Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, CBS News, CORRESPONDENTLesley Stahl, Produced by Richard Bonin and Ayesha Siddiqi , 28 July 19
Eight years after a powerful earthquake and tsunami caused a massive nuclear meltdown in the Daiichi Power Plant, Lesley Stahl reports on the unprecedented cleanup effort
More than eight years have passed since a monster earthquake and tsunami struck Northeast Japan and triggered what became, after Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
As we first reported last fall, when three of the plant’s six reactors melted down, hot fuel turned to molten lava and burned through steel walls and concrete floors. To this day, no one knows exactly where inside the reactor buildings the fuel is. And it is so deadly, no human can go inside to look for it. So the Japanese company that owns the crippled plant has turned to robots.
There are four-legged robots, robots that climb stairs and even robots that can swim into reactors flooded with water. They’re equipped with 3D scanners, sensors and cameras that map the terrain, measure radiation levels and look for the missing fuel.
This is part of a massive clean up that’s expected to cost nearly $200 billion and take decades.
Lesley Stahl: Has anything like this cleanup, in terms of the scope, ever happened before?
Lake Barrett: No, this is a unique situation here. It’s never happened in human history. It’s a challenge we’ve never had before………..
Lesley Stahl: Why not just bury this place? Why not do what they did at Chernobyl? Just cover it up, bury it, and just leave it here all– you know, enclosed?
Lake Barrett: Number one this is right next to the sea. We’re 100 yards from the ocean. We have typhoons here in Japan. This is also a high earthquake zone. And there’s gonna be future earthquakes. So these are unknowns that the Japanese and no one wants to deal with………
Lesley Stahl: How many tons of radioactive waste was developed here?
Lake Barrett: Probably 500 to 1,000 tons in each building.
Lesley Stahl: So how long will it be lethal?
Lake Barrett: It will be lethal for thousands of years.
Lesley Stahl: What we’re talking about really is three meltdowns?
Lake Barrett: Yes. It was truly Hell on Earth.
No one is gonna send a worker in there because they’d be overexposed in just a matter of seconds.”
The meltdowns triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of everyone within a 12-mile radius – about 160,000 people in all. Weeks later, TEPCO officials engaged in so-called kowtow diplomacy – allowing townspeople to berate them as they prostrated themselves in apology.
Thousands of workers were sent to the countryside to decontaminate everything touched by radiation including digging up dirt and putting it in bags – lots of bags.
At the plant they’re capturing contaminated groundwater, about 150 tons a day, and storing it in tanks, as far as the eye can see.
Lake Barrett: Water is always the major challenge here. And it’s going to remain a major challenge until the entire cores are removed.
The closer workers get to the reactors, the more protective gear they have to wear, as we discovered………..
In the years since the accident, much of the damage to the building has been repaired.
But it’s still dangerous to spend a lot of time here. We could stay only 15 minutes.
Lesley Stahl: There’s this number I’ve been seeing, 566.
Lake Barrett: Right. That’s telling you the radiation level that we’re in. It’s fairly high here. That’s why we’re gonna be here a short time.
Lesley Stahl: How close are you and I, right this minute, to the core?
Lake Barrett: The– the melted cores are about 70 feet that way.
Lesley Stahl: Seventy from here–
Lake Barrett: From here.
Lesley Stahl: –is the melted core?
Lake Barrett: Correct, that’s right over in here. We don’t know quite where other than it fell down into the floor.
Lesley Stahl: So if you sent a worker in right now to find it, how long would they survive?
Lake Barrett: No one is gonna send a worker in there because they’d be overexposed in just a matter of seconds.
Enter the robots.
Lesley Stahl: This is the robot research center.
Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. This is for remote control technology development.
In 2016, the Japanese government opened this $100 million research center near the plant where a new generation of robots is being developed by teams of engineers and scientists from the nation’s top universities and tech companies………
But even with all the high-tech training and know-how, the robots have run into problems. For the early models, it was the intense levels of radiation – that fried their electronics and cameras.
Lake Barrett: Their lifetime was hours. We hoped it would be days, but it was for hours………
when Scorpion went inside, it hit some debris and got stuck after traveling less than 10 feet. ……
Finally, in 2017, the swimming robot [Little Sunfish] made its foray into the heart of the reactor. ………. It beamed back images reveali ng clumps of debris, fuel rods, half-destroyed equipment and murky glimpses of what looks like solidified lava — the first signs, TEPCO officials say, of the missing fuel.
