1,000,000 Bq/m3 of Sr-90 detected in seawater of Fukushima plant port / Highest in recorded history
On 6/19/2015, Tepco announced they measured 1,000,000 Bq/m3 of Strontium-90 at two locations in Fukushima plant port.
This is the highest reading in recorded history. The sample is the port seawater. Sampling date was 5/4/2015.
The location was near the water intake of Reactor 3 and 4, and also the screen of Reactor 4.
The previous highest readings were lower than 700,000 Bq/m3.
Tepco has not made any announcement on this rapid increase.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2015/images/2tb-east_15061901-j.pdf
Source: Fukushima Daiichi
1,000,000 Bq/m3 of Sr-90 detected in seawater of Fukushima plant port / Highest in recorded history
The highest density of all β nuclide detected outside of Fukushima plant port
On 6/17/2015, Tepco announced they measured the highest density of all β nuclide (including Sr-90) in seawater outside of Fukushima plant port.
The sampling date was 6/15/2015. The density was 16,000 – 24,000 Bq/m3.
The sampling locations were the North-East, East, and South-East of the exit of the port. Especially in the South-East of the port exit, all β nuclide had always been under detectable level until this time.
The distance of these sampling locations and the port exit is not announced.
The Strontium-90 density has not been reported either.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2015/images/2tb-east_15061701-j.pdf
Source: Fukushima Diary
The highest density of all β nuclide detected outside of Fukushima plant port
Internal TEPCO document reveals executives knew beefing up tsunami defenses was “indispensable”
Tokyo Electric, the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has released a document during a lawsuit brought by over 40 shareholders which reveals the utilities acknowledgment that tsunami defenses at the plant were not adequate.
The internal document from 2008 noted that TEPCO executives had agreed that it would be “indispensable” to further build up coastal defenses for the plant in order to protect against a tsunami larger than had previously been recorded.
The utility has asserted that it could not have foreseen a tsunami of the size or magnitude that hit the plant in March 2011, that it had done everything it could to protect the nuclear power plant, took every available precaution against a tsunami, and has used that defense to protect itself from litigation.
This positioning by TEPCO has allowed the utility to argue that it is not responsible for the triple meltdown, but the internal document casts a definitive shadow over that claim.
Insiders from the nuclear industry in Japan have come forward since 2011 and claimed that TEPCO and the federal regulators ignored warnings of larger-than-expected tsunami in northern Japan for years. By ignoring these warnings, TEPCO delayed implementing countermeasures, including but not limited to increasing the height of protective wave barriers or removing the critical emergency backup diesel generators from the basements of the reactor buildings to higher ground.
In 2004, Kunihiko Shimazaki, a former professor of seismology of the University of Tokyo, warned that the coast of Fukushima could experience tsunamis more than double the estimates of federal regulators and TEPCO. His assertions were dismissed as “too speculative” and “pending further research.”
At a nuclear engineering conference in Miami in July 2007, Tokyo Electric researchers led by Toshiaki Sakai presented a paper which concluded that there was a 10% chance that a tsunami could test or overwhelm the defense at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the next 50 years.
Engineers from TEPCO confirmed Shimazaki’s concerns in 2008, when they produced three unique sets of calculations that revealed tsunami waves up to 50 feet tall could hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The utility sat on the information for nearly a year before handing it over to federal regulators and didn’t reveal the 50-foot wave calculation until March 7th, 2011, but by then it was too late.
In hindsight, it can now be seen that TEPCO scientists realized by at latest 2004 that it was indeed quite probable that a giant tsunami could overcome the defenses at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant — defenses which were based on engineering assumptions that dated back to the plant’s design in the 1960s.
In the weeks following the nuclear disaster in 2011, former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan pointed out the weaknesses in TEPCO’s tsunami defense concisely when he told the Japanese Parliament “It’s undeniable their (Tokyo Electric’s) assumptions about tsunamis were greatly mistaken. The fact that their standards were too low invited the current situation.”
Source: Enformable
Fukushima town decides to preserve pro-nuclear signs as negative legacys
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture–The government of what became a ghost town in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster has decided to preserve signboards featuring slogans boasting a bright future from nuclear energy.
