Unspoken Death Toll of Fukushima: Nuclear Disaster Killing Japanese Slowly
The Japanese government is still in denial and refuses to recognize the disastrous consequences of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, London-based independent consultant on radioactivity Dr. Ian Fairlie states, adding that while thousands of victims have already died, thousands more will soon pass away.
Embarrassingly, “[t]he Japanese Government, its advisors, and most radiation scientists in Japan (with some honorable exceptions) minimize the risks of radiation. The official widely-observed policy is that small amounts of radiation are harmless: scientifically speaking this is untenable,” Dr. Fairlie pointed out.
The Japanese government even goes so far as to increase the public limit for radiation in Japan from 1 mSv to 20 mSv per year, while its scientists are making efforts to convince the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to accept this enormous increase.
“This is not only unscientific, it is also unconscionable,” Dr. Fairlie stressed, adding that “there is never a safe dose, except zero dose.”
However, while the Japanese government is turning a blind eye to radiogenic late effects, the evidence “is solid”: the RERF Foundation which is based in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is observing the Japanese atomic bomb survivors and still registering nuclear radiation’s long-term effects.
“From the UNSCEAR estimate of 48,000 person Sv [the collective dose to the Japanese population from Fukushima], it can be reliably estimated (using a fatal cancer risk factor of 10% per Sv) that about 5,000 fatal cancers will occur in Japan in the future from Fukushima’s fallout,” he noted.
“It is impossible not to be moved by the scale of Fukushima’s toll in terms of deaths, suicides, mental ill-health and human suffering,” the expert said.
http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150820/1025992771.html#ixzz3jSVAPg9L
Underground temperature never go down regardless of frozen wall beside common fuel pool
The underground temperature beside common fuel storage pool has not been decreased since the end of April from Tepco’s report released on 8/20/2015.
Tepco is testing the frozen underground wall to circulate the coolant material in the frozen duct.
They have been monitoring the temperature at 18 points around the crippled reactor buildings.
From their data, the temperature of the monitoring point “No.12″ is showing almost no decrease from the beginning.
This is located between Reactor 4 building and the common pool, where is stocking the fuel assemblies removed from SFP 4 (Spent Fuel Pool in Reactor 4). At the moment of 8/20/2015, it is still over 10 ℃.
For some reason, Tepco stopped sending the coolant material to 4 of the monitoring points.
Among the rest of the points, the temperature is still above 0 ℃ at 8 of 14 monitoring points.
Japan asks for WTO panel to rule on S.Korea’s Fukushima-related food import restrictions
Aug 20 Japan on Thursday asked the World Trade Organization to set up a panel to rule on South Korea’s import bans and testing requirements for Japanese food after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, since the restrictions show no signs of being eased.
Japan launched a trade complaint at the WTO in May, saying the South Korean measures violated a WTO agreement and that Seoul had failed to justify the measures as required.
“We held two days of bilateral discussions on this on June 24 and 25, but there was no expression from the Korean side of when the restrictions might be lifted,” Japan’s Agriculture Ministry said on its website.
“Since more than 60 days have passed since the complaint was lodged, and there is no sign of when the restrictions might be repealed, we have asked today, in accordance with WTO rules, for the establishment of a panel.”
South Korea in May expressed regret at Japan’s move and said then that the ban on some Japanese seafood was necessary and reflected safety concerns.
Japan countered by saying levels were safe and that a number of other nations, including the United States and Australia, had lifted or eased Fukushima-related restrictions.
The average annual value of South Korean imports of Japanese fish and seafood was $96 million in 2012-2014, less than half the average of $213 million in 2006-2010, according to data from the International Trade Centre in Geneva.
Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/20/japan-southkorea-wto-idUSL3
Editorial: Use wisdom in drawing curtain on nuclear fuel cycle
With the recent reactivation of the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, the government has moved a step ahead with a policy for maintaining nuclear power. To keep in tandem with that move, a working group of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in July began looking into measures to maintain the nuclear fuel cycle. While the move is aimed at improving the environment for nuclear power businesses amid liberalization of the electricity market, it is posing serious problems.
Under the nuclear fuel cycle, spent fuel from nuclear plants is reprocessed to extract plutonium for reuse as fuel. While the project is promoted as part of Japan’s national policy, the actual reprocessing of spent fuel is undertaken by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., a company jointly invested in by power companies. If free competition progresses in the electricity market, utilities would not be able to secure as much profit as before and some might no longer be able to support Japan Nuclear Fuel.
The ministry’s working group is considering intensifying government involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle to keep the project afloat. The group is also mulling more secure ways to raise a total of 12.6 trillion yen in operating costs for the project.
