mochizuki sweetened the deal by pledging to take measures to promote the local economy, including a provision of grants that can be used freely by local governments. The nationalization and the economic promotion measures had been requested by the local governments………
The government is also facing difficulties in determining disposal sites in other prefectures because of strong opposition from local residents……http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201506060036
Gov’t Officials: Fukushima should be declared uninhabitable
Gov’t Officials: Fukushima should be declared uninhabitable — “Conditions are getting worse, we have to move people away… we can’t wait” — “Someone has to do something” — “Just like evacuation of children in WWII” — Newspaper: “Fukushima youths ready to desert irradiated hometowns” (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/govt-officials-fukushima-be-declared-uninhabitable-wait-around-conditions-getting-worse-move-people-away-like-evacuation-children-during-world-war-ii-japan-newspaper-fukushima-youths-ready?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
Jiji Press, Jun 5, 2015 (emphasis added): Fukushima youths ready to desert irradiated hometowns, survey finds… a majority of the young people living in 12 radiation-contaminated municipalities in Fukushima do not plan to be living in the same place… The survey, conducted in February and March, covered members of some 13,000 households randomly selected from the 77,600 still remaining in the 12 municipalities… “The results are very shocking,” said Satoshi Endo, mayor of the town of Hirono… Fukushima Prefectural Government will present a clear vision so young people can have hope about their hometowns, a senior official said..
The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 25, 2015:
- Murakami Tatsuya, former mayor of Tōkaimura (“Birthplace of nuclear power in Japan”): There are 14 reactors on [Japan’s Pacific coast] and I wouldn’t have been surprised if all these reactors had ended up failing in some way or another… It tells you how catastrophic it could be for a country like Japan to house nuclear power plants… It is crazy. Right now about 130,000 people in Fukushima have been evacuated from the exclusion areas, although it would be 80,000 or 90,000 people if we do not count voluntary evacuees… Speaking from the examples of Chernobyl, Fukushima should have been declared uninhabitable, especially to raise children.
- Prof. Katsuya Hirano, UCLA: I agree… families with small children should have been given new land somewhere safe to start their lives again. The government should have provided them with a new village and community to live…
- Murakami: I thought about the possibility of relocating the entire Tōkaimura myself. The news about the Fukushima crisis chilled me to the bone. As I mentioned, we were so close to having a similar situation, so I started thinking about relocating the entire village and in fact found a place in Hokkaido… and have them start dairy farming and cultivating new land in Hokkaido… I even visited the area. If it doesn’t work, I thought, other alternatives would be Australia or our sister state, Idaho.
Press Conference for Dr. Akira Sugenoya, Mayor of Matsumoto, Japan (AP: Sugenoya is a surgeon and thyroid specialist who left a prestigious Japanese hospital to perform lifesaving cancer surgeries in Chernobyl for several years): “It is clear that a significant amount of radioactive iodine was released from Fukushima Daiichi. It was a huge mistake not to take any measures immediately… There are children in Fukushima diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and the number of cases is increasing… I have said “children and pregnant women will suffer negative health effects in the future, as a result of external — and especially internal — exposure… In order to protect their lives, the government must, as a matter of national policy, move the children out of contaminated regions… The people are being exposed to radiation on a daily basis. Someone has to do something… A good part of Japan has been contaminated with nuclear fallout. This is just like the evacuation of children that took place en masse during the World War II.”
Taro Yamamoto, member of Japan’s Upper House of Parliament: “We have to grasp the real situation of which our children are in… we cannot wait around, because the conditions are getting worse. We have to move people away from the affected areas.”
Dr. Sugenoya’s press conference here | Interview with Yamamoto here
Still 960,000Bq Cs-134/137 and 2,336,000,000Bq noble gas discharged from reactors to the air every single hour
On 5/25/2015, Tepco reported still 960,000 Bq / hour of Cesium-134 and 137 is assumed to be discharged from Reactor 1 -4 to the air this April.
This is 2.7 times much as their provisional figure published in the end of April.
Tepco states the difference is caused by the change of calculation method. It strongly suggests the entire historical discharged volume of Cs-134/137 has been underestimated since 311 however they did not disclose the recalculated discharged volume before April of 2014.
Comparing to May of 2014, the discharged volume of Cs-134/137 increased to 180% this April. Tepco however states this is lower than 10% of the set point of “discharge control”, and they haven’t made any explanation on this increase.
Especially in Reactor 3, the discharged volume increased 78 times much as May. 2014. Also, 95,000 Bq / hour of Cs-134/137 is discharged from Reactor 4 building though it does not contain nuclear fuel.
Regarding noble gas (such as Kr-85), PCV (Primary Containment Vessel) gas control system detected 2,336,000,000 Bq of gas discharged from Reactor 1-3 every hour this April. Tepco states noble gas passes by as radioactive cloud to cause only external exposure so the exposure dose caused by the discharged noble gas should be significantly small.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2015/images/additional_amount_150525-j.pdf
http://www.tepco.co.jp/life/custom/faq/images/d150430_08-j.pdf
Source: Fukushima Diary
Report: Nuclear fallout is Japan’s top environmental problem
A Japanese government report says the release of massive amounts of radioactive materials is still the country’s top environmental problem 4 years after the nuclear accident in Fukushima Prefecture.
This year’s white paper on the environment says high levels of radiation are still detected in some areas. It says affected areas face a number of problems, such as depopulation and ungrounded rumors.
The report calls for the introduction of renewable energy in such areas. It proposes using part of earnings from green energy generation to help residents to return to their communities http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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