The decision, announced by Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa at the town assembly operating in Iwaki on June 17, followed a campaign to keep the two pro-nuclear signboards in Futaba as a negative legacy of nuclear energy.
One sign over the main street of the town reads, “Genshiryoku–Akarui Mirai no Energy” (Nuclear power is the energy of a bright future).
The town government received a petition with 6,502 signatures calling for preservation of the signboards. The petition was led by Yuji Onuma, who came up with the slogan in 1988, when he was a sixth-grader at Futaba Kita elementary school.
His homework project received an award, and the slogan became a fixture on the signboard that welcomes visitors to the center of the town.
Futaba was completely evacuated after the disaster started at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011. The plant straddles Futaba and Okuma.
Evacuees are still unable to return to their homes.
The Futaba government initially planned to remove the signboards but decided they were worth saving as a testament to the pre-disaster myth of nuclear safety.
The town is considering exhibiting the signs to the public.
Source : Asahi Shimbun
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201506180068
Safety first in decommissioning work / Speed no longer top priority at N-plant
With the government’s approval of a revised road map for the decommissioning of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are shifting to a policy focused on “reducing risks” rather than “speedy operations.”
On Friday, the government decided on a revised road map for decommissioning the nuclear reactors that reflects the current circumstances surrounding the nuclear plant four years after the outbreak of the crisis, following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 that forced the government to take urgent measures.
The schedule includes some practical content such as delays to the start of removing spent nuclear fuel rods that are stored in fuel pools at the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors.
Risk assessment
“We’ll continue facing this unprecedented challenge and proceed with decommissioning work by giving utmost consideration to safety,” TEPCO President Naomi Hirose said Friday during a meeting of concerned Cabinet ministers at which the revised schedule was endorsed.
Eschewing an emphasis on speed, the government has shifted to a policy that stresses the reduction of risks that could negatively impact people and the environment.
The shift stems from a review of the government’s previous commitment to follow a schedule that put excessive pressure on workers at the site, leading to increased cases of problems and accidents that eventually resulted in delayed operations.
There were initially about 3,000 plant workers after the outbreak of the crisis. Now, there are around 7,000 involved in such projects as the construction of additional tanks to store radioactive contaminated water and installing subterranean ice walls around reactor buildings to block groundwater from flowing in.
Work-related accidents are on the rise. In January, operations were suspended for two weeks following fatal accidents at both the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants.
Based on the policy shift, the road map has sorted operations into several categories ordered by priority depending on their risk assessments. For example, contaminated water disposal is deemed a high priority because of leakage risks, meaning measures should be taken immediately.
In terms of the most difficult task — removing melted fuel debris — the road map stipulates that a cautious stance be taken out of concern that “the risk of failure would actually increase if [operations] are hastily conducted.”
“It’s important to classify the risks since decommissioning work involves a range of procedures,” said Hiroaki Yoshii, a professor emeritus at Tokyo Keizai University.
Identifying effective methods
Preparation work such as debris removal is expected to be a lengthy process, prompting the road map to indicate that spent fuel extraction from the pools at the three reactors will be delayed by from four to 40 months.
But the extent to which the delays would affect the overall timetable of completing decommissioning work, projected to take 30 to 40 years, remains unclear. The outline of the overall timeline remained unchanged.
The extraction of melted fuel from the containment vessels is expected to start in 2021. The operation faces an unprecedented challenge involving the use of a robot arm, however, meaning deciding on the best extraction method for each reactor will take about two years.
One option is a “submersion method” in which the vessel is submerged in water to extract fuel debris. Other ways include a dry approach that doesn’t involve water.
The submersion method has the advantage of using water as a radiation shield, but potential leak points need to be repaired. Containment vessels would also need to be tested for their ability to withstand earthquakes when filled with water.
A dry method would not require the leaks to be stopped, but measures would be needed to control emissions from radioactive substances and shield workers from radiation.
The government and TEPCO plan to deploy robots to investigate the position and state of melted fuel in the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors after summer.
“If we can learn about the conditions of the fuel, we can develop an efficient retrieval method. Operations in the next few years will be important,” said Hajimu Yamana, vice president of the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation.
