by John Laforge
Since it began March 11, 2011, thousands of freelancers have reported on the Fukushima-Daiichi triple reactor meltdowns and radiation gusher, the deluge of accidents, leaks, faulty cleanup efforts, the widespread contamination of workers, citizens, soil, food and water, and the long series of cancer studies, lawsuits, and ever-changing clean-up and decommissioning plans. As Japan Times reports last October, “Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for [Tokyo Electric Power Co.] to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors.”
The journalism is partly a response to the lack of mainstream US news coverage, and partly a warning against similar radiation disasters risked in the United States every day by the operation of 23 identical GE reactors (Fukushima clones) in this country.
Japanese media coverage of the catastrophe in English, along with analysis by independent scientists, researchers, and institutes is mostly available online and much of it is reliable.
Five years into the crisis, officials from Tepco have said leaks from the wreckage with “at least” two trillion Becquerels of radioactivity entered the Pacific between August 2013 and May 2014. “At least” is vague enough to beg the question: Is the actual total 5 trillion; 25; 50? Relentless drainage of contaminated water from the site is estimated to be about 300 tons a day and has continued for 60 months. “We should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” researcher Ken Buesseler, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute said last September.
However, Japan isn’t even monitoring seawater near Fukushima, according to The Ecologist.
Greenpeace launches study of 300-year effect on oceans
On Feb. 26, Greenpeace International launched a major investigation into the gusher’s effects on the Pacific Ocean near the wrecked Fukushima complex in Northeast Japan. The group said in a press release that its investigation will employ an underwater vehicle with a sensitive gamma radiation “Spectrometer,” and a sediment sampler.
Greenpeace noted that, “In addition to the initial release of liquid nuclear waste during the first weeks of the accident, and the daily releases ever since, contamination has also flowed from the land itself, particularly nearby forests and mountains of Fukushima, and are expected to continue to contaminate the Pacific Ocean for at least the next 300 years.”
Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who headed the government in 2011, joined the Greenpeace crew aboard the Rainbow Warrior on the opening day of its study, and Kan used the occasion to call for a Germany-like total phase-out of nuclear power.
“I once believed Japan’s advanced technology would prevent a nuclear accident like Chernobyl from happening in Japan,” Kan said. “But it did not, and I was faced with the very real crisis of having to evacuate 50 million people… Instead, we should shift to safer and cheaper renewable energy.”
Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist with Greenpeace Germany said, “There is an urgent need to understand the impact this contamination is having on the ocean — how radioactivity is both dispersing and concentrating — and its implications.”
“Tepco failed to prevent a multiple reactor meltdown and five years later it’s still an ongoing disaster. It has no credible solution to the water crisis they created and is failing to prevent further contamination of the Pacific Ocean,” Burnie said.
Criminal charges leveled against reactor execs
The first criminal charges against executives of Tepco were filed Feb. 29 alleging that three officials refused to take precautionary measures that could have prevented the loss of off-site power (known as “station blackout”), and the resulting complete meltdown, or melt-through, of reactor fuel in three units. Specifically, the three are accused of negligence resulting in death and injury, having ignored explicit professional warnings about the inadequate height of the seawall, and about the improper placement (in basements) of emergency diesel generators which were destroyed by tsunami. Many of the 14,000 Japanese citizens who signed on to the lawsuit said their action was taken partly to force disclosure at trial of important information still kept secret by Tepco.
Starting from scratch with no textbook
Last October, four-½ years into the unprecedented self-destruction of three-reactors in one place, Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency opened an institute “to develop” techniques to inspect and eventually decommission the three leaky ruins. Because of the vast, daunting and novel complexity of three melted reactors, the new “Remote Technology Development Center” is starting from scratch. That’s right: No one now knows how to disassemble and safely containerize the ferociously radioactive wreckage — times three.
Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s chief of decontamination and decommissioning, told the AP Dec. 18, “This is something that’s never been experienced. A textbook doesn’t exist for something like this.” Radiation levels inside the cores are too high for even for robots to make useful inspections.
The ultimate goal of dismantling work is to remove the melted uranium fuel. Researchers don’t yet know how to patch massive quake-caused cracks in chambers under the failed reactors, which release tons of highly contaminated water every day. The new institute is tasked with inventing a first-ever technique to find and plug the leaks. The chambers must be made watertight, because removal of the melted fuel has to be done remotely and under water.
Planners must also invent a system of possible routes by which to remove the hundreds of tons of still-unseen melted fuel, and they’ve been told to find new ways of reducing radiation doses to workers conducting the mission.
Two mayors agree to host waste dumpsites
After first opposing the government’s plans, two towns in Fukushima Prefecture have agreed to Tokyo’s proposal for using them for “permanent” radioactive waste disposal. The sites, one at an existing private facility in Tomioka, and another at Naraha, have been chosen for disposal of “designated waste” in exchange for bribes, including the construction of an industrial park and subsidies worth about $81 million.
“Designated waste” is rubbish with between 8,000 and 100,000 Becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Confusingly, the Japan Times called this deadly refuse “low-level nuclear waste,” while the Asahi Shimbun called it “highly radioactive.”
The Tomioka facility, now run by Ecotech Clean Center, will be nationalized and will then bury some 650,000 cubic meters of designated waste which is mostly incinerator ash, sewage sludge and rice straw. It is a small fraction of the estimated 22 million cubic meters of waste that’s been collected in large black bags and stored outdoors at thousands of sites in 11 prefectures.
Waste with higher radiation levels is to be kept at temporary facilities being built near the doomed reactor complex.
Another proposal from the Ministry of Industry is to bury high-level radioactive waste under the seabed. Experts who made the idea public said such waste could be transported by ship, but this raised alarms about transfer mishaps, transport accidents, groundings, breakups, and sinkings of cargo ships.