Lake Barrett: These robotic steps so far have been significant steps. But it is only a small step on a very, very long journey.
Lesley Stahl: This is gonna take you said decades with an “S.” How many decades?
Lake Barrett: We don’t know for sure. The goal here is 40– 30– 40 years. You know, I personally think it may be even 50– 60, but it’s–
Fukushima residents look for Olympic PR boost, Kyodo News, By Jim Allen, 29 July 19, – Two softball games and one baseball game in Fukushima next summer may be little more than an 2020 Olympic cameo, but local fans are thrilled to have them, largely in the hopes they will give their prefecture a badly needed public relations boost.
………… Tokyo Olympic organizers have dubbed the games “the Reconstruction Olympics.”
In addition to the games in Fukushima, Miyagi Stadium will be one of the Olympic soccer venues, while all three prefectures will be focal points of the Olympic torch relay — which officially starts in Fukushima.
……….. Even eight years later, Fukushima suffers from the suspicion that food from the prefecture might be contaminated. And locals see the Olympics as an opportunity to show off their region the way they see it. ………
Iwamura said that consumers outside Fukushima have second thoughts about the safety of the food raised there and local farmers cannot get fair value for their products. But he said the Olympics are a golden opportunity to change peoples’ perceptions of Fukushima.
“For us baseball people here, we want to make the baseball and softball games held here a success,” Iwamura said. “If we can be wildly enthusiastic about them and show that to the people coming from abroad, then they will tell others that Fukushima is safe, that the people here are living good lives.”……..
Iwamura expressed optimism for next year and for the future.
More than eight years after one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, towns around Japan’s nuclear power plant struggle to rebuild, 2019 Jul 28, BYBrit McCandless Farmer
The streets are motionless. Items hang untouched on clotheslines, bleached by the sun. A clock shows 2:46, and it always will. More than eight years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, surrounding towns are still frozen in time.
“At the moment, there are huge areas that are still ghost towns,” correspondent Lesley Stahl told 60 Minutes Overtime in the video above. “People can come back into some of the areas because they have been decontaminated. But people are afraid to go back home.”
In March 2011, meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere. Wind then carried that debris, contaminating all the towns in its path. The government evacuated more than 150,000 people.
Today, residents of those towns are reluctant to return, even as the Japanese government works to assure the towns’ safety.
“They’ve sent millions of workers out to literally wipe down rails, power hose leaves on trees, clean the tops of houses, dig up all the topsoil from a tree, a garden bed,” said 60 Minutes associate producer Ayesha Siddiqi. “It’s so detailed. Every single last crevice of the town will be cleaned up somehow.”
A lot of residents have moved homes—and moved on, rebuilding their lives elsewhere. Others are afraid of returning to an area that had been covered with radioactive particles. Still, some people are starting to filter back in.
“This is their home, had always been their home,” Stahl said. “But I don’t know if they’ll ever restore the surrounding towns and have really whole, healthy communities.”
To watch Lesley Stahl’s report on how robots have finally found the reactors’ melted uranium fuel, click here.
Toxic water level at Fukushima plant still not under control, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, July 28, 2019 Almost six years after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe famously declared the contaminated water problem at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant “under control,” today it remains anything but.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) continues to face difficulties in dealing with water contaminated with radioactive substances at its crippled plant.
About 18,000 tons of highly contaminated water remain accumulated in reactor buildings and other places.
Abe made the declaration in September 2013 while Tokyo was bidding to win the 2020 Summer Games.
In reality, however, the situation is not under control even now.
In a meeting of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in June, one of its members, Nobuhiko Ban, told TEPCO officials, “I want you to show whether you have a prospect (for the reduction of contaminated water) or you have given up.”
The water level did not fall as planned in an area of a basement floor at the No. 3 reactor building for two months. Asked why the level did not drop, TEPCO officials offered only vague explanations in the meeting. Ban made the remark out of irritation.
Highly contaminated water that has accumulated in reactor buildings and turbine buildings is a major concern at the Fukushima plant. In addition to water that was used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, groundwater also has flowed into those buildings through cracks.
The concentration of radioactive substances in the highly contaminated water is about 100 million times that of the contaminated water that has been processed and stored in tanks………
Eight years since the nuclear accident occurred, the volume of highly contaminated water in the buildings has fallen to 18,000 tons. TEPCO aims to reduce the volume further to 6,000 tons by the end of fiscal 2020.