Tainted water still flowing in
Radioactive contaminated water generated from groundwater flowing into the plant continues to stand at 300 tons a day. The flow needs to be blocked before melted fuel can be extracted.
The road map also outlines a new goal of reducing groundwater flow to less than 100 tons a day by fiscal 2016 as part of efforts to complete contaminated water disposal.
To achieve the target, contaminated groundwater pumped up from areas enclosed by ice walls and wells called “subdrain pits” must be purified and directed to the ocean — but the effectiveness of the unprecedented scale of the ice walls remain unknown.
The government and TEPCO have also failed to obtain consent over the subdrain pit plan from local governments and residents after rainwater contaminated with radioactive material was found to have escaped into the ocean through a trench at the power plant in February.
Source: Yomiuri
What’s Really Going on at Fukushima?
Fukushima’s still radiating, self-perpetuating, immeasurable, and limitless, like a horrible incorrigible Doctor Who monster encounter in deep space.
Fukushima will likely go down in history as the biggest cover-up of the 21st Century. Governments and corporations are not leveling with citizens about the risks and dangers; similarly, truth itself, as an ethical standard, is at risk of going to shambles as the glue that holds together the trust and belief in society’s institutions. Ultimately, this is an example of how societies fail.
Tens of thousands of Fukushima residents remain in temporary housing more than four years after the horrific disaster of March 2011. Some areas on the outskirts of Fukushima have officially reopened to former residents, but many of those former residents are reluctant to return home because of widespread distrust of government claims that it is okay and safe.
Part of this reluctance has to do with radiation’s symptoms. It is insidious because it cannot be detected by human senses. People are not biologically equipped to feel its power, or see, or hear, touch or smell it (Caldicott). Not only that, it slowly accumulates over time in a dastardly fashion that serves to hide its effects until it is too late.
Chernobyl’s Destruction Mirrors Fukushima’s Future
As an example of how media fails to deal with disaster blowback, here are some Chernobyl facts that have not received enough widespread news coverage: Over one million (1,000,000) people have already died from Chernobyl’s fallout.
Additionally, the Rechitsa Orphanage in Belarus has been caring for a very large population of deathly sick and deformed children. Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to radiation than adults.
Zhuravichi Children’s Home is another institution, among many, for the Chernobyl-stricken: “The home is hidden deep in the countryside and, even today, the majority of people in Belarus are not aware of the existence of such institutions.”1
One million (1,000,000) is a lot of dead people. But, how many more will die? Approximately seven million (7,000,000) people in the Chernobyl vicinity were hit with one of the most potent exposures to radiation in the history of the Atomic Age.
The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is known as “Death Valley.” It has been increased from 30 to 70 square kilometres. No humans will ever be able to live in the zone again. It is a permanent “dead zone.”
Additionally, over 25,000 died and 70,000 disabled because of exposure to extremely dangerous levels of radiation in order to help contain Chernobyl. Twenty percent of those deaths were suicides, as the slow agonizing “death march of radiation exposure” was too much to endure.
Fukushima- The Real Story
In late 2014, Helen Caldicott, M.D. gave a speech about Fukushima at Seattle Town Hall on September 28, 2014. Pirate Television recorded her speech. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qX-YU4nq-g)
Dr. Helen Caldicott is co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and she is author/editor of Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, The New Press, September 2014. For over four decades Dr. Caldicott has been the embodiment of the anti-nuclear banner, and as such, many people around the world classify her as a “national treasure”. She’s truthful and honest and knowledgeable.
Fukushima is literally a time bomb in quiescence. Another powerful quake and all hell could break loose. Also, it is not even close to being under control. Rather, it is totally out of control. According to Dr. Caldicott, “It’s still possible that Tokyo may have to be evacuated, depending upon how things go.” Imagine that!
According to Japan Times as of March 11, 2015:
There have been quite a few accidents and problems at the Fukushima plant in the past year, and we need to face the reality that they are causing anxiety and anger among people in Fukushima, as explained by Shunichi Tanaka at the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Furthermore, Mr. Tanaka said, there are numerous risks that could cause various accidents and problems.
