‘It will take 300 years before contaminated water is safe to discharge into sea’

Not only 300 years, more than 300 years….

Experts warn there is no safe threshold for radioactive exposure

September 18, 2019

By Kim Jae-heun

Nuclear experts from around the world are condemning the Japanese government’s possible move to discharge radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.

The plan is raising concerns especially in Korea, Japan’s closest neighbor, as the discharged water will have a direct influence on the marine life and ecosystem in its territorial waters and eventually the people themselves.

As of Aug. 22, about 1.1 million tons of contaminated water are being stored in 977 tanks at the power plant in Fukushima, which was destroyed by an earthquake and resultant tsunami in 2011. The Japanese government has said it will only build more facilities through 2020 and this will bring the total stored to 1.37 million tons.

By August 2020, all the storage facilities are projected to be filled and there will be no more tanks to hold the 170 tons of radiation contaminated water created every day.

Tokyo has remained quit on how it will cope with the radioactive water, not giving any clear answers to the international community. The possibility of discharging it into the sea was raised recently after Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at the German branch of the environmental group Greenpeace, warned in August that Japan could dump over 1 million tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific.

Since then, Japanese government officials began to discuss the issue. They say almost all the radioactivity has been removed from the water except for tritium, claiming this metal is relatively nonhazardous ― something experts disagree with, noting it can cause cancer and fetal deformities.

Former Japanese Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada said in a recent interview that there was no other option but to dilute the contaminated water by pumping it into in the sea in order to dispose of it; although Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Harada’s remarks were only his personal opinion and the government had not made any decision.

Burnie, however, says this was only the “cheapest” option.

“This is the principal reason. They do not want to pay the full costs of storing and processing the contaminated water, including removal of radioactive tritium,” Burnie said during an email interview with The Korea Times. “For these reasons, in 2016, the Ministry of Economy Task Force on water turned down the options offered by various companies to develop tritium removal technology.”

Kim Ik-jung, a former medical professor at Dongguk University who served as a member of the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission here, agreed that discharging the contaminated water into the sea was the cheapest and fastest way to get rid of it, but at the same time it was also the most dangerous.

“There is another option to deal with radioactive water. Japan can keep it in the tanks until the radiation level becomes low enough. But this takes time and money. It will take about 300 years until it is okay to discharge the water,” Kim said.

Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University in Japan, said he thinks the Japanese government will go ahead and discharge the radiation-contaminated water into the sea in the near future, and this must be stopped at all cost.

“Being exposed to radiation, even if it is a very small amount, is still dangerous. Nobody should discharge radiation into the environment including the ocean,” Koide said.

According to a Greenpeace report released earlier this year, the Japanese government has reviewed five options to deal with the accumulating radioactive waste, and discharging it into the Pacific Ocean was considered the most reasonable as it would only cost 37.7 billion won, based on 2016 calculations by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The ministry also concluded that other options also entailed various risks.

Greenpeace Korea believes that if the Japanese government decides to discard the contaminated water, it will only do so after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

It argues that the Shinzo Abe administration will not court controversy while it has the world’s full attention during the Games scheduled between July 24 and Aug. 9.

“The Japanese government cannot just discard radioactive waste at its own discretion. It is watching how other countries are reacting to its hints that it could discharge the contaminated water into the ocean. That’s why the former Japanese environment minister made such remarks on the day he retired,” a Greenpeace Korea official said.

Concerns over Tokyo Olympics amid radiation issue

The Japanese government’s plan to dump contaminated wastewater is not the only issue related to Fukushima.

In less than a year, Japan will hold one of the world’s biggest sporting events, and nuclear experts around the world have expressed concerns that participating athletes could be exposed to radiation.

Koide says Olympic committees from all over the world should decide to boycott the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Last year, the scholar sent a document to Olympic committee members worldwide, warning of the radiation danger athletes and visitors will face.

In the letter, Koide questioned Japan’s suitability as the host of a worldwide event like the Olympics, and the country’s capability to take strict safety measures necessary to protect athletes and other visitors.

The professor further explained that the resultant radioactive materials leak from the explosion at the Fukushima plant in 2011 is still affecting “an area whose vastness has not been precisely determined yet.”

“Seven years have passed and the situation has not improved at all. As an honorable and honest citizen of Japan, I am asking you to reconsider your country’s participation in the Olympic Games that will take place in Tokyo in 2020,” he wrote in a letter sent in October 2018.

