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March 5, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Waste Water from Fukushima

By John LaForge

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno announced in January that his government would delay its plan to pump over 1.37 million tons of watery radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean from the devastated six-reactor complex at Fukushima-Daiichi. With the country facing harsh international pressure to cancel the dumping, Matsuno acknowledged “the need to gain public support,” for the plan, the Associated Press reported January 12. The wicked water is now being collected in large tanks that were hastily built near the wrecked reactors.

Fierce criticism of the deliberate pollution scheme has come from China, South Korea, other Pacific Rim countries, scientists, environmental groups, UN human rights experts, and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), an alliance of 17 Pacific island nations. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also indicated that the government wants a postponement of the dumping operation — designed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) — until it is “verifiably safe to do so,” Thomas Heaton reported February 16 for Civil Beat.

The PIF, independent states where according to Reuters up to half of the world’s tuna is sourced, was crucial in forcing Japan’s apparent retreat. The PIF warned that contaminating the Pacific could harm the fishing that its economies depend on. Mary Yamaguchi reported January 12 for the AP: “Some scientists say the impact of long-term, low-dose exposure to tritium and other radionuclides on the environment and humans is still unknown and the release plan should be delayed. They say tritium affects humans more when it is consumed in fish.” A scientific expert panel assembled by the PIF urged reconsideration of the dumping “because it was not supported by data and more information was needed,” Ken Buesseler, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in January.

Japan announced in April 2021 that it would allow Tepco to pump the nearly 1.4 million tons of liquid radioactive waste into the public commons of the Pacific Ocean beginning in spring 2023. Tepco says it intends dilute the material and pump it into the sea for the next 30 to 40 years using an underground tunnel now under construction. Media attention has focused on the tritium (radioactive hydrogen) in the waste water which cannot be removed by Tepco’s (failed) filtering system, and has generally ignored mention of the long-lived carbon-14 in the water, which likewise cannot be removed.

Often unreported about the plan is the failure of Tepco’s waste water filer system, dubbed the “Advanced Liquid Processing System,” which has not removed the dozens of long-lived radioactive substances — including ruthenium, cobalt-60, strontium-90, cesium-137, and even plutonium – that the company said it would filter.

The water becomes radioactively contaminated (150 tons more every day) after being poured over hundreds of tons of melted, ferociously radioactive uranium — and in reactor #3 plutonium — fuel, the hot wreckage amassed deep inside the foundations of the three destroyed nuclear reactors, units 1, 2 and 3. All three suffered catastrophic meltdowns following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Some of the contaminated waste is groundwater reaches the melted fuel after pouring through cracks in the reactors’ foundations caused by the earthquake. Dr. Buesseler Science magazine in 2020, “Many other isotopes are in those tanks still, and over 70 percent [of 1.37 million tons] would have to be cleaned up further before they might consider even releasing….”

Moreover, reactor 3 which was packed with “mixed oxide” fuel made of combined uranium and plutonium, suffered a huge hydrogen explosion at 11 a.m. on March 14, and Tepco announced that on March 21 and 22, in soil collected on the Fukushima site, plutonium was detected. Hydrogen explosions also caused severe damage to reactors 1 and 2, and to the waste fuel pool of reactor 4. (Three additional hydrogen explosions caused severe damage: to reactor 1 on March 11, and to reactor 2 and to the waste fuel pool of reactor 4 on March 15.)

In April 2021, Cindy Folkers, a radiation and health hazards specialist at Beyond Nuclear in Maryland, told Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams, “TEPCO data show that even twice-through filtration leaves the water 13.7 times more concentrated with hazardous tritium — radioactive hydrogen — than Japan’s allowable standard for ocean dumping, and about one million times higher than the concentration of natural tritium in Earth’s surface waters.”