However, work to decrease the water has not progressed as expected.
As for the area in the basement of the No. 3 reactor building, it is known that water used to cool melted nuclear fuel is flowing into the area. But why the water level does not drop only in that area is not known.
If the water level in the building remains high, highly contaminated water there could leak into the ground through cracks when the groundwater level outside the building drops. If the leaks occur, the entire effort to decrease the amount of highly contaminated water will be stalled.
The NRA is also requiring TEPCO to take anti-tsunami measures because if a huge tsunami engulfs the buildings again, it could send highly contaminated water pouring into the sea
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. will decommission the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant, its president, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, told Fukushima Gov. Masao Ochibori at a meeting Wednesday.
The facility is the second nuclear plant that the utility company has decided to decommission after accepting it would need to shutter the nearby Fukushima No. 1 plant, which was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Tepco’s decision to scrap Fukushima No. 2, which is expected to cost some ¥280 billion ($2.6 billion), will be formally approved at the company’s board meeting later this month if local municipalities accept the plan.
The prefecture has demanded the utility scrap the reactors at Fukushima No. 2, saying their existence would hamper its reconstruction efforts. The plant has been offline since its operations were suspended due to the 2011 disaster.
If the plan goes ahead, all 10 nuclear reactors in the prefecture — four at the No. 2 plant and six at the No. 1 facility — will be scrapped.
It will also leave the utility company with only the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and the planned Higashidori nuclear plant in Aomori Prefecture.
Kobayakawa said at the meeting, also attended by the mayors of the two towns — Naraha and Tomioka — that host the plant, that Tepco plans to build a new on-site storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from the reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant.
The fuel will be placed in metallic containers and cooled using a dry storage approach, according to the operator.
No decision has been made regarding final disposal of the spent fuel, raising concerns that the radioactive waste may remain on-site for a long time.
The Fukushima No.2 plant currently has around 10,000 assemblies of spent fuel cooling in pools.
Tepco to retire remaining reactors in Fukushima https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tepco-to-retire-remaining-reactors-in-FukushimaDecommissioning is expected to take 40 years and cost $2.5bn SUGURU KURIMOTO, Nikkei staff writer, JULY 20, 2019 TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings will scrap the four Fukushima Prefecture reactors that escaped damage in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, moving to decommission all of the nuclear power plants the public utility owns in the disaster-stricken region.
The shutdown of the Fukushima Daini plant, which is located just 12km away from the Daiichi Plant crippled by fuel meltdowns, will be formally authorized at the company’s board meeting at the end of the month. This marks the first decision by the utility, known as Tepco, to decommission nuclear reactors apart from the Daiichi facilities.
Costs for decommissioning Fukushima Daini are estimated to exceed 270 billion yen ($2.5 billion). While Tepco’s reserves are not enough to cover them, the government adopted new accounting rules allowing operators to spread a large loss from decommissioning over multiple years. The company also believes it has secured enough people with necessary expertise to move forward.
Tepco soon will inform Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori of its decision. The utility intends to submit the decommissioning plan to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority by March next year.
The decision means all 10 reactors in Fukushima will be scrapped. The Daini reactors will be decommissioned in roughly 40 years, sharing the same timetable as the Daiichi site. Tepco owns one other nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility in Niigata Prefecture.
The Daini plant, where each reactor produced 1.1 gigawatts of power, served the Tokyo area for about three decades. Japan’s central government sought to restart the complex but faced withering opposition from local residents in Fukushima.
Including the Fukushima Daini facilities, a total of 21 reactors across Japan are now slated for decommissioning. Recent additions include two units at the Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture and one reactor at the Onagawa facility in Miyagi Prefecture.
I am revealing some meaningful facts about Fukushima.
1.Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,in his twitter of June 1,criticized
an interim report presented by the Fukushima Prefecture that denies the
influence of radiation on children’s cancer,thus recalling the importance of
ethics to us.
2.Former Prime Minister is vigorously engaged in pleading for abolishing
nuclear reactors and for promoting natural energies.He is determined to prevent the restarting of the second Tokai Nuclear Reactor,situated only 100 kilometers away from Tokyo. He is to visit the nearby city Hitachi in September to make a speech that could gather thousands of citizens.