Currently, the cost for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is tacked on to electricity bills. If the government is to step up its involvement in the project, it will need to seek public consensus over its relevance, including the additional public financial burden.
The nuclear fuel cycle has been riddled with major problems in terms of technology, safety and costs. The completion of Japan Nuclear Fuel’s reprocessing plant under construction in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, has been postponed 22 times following regular trouble. The construction cost has already tripled from the initial estimate of 760 billion yen, and could further snowball for safety and other necessary measures. The development of a fast-breeder reactor, which is supposed to act as “wheels on a car” for the nuclear fuel cycle along with the reprocessing project, has been stalled at the stage of operating the Monju prototype reactor, with no prospects for putting it into practical use. The so-called “pluthermal” project using plutonium in conventional light-water reactors is not making as much progress as expected.
There also lies a serious problem in plutonium extracted in the reprocessing of spent fuel from the viewpoint of nuclear non-proliferation. Japan currently possesses more than 47 metric tons of plutonium at home and abroad, and if the country is to produce additional plutonium that could be diverted to military use with no destination for consumption amid lowering dependence on nuclear power, the international community would only grow suspicious about such possession.
In the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission released an assessment showing that the direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel over the next 20 to 30 years would be equal to or more beneficial than reprocessing such fuel in terms of economic efficiency, nuclear non-proliferation and other effects. Given such estimates, the government should focus its efforts not on measures to prolong the nuclear fuel cycle but on putting forth steps to draw a curtain on the project.
If the reprocessing of spent fuel is to be terminated, Aomori Prefecture would demand that such fuel it has thus far accommodated should be brought back to where it was originally generated. Such a project termination would also cause problems to local employment and the disposal of existing plutonium. The government should rather rack its brain over how to resolve these issues.
Source: Mainichi
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20150820p2a00m0na016000c.html
WHOI Study Shows Fukushima Contaminated Sediment Moving Offshore
Researchers deployed time-series sediment traps 115 kilometers (approximately 70 miles) southeast of the nuclear power plant at depths of 500 meters (1,640 feet) and 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). The two traps began collecting samples on July 19, 2011—130 days after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami—and were recovered and reset annually.
WOODS HOLE – Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have been studying the effects the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster in 2011 has had in the Pacific Ocean.
WHOI has recently released the results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore in the American Chemical Society’s journal, Environmental Science and Technology.
The purpose of the study is to understand what happens to the Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off of coastal Japan.
The team, led by senior scientist and marine chemist Ken Buesseler, found that a small fraction of contaminated sea floor sediments off Fukushima are moved offshore by typhoons that resuspend radioactive particles in the water, which then travel laterally with Southeasterly currents into the Pacific Ocean.
Researchers used funnel-shaped traps to collect the data at depths of 500 meters and 1,000 meters starting 130 days after the disaster.
The research found radiocesium from the plant along with sediment with a high fraction of clay material in the samples. The clay material is characteristic of shelf and slope sediments and suggest a near shore source.
Buesseler says that more than 99 percent of the contaminated material from the plant moved with the water offshore and that less than 1 percent ended up on the sea floor as buried sediment.
Source: CapeCod.com
WHOI Study Shows Fukushima Contaminated Sediment Moving Offshore
International Research Team studies Fukushima contaminants in seafloor sediments
Examining the fate of Fukushima contaminants, Science Daily,
Fraction of buried, ocean sediment uncovered by typhoons, carried offshore by currents August 18, 2015, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Summary:
- An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan. Scientists found that a small fraction of contaminated seafloor sediments off Fukushima are moved offshore by typhoons that resuspend radioactive particles in the water.
- An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in a new paper published August 18, 2015, in the American Chemical Society’s journal,Environmental Science and Technology.
The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan.
Led by Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist and marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the team found that a small fraction of contaminated seafloor sediments off Fukushima are moved offshore by typhoons that resuspend radioactive particles in the water, which then travel laterally with southeasterly currents into the Pacific Ocean.
“Cesium is one of the dominant radionuclides that was released in unprecedented amounts with contaminated water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami,” says Buesseler. “A little over 99 percent of it moved with the water offshore, but a very small fraction–less than one percent–ended up on the sea floor as buried sediment.”
“We’ve been looking at the fate of that buried sediment on the continental shelf and tracking how much of that contaminated sediment gets offshore through re-suspension from the ocean bottom,” he adds.
The research team, which included colleagues from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, analyzed three years’ worth of data collected from time-series sediment traps……….