Secretary Matsuno said in his January statement that the delayed dumping plan “includes enhanced efforts to ensure safety.” This vague reassurance comes from the same authorities that caused the triple meltdown and consequently the worst radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean in history; it follows two years of iron-clad declarations from Tepco and government regulators that contaminating the ocean will be safe. The plan to add more radioactive poisons to the Pacific in order to save money has also been approved by the U.S. government and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency. ###

— Used by Counterpunch, March 3, 2023, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/03/japan-to-delay-ocean-dumping-of-contaminated-waste-water-from-fukushima/

 

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Fukushima, Nuclear Power, Radiation Exposure, Weekly Column

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima’s Endless Crisis

By John LaForge
PhotoCredit:https://www.base.bund.de/EN/ns/accidents/fukushima/fukushima_node.html

International Objections to Japan’s Plan to
Dump Contaminated Wastewater in the Ocean

China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian has again urged Japan “to respond to the legitimate concerns of all relevant parties,” Telesur English (Venezuela) news reported November 11. Speaking April 23, 2021, Zhao Lijian had outlined China’s objections:

“As a close neighbor and stakeholder, the Chinese side expresses grave concern over this. The Fukushima accident is one of the most serious in world history. The leak of large amounts of radioactive materials has had far-reaching implications on the marine environment, food safety, and human health. Despite doubts and opposition from home and abroad, Japan has unilaterally decided to release the Fukushima wastewater into the sea before exhausting all safe ways of disposal. … This is highly irresponsible and will severely affect human health and the immediate interests of people in neighboring countries.”

Meanwhile on December 9, the Pacific Alliance of Municipal Councils’ meeting on Saipan adopted a resolution condemning “the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant and the Japanese government’s 30-year

plan to release approximately 1.1 [to 1.27] million tons (527,578 gallons per year for 30 years) of treated nuclear waste water into the Pacific Ocean.”

Environment Ministry to Experiment
with Dispersing Contaminated Soil

In Japan’s experimental trial-and-error mission to recover from the March 2011 reactor meltdowns, millions of tons of radioactively contaminated soil and debris — scraped up from surrounding lands and collected in 1-ton bags — have reportedly been “decontaminated.”

Japan’s daily Asahi Shimbun on December 7, reports that “the volume of decontaminated soil in Fukushima Prefecture … is about 14 million cubic meters.” Japan’s public TV network NHK reported December 9, “Soil exposed to radioactive fallout from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been decontaminated,” but neither report explained how or where the soil was decontaminated. Japan’s Environment Ministry has decided to experimentally use some of this waste soil — “which still contains low-level radioactive substances” — as a way “to reduce that volume before disposal.”

The plan is to use some of the waste in lawns, parking lots, and flower beds. The ministry reportedly promised that “tests will be conducted to verify changes in radiation doses in the air.” Radioactivity spread by rainfall to surface water or ground water was not mentioned in the news report. The story notes that the contaminated soil measuring less than “8,000 becquerels per kilogram … will be used in the trial runs.” The “becquerel” is a measure of radioactivity usually regarding the presence of cesium-137 which was dispersed in large amounts by the disaster.

Filed Under: Environment, Fukushima, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Goldmine of International Nuclear Reactor News

World Nuclear Industry Status Report:
All the empirical data we need to know about nuclear power’s decline

By Linda Pentz Gunter

The annual goldmine of empirical data on nuclear power that is the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) was unveiled on October 5 in Berlin. The 2022 edition is available for download and is an indispensable reference source.

Beyond its in-depth overview of the status of nuclear power worldwide, the report also provides sections focused on particular areas of the technology or on certain countries or regions of the world.

As its principal author Mycle Schneider pointed out during the rollout, the report’s co-authors are fans of empirical data. Many of the findings in the report are taken from the nuclear industry itself. Facts and physics are pretty much immutable when it comes to nuclear power, and neither favors the industry very well. No amount of industry aspirational rhetoric can hide the truth about a waning and outdated technology.

The over-riding finding of the WNISR is that nuclear power’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation in 2021 dropped to below 10 percent for the first time ever, sinking to its lowest in 40 years.

[Journalist Elisa Serret on Radio Canada noted that this is a 40 percent drop from 1996, when nuclear’s share of global electricity generation peaked at 17.5 percent.]

As in past years, if you take China out of the picture — a country with 21 new reactors under construction as of mid-2022 — the decline of nuclear power worldwide is even more dramatic.

At close to 400 pages, the WNISR is a tome, but it is packed full of essential detail on every important topic related to nuclear power and its decline.