Burnie sided with Koide by saying that the Japanese government was being dishonest in the way it was using the Olympics to communicate with the world and its citizen that there has been a full recovery from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and there are no radiation risks.

“The reality of Fukushima Prefecture is highly complex with many citizens living in areas with low radiation risks ― at the same time there are areas in Fukushima, such as Namie and Iitate, where radiation risks are high, and tens of thousands of citizens remain displaced as evacuees,” Burnie said.

The Japanese government also announced that it would host baseball games and softball games in Fukushima, while providing food made from ingredients grown in the region.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe ate a rice ball made with crops grown there to demonstrate that the food was safe, but many criticized that this was a dangerous act.

“I don’t know if Abe ate it because he really thought it was safe or just for show. But it was a really dangerous act. Whatever is affected by radiation is dangerous without question,” Kim said.

“According to textbooks, if a person is exposed to radiation, be it internal or external, he or she is highly likely to develop cancer or hereditary disorders. Heart disease is also a common result.”

Korean government’s response

The Korean government is alarmed by the possible discharge of contaminated water, but is unable to strongly request the Japanese government not to do so, because the latter keeps saying it has yet to make a decision about how it will dispose of the water.

In mid-August, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the Japanese government to state its official stance on the issue. Environment Minister Cho Myung-rae said on social media Sunday, “We’ve asked the Japanese government to share material about how it is coping with the contaminated water from Fukushima, but it has avoided giving answers. It should take responsibility as a member of the international community by sharing information with its neighboring countries and holding sufficient talks with them.”

The government also called on international society at a general meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, Monday, to take collective action against the possibility of Japan discharging the water into the ocean.

Mun Mi-ock, the first vice minister of science and ICT, said in a keynote speech that Japan has failed to find an answer to the disposal of the radioactive waste since the meltdown at the Fukushima plant in March 2011.

“It is an important international issue that can affect the marine environment of the whole world, so the IAEA and its members need to take joint action,” Moon said.

The IAEA has no right to regulate a particular country, but the government believes public opinion formed against Japan could prevent it from dumping the radioactive water into the ocean as it counts 171 countries as members.

https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=275749&fbclid=IwAR2kxNEpVbtEQUu7t9VC6srC3k2DfO9g4FX7fP7dyOVksaf-Lu2NsNUfZ_E

September 26, 2019 Posted by dunrenard | fukushima 2019 | Fukushima Daiichi, Radioactive Water, Sea Dumping | Leave a comment

Osaka mayor Ichiro Matsui offers to take in tainted Fukushima water and dump it into Osaka Bay

Workers stand in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, in February.

Sep 17, 2019

OSAKA – Ichiro Matsui, the mayor of Osaka and head of Nippon Ishin no Kai, said Tuesday that water tainted by radioactive tritium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant could — if proven environmentally safe — be sent to Osaka and dumped into Osaka Bay.

“It’s necessary for all of Japan to dispose of that which creates absolutely no environmental damage. If (the radioactive water) is brought to us, it can be released,” Matsui said.

 

He added that he first would want a team of scientific experts to study the matter, and that the team would need to show that the level of radioactivity in any Fukushima water was at or below normal levels of radiation.

Matsui’s offer comes as the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. continue to discuss what to do with the more than 1 million tons of contaminated water collected since the Fukushima plant was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The water is being stored in tanks at the site, but Tepco has said it will run out of storage space in about three years.

Former Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada angered Fukushima residents and the local fishing industry earlier this month when he said that the water might have to be dumped into the ocean. The government has said that dumping the water contaminated with tritium would not pose any health risks to humans.

“The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” Harada told a news conference.