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“The total transport is small, though it is readily detectable. One percent or less of the contaminated sediment that’s moving offshore every year means things aren’t going to change very fast,” Buesseler says. “What’s buried is going to stay buried for decades to come. And that’s what may be contributing to elevated levels of cesium in fish–particularly bottom-dwelling fish off Japan.”
While there were hundreds of different radionuclides released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant during the disaster, after the initial decay of contaminants with half lives (the time it takes for one half of a given amount of radionuclide to decay) less than days to weeks, much of the attention has remained focused on cesium-137 and-134– two of the more abundant contaminants. Cesium-134 has a half-life of a little over two years, and so any found in the ocean could come only from the reactors at Fukushima. Cesium-137 has a half-life of roughly 30 years and is also known to have entered the Pacific as a result of aboveground nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and ’60s, providing a benchmark against which to measure any additional releases from the reactors.
In October, Buesseler and the research team will return to Japan to redeploy more sediment traps. The continued study will help estimate how long it takes to decrease the level of radiocesium in seafloor sediments near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150818112431.htm
Tianjin explosion highlights need to prioritise environment over economic growth
Tianjin blast must trigger real change in China, The Age, August 18, 2015 Hopefully, the thundering fireballs and devastation at Tianjin have shocked China’s authorities – and others in the world
China’s economic advances have come at a terrible cost to its environment.
The evidence is in its air, in the rivers and coastal waters, and in the vast tracts of farmlands so contaminated with heavy metals and pesticides that some senior offi- cials have warned they should never be used for food production. In 2014, a report by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection noted almost 20 per cent of the country’s arable land is polluted.
Criminally lax regulations, corruption and widespread failures to enforce breaches of environmental laws add to the woes and fuel justifiable anger among Chinese people. But more than any other environmental disaster in China (and there have been far too many), the series of explosions that ripped through the major port of Tianjin last week galvanised attention on the awful risks of elevating profit goals and economic advancement above the environment and citizens’ safety……….. http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/tianjin-blast-must-trigger-real-change-in-china-20150817-gj19t1.html#ixzz3jClGQ9na
EXtra high radiation level in atmosphere above Melted slag storage facility of Fukushima sewage plant
Melted slag storage facility of Fukushima sewage plant has 10 times higher atmospheric dose than rest of area The atmospheric dose near the melted slag storage facility is approx. 10 times higher than the rest of the area in Fukushima sewage plant.
This is from the data published by Fukushima prefectural government on 8/11/2015………http://fukushima-diary.com/2015/08/melted-slag-storage-facility-of-fukushima-sewage-plant-has-10-times-higher-atmospheric-dose-than-the-rest-of-the-area/
Concern over North Korea’s uranium enrichment
The world can’t ignore North Korea’s nuclear progression WP, By Editorial Board August 17 CHARTING THE course of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program has always required painstaking detective work. Because the country is so closed to outsiders, hints have been drawn from sources such as atmospheric samples, seismic data and satellite photographs. A new building or roof on an industrial factory has often pointed to activity inside. North Korea once gave a visiting American scientist an eyeful: a sprawling array of new uranium enrichment centrifuges that hadn’t been detected previously.
This is why there are serious worries about uranium mining and milling in North Korea as described in a new report from Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Analyzing satellite photographs and other information, Mr. Lewis has published evidence on the Web site 38 North, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, that North Korea is “expanding its capacity to mine and mill natural uranium.” The information doesn’t confirm what the uranium is to be used for; it might be for nuclear power reactors, or it might be for nuclear weapons. Mr. Lewis found evidence of “significant refurbishment” at a uranium concentration plant at Pyongsan that turns ore into yellowcake. Pyongsan is the most important uranium mine and mill in the country.
This new hint comes on top of an earlier report this year from the same institute that suggested North Korea is moving toward a bigger, better nuclear arsenal that could put it on par with Pakistan and Israel. …….https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-world-cant-ignore-north-koreas-nuclear-progression/2015/08/17/6e74a664-42ca-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html
Fukushima: thousands have died, thousands more will die
New evidence from Fukushima shows that as many as 2,000 people have died from necessary evacuations, writes Ian Fairlie, while another 5,000 will die from cancer. Future assessments of fatalities from nuclear disasters must include deaths from displacement-induced ill-heath and suicide in addition to those from direct radiation impacts.
Official data from Fukushima show that nearly 2,000 people died from the effects of evacuations necessary to avoid high radiation exposures from the disaster.
The uprooting to unfamiliar areas, cutting of family ties, loss of social support networks, disruption, exhaustion, poor physical conditions and disorientation can and do result in many people, in particular older people, dying.
Increased suicide has occurred among younger and older people following the Fukushima evacuations, but the trends are unclear.