Whether you are interested in new reactors or closures, decommissioning or small modular reactors, the world or a specific country, there is something in the report that will flesh out the details.
In addition, there is an important chapter — Nuclear Power and War — dealing with the fate of nuclear reactors caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the warfare that is exploding around them.

We have of course been talking, writing, and warning about the perils of reactors in a war zone since the time a Russian invasion was first intimated late in 2021. But the WNISR helpfully lays out all the possible causes and consequences of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine. It answers the many questions we have about the robustness, or not, of reactors, fuel pools, and radioactive waste casks to withstand and survive a bombardment or even a prolonged power outage.

As former IAEA director of nuclear safety, Aybars Gurpinar told Bloomberg when addressing the risks to reactors in Ukraine: “Even if structures are extremely well designed, you cannot expect them to withstand a military-style attack. They are not designed for this.”

The WNISR concludes:

“Nuclear power plants are immediately vulnerable in war situations. This is directly due to the constant and permanent need for cooling. Extensive failure of the necessary electrical power or destruction of the cooling systems would lead to overheating of the reactor core. It is relatively unimportant whether this damage is intentional, unintentional, or of indeterminate cause and motivation.

“On the other hand, with increasing duration, the specific stress on the personnel and poorer maintenance worsens the operating conditions which also increases the probability of triggering serious accidents.”

In addition to covering the most obviously disastrous impacts, such as loss of coolant leading to fires and meltdowns, the report also explores some of the other essentials that could be lost during war but that are less often discussed.
These include lack of access to the site due to the destruction of roadways; absence of diesel fuel supplies for backup generators; the continued presence of a fire department with necessary equipment and access; the availability of skilled operating personnel and the consequences of staff working under duress or takeover; and the necessity of continued maintenance, repairs, and inspections.

These add to the already long list of technical things that could go wrong at a reactor under war conditions. This makes it particularly important to focus on the prevention of such a disaster, rather than speculating about who is at fault.

Speculation is not to be found in the WNISR. Accordingly, the authors chose to point out in conclusion that the news reports, about who is firing on what and why, are not necessarily reliable. All they, and we, can assess, is what the damage might be and what the consequences of that damage could lead to.

“In a war situation, it is particularly difficult to verify whether certain reports cover indisputable facts, are exaggerated, or false,” the WNISR authors write. “The warring parties, as well as organizations and individuals interacting with them, have an interest in a representation that is not necessarily objective.”

Wars will happen, and the fog of war will mask and confuse what is actually going on. But the one abiding problem is the nuclear reactors being there in the first place. And that’s the one thing we do have the power to change.

— Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International, where this report first appeared.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Dangerous Nuclear Fantasies: Bill Gates and Techno-fix Delusions

Melted core of Experimental Breeder molten sodium reactor, Idaho, Nov. 29, 1955. In 2018, TerraPower reached a cooperation agreement with China’s National Nuclear Corporation to form a joint venture to co-develop the Traveling Wave Reactor, which is also a liquid sodium-cooled reactor like the failed one above. (Reddit)

Editor’s note: The excerpts below, edited for space, are reprinted from the article by M.V. Ramana and Cassandra Jeffery in the Sept/Oct 2022 issue of Against the Current. To read the full article with footnotes visit https://againstthecurrent.org/atc220/bill-gates-and-techno-fix-delusions/.

Bill Gates and TerraPower
[Bill Gates’ firm] TerraPower was founded in 2006, and Gates continues to serve as Chairman of the Board. The company has funded the development of three different nuclear reactor designs through a mix of venture capitalist investments from fellow billionaires, engineering and manufacturing corporations in the energy and military sector, and government grants. The company has research and development partnerships with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, both of which design and test nuclear weapons. In 2010, the company received $35 million from venture capital firms to develop the first of its “Traveling Wave” reactor[s] (TWR). In 2016, the firm received a $40 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE), followed by another $80 million in 2020, and $8.5 million in 2022. In 2021, [DOE’s] Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations … set aside $2.5 billion for nuclear projects and some of this funding will subsidize the TerraPower nuclear project. [Though TerraPower’s financial records are not available], government support [seems to] add up to nearly as much as private investment and almost certainly more than Gates has personally invested.