Newly appointed Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi met with Fukushima officials after assuming the post last week, but he did not clearly indicate how he wanted to deal with disposal of the radioactive water.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/17/national/osaka-mayor-offers-take-tainted-fukushima-water-dump-osaka-bay/?fbclid=IwAR2Wlvie4urEUB0gS34g9CUphrouBnD3FHUNKh52tStyEi3aBYCaBgptjZg#.XYD7sWbgqUl

September 26, 2019 Posted by dunrenard | fukushima 2019 | Fukushima Daiichi, Radioactive Water, Sea Dumping | Leave a comment

Radioactive water at Fukushima should be stored not dumped

Cooling water is needed at the Fukushima site because, when Units 1, 2 and 3 lost power, they also lost the flow of reactor coolant, causing their cores to overheat. The fuel rods then melted, and molten fuel dripped down and burned through the pressure vessels, pooling in the primary containment vessels. Units 1, 3 and 4 also suffered hydrogen explosions. Each day, about 200 metric tons of cooling water is used to keep the three melted cores cool, lest they once more go critical. Eventually the water becomes too radioactive and thermally hot to be re-used, and must be discarded and stored in the tanks.

As Greenpeace International (GPI) explained in remarks and questions submitted during a consultative meeting held by the International Maritime Organization in August 2019:

“Since 2011, in order to cool the molten cores in the Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Daiichi reactor units 1-3, water is continuously pumped through the damaged Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPVs) and circulated through reactor buildings, turbine buildings, the Process Main Building and the “High Temperature Incinerator Building”  and water treatment systems.

“As a result, the past eight years has seen a relentless increase in the volume of radioactive contaminated water accumulating on site. As of 4 July 2019, the total amount of contaminated water held in 939 storage tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant (units 1-4) was 1,145,694 m3 (tonnes). The majority of this, 1,041,710 m3, is contaminated processed water. In the year to April 2019, approximately 180 m3/day of water was being circulated into the RPVs of units 1-3.”

In addition to the cooling water, the tanks also house water that has run down from the nearby mountains, at a rate of about 100 tons each day. This water flows onto the site and seeps into the reactor buildings. There, it becomes radioactively contaminated and also must be collected and stored, to prevent it from flowing on down into the sea.

The water tank crisis is just one of multiple and complex problems at the Fukushima Daiichi site, including the eventual need to extract the molten fuel debris from inside the stricken reactors. Decommissioning cannot begin until the water storage tanks are removed.

Tepco has tried to mitigate the radioactive water problem in a number of ways. The infamous $320 million ice wall was an attempt to freeze and block inflow, but has had mixed results and has worked only intermittently. Wells were dug to try to divert the runoff water so it does not pick up contamination. The ice wall has reportedly reduced the flow of groundwater somewhat, but only down from 500 tons a day to about 100 tons.

In anticipation of dumping the tank water into the Pacific Ocean, Tepco has deployed an Advanced Liquid Processing System that the company claims can remove 62 isotopes from the water — all except tritium, which is radioactive hydrogen and therefore cannot be filtered out of water. (Tritium is routinely discharged by operating commercial nuclear power plants).

Tepco’s “Land-side Impermeable Wall” (Frozen soil wall). (Image: Tepco)

But, like the ice wall, the filtration system has also been plagued by malfunctions. According to GPI, Tepco admitted only last year that the system had “failed to reduce radioactivity to levels below the regulatory limit permissible for ocean disposal” in at least 80% of the tanks’ inventory. Indeed, said GPI, “the levels of Strontium-90 are more than 100 times the regulatory standard according to TEPCO, with levels at 20,000 times above regulations in some tanks.”

The plan to dump the water has raised the ire of South Korea, whose fish stocks would likely also be contaminated. And it has introduced the question of whether such a move is a violation of The Conventions of the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as was raised in a joint written statement by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and Greenpeace International, before the UN Human Rights Council currently in session.

So what else could or should Tepco do, if not dump the water offshore and into the ocean? A wide consensus amongst scientific, environmental and human rights groups is that on-site storage for the indefinite future is the only acceptable option, while research must continue into possible ways to extract all of the radioactive content, including tritium.

Meanwhile, a panel of experts says it will examine a number of additional but equally problematic choices, broadly condensed into four options (each with some variations — to  dilute or not to dilute etc):

• Ground (geosphere) injection (which could bring the isotopes in contact with groundwater);
• Vapor release (which could infiltrate weather patterns and return as fallout);
• Releasing it as hydrogen (it would still contain tritium gas); and
• Solidification followed by underground burial (for which no safe, permanent storage environment has yet been found, least of all in earthquake-prone Japan).

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds, recommends a chemical injection processes (drilling mud) — also used by the oil industry — to stop the flow of water onto the site entirely. But he says Japan has never considered this option. GPI contends that Japan has never seriously researched any of the alternatives, sticking to the ocean dumping plan, the cheapest and fastest “fix.”