A Japanese Cabinet Office report stated that, between March 2011 and July 2014, 56 suicides in Fukushima Prefecture were linked to the nuclear accident. This should be taken as a minimum, rather than a maximum, figure.
Mental health consequences
It is necessary to include the mental health consequences of radiation exposures and evacuations. For example, Becky Martin has stated her PhD research at Southampton University in the UK shows that “the most significant impacts of radiation emergencies are often in our minds.”
She adds: “Imagine that you’ve been informed that your land, your water, the air that you have breathed may have been polluted by a deadly and invisible contaminant. Something with the capacity to take away your fertility, or affect your unborn children.
“Even the most resilient of us would be concerned … many thousands of radiation emergency survivors have subsequently gone on to develop Post-Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety disorders as a result of their experiences and the uncertainty surrounding their health.”
It is likely that these fears, anxieties, and stresses will act to magnify the effects of evacuations, resulting in even more old people dying or people committing suicide.
Such considerations should not be taken as arguments against evacuations, however. They are an important, life-saving strategy. But, as argued by Becky Martin,
“We need to provide greatly improved social support following resettlement and extensive long-term psychological care to all radiation emergency survivors, to improve their health outcomes and preserve their futures.”
Untoward pregnancy outcomes
Dr Alfred Körblein from Nuremburg in Germany recently noticed and reported on a 15% drop (statistically speaking, highly significant) in the numbers of live births in Fukushima Prefecture in December 2011, nine months after the accident.
This might point to higher rates of early spontaneous abortions. He also observed a (statistically significant) 20% increase in the infant mortality rate in 2012, relative to the long-term trend in Fukushima Prefecture plus six surrounding prefectures, which he attributes to the consumption of radioactive food:
“The fact that infant mortality peaks in May 2012, more than one year after the Fukushima accident, suggests that the increase is an effect of internal rather than external radiation exposure.
“In Germany [after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster] perinatal mortality peaks followed peaks of cesium burden in pregnant women with a time-lag of seven months [2]. May 2012 minus seven months is October 2011, the end of the harvesting season. Thus, consumption of contaminated foodstuff during autumn 2011 could be an explanation for the excess of infant mortality in the Fukushima region in 2012.”
These are indicative rather than definitive findings and need to be verified by further studies. Unfortunately, such studies are notable by their absence.
Cancer and other late effects from radioactive fallout
Finally, we have to consider the longer term health effects of the radiation exposures from the radioactive fallouts after the four explosions and three meltdowns at Fukushima in March 2011. Large differences of view exist on this issue in Japan. These make it difficult for lay people and journalists to understand what the real situation is.
The Japanese Government, its advisors, and most radiation scientists in Japan (with some honourable exceptions) minimise the risks of radiation. The official widely-observed policy is that small amounts of radiation are harmless: scientifically speaking this is untenable.
For example, the Japanese Government is attempting to increase the public limit for radiation in Japan from 1 mSv to 20 mSv per year. Its scientists are trying to force the ICRP to accept this large increase. This is not only unscientific, it is also unconscionable.
Part of the reason for this policy is that radiation scientists in Japan (in the US, as well) appear unable or unwilling to accept the stochastic nature of low-level radiation effects. ‘Stochastic’ means an all-or-nothing response: you either get cancer etc or you don’t.
As you decrease the dose, the effects become less likely: your chance of cancer declines all the way down to zero dose. The corollary is that tiny doses, even well below background, still carry a small chance of cancer: there is never a safe dose, except zero dose.
But, as observed by Spycher et al (2015), some scientists “a priori exclude the possibility that low dose radiation could increase the risk of cancer. They will therefore not accept studies that challenge their foregone conclusion.”
One reason why such scientists refuse to accept radiation’s stochastic effects (cancers, strokes, CVS diseases, hereditary effects, etc) is that they only appear after long latency periods – often decades for solid cancers. For the Japanese Government and its radiation advisors, it seems out-of-sight means out-of-mind.
This conveniently allows the Japanese Government to ignore radiogenic late effects. But the evidence for them is absolutely rock solid. Ironically, it comes primarily from the world’s largest on-going epidemiology study, the Life Span Study of the Japanese atomic bomb survivors by the RERF Foundation which is based in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The lessons of Chernobyl
The mass of epidemiological evidence from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 clearly indicates that cancer etc increases will very likely also occur at Fukushima, but many Japanese (and US) scientists deny this evidence.
For example, much debate currently exists over the existence and interpretation of increased thyroid cancers, cysts, and nodules in Fukushima Prefecture resulting from the disaster. From the findings after Chernobyl, thyroid cancers are expected to start increasing 4 to 5 years after 2011.