Even more ominously, Seiichi Mizuno, a former member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Upper House of Parliament, 1995-2001) in March 2015 said:
The biggest problem is the melt-through of reactor cores… We have groundwater contamination… The idea that the contaminated water is somehow blocked in the harbor is especially absurd. It is leaking directly into the ocean. There’s evidence of more than 40 known hotspot areas where extremely contaminated water is flowing directly into the ocean… We face huge problems with no prospect of solution.2
At Fukushima, each reactor required one million gallons of water per minute for cooling, but when the tsunami hit, the backup diesel generators were drowned. Units 1, 2, and 3 had meltdowns within days. There were four hydrogen explosions. Thereafter, the melting cores burrowed into the container vessels, maybe into the earth.
According to Dr. Caldicott, “One hundred tons of terribly hot radioactive lava has already gone into the earth or somewhere within the container vessels, which are all cracked and broken.” Nobody really knows for sure where the hot radioactive lava resides. The scary unanswered question: Is it the China Syndrome?
Following the meltdown, the Japanese government did not inform people of the ambient levels of radiation that blew back onto the island. Unfortunately and mistakenly, people fled away from the reactors to the highest radiation levels on the island at the time.
As the disaster happened, enormous levels of radiation hit Tokyo. The highest radiation detected in the Tokyo Metro area was in Saitama with cesium radiation levels detected at 919,000 becquerel (Bq) per square meter, a level almost twice as high as Chernobyl’s “permanent dead zone evacuation limit of 500,000 Bq.”3. For that reason, Dr. Caldicott strongly advises against travel to Japan and recommends avoiding Japanese food.
Even so, post the Fukushima disaster, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement with Japan that the U.S. would continue importing Japanese foodstuff. Therefore, Dr. Caldicott suggests people not vote for Hillary Clinton. One reckless dangerous precedent is enough for her.
According to Arnie Gundersen, an energy advisor with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, as reported in The Canadian on August 15, 2011:
The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima. In April, the month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake crippled Japan including its nuclear power plant, Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them. So, we are not sampling food coming in from Japan.
However, in stark contrast to the United States, in Europe Angela Merkel, PhD physics, University of Leipzig and current chancellor of Germany is shutting down all nuclear reactors because of Fukushima.
Maybe an advanced degree in physics makes the difference in how a leader approaches the nuclear power issue. It certainly looks that way when comparing/contrasting the two pantsuit-wearing leaders, Chancellor Merkel and former secretary of state Clinton.
After the Fukushima blow up, ambient levels of radiation in Washington State went up 40,000 times above normal, but according to Dr. Caldicott, the U.S. media does not cover the “ongoing Fukushima mess.” So, who would really know?
Dr. Caldicott ended her September 28. 2014 speech by saying:
In Fukushima, it is not over. Everyday, four hundred tons of highly radioactive water pours into the Pacific and heads towards the U.S. Because the radiation accumulates in fish, we get that too. The U.S. government is not testing the water, not testing the fish, and not testing the ambient air. Also, people in Japan are eating radiation every day.
Furthermore, according to Dr. Caldicott:
Rainwater washes over the nuclear cores into the Pacific. There is no way they can get to those cores, men die, robots get fried. Fukushima will never be solved. Meanwhile, people are still living in highly radioactive areas.
Fukushima will never be solved because “men die” and “robots get fried.” By the sounds of it, Fukushima is a perpetual radiation meltdown scenario that literally sets on the edge of a bottomless doomsday pit, in waiting to be nudged over.
UN All-Clear Report
A UN (UNSCEAR) report on April 2, 2014 on health impacts of the Fukushima accident concluded that any radiation-induced effects would be too small to identify. People were well protected and received “low or very low” radiation doses. UNSCEAR gave an all-clear report.