3.On June 25,three days before the G 20 Summit in Osaka,white smoke was
observed blowing up near No.6 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi.
There is no press report about this up to this day. On 28 June,an acquaintance
informed me of it and a director in charge of the Fukushima Prefecture I
contacted confirmed this and asked me to reassure people that there was
no need for panic.I sent out a BCC message to this effect.
Why me and not the media !
I have sent a message to Prime Minister Abe to inform him of the fact and
the problem regarding the media.
4.The floods in Kumamoto in Kyushu actually oblige 1 million residents to
take refuge.We are reminded that Japan is a super power of natural disasters.
The actual severe heat wave in Europe makes us anxious about the Tokyo Olympic Games taking place in mid-summer.
Is Tokyo Ready for the Olympic Juggernaut? Tokyo says that it’s ready to host the 2020 Olympics. The early numbers—and quality of Olympic leadership—are not encouraging. The Nation, By Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff 18 July 19
This is not so much a prophecy as it is a prediction: The city of Tokyo is in serious trouble. We are headed to the “Electric Town” this week to look at how this modern metropolis of more than 9 million people is preparing to host the 2020 Summer Olympics exactly one year before the five-ring juggernaut rolls into town. To be clear, the Olympics—and their masters in the International Olympic Committee—are not in trouble. They will nest in Tokyo’s five-star hotels, avoid traffic in special Olympic driving lanes and gather a mighty profit. But, if recent history is any guide, the city and its residents are in for a very rough ride.
We are heading to Tokyo to report on the preparations underway for (and growing resistance against) next year’s games, but even before we land there are some things we can be sure about. One is that the debt to be incurred from the Games could have a perilous effect on Japan’s economy. The country is already weighted down by debt, with Forbes magazine publishing breathless articles about “when Japan’s debt crisis will implode.” The 2020 Olympics costs have exploded, now in the range of $30 billion, four times the original cost projections. After a slew of bad press, Tokyo organizers have claimed that they’ve made extreme budget cuts, but as sports economist Andrew Zimbalist noted, many of these cuts were fictitious. And the cuts the organizers have made have largely been on essentials related to the experience of fans and athletes, like new transportation infrastructure for the games.
Thirty billion dollars might seem like a drop in the bucket for a country whose total debt stands at over $11 trillion, but taking on any water at this point could prove deeply harmful politically and economically. It could mean even steeper cuts to social services, which is a recipe for social conflict. We don’t need to look further than the fallout following the 2016 Olympics in Rio to see just how combustible a bloated Olympics can be for a struggling economy.
Speaking of conflict, anti-Olympic dissent is already percolating in Japan. While we are there, we’ll be attending a demonstration on July 24, the one-year mark before the Olympics kick off, where people from Olympic cities across the world—past, future, and prospective—are coming together to protest against the cost, displacement, and militarization that the Games bring. We’ll attend a conference and workshops organized by activists who have been resisting the excesses of the Olympics. And we’ll travel to Fukushima, the site of the horrific 2011 nuclear meltdown, and future home of Olympic baseball and softball games as well as the site where the Olympic torch relay will begin. We will also be looking at areas of the city that are being upended by the Olympics. ……..
Expect to see swathes of the mainstream media say that “Tokyo has the Olympics in its sights.” The opposite is true: The Olympics have Tokyo in its sights. Tokyo is the target. The only question is how much of the Olympics it can withstand. Over the coming week, we’ll give you on-the-ground analysis from a future Olympic city where activists are standing up and saying hell no. We’ll gather stories from locals whose lives are being directly affected by the Olympics. We’ll pull back the Olympics’ shimmering curtain of propaganda and see what lies behind it.
TEPCO to decommission Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2019/07/4fe439832736-tepco-to-decommission-fukushima-daini-nuclear-plant.htmlKYODO NEWS – 20 July 19 Tokyo, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. will formally decide to decommission the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant after informing the prefecture’s governor of its policy as early as this month, a company source said Friday.Excluding the nearby Daiichi, crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, it is the first time that the utility, also known as TEPCO, has decided to decommission a nuclear plant.
The decommissioning of all four nuclear reactors at Daini will likely require more than 40 years and some 280 billion yen ($2.6 billion) in costs, the source said. If realized, all 10 nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture will be scrapped.
Closure of the Daiichi plant, which suffered core meltdowns at three of its six reactors, has already been decided.