All of this mess is of course an inevitable outcome of the choice to use nuclear power in the first place. Even without an accident, no safe, permanent storage solution has been found for the high-level radioactive waste produced through daily operation of commercial nuclear power plants, never mind as the result of an accident.

According to Dr. M.V. Ramana, by far the best solution is to continue to store the radioactive water, even if that means moving some of the storage tanks to other locations to make more room for new ones at the nuclear site. The decision to dump the water, Ramana says, is in line with Abe’s attempts to whitewash the scene before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and claim, as he has publicly in the past, that everything at Fukushima is “under control.” (Baseball and softball games will be played in Fukushima Prefecture and the torch relay will start there, all in an effort to pretend there are no dangerous nuclear after-effects remaining in the area.)

“The reason that they keep saying they need to release it is because they might have to move some of this offsite and that goes against the Abe government’s interest in creating the perception that Fukushima is a closed chapter,” Ramana wrote in an email. “So it is a political decision rather than a technical one.”

As with all things nuclear, there are diverging views on the likely impact to the marine environment and to human health, from dumping Fukushima’s radioactive water into the ocean. These run the gamut from “a little tritium won’t hurt you” to “the Pacific Ocean is dead thanks to Fukushima” — both of which are wildly untrue. (Tritium can bind organically inside the body, irradiating that person or animal from within. The many problems in the Pacific began long before Fukushima and are likely caused by numerous compounding factors, including warming and pollution, with Fukushima adding to the existing woes.)

The effect on deep sea creatures of radioactive ocean dumping could be long-lasting.

What is fact, however, is that scientists have found not only the presence of isotopes such as cesium in fish they tested, but also in ocean floor sediment. This latter has the potential to serve as a more long-term source of contamination up the food chain.

But it is also important to remember that if this radioactive water is dumped, it is not an isolated event. Radioactive contamination in our oceans is already widespread, a result of years of atmospheric atomic tests. As was reported earlier this year, scientists studying deep-sea amphipods, retrieved from some of the deepest trenches in the ocean — including the Mariana Trench which reaches 36,000 feet below sea-level and is deeper than Mount Everest is high — detected elevated levels of carbon-14 in these creatures.

“The levels closely matched abundances found near the surface of the ocean, where the amount of carbon-14 is higher than usual thanks to nuclear bomb tests conducted more than half a century ago,” reported Smithsonian Magazine.

Weidong Sun, co-author of the resulting study, told Smithsonian Magazine that “Biologically, [ocean] trenches are taken to be the most pristine habitats on Earth”.

How chilling, then, to realize that our radioactive irresponsibility has reached the lowest depths, affecting creatures far removed from our rash behaviors.

Consequently, the decision by the Japanese government to release yet more radioactive contamination into our oceans must be viewed not as a one-off act of desperation, but as a contribution to cumulative contamination. This, added to the twin tragedies of climate crisis-induced ocean warming and plastics and chemicals pollution, renders it one more crime committed on the oceans, ourselves and all living things. And it reinforces the imperative to neither continue nor increase our reckless use of nuclear power as an electricity source.

For an in-depth look at this issue, read the January 2019 Greenpeace Germany briefing, TEPCO Water Crisis (in English.)

Murky politics pollute the Pacific

September 26, 2019 Posted by dunrenard | fukushima 2019 | Fukushima Daiichi, Radioactive Water, Sea Dumping | Leave a comment

Plan to Release Radioactive Fukushima Wastewater Into Pacific Ocean Panned by Critics

“Another reason to not build nuclear power plants.”

Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior sailing past the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, five years after the plant’s accident.

September 14, 2019 Posted by dunrenard | fukushima 2019 | Fukushima Daiichi, Radioactive Water, Sea Dumping | Leave a comment

Minister says Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific

Fukushima: Japan will have to dump radioactive water into Pacific, minister says

More than a million tonnes of contaminated water lies in storage but power company says it will run out of space by 2022

The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will have to dump huge quantities of contaminated water from the site directly into the Pacific Ocean, Japan’s environment minister has said – a move that would enrage local fishermen.

More than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water has accumulated at the plant since it was struck by a tsunami in March 2011, triggering a triple meltdown that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has struggled to deal with the buildup of groundwater, which becomes contaminated when it mixes with water used to prevent the three damaged reactor cores from melting.