It’s best to withhold comment until clearer results become available in 2016, but early indications are not reassuring for the Japanese Government. After then, other solid cancers are expected to increase as well, but it will take a while for these to become manifest.
The best way of forecasting the numbers of late effects (ie cancers etc) is by estimating the collective dose to Japan from the Fukushima fall out. We do this by envisaging that everyone in Japan exposed to the radioactive fallout from Fukushima has thereby received lottery tickets: but they are negative tickets. That is, if your lottery number comes up, you get cancer [1].
If you live far away from Fukushima Daiichi NPP, you get few tickets and the chance is low: if you live close, you get more tickets and the chance is higher. You can’t tell who will be unlucky, but you can estimate the total number by using collective doses.
The 2013 UNSCEAR Report has estimated that the collective dose to the Japanese population from Fukushima is 48,000 person Sv: this is a very large dose: see below.
Unfortunately, pro-nuclear Japanese scientists also criticise the concept of collective dose as it relies on the stochastic nature of radiation’s effects and on the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model of radiation’s effects which they also refute. But almost all official regulatory bodies throughout the world recognise the stochastic nature of radiation’s effects, the LNT, and collective doses.
Summing up Fukushima
About 60 people died immediately during the actual evacuations in Fukushima Prefecture in March 2011. Between 2011 and 2015, an additional 1,867 people [2] in Fukushima Prefecture died as a result of the evacuations following the nuclear disaster [3]. These deaths were from ill health and suicides.
From the UNSCEAR estimate of 48,000 person Sv, it can be reliably estimated (using a fatal cancer risk factor of 10% per Sv) that about 5,000 fatal cancers will occur in Japan in future from Fukushima’s fallout. This estimate from official data agrees with my own personal estimate using a different methodology.
In sum, the health toll from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is horrendous. At the minimum
- Over 160,000 people were evacuated most of them permanently.
- Many cases of post-trauma stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety disorders arising from the evacuations.
- About 12,000 workers exposed to high levels of radiation, some up to 250 mSv
- An estimated 5,000 fatal cancers from radiation exposures in future.
- Plus similar (unquantified) numbers of radiogenic strokes, CVS diseases and hereditary diseases.
- Between 2011 and 2015, about 2,000 deaths from radiation-related evacuations due to ill-health and suicides.
- An as yet unquantified number of thyroid cancers.
- An increased infant mortality rate in 2012 and a decreased number of live births in December 2011.
Non-health effects include
- 8% of Japan (30,000 sq.km), including parts of Tokyo, contaminated by radioactivity.
- Economic losses estimated between $300 and $500 billion.
Catastrophes that must never be repeated
The Fukushima accident is still not over and its ill-effects will linger for a long time into the future. However we can say now that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima delivered a huge blow to Japan and its people.
2,000 Japanese people have already died from the evacuations and another 5,000 are expected to die from future cancers.
It is impossible not to be moved by the scale of Fukushima’s toll in terms of deaths, suicides, mental ill-health and human suffering. Fukushima’s effect on Japan is similar to Chernobyl’s massive blow against the former Soviet Union in 1986.
Indeed, several writers have expressed the view that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was a major factor in the subsequent collapse of the USSR during 1989-1990.
It is notable that Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the USSR at the time of Chernobyl and Naoto Kan, Prime Minister of Japan at the time of Fukushima have both expressed their opposition to nuclear power. Indeed Kan has called for all nuclear power to be abolished.
Has the Japanese Government, and indeed other governments (including the UK and US), learned from these nuclear disasters? The US philosopher George Santayana (1863-1962) once stated that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Dr Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment. He has a degree in radiation biology from Bart’s Hospital in London and his doctoral studies at Imperial College in London and Princeton University in the US concerned the radiological hazards of nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Ian was formerly a DEFRA civil servant on radiation risks from nuclear power stations. From 2000 to 2004, he was head of the Secretariat to the UK Government’s CERRIE Committee on internal radiation risks. Since retiring from Government service, he has acted as consultant to the European Parliament, local and regional governments, environmental NGOs, and private individuals.
Source: The Ecologist
Japan nuclear utility says no special precautions over volcano
Japanese utility Kyushu Electric Power said on Monday that it was monitoring activity at a volcano near its Sendai nuclear plant, but did not need to take any special precautions after authorities warned of the risk of a larger-than-usual eruption.
TOKYO: Japanese utility Kyushu Electric Power said on Monday that it was monitoring activity at a volcano near its Sendai nuclear plant, but did not need to take any special precautions after authorities warned of the risk of a larger-than-usual eruption.