After telling Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori about the policy, it may be formally approved at a TEPCO board meeting, scheduled at the end of this month, the source said.
The Daini complex was also hit by tsunami waves in the 2011 disaster and temporarily lost reactor cooling functions. But unlike the Daiichi plant, it escaped meltdowns.
Since the disaster, the decommissioning in Japan of 21 nuclear reactors, including those at Daini, has been decided.
For the Tokyo-headquartered power company, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture will be its only nuclear complex.
In June last year, TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa told the governor that the company is leaning toward scrapping all four reactors at the Daini plant. A project team was later formed at the utility and looked into whether that is possible, according to the source.
The prefecture has demanded the utility scrap the reactors, saying their existence would hamper its reconstruction efforts.
Is there a future for nuclear power in Japan?, Japan Times, BY SUMIKO TAKEUCHI, JUL 16, 2019, This is the third in a series of reports on Japan’s energy policy…….
the damage from nuclear accidents can be catastrophic, in addition to the challenges posed by nuclear waste disposal. The Fukushima disaster has led to strong opinions that Japan should denuclearize, and this is still the case.
…. ………The fact is that the economic benefits of nuclear power have been losing their shine. Because of the sharp hike in safety standards imposed by the Nuclear Regulation Authority after the Fukushima disaster, exorbitant safety upgrades nearly equal in cost to building a new reactor are being installed at each site. To get a return on investment, this intensive capital spending will require long-term operation and high utilization rates, but the need to get local consent to operate and to respond to dozens of lawsuits from anti-nuclear residents is making stable operations difficult. Reactor operations are also capped at 60 years. Nuclear power could potentially be a source of cheap electricity, depending on the utilization rate and other conditions, but there’s also a possibility it won’t. ……
The impact of the Fukushima disaster, however, was enough to completely overshadow the benefits. The majority of the public is still against nuclear power. In light of persistent public opinion, Japan’s nuclear power business has been surrounded by three big uncertainties.
The first is political uncertainty. The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, despite its long-term stability, has not provided enough support to the nuclear power business. In addition, the government has entrusted the utilities with the job of gaining local consent.
The safety agreements that stipulate the rules of the industry, such as disclosure of information to the host governments, are not legally binding. But running reactors would be next to impossible without local consent based on such agreements. Whenever there’s an election, the utilities are thrown into confusion, and if a new leader is elected, they will initiate communication from scratch.
The second is policy uncertainty. Japan has fully liberalized the retail power sector. In a liberalized market, reactors for which returns on investment have fully recovered could have high cost competitiveness, but there will likely be no companies that will take up the challenge of building new ones.
Since nuclear plants require huge capital, curbing fundraising costs to a low level would have a big impact on competitiveness, but cheap fundraising is something that cannot be expected in a liberalized market. …….
The third is regulatory uncertainty. It has become quite common for reactor safety reviews to take multiple years because of inadequate communication between utilities and regulators. The U.S. has a presidential executive order that stipulates regulation shall not be undertaken unless the potential benefits to society from regulation outweigh the potential costs of dealing with the regulation.
Though Japan has no such principles, appropriate oversight on regulatory activities is being called for to check whether the public is suffering from any disadvantages from unforeseeable regulatory activities. In the meantime, the finishing blow is the plethora of lawsuits that have been filed demanding the halt of nuclear power plants……..
TEPCO wants to restart reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture.
July 15, 2019
Any discussion on nuclear power policy should be based on reality.
In their Upper House election campaign platforms, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, say they will allow more restarts of nuclear reactors in line with the government’s Basic Energy Plan.
The plan defines nuclear energy as a mainstay source of power, which it assumes will account for 20 to 22 percent of Japan’s total power supply in fiscal 2030.
Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, decisions have been made to decommission some of the nation’s nuclear reactors; plans are being floated to decommission others. The total number of the reactors concerned is 21.
Achieving the goal of the Basic Energy Plan would require about 30 operating reactors, meaning the activation of almost all remaining nuclear reactors in Japan.
One is tempted to ask if such a plan can be described as realistic.
The power industry has placed topmost priority on restarting nuclear reactors, but only nine reactors have so far been brought back online.
Many reactors are not likely to be reactivated any time soon because of local opposition, the presence of an active fault nearby or for other reasons.
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which is seeking to restart reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, made an argument for itself during a general shareholders’ meeting in June.