Rebuttal of the UNSCEAR report by the German affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War dated July 18, 2014 takes a defiant stance in opposition to the UN report, to wit:
The Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from over. Despite the declaration of ‘cold shutdown’ by the Japanese government in December 2011, the crippled reactors have not yet achieved a stable status and even UNSCEAR admits that emissions of radioisotopes are continuing unabated. 188 TEPCO is struggling with an enormous amount of contaminated water, which continues to leak into the surrounding soil and sea. Large quantities of contaminated cooling water are accumulating at the site. Failures in the makeshift cooling systems are occurring repeatedly. The discharge of radioactive waste will most likely continue for a long time.
Both the damaged nuclear reactors and the spent fuel ponds contain vast amounts of radioactivity and are highly vulnerable to further earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and human error. Catastrophic releases of radioactivity could occur at any time and eliminating this risk will take many decades… It is impossible at this point in time to come up with an exact prognosis of the effects that the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have on the population in Japan… the UNSCEAR report represents a systematic underestimation and conjures up an illusion of scientific certainty that obscures the true impact of the nuclear catastrophe on health and the environment.
Read the full text of the rejoinder to the UN report here. (https://japansafety.wordpress.com/tag/saitama/)
Fukushima’s Radiation and the Future
Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press (AP), June 12, 2015:
Four years after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, the road ahead remains riddled with unknowns… Experts have yet to pinpoint the exact location of the melted fuel inside the three reactors and study it, and still need to develop robots capable of working safely in such highly radioactive conditions. And then there’s the question of what to do with the waste… serious doubts about whether the cleanup can be completed within 40 years.
According to Prof. Hiroaki Koide (retired), Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, April 25, 2015:
Although the Chernobyl accident was a terrible accident, it only involved one reactor. With Fukushima, we have the minimum [of] 3 reactors that are emitting dangerous radiation. The work involved to deal with this accident will take tens of years, hundreds of years. It could be that some of the fuel could actually have gone through the floor of the containment vessel as well… What I’ve just described is very, very logical for anyone who understands nuclear engineering or nuclear energy. (Which dreadfully spells-out: THE CHINA SYNDROME.)
According to the Smithsonian, April 30, 2015:
Birds Are in a Tailspin Four Years After Fukushima: Bird species are in sharp decline, and it is getting worse over time… Where it’s much, much hotter, it’s dead silent. You’ll see one or two birds if you’re lucky.
Developmental abnormalities of birds include cataracts, tumors, and asymmetries. Birds are spotted with strange white patches on their feathers.
Maya Moore, a former NHK news anchor, authored a book about the disaster: The Rose Garden of Fukushima (Tankobon, 2014), about the roses of Mr. Katsuhide Okada. Today, the garden has perished:
It’s just poisoned wasteland. The last time Mr. Okada actually went back there, he found baby crows that could not fly, that were blind. Mutations have begun with animals, with birds.
The Rose Garden of Fukushima features a collection of photos of an actual garden that existed in Fukushima, Japan. Boasting over 7500 bushes of roses and 50-thousand visitors a year, the Garden was rendered null and void in an instant due to the triple disaster — earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown.
The forward to Maya’s book was written by John Roos, former US Ambassador to Japan 2009-13:
The incredible tale of Katz Okada and his Fukushima rose garden was told here by Maya Moore… gives you a small window into what the people of Tohoku faced.
Roos’ “small window” could very well serve as a metaphor for a huge black hole smack dab in the heart of civilization. Similarly, Fukushima is a veritable destruction machine that consumes everything in its path, and beyond, and its path is likely to grow. For certain, it is not going away.
Thus, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is deeply involved in an asymmetric battle against enormously powerful unleashed out-of-control forces of E=mc2.
Clearly, TEPCO has its back to the wall. Furthermore, it’s doubtful TEPCO will “break the back of the beast.” In fact, it may be an impossible task.
Maybe, just maybe, Greater Tokyo’s 38 million residents will eventually be evacuated. Who knows for sure?
Only Godzilla knows!
Source: Dissident Voice
INSIGHT: Success of revised decommissioning plan for Fukushima far from a done deal
Safety over speed reflects the thinking behind the revised road map for decommissioning the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Officials of the central government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. had wanted in the past to move quickly in decommissioning the reactors in part because that would also speed up the rebuilding process in Fukushima Prefecture.
However, because of the unprecedented scale and nature of the decommissioning project resulting from the triple meltdown triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, the rush to move on resulted in only more problems that had to be addressed.