The reactor is the first to be restarted under new safety standards put in place since the meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and much of Japanese industry want reactors to be switched on again to cut fuel bills, but opinion polls show a majority of the public oppose the move after the nuclear crisis triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.
The possibility of a significant eruption of Sakurajima, located about 50 km (30 miles) from Sendai, is a reminder of the volatile geology of Japan, which has 110 active volcanoes.
“We are not currently taking any particular response,” Kyushu Electric spokesman Tomomitsu Sakata said by phone.
“There is no impact in particular to the operations” of the Sendai plant, Sakata said. “We will continue to pay close attention to information from the Japan Meteorological Agency.”
The 890-megawatt-reactor had reached 50 percent of its output by Sunday and the operator expects full power to be achieved around Aug. 24, Sakata said.
Critics of the nuclear industry say that new safety measures are insufficient, particularly for plants such as Sendai, which is located near five giant calderas, crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, with the closest one about 40 km away.
The precautions by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority for volcanic eruptions were “wanting in a number of important respects” and did not meet international standards, said John Large, chief executive of Large & Associates, a nuclear engineering consultancy.
Large wrote a report this year on the Sendai plant’s ability to withstand being hit by volcanic ash and has testified in court about the issue.
Sakurajima is one of Japan’s most active volcanoes and erupts almost constantly. There was a risk of larger than usual eruption, an official at the Japan Meteorological Agency said on Saturday.
“With Kyushu’s volcanoes clearly more active, Sendai should be shut immediately,” said Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director at activist group, Green Action, claiming there was no viable evacuation plan for the plant.
The Meteorological agency raised the warning level on the peak, about 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo, to an unprecedented 4, for prepare to evacuate, from 3.
Seventy seven residents who live within a 3 km radius of the craters have been evacuated, an official said on Monday.
Source: Channel News Asia
Utilities spent ¥1.4 trillion last year to maintain idled reactors
The nation’s nine utilities with nuclear power plants had to spend a total of about ¥1.4 trillion last fiscal year to maintain their idled reactors, financial statements showed Monday, revealing part of the reason that electricity rates went up.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. restarted a reactor last week despite strong public opposition, adding to the view the utilities are trying to reactivate their idled plants as soon as possible to help rehabilitate their balance sheets, which are also suffering from rising fuel costs for alternative power generation.
All of the country’s commercial reactors remained offline in fiscal 2014, which ended March 31, amid heightened safety concerns following the 2011 crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 complex.
Tepco spent the most — ¥548.6 billion — having to maintain the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear complex, which is located about 10 km south of Fukushima No. 1, and the massive Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture.
Kansai Electric Power Co., which relied heavily on nuclear power before the Fukushima disaster, spent ¥298.8 billion, while Kyushu Electric spent ¥136.3 billion.
Last week, a reactor owned by Kyushu Electric became the first to come back online under upgraded regulations introduced after the Fukushima meltdowns.
Five of the nine companies — Tohoku Electric Power Co., Tokyo Electric, Chubu Electric Power Co., Hokuriku Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric — also had to pay some ¥130 billion to Japan Atomic Power Co. to honor their contracts with the entity, even though their reactors were idle.
Source: Japan Times
Fukushima operator’s mounting legal woes to fuel nuclear opposition
Four and a half years after the Fukushima disaster, and as Japan tentatively restarts nuclear power elsewhere, the legal challenges are mounting for the crippled plant’s operator.
IWAKI, Japan: Four and a half years after the Fukushima disaster, and as Japan tentatively restarts nuclear power elsewhere, the legal challenges are mounting for the crippled plant’s operator.
They include a judge’s forced disclosure of a 2008 internal document prepared for managers at Tokyo Electric Power Co warning of a need for precautions against an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe.
Also, class actions against Tepco and the government now have more plaintiffs than any previous Japanese contamination suit and, overruling reluctant prosecutors, criminal charges have been levelled against former Tepco executives for failing to take measures to prevent the 2011 meltdowns and explosions.
Radiation from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 forced 160,000 people from their homes, many never to return, and destroyed businesses, fisheries and agriculture.
The criminal and civil legal cases do not threaten financial ruin for Tepco, which is now backstopped by Japanese taxpayers and faces far bigger costs to decommission the Fukushima plant and clean up the surrounding areas.
Rather, the cases could further increase opposition to nuclear restarts – which consistently beats support by about two-to-one – as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government pushes to restore nuclear to Japan’s energy mix to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuel.
“The nuclear plant disaster has upended our way of life,” evacuee and former beekeeper Takahisa Ogawa, 45, testified recently in a court in Iwaki, near the Fukushima power station. “We’ve lost the support we counted on.”