“We need to have nuclear reactors up and running, after all,” they said, adding that doing so would allow TEPCO to increase its profits and thereby “fulfill its responsibility for Fukushima.”
TEPCO, however, has apologized for keeping local governments in the dark for three years about insufficient seismic resistance of the Main Anti-Earthquake Building at the Niigata plant, which would serve as a center for response measures in the event of a disaster.
Following a big earthquake in June this year, TEPCO mistakenly sent wrong information to local governments saying that “abnormalities” had occurred at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
Given these circumstances, TEPCO could hardly expect to gain deeper understanding of the host communities.
The construction of anti-terror facilities is falling behind schedule at nuclear plants elsewhere in Japan where reactors have been brought back online.
Beginning next spring, reactors operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric Power Co. are expected to be taken offline again in succession.
The argument that nuclear power is cheap is also losing ground. Expenses for safety measures have swollen following the Fukushima disaster, and more than 4 trillion yen ($37 billion) in total has been spent so far to prepare nuclear reactors for their restarts.
The joint public-private efforts to export nuclear power technology to developing markets overseas, given the thin opportunities in Japan, have reached a deadlock in many nations.
The ruling parties should explain specifically how they plan to deal with all of these realities if they insist that Japan should remain reliant on nuclear power.
A final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste is unlikely to be built soon, either. The nuclear fuel recycling program, intended to extract plutonium from spent fuel for reuse, has also practically failed.
Despite all that, there are still plans to activate a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, to extract plutonium. This shows Japan’s nuclear power policy is laden with many layers of contradictions.
Opposition parties that oppose reactor restarts and are calling for zero nuclear power, such as the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party, should also face up to the question of feasibility.
Even if a transition to renewable energy sources, such as solar power, is to be pursued, there is still a need to curb the burden on the public to guarantee a certain level of income for renewable energy operators.
Measures should be established to ensure a stable supply of power even when renewables account for the majority of it. Allowances should also be made for the economies of local communities that have long depended on nuclear power.
People living in power consumption areas, to say nothing of residents of communities hosting nuclear plants, should give serious thought to the future of nuclear power in this country.
Expert says 2020 Tokyo Olympics unsafe due to Fukushima | 60 Minutes
Fukushima: an ongoing disaster, Red Flag , Jack Crawford, 15 July 2019 In March – on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster – Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”. In it, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, evokes the imminent threat of climate catastrophe to argue, “There are paths out of this mess. But on March 11, 2011 [the day of the Fukushima disaster], the world’s course was diverted away from one of the most important. I am talking about nuclear energy”. He continues by criticising public fears of nuclear as irrational: “Plane crashes have not stopped us from flying, because most people know it is an effective means of travelling”. Blix speaks for the global nuclear industry, which is increasingly attempting to present itself as the solution to climate change.
But plane crashes do not kill untold numbers and spread deadly poisons over huge areas of the planet. Fukushima was and still is a horrific and ongoing human and environmental catastrophe, exposing the horrendous risks to which the powerful are willing to subject people and the planet. It should be remembered every time a pro-nuclear bureaucrat or politician exploits genuine concern about climate change to promote this deadly industry. It should never be forgotten.
………..Today, towns such as Futaba, Tomioka and Okuma are nuclear ghost towns. In them you will find a forest of metal gates, decaying buildings, shattered glass and cars wrapped in vines. The only human faces are mannequins in store windows, still dressed in the fashion of 2011. Sprawled across the highway between towns are hundreds of black bags filled with toxic dirt. They are one of the many problems of the clean-up effort. There are about 30 million one-tonne bags of radioactive topsoil, tree branches, grass and other waste. There is no safe, long-term storage place for this material.
The clean-up is undermined by cost cutting. Workers are forced to meet strict deadlines, even if it compromises safety. “There were times when we were told to leave the contaminated topsoil and just remove the leaves so we could get everything done on schedule”, explained Minoru Ikeda, a former worker. “Sometimes we would look at each other as if to say: ‘What on earth are we doing here?’”
The task is mammoth. The government and TEPCO now say that decommissioning the failed nuclear plant will take 40 years, at a cost of ¥22 trillion (or US$200 billion). But there is significant uncertainty about how to remove the hundreds of tonnes of molten fuel from the reactors. “For the removal of the debris, we don’t have accurate information or any viable methodology for that”, admitted the plant’s manager, Akira Ono, in 2015. “We need to develop many, many technologies.”