Tepco has attempted to remove most radionuclides from the excess water, but the technology does not exist to rid the water of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Coastal nuclear plants commonly dump water that contains tritium into the ocean. It occurs in minute amounts in nature.

Tepco admitted last year that the water in its tanks still contained contaminants beside tritium.

Currently, more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water is held in almost 1,000 tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi site, but the utility has warned that it will run out of tank space by the summer of 2022.

“The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” Yoshiaki Harada told a news briefing in Tokyo on Tuesday. “The whole of the government will discuss this, but I would like to offer my simple opinion.”

No decision on how to dispose of the water will be made until the government has received a report from a panel of experts. Other options include vaporising the liquid or storing it on land for an extended period.

Harada did not say how much water would need to be discharged into the ocean.

One recent study by Hiroshi Miyano, who heads a committee studying the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi at the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said it could take 17 years to discharge the treated water after it has been diluted to reduce radioactive substances to levels that meet the plant’s safety standards.

Any decision to dispose of the waste water into the sea would anger local fishermen, who have spent the past eight years rebuilding their industry.

Nearby South Korea has also voiced concern over the impact it would have on the reputation of its own seafood.

Last month, Seoul summoned a senior Japanese embassy official to explain how Fukushima Daiichi’s waste water would be dealt with.

Ties between the north-east Asian nations are already at a low ebb following a compensation dispute over Koreans forced to work in Japanese factories during the second world war.

The government spent 34.5bn yen (£260m) to build a frozen underground wall to prevent groundwater reaching the three damaged reactor buildings. The wall, however, has succeeded only in reducing the flow of groundwater from about 500 tonnes a day to about 100 tonnes a day.

Japan has come under renewed pressure to address the contaminated water problem before Tokyo hosts the Olympics and Paralympics next summer.

Six years ago during the city’s bid for the games, the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assured the international community that the situation was “under control”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/10/fukushima-japan-will-have-to-dump-radioactive-water-into-pacific-minister-says?CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter&fbclid=IwAR0y_cSlb7u-xDEJ8_IZ7DEYK18r0a3AKAm1pQcdxHKaE_OOmzKhbstrx8Q#Echobox=1568114071

Minister calls for dumping Fukushima plant treated water into ocean

September 10, 2019

Japan’s environment minister called Tuesday for water contaminated with low-toxicity radioactive tritium at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to be discharged into the Pacific Ocean, potentially provoking controversy with South Korea that has expressed concerns about the idea.

“Although I’m not the minister in charge, I believe there’s no choice but to dump the water (into the ocean) and dilute it,” Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada told a press conference, a day before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned Cabinet reshuffle.

Even after being treated, the water, used to cool reactor cores that suffered meltdowns at the plant following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, remains contaminated with tritium.

But the water, currently stored in tanks at the Fukushima plant, is regarded by the government as relatively harmless to humans.

Seoul has expressed concern over the possibility that the water could be discharged into the ocean. Local fishermen are also opposed to the release of the water into the sea, fearing the potential impact on fish stocks.

The Japanese government has yet to decide on how to dispose of the accumulating water. The tanks storing the water are expected to be full by the summer of 2022, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the operator of the Fukushima plant.

A nuclear expert from the International Atomic Energy Agency said in 2018 that a controlled discharge of such contaminated water “is something which is applied in many nuclear facilities, so it is not something that is new.”

Harada said his view was based on a visit to the Fukushima complex, where he saw a number of tanks storing the water, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s support for the water discharge.

In an apparent reference to South Korea, Harada added the most important thing for Japan is to “provide sincere explanations” to countries that may oppose Tokyo’s policy.

The environment minister made the remarks as he looked back on his time in the post since October last year.

In August, a government panel began discussing the possibility of long-term water storage. It has looked at other options such as discharging it into the sea and vaporization.

Toxic water produced by cooling debris and other processes at the Fukushima plant is purified using the Advanced Liquid Processing System, said to be capable of removing almost all radioactive materials except tritium.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2019/09/c1a5b0cc2143-minister-calls-for-dumping-fukushima-plant-treated-water-into-ocean.html

September 14, 2019 Posted by dunrenard | fukushima 2019 | Fukushima Daiichi, Radioactive Water, Sea Dumping | Leave a comment