The revised road map that got the official go-ahead June 12 delays the removal of nuclear fuel from the three reactors by as much as three years. The new schedule was needed because of the numerous problems that arose in the preliminary stages of work to prepare for the most difficult work of removing nuclear fuel assemblies from the spent fuel storage pools. An even more dangerous process that comes with its own larger set of unknown factors is removing the melted fuel in the reactor cores of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
One of the biggest problems has been removing debris at the plant site caused by the explosions at the reactors, along with decontaminating work areas with high levels of radiation, stopping leaks of radiation-contaminated water and dealing with radioactive materials that are still gushing.
The hurried pace of past work may have been a factor behind a spike in work-related accidents at the plant site.
New targets have been established for dealing with the continuing problem of contaminated water.
One goal is to reduce the flow of groundwater into the reactor buildings by the end of fiscal 2016 to less than 100 tons a day from the current daily level of about 300 tons.
However, achieving that goal will require successful operation of two separate projects. One is the construction of an underground frozen wall of soil to divert groundwater, while the other involves processing pumped up groundwater before releasing it into the ocean.
Even if the contaminated water problem is dealt with, there are other issues that have to be addressed before removal of the nuclear fuel from the reactors can begin.
The overall goal of completing the decommissioning within a period of 30 to 40 years has not changed. The road map also maintains the objective of starting the removal of melted fuel at one of the three reactors in 2021. To achieve that goal, the method for removing that fuel will have to be finalized in early fiscal 2018.
However, a major problem is the uncertainty about just where that melted fuel is located within the reactor containment vessel.
Remote-controlled robots will be used within the vessels to assess conditions there.
Hajimu Yamana, deputy head of the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp. who is in charge of providing technological advice, said, “By using investigative robots to gather information, we will have a pretty good idea of the state of the melted fuel within two years. We should have all the information we would need by then in deciding how to remove the fuel.”
But some experts still seem to think the authorities are rushing things.
Shigeaki Tsunoyama, former president of the University of Aizu in Fukushima Prefecture who serves as an adviser to the Fukushima prefectural government on nuclear issues, cast doubt on whether fuel removal could begin within three years of deciding the removal method.
He cited the problem of developing specialized equipment, training the workers to use it and screening by the Nuclear Regulation Authority as being time-consuming issues that would have a bearing on the outcome
Source ; Asahi Shimbun
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201506130054
Fukushima decommissioning schedule revised to delay spent fuel removal
With the decommissioning of Fukushima No. 1 proving harder than expected, planners have pushed back plans to remove spent nuclear fuel from the cooling pools perched above the damaged reactors by a few years.
The decision was made Friday by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the tsunami-hit complex.
The spent fuel rod assemblies must be removed from the pools above reactor Nos. 1, 2 and 3 before any attempt can be made to extract the fuel that melted inside the reactors themselves.
But the delay will not impact the overall cleanup timeline for the plant, which spans 30 to 40 years, the government and Tepco said.
The first revision to the decommissioning road map in two years was made after it was decided that too much priority had been placed on speed. This would have heaped excessive pressure on workers tasked with operating in a highly radioactive environment. The road map was first crafted in December 2011.
According to the revised road map, the removal of fuel assemblies from the No. 3 cooling pool will be delayed until fiscal 2017, as it is already behind schedule. The work was expected to be finished in the first half of fiscal 2015, which ends next March.
Work to extract fuel assemblies from the pools on units 1 and 2 is now expected to begin in fiscal 2020, instead of fiscal 2017.
The subsequent extraction of the melted fuel — the most challenging part of the process — is expected to start in 2021, but the government and Tepco have not yet figured out how to do it. They are aiming to settle on a single approach in fiscal 2018.
The revised road map also aims to reduce the amount of groundwater seeping into the structurally damaged plant to less than 100 tons per day in fiscal 2016, instead of 300 tons. The influx of groundwater has become its own crisis by mingling with the highly radioactive water generated in the daily process of cooling the leaking reactors. And all of it must be stored on site until it can be cleaned.