Beyond the plant itself, the total clean-up is likely to cost between ¥50 trillion and ¥70 trillion (US$460-640 billion), according to the estimates of a right wing think tank, the Japan Center for Economic Research. Thousands of workers continue to make daily trips between the contaminated zones and company accommodation. Dodgy subcontractors recruit largely from Japan’s destitute, including the homeless, migrant workers and asylum seekers. A recent Greenpeace investigation, “On the Frontline of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Workers and Children”, found evidence of hyper-exploitation and dangerous radiation exposure. In one case, a 55-year-old homeless man was paid the equivalent of US$10 for a month’s work. “TEPCO is God”, lamented Tanaka, another homeless Fukushima worker. “The main contractors are kings, and we are slaves.”
Scandalously, organised crime has penetrated the clean-up operations. Those with debts to the Yakuza (Japanese organised crime) have found themselves shoved into hazmat suits and set to work. The subcontracting system has allowed TEPCO to turn a blind eye to such human rights abuses.
Despite triumphant optimism from some champions of nuclear, researchers continue to uncover unexpected and unpredictable consequences of the Fukushima disaster. These include the discovery of tiny, glassy beads containing extremely high concentrations of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope) among polluted dust and dirt particles. These bacterium-sized particles are easily inhaled and persistently insoluble. How they react with our bodies and the environment is not yet clear, but scientists increasingly believe them to be a health risk. The beads have been found as far from the disaster site as Tokyo.
The dangers faced by those returning to Fukushima prefecture have been a central controversy of recent years. Compelled by economic necessity, most have returned. But as of February 2019, 52,000 remain displaced, either unwilling to return or with homes in still-prohibited zones. In a recent press tour, the government repeatedly blamed “harmful rumours” for creating fear of returning as well as the Japanese public’s unwillingness to consume Fukushima’s fish and agricultural products.
“To me”, explained activist Riken Komatsu, “talking about ‘harmful rumours’ sounds like they are making someone else the bad guy or villain, as if they are blaming people for saying negative things because they don’t understand science and radiation. But those who have lost our trust do not have the right”.
Mistrust is justified. Prime minister Shinzo Abe, keen to move on from the crisis, intends to end evacuations by the time Japan hosts the 2020 Olympics. The international and (prior to the meltdowns) Japanese standard of acceptable exposure to radiation, one millisievert per year, has been scrapped. Across Fukushima prefecture, measurements five times that level are now deemed safe.
Some places measure as high as 20 millisieverts per year. These radiation levels are especially dangerous for children, who are far more sensitive than adults to even low levels of exposure. It will take decades before the cost of the authorities’ carelessness can be measured in increased cancer rates. The loss of happy, healthy human life of course can never be quantified………
those who “benefit” from the powerful nuclear industry are the same people who crave military dominance. The politicians and officials currently fighting to rebuild Japanese nuclear capability are thinking far more about the military tensions surrounding them than tackling climate change. We don’t need to a build a world full of deadly nuclear power plants to combat climate change. We need clean, renewable energy and a system that prioritises people and the planet over money and military might. https://redflag.org.au/node/6838
Fukushima Upper House candidates face cynical voters despite anti-nuclear platforms, Japan Times, 14 July 19, JIJI FUKUSHIMA – Rival candidates, both women, from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition camp for next Sunday’s House of Councilors election in Fukushima Prefecture are campaigning on platforms to eliminate nuclear power from the prefecture.
But their calls are in conflict with the national energy policy of the LDP and the positions of some opposition supporters.
With campaigning in the single-seat prefectural constituency shaping up effectively as a one-on-one race, local voters who were affected by the March 2011 nuclear accident are casting a cynical eye at the race for the July 21 election.
“I’m determined to push ahead with reconstruction following your requests,” Masako Mori, the LDP’s candidate for Fukushima, said on July 4, the opening day of the official campaign period, in the prefectural capital of Fukushima.
“I’ll do my best to achieve the goal of decommissioning all nuclear reactors in the prefecture,” said Mori, 54, vice chair of the LDP’s Headquarters for Accelerating Reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, also president of the LDP, gave a speech in support of Mori.
Reflecting local voter concerns over nuclear power, the LDP’s Fukushima chapter has set goals of scrapping all reactors in the prefecture and building up knowledge and expertise related to decommissioning.