Technical Problems

TerraPower has three different reactor designs: the Natrium reactor; the molten chloride fast reactor; and the TWR. All of them are based on old reactor designs vexed with major problems. As its name suggests, the [molten chloride fast] reactor uses nuclear materials dissolved in molten chemical salts … so the inside of the reactor will be a chemically corrosive and highly radioactive environment. The last one to be built [in Oakridge, Tennessee] … operated intermittently from 1965 to 1969, and [was] interrupted [by] 225 [shutdowns] in those four years, only 58 [of which] were planned. Both the TWR and the Natrium use molten sodium … to transport the intense heat produced by the nuclear fission … such reactors have had numerous accidents: on November 29, 1955, the Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho had a partial core meltdown; in October 1966, the Fermi-1 fast reactor in Michigan suffered a partial core meltdown; in Japan, the [abandoned] Monju reactor suffered a series of accidents, produced almost no electricity [and was abandoned] after an expenditure of at least $8.5 billion.

The use of molten sodium makes reactors susceptible to serious fires, because the material burns if exposed to air. Almost all sodium-cooled reactors constructed around the world have experienced sodium leaks, likely because of chemical interactions between sodium and the stainless steel used in various components. Having to deal with all these volatile properties and safety concerns naturally drives up the construction costs of fast reactors, rendering them substantially more expensive than common thermal reactors. Sodium-cooled reactors … operat[e] at dismally low rates compared to standard reactors, the [fuel] load factor … for the Prototype Fast Reactor in the United Kingdom was 27%; France’s Superphenix reactor managed a mere 7.9%. The typical US reactor operates with a load factor of more than 90%.

Systemic Problems and Corruption

The [industrial lobby group] Nuclear Energy Institute [pushed] the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act [of 2019]. Publicly endorsed by Gates, the law makes it easier for “next-generation advanced reactors” of the sort that TerraPower promotes, to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the case of TerraPower, tens of millions of federal tax dollars have been donated to TerraPower without taxpayers ever being given an opportunity to provide or deny their informed consent.
The public — especially near sites [of] new reactor[s], areas where uranium will be mined and processed, and wherever the radioactive waste will go — will be subject to environmental contamination, paying far more than just a financial cost. Further, this obsession with nuclear power … diverts attention from the larger systemic drivers of the climate crisis: unabated capitalism and its need for never-ending economic growth. Pushing the nuclear agenda furthers the falsehood that … climate change can be solved using one more technology from the same toolbox. “Those most responsible for creating the problem [of climate change] will see to it that they profit from the solution,” wrote Arundhati Roy. People like Gates exemplify that observation.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Governor Vetoes Bill to Halt Radioactive Wastewater Dumping in Cape Cod Bay

Protesters gathered in front of Plymouth Town Hall before a public meeting Monday on Holtec Corp.’s plans for decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant.MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF
By Matt Jahnke

Holtec International, the current owner tasked with decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, plans on dumping 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. The plan has met with fierce opposition from local activists, environmentalists, fishermen, and the restaurant and tourism industries. Furthermore, State Senators Susan Moran and Julian Cyr received unanimous approval from the State House and Senate for their proposed amendment — vetoed by Governor Charlie Baker on November 10 — to delay dumping for two years in order to form a commission to investigate potential economic and environmental impacts of the contaminated wastewater. Holtec appears poised to move ahead, maintaining it is legally allowed to do so, now with a clear signal from the governor that he will not stand in the way. Sen. Moran responded to the governor’s veto, saying, “At no time did anyone ever relay concerns with this important amendment. I am eager to press the administration for an explanation…. I will be refiling [the bill] at the earliest opportunity.” US Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, and US Rep. Bill Keating have called on Holtec to respond to a June 17 letter from the Environmental Protection Agency reminding Holtec that any dumping in the bay would violate federal regulations and Holtec’s permits, and could result in civil, judicial, and administrative penalties.

 

— Old Colony Memorial, Nov. 17; Provincetown Independent, Nov. 9; and Markey, Warren, Keating, Letter to Holtec, Nov. 2, 2022

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

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