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The enormous and intractable problem of Fukushima’s radioactive soil

That would be about enough dirt to fill the 59,000-capacity B.C. Place Stadium 23 times.

However, Yuichi Moriguchi, a University of Tokyo environmental-engineering professor, pegged the amount at closer to 100 million cubic metres, enough to fill 80 B.C. Places.

Minister Ishihara had told reporters in Tokyo on June 16 that the dragged-out and often acrimonious soil-storage negotiations between Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party–led administration and local and state governments in Fukushima would be solved once the issue of “monetary value” was settled.

Fukushima residents, evacuees, the governor, and the mayors of Futaba and Okuma—the two towns adjacent to Daiichi that have been tentatively earmarked for storage facilities—were outraged by the comment.

They called it insensitive and said it failed to take into account their dislocation, fears, and sense of helplessness. They said it made them seem to be concerned only with compensation.

Minister underestimated reaction

The environment minister quickly backtracked, saying he was misconstrued, but he refused to retract his statement. After opposition pressure, however, he apologized during a June 19 parliamentary session and retracted his remark………

Many of the sites are already at or near capacity.

Costs could be wildly inaccurate

In December 2013, Tokyo announced that it would spend almost $1 billion to store 132,738 tonnes of radioactive soil already removed from near the crippled power plant. No towns came forward to offer to sell the approximately three to five square kilometres of land estimated to be needed to build the supposedly “interim” facility to house the waste, currently stored temporarily in different locations around Japan.

(That plan covers less than 150,000 tons of soil. Greenpeace International has claimed that as of February 2013, more than fourmillion tons of radioactive waste had been produced.)

The $1-billion cost of this plan might be severely underestimated, however. A disposal centre in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, for low-level radioactive waste from the country’s nuclear plants (including metal parts and work clothing) cost $2 billion to build.

And it holds only 200,000 cubic metres of material.

The true cost for the planned “interim” facility could be in the tens of billions of dollars—or much higher.

Waste needs to be stored for 30 years

Prefecture officials and residents expressed skepticism about the unclear future location of “permanent” storage sites, noting that the material would have to be stored away for a minimum of 30 years and voicing fears that their towns would become the preferred perpetual spots…….

There are many areas outside this district that are contaminated as well, to varying degrees, including isolated “hot spots”. Some of these were found in Tokyo, more than 200 kilometres away from Daiichi. On the other hand, that original clean-up area consists of up to 70 percent woodlands, hills, and mountains, much of which (if not most) will probably never be touched by decontamination efforts.

Some areas may be deserted forever

And if more than five centimetres of topsoil needs to be scraped off to remove radioactive cesium­, after years of rain and groundwater movement, the volume of material needing to be stored will rise accordingly. Prof. Tomoko M. Nakanishi, from the University of Tokyo’s graduate school of agriculture, conducted soil research in Fukushima post-disaster and had this to say about how readily radioactive cesium was absorbed by the soil: “It was like pollen with superglue.”

Friends of the Earth, an international network of environmental groups, reported in 2012 that a test soil-decontamination program for only three houses in Fukushima generated 35 tons of soil waste.

In the end, it will probably be areas around parks, residences, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings that will see the most attention from decontamination efforts.

Some parts of the surrounding prefectures may never see a return to levels of human activity to compare with pre-Fukushima. And some areas may remain deserted forever.

Oh, yeah, then there’s the ocean

This is without even mentioning the incalculable amount of radioactive groundwater and cooling water that has flowed into the Pacific Ocean nonstop since the first day of the disaster almost three-and-a-half years ago. Woods Hole Oceanographic Society scientists labelled this “the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history”.

According to Greenpeace International, one month after the meltdowns, cesium-137 levels in the sea near Daiichi were 50 million times higher than pre-disaster measurements. (Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years; cesium-134’s is a bit more than two years.)

And Asahi—using data provided by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the Daiichi plant operator—says that 462TBq (a terabecquerel equals one trillion Becquerels) of radioactive strontium have been dumped into the Pacific. Strontium is potentially far more dangerous to human life than either cesium-134 or cesium-137.

There have been conflicting reports about the amounts of even deadlier plutonium that might have been released into the soil, air, or water……http://www.straight.com/news/680196/fukushimas-radioactive-soil-sparks-fights-exposes-enormity-and-hopelessness-clean-task

July 7, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Fukushima 2014, Japan | Leave a comment