In contrast to the prefectural chapter’s position, however, the Abe government’s basic energy program regards nuclear power as an important base load electric power source, while the LDP’s policy pledges for the Upper House election include efforts to reactivate nuclear reactors.
The LDP suffered losses in recent national elections in Fukushima Prefecture, home to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the site of the nation’s worst-ever nuclear accident, which resulted from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami………
Hard to differentiate
Mori’s key opponent in the three-way race is Sachiko Mizuno, 57, who is running as the opposition camp’s unified candidate.
On June 30, standing in drizzling rain in front of a department store in the city of Fukushima, Mizuno told a small crowd, “Reconstruction of Fukushima is still only half done.”
Referring to the LDP’s policy pledge, she said the government “has not presented a road map for decommissioning all reactors (in the prefecture).”……..
With Mizuno calling for a society free of nuclear power, the policy differences with the LDP are blurred. “It’s difficult to differentiate ourselves (from the LDP) in the prefecture,” a senior official in Mizuno’s campaign office said.
Within her camp, there are differing levels of enthusiasm regarding the elimination of nuclear power…….
Unenthusiastic voters
After the triple meltdown accident, the government issued an evacuation advisory to 11 municipalities around the stricken nuclear plant. Since the advisory was lifted in the eastern part of the city of Tamura in April 2014, the size of the exclusion zone has been reduced in stages.
But the advisory remains in place in the town of Futaba, as well as in parts of six municipalities, including the towns of Okuma and Namie. More than 30,000 people still live as evacuees outside the prefecture…….
A Fukushima Ghost Town Seeks Rebirth Through Renewable Energy
Devastated by Japanese nuclear plant’s meltdown in 2011, Namie hopes a new hydrogen-fuel facility can generate a turnaround. WSJ, By River Davis, July 12, 2019
NAMIE, Japan—Fukushima prefecture, a place synonymous in many minds with nuclear meltdown, is trying to reinvent itself as a hub for renewable energy.
One symbol is just outside Namie, less than five miles from the nuclear-power plant devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. At the end of a winding road through miles of barren land, construction is nearing completion on one of the world’s largest hydrogen plants.
The government hopes to show that hydrogen, a hard-to-handle fuel that hasn’t been used for large-scale power generation, can supplement intermittent solar and wind power.
……….. By 2040, Fukushima aims to cover 100% of its energy demand with non-nuclear renewable energy. Since 2011, the prefecture’s generating capacity from renewable energy, excluding large-scale hydropower, has more than quadrupled. More than a gigawatt of solar-energy capacity has been added—the equivalent of more than three million solar panels—while other projects are under way in offshore wind power and geothermal energy……… https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fukushima-ghost-town-seeks-rebirth-through-renewable-energy-11562923802
July 8, 2019 (Mainichi Japan) TOKYO— Radioactive cesium released into the Pacific Ocean due to the March 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is returning to Japanese shores via a shorter route than expected, according to a joint research initiative.
The findings were revealed by a team from the University of Tsukuba, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and Kanazawa University.
Until now, it was thought that cesium from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)-operated plant would be circulated around the Pacific by subtropical gyre currents for several decades before returning to Japanese waters. But in 2012, a year after the reactor core meltdowns, tests on seawater samples collected by the team showed increased cesium concentrations in East China Sea waters off Japan. Researchers say that the concentrations observed are too low to impact sea life.
The rate increased, peaking in 2014, and a year later high concentrations were also reported in the Sea of Japan. The team believes the cesium is now flowing around the Pacific Ocean again.
It is thought that seawater sank deeply into the sea after its density increased due to cooling by winter winds, causing the cesium to travel on a western-flowing underwater route.
Michio Aoyama, a visiting professor at the University of Tsukuba, said, “That the cesium would come back in such a short time was unexpected. We’ve found a previously unknown route.”
Senior JAMSTEC research scientist Yuichiro Kumamoto said of the project’s potential benefits, “Because it has visualized ocean circulation, the results could be used in the future for predictions on issues such as climate change.”
(Japanese original by Mayumi Nobuta, Science & Environment News Department)
In addition to the games in Fukushima, Miyagi Stadium will be one of the Olympic soccer venues, while all three prefectures will be focal points of the Olympic torch relay — which officially starts in Fukushima.