PROVING NEGLIGENCE
Ogawa and other plaintiffs are seeking 20 million yen (US$160,000) each in damages from Tepco. More than 10,000 evacuees and nearby residents have brought at least 20 lawsuits against the utility and the government over the handling of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant 220 km (130 miles) north of Tokyo.
The biggest class action, with 4,000 plaintiffs, seeks to dramatically increase Tepco’s liability by proving negligence under Japan’s civil law, rather than simply proving harm and seeking compensation, said lead attorney Izutaro Managi.
Japan recently approved increasing the amount of compensation payments through a government-run fund to 7 trillion yen (US$56 billion).
Prosecutors twice declined to charge former Tepco bosses over their handling of the disaster, citing a lack of evidence, but a citizens’ panel overruled them last month. It’s unlikely the three former executives, who will be summoned to give evidence in court, will be convicted as it is hard to prove criminal acts in this type of case, said Nicholes Benes of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan.
A first trial is not expected to start until next year at the earliest.
The legal actions against Tepco are “serious for the industry” as it seeks to gradually bring some of Japan’s 43 idled nuclear reactors back online, said Tom O’Sullivan, an independent energy consultant and former investment banker.
“With potentially up to 25 reactors coming online, board members of other electric power companies must be quite nervous about what could happen if something goes wrong,” he said. “Most reactors have been switched off for four years so switching them back on is going to be potentially problematic, not to mention the risk of natural disasters.”
“UNAVOIDABLE”
It’s unclear what bearing the various lawsuits against Tepco might have on one another, but a common thread is that it should have anticipated the possibility of a devastating quake and tsunami and taken steps to reduce the impact.
The company maintains that the severity of the 9.0 magnitude quake and 13-meter wave could not have been predicted.
But the document introduced as evidence in the shareholders’ suit after a judge forced Tepco to produce it, appears to challenge that. The “Tsunami Measures Unavoidable” report, dated September 2008, was filed with the Tokyo District Court in June, but has not been widely reported.
The unnamed authors prepared the report for a meeting attended by the head of the power station and marked the document “to be collected after discussion.” It’s not clear whether senior executives in Tokyo saw the report at the time.
The report called for Tepco to prepare for a worse tsunami than it previously assumed, based on experts’ views.
“Considering that it is difficult to completely reject the opinions given thus far of academic experts on earthquakes and tsunami, as well as the expertise of the (government’s) Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, it is unavoidable to have tsunami countermeasures that assume a higher tsunami than at present,” says the report.
“This is prime evidence that Tepco recognised the need for tsunami measures,” said Hiroyuki Kawai, lead attorney in the shareholders’ suit. “This will have an important impact on the lawsuit.”
Tepco, in a court filing, counters that the document “does not mean there was a risk that a tsunami would strike and did not assume any specific tsunami countermeasures.”
Asked to comment further on the internal report and the range of legal problems facing the company, Tepco spokesman Kohji Sakakibara told Reuters, “We cannot answer these questions because they pertain to lawsuits and because they suppose a hypothetical determination of negligence. However, the company is making appropriate assertions in the lawsuits and expects that in the end the courts will render fair judgements.”
The shareholder lawsuit, filed in March 2012, seeks to establish responsibility for the disaster and demands 5.5 trillion yen (US$44 billion) in damages from current and former executives. A verdict is not expected for at least a year.
“This is likely to become a long battle where lawsuits go on for several decades or half a century,” said Shunichi Teranishi, a professor emeritus of environmental economics at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, comparing it to the Minamata mercury poisoning disaster in the 1950s, where lawsuits continue to be filed to this day.
Source: Channel News Asia
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/fukushima-operator-s/2054688.html
Japan’s Plutonium Problem
OXFORD, England — When Japan marked the 70th anniversary of Nagasaki’s obliteration by a plutonium bomb on Aug. 9, its own cache of weapons-usable plutonium was more than 47 metric tons — enough to make nearly 6,000 warheads like the one that flattened Nagasaki.
Japan, an industrial powerhouse but resource-poor, has long depended on nuclear energy. Before the earthquake and meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, it was generating nearly one-third of its electricity from nuclear power, and had plans to increase that share to 50 percent by 2030. Japan’s 48 standard reactors burn uranium fuel, a process that yields plutonium, a highly radioactive and extremely toxic substance.
These reactors were shut down after Fukushima. But Japan still stores nearly 11 tons of plutonium on its territory (the rest is abroad for now), and stockpiling plutonium remains hazardous: There is seismic instability, but also the risk of theft by terrorists. Yet just this week, Japan put one reactor back online, and another four have been approved for restart by the end of FY2015.
