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.
US nuclear industry lobbying hard to sell its reactors to China
Nuclear industry pushing for renewal of U.S.-China agreement, The Hill, By Devin Henry – 06/08/15The nuclear energy industry is pushing to keep a critical export agreement with China on the books beyond the end of this year.
A nuclear cooperation agreement that allows United States companies to export their products and technologies to China expires in December. President Obama proposed a 30-year extension of that agreement in April, which the American nuclear industry says will allow it to continue working in the country.
Congress has the right to block or modify that agreement, and concerns about nuclear nonproliferation could hinder it at some point. But key lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they support the idea of a nuclear cooperation pact, and industry officials are hopeful the new version takes hold this year.
“Even where the Russians may have brought in financing, or the Koreans may have underbid folks, there is still the desire to have the American supply chain come in,” said David Blee, the executive director of the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council, a business group. Continue reading
India bans entrance of Greenpeace member
India barred activist from entry: Greenpeace , Arab News 9 June 15 NEW DELHI: Greenpeace said Monday an Australian staff member had been barred from entering India despite holding a valid visa, in what it said was the latest crackdown against the group.
Aaron Gray-Block was on his way to meetings in India when immigration officials stopped him at Bangalore airport on Saturday night and put him on a flight to Kuala Lumpur without explanation, the campaign group said.
His passport was seized and only returned to him once he had landed in the Malaysian capital, the environmental group said in a statement.
“Our colleague has a valid business visa, and yet he was prevented from entering India with no reason given,” Divya Raghunandan, program director of Greenpeace India, said.
“We are forced to wonder if all international staff of Greenpeace will now be prevented from entering the country?“
Local media reports cited unnamed home ministry sources saying Gray-Block was denied entry because his name figured in an official ‘black list’.
But the activist said he had “not received any communication” from the government of being placed on such a list, demanding “an explanation to this.”
“I arrived at Bangalore Airport with a valid business visa issued by the Indian embassy in Australia… Any suggestion of wrongdoing is a farce and a smear,” Gray-Block said in a statement late Monday.
“There is no reason for me to be included in any blacklist,” he added……
A court last month ordered authorities to unfreeze some of Greenpeace’s accounts, handing the group a lifeline after it faced closure of its local operations.
Greenpeace has accused the government of waging a “malicious campaign” against it. Authorities prevented one of its campaigners in January from leaving Delhi after she was placed on a suspicious persons list. According to Indian media, a secret report by the main intelligence agency recently warned that delays to key development projects being sought by Greenpeace and other activist groups could knock up to three percentage points off India’s annual growth rate.
Greenpeace has been at loggerheads with the government over claims of environmental damage caused by India’s heavy reliance on coal and the impact of deforestation and nuclear projects. http://www.arabnews.com/news/758971
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
Burnout and stress in Fukushima’s 7,000 nuclear cleanup workers
Stress on The Front Lines of Fukushima Cleanup, NHK, 12 March 2015 Four years ago, crews at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan were racing to keep the nuclear plant from spiraling out of control following the earthquake and tsunami. Today, that sense of urgency has dissipated. But the situation remains serious as workers juggle a host of problems as they decommission the facility. Given the risks involved, health concerns and other worries weigh heavily on their minds……Every day about 7,000 workers help decommission the reactors. In heavy protective clothing, they carry out such tasks as collecting and storing contaminated water. However, the decommissioning work is expected to take up to 40 years to complete. Keeping stress levels down and morale up is proving difficult.
Maeda says a change of mood has definitely come over his staff. He also says it’s getting harder to find new skilled workers. His company now has only one-third the number of experienced workers it had before the accident. “If it carries on like this, we’ll go out of business,” he says.
Four years after the disaster, the decontamination of land around the plant continues. But it is hard to predict when places like Maeda’s hometown of Namie will be habitable again. He says many residents are losing hope of returning home……… http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclearwatch/20150312.html
A Marine Food Web Bioaccumulation model for Cesium 137 in the Pacific Northwest
July 2, 2014
The Fukushima nuclear accident on 11 March 2011 emerged as a global threat to the
conservation of the Pacific Ocean, human health, and marine biodiversity.
On April 11 (2011), the Fukushimanuclear plant reached the severity level 7, equivalent to that of the 1986-Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
This accident was defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as “a major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures”.
Despite the looming threat of radiation, there has been scant attention and inadequate radiation monitoring.
This is unfortunate, as the potential radioactive contamination of seafoods through bioaccumulation of radioisotopes (i.e. 137Cs) in marine and coastal food webs are issues of major concern for the public health of coastal communities.
While releases of 137Cs into the Pacific after the Fukushima nuclear accident are subject to high degree of dilution in the ocean, 137Cs activities are also prone to concentrate in marine food-webs. With the aim to track the long term fate and bioaccumulation of 137Cs in marine organisms of the Northwest Pacific, we assessed the bioaccumulation potential of 137Cs in a North West Pacific foodweb by developing, applying and testing a simulation time dependent bioaccumulation model in a marine mammalian food web that includes fish-eating resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) as the apex predator.
The model outcomes showed that 137Cs can be expected to bioaccumulate gradually over time in the food web as demonstrated through the use of the slope of the trophic magnification factor (TMF) for 137Cs, which was significantly higher than one (TMF > 1.0; p < 0.0001), ranging from 5.0 at 365 days of simulation to 30 at 10,950 days.
From 1 year to 30 years of simulation, the 137Cs activities predicted in the male killer whale were 6.0 to 182 times 137Cs activities in its major prey (Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Bioaccumulation of 137Cs was characterized by slow uptake and elimination rates in upper trophic level.
Source :
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268982476_A_Marine_Food_Web_Bioaccumulation_model_for_Cesium_137_in_the_Pacific_Northwest
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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