The most important progress made at the plant so far has been the removal of all the fuel assemblies that had been stored in the cooling pool above the No. 4 reactor, which suffered a hydrogen explosion but avoided meltdown.
The revision also said the government and Tepco will begin discussions in the first half of 2016 on how to dispose of water tainted with tritium. The filters currently available can remove all radioactive isotopes from large volumes of water with the exception of tritium, a common byproduct at nuclear plants.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Regulation Authority have suggested such water be dumped into the ocean rather than be kept in tanks, to reduce the risk of accidents, but Tepco remains undecided on this given strong local opposition to the proposal, especially by fishermen.
Source: Japan Times
Gov’t OKs long-term Fukushima cleanup plan despite unknowns
TOKYO —The Japanese government on Friday approved a revised 30- to 40-year roadmap to clean up the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, but many questions remain.
The plan, endorsed by cabinet members and officials, delays the start of a key initial step — the removal of spent fuel in storage pools at each of the three melted reactors — by up to three years due to earlier mishaps and safety problems at the plant.
Three of the plant’s six reactors melted following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The fourth, which was offline and had no fuel in the core at the time of the accident, suffered damage to its building, and its fuel storage pool was emptied late last year.
Despite the delay, experts need to locate and study melted fuel inside the reactors and develop robots to start debris removal within six years as planned.
Experts believe melted fuel had breached the reactor cores and mostly fell to the bottom of the containment chambers, some possibly sinking into the concrete foundation.
The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has conducted limited surveys of the reactors using remote-controlled robots.
The roadmap says the initial plan to repair damage in the containment chambers and fill them with water to conduct debris removal underwater is more technically challenging than previously thought, and alternative plans need to be studied.
Radiation levels at the reactors remain high and the plant is still hobbled by the massive amount of contaminated water.
Some of the uncertainties and questions:
___
THE FUEL RODS: Kept cool in storage pools on the top floor of each of the three reactors, they need to be removed to free up space for robots and other equipment to go down to the containment chambers. The 1,573 units of fuel rods – mostly used but some of them new – are considered among the highest risks at the plant, because they are uncovered within the reactor building. To remove them, the building roofs must be taken off and replaced with a cover that prevents radioactive dust from flying out. Each building is damaged differently and requires its own cover design and equipment. The government and plant operator TEPCO hope to start the process in 2018, three years later than planned.
___
THE MELTED FUEL: Once the spent fuel rods are out of the way, workers can turn their attention to what is expected to be the hardest part of the decommissioning: Removing the melted fuel from the three wrecked reactors. The biggest questions are where the melted fuel is and in what condition. Radiation levels are too high for humans to approach. Based on computer simulations and a few remote-controlled probes, experts believe the melted fuel has breached the cores and fallen to the bottom of the containment chambers, some possibly seeping into the concrete foundation.
A plan to repair the containment chambers and fill them with water so that the melted fuel can be handled while being kept cool may be unworkable, and experts are now studying alternative methods. How to reach the debris – from the top or from the side – is another question. A vertical approach would require robots and equipment that can dangle as low as 30 meters (90 feet) to reach the bottom. Experts are also trying to figure out how to get debris samples out to help develop radiation-resistant robots and other equipment that can handle the molten fuel.
___
CONTAMINATED WATER: The plant is still plagued with massive amounts of contaminated water – cooling water that must be added regularly, and subsequently leaks out of the reactors and mixes with groundwater that seeps into the reactor basements. The volume of water grows by 300 tons daily. TEPCO runs it through treatment machines to remove most radioactive elements, and then stores it in thousands of tanks on the compound. Water leaks pose environmental concerns and health risks to workers. Nuclear experts say controlled release of the treated water into the ocean would be the ultimate solution.
___
RADIOACTIVE WASTE: Japan currently has no plan for the waste that comes out of the plant. Under the roadmap, the government and TEPCO are supposed to compile a basic plan by March 2018. Waste management is an extremely difficult task that requires developing technology to compact and reduce the toxicity of the waste, while finding a waste storage site is practically impossible considering public sentiment. This raises serious doubts about whether the cleanup can be completed within 40 years.
Source: JapanToday
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
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.
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
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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