For this, one can thank a powerful network of utility companies, conservative politicians and bureaucrats in Japan, who peddle the notion that plutonium constitutes a sort of thermodynamic elixir. A byproduct of burning uranium, plutonium itself can be processed in so-called fast-breeder reactors to produce more energy. That step also yields more plutonium, and so in theory this production chain is self-sustaining — a kind of virtuous nuclear-energy cycle.
In practice, however, fast-breeder technology has been extremely difficult to implement. It is notoriously faulty and astronomically expensive, and it creates more hazardous waste. By the 1990s, many countries that experimented with fast-breeder reactors, including the United States, had phased them out.
But Japan doubled down. The government invested heavily in Monju, a prototype fast-breeder reactor, and the nuclear industry went on a charm offensive. It introduced Mr. Pluto, a puckish animated character, who claimed plutonium was safe enough to drink. It set up so-called PR centers next to nuclear plants: An exhibit at the one near Monju declared that the reactor was “necessary because plutonium can be used for thousands of years.”
The exhibit did not say Monju was a failure. The reactor became operational in 1994, but was shut down the next year after a leak caused a coolant to catch fire. Then came a botched cover-up, more than a decade of repairs, a failed restart and another accident. Monju has cost about $12.5 billion so far and produced only a tiny amount of energy.
In 1993 Japan also started spending a fortune on a reprocessing facility at Rokkasho, which would transform nuclear waste into fuel by separating plutonium and usable uranium from other waste. The process also is extremely expensive, and it, too, creates huge amounts of waste. Scheduled to begin operations in 2016, the plant could add as many as eight tons of plutonium to Japan’s stockpile each year.
While Japan’s record with nuclear waste is abysmal, no other state has found a safe or economically sustainable way to reuse such substances, especially not plutonium. Britain has announced it will abandon its costly and highly toxic reprocessing efforts by around 2020. The United States has a program to recycle nuclear byproducts into a mixed-oxide fuel known as MOx, a blend of uranium and plutonium. But the Obama administration has put it on stand-by because of ballooning costs.
France, which is at the forefront of MOx conversion efforts, has also struggled and is expected to phase out its MOx program by 2019. Instead, it has announced plans to start building in 2020 a new kind of fast-breeder reactor, known as ASTRID. This reactor is designed to generate energy by converting high-level nuclear waste into less dangerous residues, which require storage for several hundred years rather than many thousands of years, as is the case with plutonium. But this project has been delayed until at least 2030.
By far the best way to handle plutonium is to store it in secure long-term repositories underground. Having long banked on conversion, neither France nor Britain has permanent facilities; they keep plutonium in interim storage at reprocessing plants. Only two states have begun building viable long-term storage. Finland is constructing a vast facility blasted out of granite, which should be usable as of 2020. In the United States, underground chambers that can accommodate 12 metric tons of plutonium have been dug in New Mexico.
Considering Japan’s many vulnerabilities, particularly seismic activity, nuclear waste should no longer be stored there. The Japanese government should pay its closest allies to take its plutonium away, permanently.
Britain already holds about 20 tons of Japan’s plutonium, and France, about 16 tons, under contracts to reprocess it into usable fuel. Under current arrangements, this fuel, plus all byproducts (including plutonium), are to be sent back to Japan by 2020. Instead, Japan should pay, and generously, for that plutonium to stay where it is, in secure interim storage. And it should help fund the construction of secure permanent storage in Britain and France.
The Japanese government should also pay the United States to take the nearly 11 tons of plutonium currently in Japan. This proposal will seem controversial to some Americans, but the two states already have arrangements for the exchange of nuclear material. (With Finland, however, the proposition is a political nonstarter.) But it will take many years to build additional permanent storage in the United States — and overcome likely opposition in Congress — so in the meantime, Japan’s plutonium should be stored in interim facilities at American plants.
Handling Japan’s plutonium would be a great burden for receiver countries, and Japan should pay heftily for the service. But even then the expense would likely amount to a fraction of what Japan spends on its ineffectual plutonium-energy infrastructure: By the most conservative estimate, the Rokkasho facility is expected to cost $120 billion over its 40-year lifetime.
The benefits of this policy would extend far beyond Japan. An earthquake near Rokkasho could trigger an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe; preventing such an accident is in the whole world’s interest. And by funding the construction of long-term storage facilities overseas, Japan wouldn’t just be solving its plutonium problem. It would also be helping other states mitigate their own.
Peter Wynn Kirby is a nuclear and environmental specialist at the University of Oxford.
Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/opinion/japans-plutonium-problem.html?_r=0
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