Pollution solution: Declare safe today what was unsafe yesterday
Following the start of the ongoing disaster, the government’s official allowable public external radiation exposure was arbitrarily raised. One milliSievert (mSv) per year was raised to 20 mSv for residents in areas affected with radioactive fallout. For radiation workers in the nuclear industry the annual limit was raised from 100 mSv to 250 mSv. This had the double effect of both saving the industry billions in cleanup costs, and increasing radiation-induced health effects — especially in women, fetuses, infants, and children.
Robert Hunzinker reported in CounterPunch Dec. 14 that Physicians for Social Responsibility has warned that the new “allowable dose” means there’s a 1 in 200 risk of children getting cancer in the first year; and over two years the risk increases to 1 in 100.
Sea wall making matters worse
In October, Tepco completed a deep seawall dug into the shore between the ocean and the wrecked reactors. Intended to halt the flow of contaminated groundwater to the Pacific, the dam has cause groundwater levels to rise behind the wall. Now, in an attempt to fix the problem caused by the wall, Tepco dug new wells to pump backed-up groundwater, planning to dump less-contaminated groundwater from new wells into the sea. But the water is so heavily poisoned with tritium that sea dumping was not allowed. Now the company is pumping and dumping the fast rising groundwater into severely radioactive reactor buildings — where the water will become even more contaminated by passing over the mass of hot melted fuel inside. It’s not really a comedy of errors, but a calamity of terrors.
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.
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'Robert Hunzinker reported in CounterPunch Dec. 14 that Physicians for Social Responsibility has warned that the new “allowable dose” means there’s a 1 in 200 risk of children getting cancer in the first year; and over two years the risk increases to 1 in 100.'
I wonder what the risk is after five years, then ten years? Their kids are going to experience what's happening to seal pups. At some point they will reach zero survivability past age twenty. The West Coast seal pups are already there, after five years- :( I've always said, 'first the animals, then the humans (larger animals)', from my observations.
People talk but no one, not one, so-called politician or 'leader' stands up to the obvious population reduction and total degradation of the atmospheric ocean and all earthly materials and life forms, by man made radiation alone (nevermind cosmic, I mean cosmic s*t happens, not in our control to stop events). How can the NOT say anything? We did and do still HAVE A CHOICE to keep creating these materials! Meanwhile they are carting off all the excess Japanese waste to California, the WIPP in New Mexico, is it SC or VA?, and Australia. This is what we do, like a virus, we replicate more and spread it around to create more, and spread it around, and so on and so on. At what point does the idiocy stop, when our longevity decreases on the planet or a certain number of world populations drop? What do they imagine will be left of any other life forms at that point when those life forms that do squeek through the rad veil, will be 'hot' and not good for humans. I couldn't/wouldn't write a better suicide script for the planet, except by radiation.
Hillary went to Japan to tell them 'so, sorry for your losses', market losses that is, then allowed contaminated Japanese food to be sent and sold in the United States, continuing at present, no doubt. I couldn't vote for her, for that decision and her support of Monsanto - oh hell no! She thinks Monsanto is going to save the planet from hunger?
I am flabbergasted that all our our leaders, around the globe for that matter, have bought the nucleocrats stories about how 'radiation is everywhere, no problem for humans, you survive with a little mutation, no worries, big ocean, blah blah'. It's like their mentality is stuck on an old advertisement, about 'better living through modern chemistry' and physics. Something tells me they have NO CLUE the amounts of radiation we are dealing with, new to the planet, and unprecedented exposure to noble gases. It's not just Fukushima but many leaking plants worldwide. When scientists do speak about the ocean's radiated blobs bobbing about, evaporating onto land, killing off everything that lives in the ocean, they mince their words, like 'oh much radiation, we will have to S T U D Y the effects on humans'. Ooh balderdash, we've been studying radiation for 50 years! They know damned well what it does to humans which has led some people like J. Stone to say that this event was an act of sabotage to depop the U.S. Well, it's done now, whatever the reason, but the ongoing radiation situation is a very grim one that will include the masterminds and their minion's grandchildren. It's really a matter of HOW MUCH is being accumulated by each and every person, animal, plant, or microorganism. At the rate of long decays, the variety of isotopes including estoeric nuclides, in the amounts that are spewing in the atmosphere, there are going to be compounded effects, especially from ingestion and/or any new fresh plumes inhaled.
I've said that my views of the cams show the commons pent fuel pool that at one time stored 1500 rods of fuel is steaming, again, with about 10 guys in hazmat suits trying to shore something up on the floor with an outside railing. What's up with that I wonder? How much fuel is left in that storage bin? When that pool goes, it's in your face doom if it hits the jet stream or goes out into the ocean from underneath. I've seen it steaming several times, not sure of the number of fires. If there's fire, it's likely that would start a partial melt down. I'm hoping it hasn't and won't happen.
Remember that your chest X-rays, tomographic, nuclear medicine scans, and especially CT scans are measured in (percentage or whole numbers of) millisievert doses, not microsieverts. Unless there is a spoken reason that the doctor knows what they are looking for and can tell you what they've already ruled out, leaving a specific diagnosis that can be backed up by a CT scan, resist the urge to take a quick 'looksee'! Sometimes there is no other way to diagnosis something but often the doctors have no clue and one symptom you related is the reason for jumping off the pier, into a CT Scan, with multiple views. CAVEAT EMPTOR! :D
I'll continue to hope and pray that everyone gets a clue that Japan needs an unusual, out of the box solution to cool the remaining radiation in soil air andwater. I can't imagine what that might be, though there have been lots of suggestions in different places. Who knows if anyone is listening or cares at the top of the human heap? It doesn't seem like it. Seems like they all live in fantasy land. They've all gone dotty.
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